Chapter 9 Emily #2
The sight of him—broken open, bleeding, not just the outlaw but the hurt animal under the skin—made something inside me twist. I wanted to touch his hair, to wipe the sweat off his face, to hold him the way I would one of the dogs after surgery.
But I knew he’d hate that. So I kept it clinical, efficient.
“Where else are you hurt?” I asked, voice all business.
He flexed his hand, then let it drop to his thigh. “Ribs. Maybe the side. Not sure.”
I lifted his shirt and found the bruise already blooming over his ribs, purple and black. There was a deep gash along his side, but it didn’t look life-threatening.
“Nothing poking out. I think you’ll live.”
He made a sound, not quite a laugh.
“Your lip is split,” I said, wiping away blood. “Don’t talk.”
He nodded, teeth stained red.
I worked in silence, cleaning the wounds, taping the worst of them shut. The air stank of sweat, iron, and bleach. I could hear the pit bulls whining, their bodies pressed to the doors, desperate for reassurance.
“You should see a doctor,” I said.
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
I swallowed, wiped my hands on my jeans.
“Dean?” I said, softer.
He looked at me, eyes steady.
“You didn’t have to do that. They would have left.”
He snorted, then winced at the pain. “They would have come back. For you. For the dogs.”
I felt the tears start, hot and angry. I pressed the gauze to his cheek, harder than necessary. “That’s not your job.”
He caught my wrist, gentle. “It is. Now.”
I leaned my forehead against his, the blood sticky but warm. “Promise me you’ll stop getting stabbed.”
He closed his eyes. “Only if you promise not to let idiots adopt our dogs.”
I nodded, and we sat like that, the two of us and the sound of the shelter settling back into itself, until the adrenaline faded and the only thing left was the clean, sharp ache of still being alive.
The rest of the day went by uneventfully, Dean staying at my side until closing. All day, I watched him, wondering, wanting, fidgeting. I sent the last tech home, told Taryn I’d close everything up, and sent her home.
“I need to do a final walkthrough of the kennels,” I said.
Dean followed me to the back, where rows and rows of eight-foot-tall cages worked across the room. Halfway across the room, in front of an empty cage that had been recently cleaned, I stopped and turned.
Nothing needed to be said. At some point in everyone’s lives, they feel some ancient, animal instinct kick in. Dean backed me into the cage, dogs barking on each side. He kissed me harder, forcing his tongue between my lips.
I should have bolted the cage behind us, made a joke about putting myself in “time out,” but I just let the door clang shut, Dean’s hands already tangled in my hair, pinning my head with just enough force to be a little scary—just enough to break me out of my self-destructive brain loop.
He kissed me like I was air after drowning, all teeth.
The mesh behind me rattled from the impact.
Somewhere down the row, the dogs lost their minds, but Dean found my waistband and yanked me flush to him, his thigh prying open my knees.
I’d never been more grateful for industrial-grade tile.
I hooked my thumbs through his belt loops.
He jerked my hips forward, grinding us together so hard my molars rang.
Kissed again, deeper—his tongue tasted like blood and coffee and chiles, hotter than I expected, so hot the burn shot straight to my chest and lower.
I bit his bottom lip. He grunted, and the sound was so utterly animal it made my thighs go slick.
“Jesus, you’re bleeding,” I said, when he let me breathe for half a second. I reached up to check the cut on his cheek. It leaked, but he ignored it, moving my hand away, biting the heel of my palm, then licking the mark like an apology.
“Not as bad as you make me feel,” he said, voice rough, not kidding at all.
“Let me—” He started on my buttons, popping them so fast I lost one and didn’t care.
My collarbone hit the mesh, cold steel shocking through my skin.
He shoved the shirt off my shoulders, clumsy from adrenaline, then ran his hands down my sides, found the edge of my bra, pushed under to cup me bare.
His palms were hot, callused. His thumb found my nipple—it hurt in a way that made my whole body bow into him.
“Fuck,” I hissed. I didn’t recognize my own voice—needy, half-feral. I unbuckled his belt. His jeans already tented up, the seam wet where he pressed me, like he wanted to mark me right through the fabric. I wanted him inside, but I also wanted this moment to stretch and crack me open.
He didn’t talk, just shoved my jeans down, then lifted me into his hands and pinned me higher up the cage.
My bare ass hit cold wire. The dogs howled, the two in the next kennel barking so hard their feet scrabbled out from under them, but I was past caring.
My boots scuffed the mesh; Dean’s hand snaked between my legs, dragging his fingers over the slick there, and he groaned—low, hungry, devastated.
I barely had time to claw his zipper down before he freed himself, cock already flushed and angry-looking.
He lined us up, and I locked my legs around his hips, holding on like a drowning woman.
He slid all the way in, thick and brutal, shoving the wind out of me so hard I slapped a hand over his mouth to keep from screaming.
“Don’t,” he said, voice muffled by my palm, “don’t you ever fucking hold back.”
He thrust into me again, so deep I couldn’t see anything but the hard blue of his eyes and the rust-bright flash of blood on his cheek.
