#(( queued ))

The flat has no air conditioning because Simon is, at his core, a man who believes suffering builds character and that a desk fan pointed at the bed is a reasonable substitute for modern climate control.

So you've been lying on the kitchen floor in your knickers for the better part of an hour, cheek pressed to the tile, when you hear his key in the lock.

He's come home from the gym. You know this before you see him because you can smell him the second the door opens—that warm, salt-heavy wave of clean sweat and cheap deodorant losing its war and something underneath that's just him, dense and male and so fundamentally Simon that your brain whites out for a second like a computer hitting a critical error.

He rounds the corner and finds you on the floor. Doesn't blink.

"Heatstroke?"

"Almost."

"Drink water."

"No."

He steps over you to get to the fridge, and the smell of him hits you full force.

The cotton of his shirt is damp at the collar and under the arms and clinging to the small of his abnormally broad back, and when he reaches up to grab a glass from the cabinet his shirt rides up and you get a flash of his stomach, the trail of hair below his navel, and the waistband of his shorts sitting low on his hips, and something in your hindbrain just snaps.

You don't make a conscious decision. One moment you're on the floor. The next you're standing behind him with your nose pressed into the space between his shoulder blades, inhaling like you're trying to extract his soul through his t-shirt.

He goes still. Glass in hand. Tap running.

"Whot're y'doin'."

It's not a question. It's a statement—delivered all flat and measured, the voice he uses on comms when someone is doing something tactically stupid and he's deciding whether to intervene or let natural selection handle it.

"You smell good," you mutter into the damp cotton, which is—objectively insane.

He smells like a man who just did over ninety minutes of deadlifts in thirty-degree heat. He smells like exertion and iron and the ghost of this morning's soap buried under hours of sweat. He smells absolutely incredible.

"I smell like a bloody gym bag."

"Yes." You press closer.

And your arms come around his waist and your hands flatten against his stomach, feeling his abs flex, and you drag your nose up the line of his spine to the nape of his neck where his hair is damp and the scent is concentrated, thick and warm and salty, and the sound you make is embarrassing.

It's a sound that belongs in a nature documentary. The sound a wolf makes finding its mate's trail.

Simon turns the tap off. Sets the glass down.

"You're sniffin' me."

"Mm-hm."

"Haven't showered yet."

"I know." You say it like that's the point, because it is, and you feel the exact moment he processes that by the way his stomach tenses under your palms, the slow, deliberate way he turns around and looks down at you.

His pale face is flushed from the heat. Dirty blonde hair pushed back and slick at the temples. There's a bead of sweat tracking down the side of his neck and you want to lick it, and something in your expression must telegraph that thought clearly because his dark eyes go half-lidded and the corner of his mouth twitches, twisted by a scar.

"Filthy girl," he says, low and warm and not remotely disapproving.

You lose your mind a little.

It gets worse from there. Or better. Depends who you ask.

Simon comes home from a five-day exercise on Salisbury Plain—unwashed, kit bag reeking, the smell of him so potent that it practically has its own postcode—and you ambush him in the hallway before he's even got his boots off.

Shoving your face into his neck as he drops the bag before his mammoth hands come up to grip your hips, and the noise he makes is quiet and dark and satisfied, like this is exactly what he expected and he's been thinking about it for five days.

"Missed me, then," he murmurs against the top of your head, and his voice has that edge it gets—the arrogant one, the one that knows precisely what effect he has and has decided to be insufferable about it.

"Take your shirt off," you demand, tugging at the fabric impatiently.

"Haven't even locked the fuckin' door."

"Take your shirt off."

And he takes his shirt off.

And you, you're past the point of pretending this is normal when you press your face into his chest and breathe him in, the dip of his sternum, the hollow of his collarbone, the coarse hair that covers his pecs.

He smells like five days of sweat and gun oil and British weather and the base layer he hasn't changed since Tuesday, and you're making noises against his skin that are genuinely unhinged—little huffs and hums and one actual, literal whimper when you find the crease where his arm meets his torso and the scent is so strong your vision blurs.

His armpit.

You have your nose in his armpit. You are a woman with a degree and a mortgage and you are huffing your boyfriend's unwashed armpit in the hallway of your shared home and making sounds like you've found God.

