Chapter 13
The adrenaline wouldn't stop.
Paige stood in the shower, water scalding hot, watching blood that wasn't hers swirl down the drain. Her hands trembled against the tile. Her heart hammered like she was still in combat, still firing, still watching men fall in the predawn darkness.
She'd killed three people today. Maybe four—hard to know for certain in the chaos. Her body count since joining the Army was higher than she'd ever admitted to anyone, but it had been four years since she'd added to it. Four years of thinking she was done.
The inn was supposed to be peace.
A knock on the bathroom door. "Paige."
Channel's voice, rough with the same edge she felt crawling under her skin.
She'd seen him after battles before—the cool control, the calculated calm.
But she'd also seen the way his hands shook when he thought no one was looking.
The way his eyes went somewhere far away before snapping back to the present.
He was crashing too. They both were.
"Come in."
The door opened. He stood there in jeans and nothing else, bruises already blooming across his ribs, a cut on his cheekbone that would probably scar. His eyes found hers through the steam, and what she saw there wasn't charm or calculation.
It was hunger. Raw and desperate and barely leashed.
"I need—" He stopped, jaw working. "I can't—"
"I know." She turned off the water and stepped out, not bothering with a towel. "I know."
He met her halfway.
This wasn't like before.
Their first time had been about stripping away masks, finding the real person underneath. Tender in its own fierce way. This was something else entirely—primal and desperate, two people proving to each other that they were still alive.
Channel lifted her onto the bathroom counter, his mouth claiming hers with a ferocity that stole her breath. She wrapped her legs around him and pulled him closer, nails digging into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks.
"Alive," she gasped against his lips. "We're alive."
"Alive." The word was a growl, a promise, a prayer. His hands gripped her hips with bruising force, tilting her toward him. "Need to feel you. Need to know—"
"Then take."
He did.
There was nothing gentle about it. Nothing careful.
Just two bodies crashing together, chasing sensation that would drown out the echoes of gunfire and screaming.
Paige threw her head back and let herself feel—the counter cold beneath her, his body burning hot against her, the rhythm building between them like a wave about to break.
"Harder," she demanded, and he obeyed.
She came with a cry that echoed off the tile, her whole body shaking with release. He followed seconds later, his face buried in her neck, her name torn from his throat like it was ripped from somewhere deep.
They stayed locked together for a long moment, both trembling, both breathing like they'd run a marathon. Paige pressed her forehead to his shoulder and felt the last of the adrenaline finally, finally drain away.
"Bedroom," she managed eventually. "Before I fall off this counter."
He carried her there without a word.
They lay tangled in sheets that smelled like smoke and sweat, the compound quiet around them. Paige's head rested on Channel's chest, her fingers tracing the bruises along his ribs. He'd need to have someone look at those—cracked, maybe, from the way he'd winced when she touched them.
"I thought I was done," she said into the silence.
His hand stilled on her back. "Done with what?"
"Combat. Violence. All of it." She closed her eyes, feeling the words scrape her throat. "The inn was supposed to be my peace. Proof that I could be something other than what the Army made me."
"And now?"
"Now I've killed people in my rose garden and on your waterfront, and I'm lying here wondering why I don't feel worse about it." She pushed up on one elbow, looking down at him in the dim light. "What does that make me?"
"A survivor." His hand came up to cup her face, thumb brushing across her cheekbone. "Peace doesn't mean soft, Paige. You were never soft. You just wanted to be, for a while."
"And now?"
"Now you're remembering what you are." His eyes held hers, no judgment in them, only understanding. "Dangerous. Capable. Someone who protects what matters instead of hiding from the world."
She let that settle into her bones, testing the truth of it. The inn had been hiding—she could admit that now. Pretending the soldier didn't exist. Burying her under flowered bedspreads and welcome baskets like that could erase a decade of training and three deployments worth of violence.
But the soldier had never really been buried. Just waiting.
"The inn might not survive this," she said. "Even if we beat Trask. The reputation, the damage... I'm not sure I can go back to being an innkeeper after everything that's happened."
"Do you want to?"
The question caught her off guard. Did she? A month ago, the answer would have been immediate—of course she wanted her peaceful life back, her quiet creek, her routine of breakfast prep and fresh flowers.
Now she wasn't so sure.
"I don't know," she admitted. "I thought that life was what I needed. But being here, with you, with the club... I haven't had to pretend. Haven't had to hide what I am." She laughed, the sound brittle. "Turns out the thing I was running from might have been the thing I actually needed."
Channel pulled her back down against him, his arms wrapping around her like a shield. "You found something here. Something real."
"Don't be smug about it."
"I'm not being smug." She could hear the smile in his voice. "I'm being factual. You came here for protection and you found a place where you don't have to apologize for being dangerous. Where your skills are assets instead of things to be hidden."
"And you?"
"What about me?"
Paige propped her chin on his chest, meeting his eyes. "What did you find?"
He was quiet for a long moment, his hand tracing patterns on her spine. When he spoke, his voice was rough.
"Someone who sees through the bullshit. Someone who wants what's underneath instead of what I show the world." His arms tightened around her. "Someone worth fighting for."
"We've known each other less than a month."
"Time doesn't matter when you know." His gaze was steady, unflinching. "And I know. Whatever this is—whatever we're building—it's real. Realer than anything I've had in years."
Paige felt something shift in her chest—not the adrenaline crash, not the combat stress, but something warmer. Softer. The kind of thing she'd been afraid to feel because feeling meant vulnerability, and vulnerability meant loss.
But she was already in too deep. Had been since he dropped the tourist act in her parlor and showed her the sharp edges underneath.
"The inn was supposed to be my peace," she said again, quieter this time. "But peace was never really the goal, was it? I just wanted somewhere I didn't have to hide."
"And now you've got it." He pressed a kiss to her forehead, lingering and tender. "Just looks different than you expected."
"You're saying I traded a Victorian bed and breakfast for a motorcycle club compound and a man who throws people off towers."
"I'm saying you traded isolation for something worth protecting." His smile was soft, real, nothing calculated about it. "That's not a downgrade. That's finding where you belong."
She wanted to argue. Wanted to point out all the ways this was insane—the violence, the danger, the complete upheaval of everything she'd built. But the words wouldn't come, because somewhere deep down, she knew he was right.
The inn had been escape. This was home.
"We still have to deal with Trask," she said instead. "He's lost his enforcer and his operations coordinator. He'll be desperate."
"We'll handle it."
"Together?"
"Always." He rolled them so she was beneath him, his weight pressing her into the mattress, his eyes dark with something that made her pulse jump. "But that's tomorrow's problem. Right now, I'm more interested in making sure we're both still alive."
"We established that already."
"Could use some confirmation." His mouth found her neck, teeth scraping lightly. "Just to be sure."
Paige arched into him, letting the heat build again, slower this time, less desperate but no less consuming. Tomorrow they'd plan their assault on Trask. Tomorrow they'd finish what the smuggler had started.
But tonight was for this—two people who'd found each other in the middle of violence, discovering something worth more than the peace they'd been chasing.
"Something worth more than peace," she murmured against his skin as he settled between her thighs.
"What?"
"Nothing." She pulled him closer, letting everything else fall away. "Don't be smug about it."
His laugh was low and warm and real, and then there was no more room for words.