Every part of him was at war with holding back—his hands shook on my hips, his teeth grinding so hard I heard the joints pop—but he didn’t go gentle, didn’t settle for sweet.
The first pumps were bruising, wild, the way you only fuck when you’re both a heartbeat away from falling apart completely.
I dug my nails into the back of his neck, then down his spine, dragging red trails through the sweat and grime.
He hissed at the sting, then bent his head to bite my shoulder, hard enough to leave a mark for a week.
My body wanted to cave in, but he wouldn’t let me—he just pressed closer, set a ruthless pace, one hand coming up to close around my throat, thumb resting just under my jaw, not choking but holding me still.
I looked up at him, unblinking, daring him to take more, and he did: he twisted his fingers in my hair and fucked me so hard I slid up the cage, the wire branding my back.
My cunt clenched, desperate and wet, and every time he withdrew, I felt the emptiness like a loss.
If there were words between us, I don’t remember them.
Just that I lived for the scrape of metal mesh and the slap of our bodies, for the way he refused to break eye contact even as his rhythm got frantic, even as sweat dripped from his face onto my lips, even as my orgasm built sharp and mean and absolutely inevitable.
“Are you going to come for me?” he whispered, voice gone so raw it didn’t sound like him. “Tell me.”
“Make me,” I snapped, and so he did. His hand tightened on my jaw, and he shifted his angle, pinning my knees wider with his hips, fucking me so deep and so savage I saw white.
The world went silent except for the crash of dogs and the slap of our bodies, and when I came, it was a full-body spasm, a soundless scream that left my throat raw.
He didn’t stop, didn’t slow, just kept pounding into me, chasing his own release with a single-minded violence that was almost holy.
When he came, his whole body locked up, every muscle a live wire under my hands. He bit my shoulder again, and I loved him for it. I loved every goddamn broken, furious atom in him.
After, we collapsed sideways in the cage, tangled and sticky and shaking. The wire left marks in my thighs and arms. The dogs kept howling, but softer now, like they knew something had changed in the pack order.
Dean laughed, rough and stunned, and the sound was so alive I felt like crying. He brushed the hair from my eyes and kissed my forehead, surprisingly gentle, then licked the sweat from my bare shoulder, eyes a little wild.
“I could stay in here all night,” he said, voice thick.
“You’d get caught. They’d call the cops.”
He grinned, blood on his teeth. “Think anyone would adopt me?”
I kissed him again, then laughed, an animal sound, rolling as I slid off his lap and landed ass-thudding to the tile.
The jolt made the aftershocks fizz up my spine; the wire mesh left a ghost of his fingerprints mapped across my ribs.
He reached down, tucking himself away with a casualness that started a new furnace in my chest, and drew me into his lap again, legs splayed wide, my bare back sticky with sweat, my top half flushed and raw and covered in red press-marks where the mesh had bit into me.
We sat like that, the two of us a ragged, sweating heap in the dirty corner of the empty kennel.
The air settled, still electric, the dogs finally falling to a panting buzz.
I watched Dean’s chest rise and fall through the torn neck of his t-shirt, the dark hair curling damp at his collar, the cut of his jaw now smeared with blood and lipstick and my own shine.
He looked like a goddamn wreck. I’d never wanted anything more.
“Jesus,” I said, finally. “That was—” I couldn’t find a word for it. Biblical, maybe, or something even dumber.
He leaned back, braced on his elbows, and grinned at me like he’d just finished rebuilding an engine from scrap. “You can say it,” he said, voice rough but gloating. “Say I was the best you ever had.”
“You’re the dumbest,” I told him. “You know they have hidden cameras back here, right?”
He shrugged. “Better than being on YouTube for losing a fight to three Sultan idiots.”
I snorted, then shivered when cool air hit my sweaty skin. “Help me up,” I said, but when he did, I ended up on my knees, mouth at his belly. For a second, I considered testing if he could go again, but the ache between my thighs said I’d already pushed my luck past the limit.
He smoothed my hair with one palm, slow, then rolled us up to standing and started buttoning my shirt for me, none of the usual guy-clumsiness in his fingers.
I caught his hand at my throat before he could button all the way, wanting him to see the fresh red fingerprints he'd left there, my collarbone bright and bitten.
He got the message; the look on his face turned hungry again, then melted into something softer that scared the shit out of me.
“You okay?” he asked, for real this time.
I nodded. My voice came out ruined, breathy. “You?”
He tugged his cut straight, then took in the little cube of cage and the puddle of blood drying on his jeans. “Yeah.” Then, “Sorry, I lost it back there.”
I pushed my face against the warm patch between his jaw and shoulder and inhaled, getting a full hit of sex and sweat and spilled adrenaline. “You only lost it a little.”
He laughed, but kept his arms clamped tight around me, swaying us gently side to side. I’d never thought of myself as a romantic. I believed trauma bonded people about as well as trauma did anything—temporarily, not permanently—but I could feel my heart rabbiting out of my chest.
“We need to erase the security cameras,” I said.
Dean laughed, and I led him back through the kennels. FUck, my world had changed.