Simon's hand comes up to cradle the back of your head. Not pulling you away but holding you there.

"That's rank, luv," he says, conversationally. "Haven't washed in days."

You whimper again. He feels it against his skin and his fingers tighten in your hair and his chest expands with a slow, controlled breath that you've learned to identify as Simon Riley exercising enormous restraint.

"You're proper fucked in the head," he tells you, fond as anything, sporting a throbbing erection in his tac pants.

"Your bloody fault."

You drag your mouth across to the other side. Equal opportunity. His skin is salt-warm and slightly tacky and you tongue the hollow of his throat on the way and he makes a sound—a real one, rough and low—and his hips shift forward and you feel exactly how okay he is with all of this pressing hard against your stomach.

The thing about Simon is that he's a hypocrite.

He'll call you unhinged and stand there with that flat, unimpressed expression while you bury your face in his worn hoodie that he deliberately left on the back of the sofa. He'll raise one split eyebrow when you steal his pillow on the nights he's away because it still smells like his shampoo and his skin.

But then you'll catch him.

You'll catch him pressing his nose into your hair when he thinks you're asleep, breathing slow and deep like he's memorising you. You'll catch him picking up the shirt and knickers you wore yesterday and holding them to his face for just a second before tossing it in the wash.

And you'll catch him pulling you onto his lap after his run and settling you so your face tucks against his neck, unprompted, like he's offering himself, and when you latch on and inhale he'll sigh this long, heavy, settled exhale, like a man setting down something he's been carrying for a very long time.

He likes it. He more than likes it.

He loves that you want him like this—graceless and desperate and raw.

Loves that it's not the clean, put-together version of him that gets you going, but the unwashed, sweating, human animal underneath.

He loves it because Simon Riley has spent his entire adult life being a weapon, a ghost, a thing behind a mask, and you're down on your knees in the hallway sniffing him like a deranged bloodhound because he smells like himself and that's enough to make you lose your mind.

He'll never say it. But his hand in your hair says it. The way he tilts his chin up to give you access says it. The way he comes home from a run and finds you on the sofa and stands in front of you, shirt dark with sweat, and waits—just waits expectantly—with that barely-there smirk until you reach for him.

The worst instance—the one that becomes legend, the one that Simon would murder you for if you ever told a living soul—happens on a Saturday afternoon.

He's been out on a long run. It's hot again. He comes through the door in shorts and a vest that's soaked through, and he's flushed and breathing hard, and you're sitting on the kitchen counter eating an apple and you just stop chewing, eyes big. Mid-bite. Like a prey animal that's just spotted a predator.

Your eyes drop from his face to his chest to the dark trail of hair disappearing into the waistband of his running shorts, and then lower, to where the thin material is clinging with sweat and leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination, and your brain produces a single, coherent thought:

I need to put my face there.

Simon follows your gaze. Looks down at himself. Looks back at you.

"No."

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have'ta. I can hear ya bloody thinkin'." He grabs a cold water bottle. Takes a long drink. A drop escapes down his jaw and tracks along his throat. "The answer's no. I'm disgustin'."

You put the apple down.

"I will literally get on my knees right now, Si."

He chokes on the water. Actually coughs—Lieutenant Simon Riley, the man who has been waterboarded and didn't flinch—and when he recovers, his eyes are dark and his voice is rougher than it was ten seconds ago.

"You're a fuckin' menace, luv."

"And you fucking love it."

He stares at you. You stare back, unblinking. The kitchen is very quiet except for the hum of the fridge and the sound of your shared dignity circling the drain.

He sets the water bottle down. Leans back against the opposite counter. Spreads his stance—just slightly, just enough—and the look he gives you is the most arrogant, self-satisfied, obscene thing you've ever seen on a human face. The whore.

"Come here, then."

You have never moved faster in your life.

You slide off the counter and cross the kitchen in two steps, and then you're on your knees on the tile in front of him, and he's looking down at you with that heavy-lidded expression that's half disbelief and half want—raw and dark and barely controlled.

"Christ," he mutters, and his hand comes up to cup the side of your face, thumb dragging across your cheekbone. "Fuckin' look at you."

You nuzzle into the front of his shorts before he can say anything else. Press your open, wet mouth against the shape of him through the thin, sweat-damp material, and the sound he makes—low, involuntary, and punched out of his chest—sends a hot pulse of satisfaction straight through you.

