{Chapter: 103 - After the Storm}
The early morning hours were pierced by the muted clamor of a city stirring awake. Shouts of vendors, the rhythmic clatter of wheels over cobblestone, and the hum of conversation drifted in from the open window like the pulse of a world that refused to sleep.
Aiden stirred beneath the sheets, a soft groan escaping his throat as his senses slowly returned to him. The sunlight spilled generously across the bed, filtered through gauzy curtains that danced gently in the breeze. The air carried a faint chill, but it wasn't what caused the goosebumps that peppered his skin.
It was her.
Something warm, delicate, and undeniably soft was draped over his chest. As his eyes fluttered open, adjusting to the invading light, he tilted his head slightly—just enough to glimpse the vivid red hair tangled messily across the pillow beside him.
Natasha.
She lay there in silence, her breathing slow and even, a rare image of peace that starkly contrasted the intensity from the night before. Her naked form was partially hidden under the sheets, but Aiden could see the faint mark where her lips had been bitten— with hickeys everywhere on her body, in the haze of that madness.
The events of the previous night came rushing back like a tidal wave: raw, unfiltered passion driven by emotional chaos neither of them had prepared for. They had gone too far, pushed past the edges of sex and into something primal—perhaps inevitable.
He sat there for a moment, running a hand over her face.
The staff, he thought grimly. That damn berserker staff.
Though he had resisted its madness in the past, it seemed to affect people differently. With Natasha, it hadn't just ignited fear—it had stoked something else also. Something deep. And as much as he hated to admit it, he wasn't exactly an innocent bystander.
He looked down at her again.
The legendary Black Widow. The woman whispered about in both heroic circles and underworld networks. Cold. Deadly. Calculated. And yet, here she was—wrapped in his arms only hours ago, her mind unshackled, her body tangled with his in a symphony of chaos and longing. This version of Natasha was almost unrecognizable from the woman he thought he knew.
He noticed the smear of dried blood on her lower lip and sighed with a rueful chuckle. "For real?" he murmured under his breath. "Last night was…"
Wild didn't even begin to describe it.
He carefully untangled himself, lifting her arm and then her leg from across his body, moving slowly so as not to wake her. The last thing he wanted was to startle Natasha Romanoff—especially in a vulnerable moment.
Padding barefoot to the bathroom, Aiden let the warm water wash away the remnants of last night, but the memories clung stubbornly to his mind. No matter how scalding the water, the image of her body arching beneath him, of her voice whispering his name in tones that sounded more like need than command, refused to fade.
When he stepped back out, towel-drying his hair and buttoning a shirt over his chest—leaving the top two buttons undone—he felt composed. He needed to be.
But his composure shattered the moment he saw her.
Natasha was standing at the window, his oversized shirt hanging off one shoulder, her bare legs silhouetted by the morning light. Her hair tumbled over her back in crimson waves, a visual echo of fire and defiance. And yet, despite the outward calm, her body was rigid, her mind clearly elsewhere.
"Do you want something to eat?" Aiden asked gently as he stepped into the room. "Or maybe just… sleep a little longer?"
She didn't turn. "What about the staff?" she asked instead. Her voice was low, even, but not cold. Not yet.
Aiden stopped mid-step. He blinked at her. "That's the first thing you say?"
She turned then—slowly, deliberately—crossing her arms across her chest. The shirt shifted slightly, revealing just a hint more skin, but her expression was unreadable. The Black Widow mask was back in place.
"What did you expect?" she said quietly. "That I'd wake up all soft and glowing, asking about breakfast in bed?"
"I expected…" Aiden paused, brow furrowing. "I don't know. Something more human than a debrief."
Natasha's lips twitched into a faint, bitter smile. "You forget who I am."
"No," he said carefully, stepping closer. "I think I'm just starting to understand exactly who you are."
Silence stretched between them, taut and heavy.
"I don't do pillow talk, Aiden," she said, her voice sharper now. "And I don't believe in pretending something wasn't what it was. Last night was intense. It was… something. But don't try to turn it into a Hallmark moment."
He exhaled, running a hand through his damp hair. "You don't think it meant anything?"
"I didn't say that."
"Then what are you saying?"
Natasha turned away again, her gaze returning to the city beyond the window. "I'm saying it can't mean anything. Not in the way you want it to. I can't afford that kind of complication. You know the life I live. The enemies I have. The missions I take on. Attachments are a liability—and that's not just spy rhetoric. That's reality."
