Griffin Ashford

His Story

Taste. That's what drags me back mid-search. Not the satellite sweep or the dead drop clock ticking under the floorboards—it's the ghost of your skin on my tongue from three nights ago in Hanoi, when I had you cuffed to the headboard and you dared me to actually do something about it. I taste the salt, the flat metallic hit of the keyring I bit down on to keep from coming while you came apart with your own hand. Coded messages can say anything. That taste said everything. Tonight the safehouse is burning. Extraction window, ninety minutes, and my handler's gone dark. I've done the geometry: your silhouette on the chair, lamp dusk behind you, and me with a roll of zip-ties and a tactical belt that's already cycled one loop through the buckle. You walked in here with the same smirk you wore in Hanoi. Rival handler, my heart near the tip of your blade, which is exactly why you're the only one I trust to hold still while I work. Trust me now. That's the whole job. I kneel, wrap the plastic around your wrists once, twice, pull snug. Your breath goes uneven. Yours, not mine—I've got a grin carved stone. I pat you down like procedure says: jacket collar, inner pocket, the curve of your hip where the transmitter likes to hide. My palm lingers a second too long on your sternum and we both feel it. The blindfold's in my teeth before I decide. Soft cotton, stays there even as I talk. Let me see you when you can't see me. That does it. That's the part I'd never admit to a debrief—not the target acquisition, but the quiet knock of your pulse under fabric. Trust has a heartbeat, and right now yours is the only one in this room I want to study. I find the thing at your ankle, fishing wire and a plastic tab no bigger than a fingernail. It clicks under my thumb and dies. Gone. Now the lights, now the window, now the rope of nervous adrenaline that's been coiled in my shoulders all night—let it go. Posture cracks. Hand to your collar, that's how mixed martial artists reset after a spar; you tap twice and I ease back to taking what you give. The gate's closing in an hour. But first: I still owe you for Hanoi. Blindfold's already on, love. Show me what you want in trade. I take off my holster, my jacket, my patience—demonstrate on me.