He's already half-hard and you can smell him here, concentrated and musky and so overwhelmingly male that your eyes flutter shut and you moan against the fabric like you've been starving for it.

"Fuck." His hand slides into your hair. Not pushing, not yet. Just there. "You're really goin' to—"

You tug his shorts down. He helps, lifts his hips off the counter just enough, and then there's nothing between you and the thick, flushed length of him, and the scent hits you unfiltered. Skin and salt and the dark, heady musk of sweat pooled in the crease of his thick thigh, and you bury your nose there first, dragging your tongue along the join of his hip and his leg, tasting the salt on his skin, lapping it up like it's something precious.

"Jesus." His thigh tenses against your cheek. His fingers tighten in your hair. "That's—You're actually—"

You lick a broad, flat stripe up the underside of his cock, base to tip, and his sentence dies in his throat when you slowly stroke his foreskin back, revealing his glistening tip.

He tastes like sweat and skin and Simon, bitter-salt and warm, and you take the head into your mouth with a groan that vibrates through him and makes his hips jerk forward. You feel the twitch of restraint in his grip, how he stops himself from thrusting, and you reach up and grab his wrist and pull, giving him permission.

He swears. Low and filthy and barely audible.

You take him deeper. Relax your throat and let him slide heavy over your tongue, and you can taste every inch of him. The clean salt of fresh sweat, the musk that clings to the coarse hair at his base when you press your nose into it, the slick of pre-come that you chase with your tongue and swallow without hesitation.

And you're sloppy about it. Graceless. Drooling and gagging and moaning around him like you're the one getting something out of this, and the thing is—you are. Your thighs are pressed together and you're grinding against nothing and you're so wet it's obscene, all from the taste and smell of his unwashed, post-run, sweat-soaked body filling your mouth and bursting on your tastebuds.

"Look at me," he rasps, and when you drag your eyes up the length of his body—his clenched stomach, his heaving chest, the dark flush spreading across his collarbones—his expression nearly undoes you. It's wrecked.

The arrogance is still there but it's cracked open, underlaid with something raw and desperate that Simon Riley does not let anyone see, ever, and his chiseled jaw is tight and his lips are parted and he's watching you with the kind of focus he usually reserves for a scope.

"Fuckin' perfect," he grits out. "Taking me so—fuck—so well, that's it—"

You hollow your cheeks and suck, hard, and his head drops back against the cabinet with a dull thud. His hips stutter forward, once, twice, and you feel the tension coiling in his thighs, the tremor in his hand where it's fisted in your hair, and you pull back just enough to tongue at the slit, taste the fresh salt of him leaking onto your tongue, then swallow him down again as deep as you can take him.

He comes with a groan that sounds like it's ripped out of him—low and broken and long, and his hand holds you steady while his hips pulse forward and you swallow every drop of it, hot and salty on the back of your tongue, and you keep swallowing, keep licking him through it until his thigh is shaking against your cheek and his grip in your hair softens from holding to cradling and the sound he's making is just breath—ragged, shattered breath.

You pull off slowly. Press one last, open-mouthed kiss to the crease of his thigh, tasting the sweat still cooling there. Look up at him.

He looks properly ruined. Chest heaving, eyes half-closed, lips bitten red. And he looks down at you on your knees on his kitchen floor with your swollen mouth and your wild eyes, and the corner of his lips curves into something that's too undone to be a smirk.

"C'mere," he murmurs, and pulls you up into his lap on the floor.

And later—much later, after you've done things on the kitchen floor that would get you both banned from polite society—he's lying on his back on the tile with you draped across his chest, both of you disgusting, and he's running his fingers through your hair with this idle, lazy contentment that he only ever shows when it's just the two of you.

"You're absolutely mental, woman," he deadpans. "You're aware, yeah?"

"You literally invited me."

He clicks his tongue. "Didn't say I was complainin'."

Then his calloused hand drifts down your back, and he pulls you closer. His nose presses into your temple and he inhales slow, deliberate, tasting the smell of your sweat and his sweat and the two of them mingled together—and the rumble in his chest when he exhales is so deep that you practically feel it in your teeth.

"Good girl," he says quietly, into your hair. "Fuckin' feral, but good."