He approached her, slower this time. "You're allowed to care about people, Nat."
"No," she whispered. "I'm trained not to. Do you know what it means to spend years being taught that love is a weakness? That desire is just another tool to manipulate targets? That vulnerability gets people killed?"
She finally turned to face him fully, and for the first time, the cracks in her armor were visible. Her voice trembled, just barely.
"But last night…" She swallowed hard. "It wasn't about control. It wasn't manipulation. And that scares the hell out of me."
Aiden was silent.
"I remember every moment," she went on, her voice quieter now. "Not because it was reckless—but because it was real. I felt something. Something I wasn't ready for."
He studied her face, the storm behind her eyes. He realized that this—this—was what it meant to get close to Natasha. It meant facing the fractured pieces of a woman forged in fire, constantly balancing between assassin and human being.
"I didn't expect a love confession," he said finally. "But I also didn't expect to feel like a transaction the next morning."
Natasha winced. It was subtle, but he caught it.
"You weren't," she said. "You aren't. And that's what makes it harder. If you were just another mistake, I'd have walked out an hour ago."
She moved closer, standing just inches from him. "But you made me feel safe, Aiden. You made me want something I've spent most of my life running from. And I don't know how to handle that."
He reached out slowly, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek. She didn't flinch.
"We don't have to define anything right now," he said. "But don't pretend it didn't matter."
"I'm not pretending," she whispered. "I'm surviving."
"I see," Aiden muttered, nodding slowly, though his jaw remained tight. "So that's all you have to say."
Natasha raised an eyebrow, arms still folded under the oversized shirt that draped across her frame like a half-hearted disguise. "What, did you expect me to swoon? Bite my lip and beg you to whisper sweet nothings until sunrise?" Her voice was light, almost mocking, but her eyes betrayed something deeper. "Sorry to disappoint."
"I didn't expect anything," he said quietly, though there was a tension behind his voice—a disappointment he couldn't completely bury. "But I also didn't expect you to act like it meant nothing."
Her head tilted slightly, as if measuring the weight of his words. "You think I'm brushing it off?"
"You're certainly doing a good job at it," he replied. "You were gone the moment the sun rose. It's like you zipped your feelings up along with that shirt."
Natasha sighed, lifting a hand to rub the back of her neck—a rare show of discomfort while also scratching the hickey on her neck. "It's not like I didn't feel something, Aiden. That would be easy. But this... whatever this is… it's harder to admit."
Aiden stepped forward slowly, his eyes softening. "Then don't pretend to be so unfazed."
There was a pause. A silence long enough for the hum of the outside world to filter into the room. Birds chirping. Distant traffic. A life too normal for what they were.
"I'm not used to this," she said finally, her voice quieter now, rougher at the edges. "I've spent decades locked in a world where feelings were liabilities, where warmth was a calculated risk, and every kind gesture was a potential trap. You know that, right?"
He nodded slowly, but didn't interrupt.
"I've lived through things you can't imagine, Aiden. Things that change your soul's shape, not just your mind. People like me—we don't come back from that the same." Her eyes lifted to his. "You don't grow up in a world of cold steel and quieter assassinations and then just learn to play house because someone looked at you kindly."
Aiden didn't move, but he heard every word.
"I don't even remember what it felt like to blush at a kiss," she continued, voice brittle. "That kind of innocence… that softness... it was taken from me a long time ago. Before most old people alive were even born. So don't ask me to react like I'm some girl swept off her feet."
She wasn't exaggerating. Though her skin remained smooth and her body unaged thanks to secret programs, serum, and science that went beyond ethical lines, the truth was Natasha had lived nearly a century. Wars came and went. Governments rose and fell. Bed encounters blurred into the pages of memory, indistinct and half-forgotten. It had been a lifetime since she had allowed herself to feel something real—and longer still since she believed she was capable of receiving it.
Aiden looked at her then—not just at the figure in his shirt, not just at the femme fatale with trained reflexes and daggered words—but at the woman beneath the history. "Then I won't ask you to pretend. I'll just ask you not to run from it."
A long silence stretched between them, thick and meaningful.
He stepped forward and brushed a strand of her red hair behind her ear. Natasha's breath caught, but she didn't pull away.
*****
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