The Brain Milk

Then Dom's eyes lifted.

He was looking at her chest.

Kayla felt her stomach tighten, but she didn't look away. She had been briefed on this. They will look. They will comment. Don't take it personally. It's tactical. It's not about you.

But eight of them, a small voice whispered in the back of her mind. Eight of them looking at you like that.

She silenced the voice.

"You ready to share the good stuff, new girl?" Dom asked, his grin lazy, almost friendly, but edged with something sharper. "Or do we gotta beg?"

"Dom," Vic said mildly. It wasn't a reprimand. It was a placeholder. A warning dressed in neutral clothing.

"What? I'm just saying." Dom spread his hands, the picture of wounded innocence. "We're about to walk into a building where people might shoot at us. I want my brain juice."

"It's not juice," Marcus — Chief — said, finally looking up from his magazine check. His eyes met Kayla's. He didn't smile, but something in his expression softened. Something almost paternal. "It's G2 plus A5. Focus and cognitive enhancement. Ninety to a hundred eighty minutes of peak performance."

"Show-off," Terry muttered beside her.

"I read the mission briefing," Chief replied. "Unlike some people."

"Reading's overrated," Dom said. "Experience is what matters."

"You've been shot three times," Hicks pointed out.

"Exactly. Experience."

The van hit a bump — a deep, bone-rattling crater in the asphalt — and Kayla's breasts, heavy and swollen and barely contained by the unzipped front of her tactical top, swayed visibly. The torn fabric gaped open, exposing the full curve of her cleavage, the pale blue veins tracing delicate patterns beneath her skin.

A small bead of milk broke free from her right nipple and traced a slow, glistening path down the underside of her breast before disappearing into the waistband of her tactical pants.

Dom stared.

So did Terry.

Even Vic glanced, though his expression remained unreadable.

The bearded operator — Beard — licked his lips without seeming to notice he'd done it. "Gym & Guns" hoodie adjusted the front of his pants, casual and practiced, maybe not even conscious of the gesture.

Hicks tilted his helmet back an inch for a better view.

The broad-shouldered man with no identifiers just stared, his shotgun resting across his thighs, his expression unreadable but his knuckles white where he gripped the forend.

Kayla kept her breathing steady. Her face still.

Cold professionalism. That's what they taught her.

What they didn't teach her — what no one could teach her — was how to stop her heart from hammering against her ribs when eight armed men looked at her exposed body like she was a vending machine. Or maybe something else. Something she didn't have words for yet.