Chapter Eleven
Angela stood outside Edge's door for three full minutes before she found the courage to knock.
The compound had gone quiet hours ago. The cookout guests had packed up their folding chairs and casserole dishes and drifted back to their homes in the marina district.
The brothers had retreated to their rooms or their bikes or whatever darkness called to them after midnight.
Even the bay had stilled, the water turning to black glass under a sliver of moon.
And Angela couldn't sleep.
Every time she closed her eyes, she felt his arms around her on the pier. Felt the solid warmth of his chest against her cheek. Felt the way his hands had pressed into her back like he was trying to memorize the shape of her.
She'd tried to tell herself it was adrenaline. Gratitude. The strange intimacy of shared danger and close quarters.
But she was done lying to herself.
Angela knocked.
The door opened almost immediately. Edge stood in the threshold wearing jeans and nothing else, his chest bare, his hair still damp from a shower. The dim light from behind him carved shadows across his body, highlighting scars she hadn't known were there.
"Angela." His voice was rough. Surprised. "Something wrong?"
"No." She swallowed hard. "Can I come in?"
He stepped aside without a word.
His room was bigger than the guest quarters.
A real bed instead of a narrow cot. A window overlooking the bay.
The same industrial bones as the rest of the compound, but with touches that made it his—a worn leather jacket hanging over a chair, boots lined up by the door, a photograph on the nightstand that she couldn't quite see.
"What's going on?" Edge closed the door behind her but didn't move closer. Giving her space. Giving her a chance to change her mind.
Angela turned to face him.
"I've been lying in that guest room for hours trying to convince myself this is a bad idea."
"What is?"
"This." She gestured between them. "You. Me. Whatever's been building since you walked into my shop and broke two men like they were nothing."
Edge's jaw tightened. "Angela—"
"Let me finish." She held up a hand, and he fell silent. "I've spent my whole life being careful. Building something. Protecting what I have. And in one week, you've shown me that careful doesn't matter when someone decides to take what's yours anyway."
She stepped closer. Close enough to see the pulse jumping in his throat.
"I don't know what happens tomorrow. I don't know if we stop Vitale or if he burns everything I have to the ground. But I know I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of being careful." Her voice dropped. "And I'm tired of pretending I don't want you."
Edge didn't move. Didn't breathe.
"You should go back to your room." His voice was strained. Controlled. "Get some sleep. In the morning—"
"I don't want morning." Angela closed the last of the distance between them, her hand finding his chest, feeling his heart pound beneath her palm. "I want now. I want you."
"You don't know what you're asking for."
"Then show me."
Something broke behind his eyes.
His hands came up to frame her face, holding her like she was fragile and precious and the only thing in the world that mattered. His forehead dropped to rest against hers.
"My life isn't quiet," he said. "It's not safe. The things I've done, the things I'll do—you deserve better than a man who solves problems with violence."
"I don't want better." Angela's hands slid up his chest, feeling the heat of his skin, the raised lines of old scars. "I want you."
"Angela..."
"Tell me your name." She pulled back enough to meet his eyes. "Your real name. Not the road name, not the patch. You."
He was silent for so long she thought he wouldn't answer.
Then, so quietly she almost missed it: "Ryan."
Ryan.
Angela let the name settle into her chest, into the space she'd been keeping empty for so long. She lifted up on her toes and pressed her lips to his.
The kiss started gentle. Testing. His hands still cradling her face like he was afraid she'd shatter.
Then she opened her mouth against his, and gentle burned away.
Edge—Ryan—kissed her like a man who'd been drowning and finally found air.
One hand slid into her hair, tilting her head back, deepening the kiss until she couldn't tell where she ended and he began.
The other hand dropped to her waist, pulling her flush against him, and she felt exactly how much control he was struggling to maintain.
"Last chance." He pulled back just enough to speak, his breath ragged against her lips. "Walk away now, and I'll pretend this never happened. Stay, and you're mine. Do you understand? Mine."
Angela's answer was to grab the hem of her shirt and pull it over her head.
Edge made a sound low in his throat—something between a groan and a growl—and then his hands were everywhere. Her back, her waist, her hips. He walked her backward until her legs hit the bed, then lowered her down with a gentleness that made her ache.
"Beautiful." He stood over her, his eyes dark and hungry, taking in the sight of her laid out on his sheets. "Do you have any idea what you do to me?"
"Show me."
He came down over her, one knee between her thighs, his weight braced on his forearms. His mouth found her throat, trailing fire down to her collarbone, finding the places that made her gasp and then returning to them again and again.
Angela arched into him, her hands exploring the planes of his back, feeling the muscles shift beneath his skin. He was hard everywhere—hard and warm and real in a way that made her desperate for more.
"I've wanted this since the flower shop," he murmured against her skin. "Wanted you under me. Wanted to hear you say my name."
"Ryan." She breathed it like a prayer, and he shuddered.
His hand slid down her body, finding the button of her jeans, pausing. Asking.
"Yes." She didn't hesitate. "Yes, please, yes—"
He undressed her slowly. Reverently. Kissing each inch of skin as it was revealed, murmuring words she couldn't quite hear but felt in her bones. By the time she was bare beneath him, Angela was trembling—not from cold, not from fear, but from the sheer overwhelming intensity of being seen.
"You're shaking." His voice was tender now. Worried.
"Don't stop." She pulled him down to her, needing to feel his weight, his warmth, the solid reality of him. "Please don't stop."
He didn't.
Edge shed his jeans and settled between her thighs, and the first press of him against her core made them both gasp. He moved slowly at first, giving her time to adjust, watching her face like every flicker of expression was a map he needed to memorize.
"Look at me." His voice was rough, commanding. "I want to see your eyes when I—"
He thrust forward, and Angela cried out.
It wasn't pain. It was pleasure so sharp it bordered on pain, the kind of feeling that erased thought and left only sensation. She wrapped her legs around his hips, pulling him deeper, and Edge groaned her name like it was being torn from him.
They moved together in a rhythm that built and built, tension coiling tighter with every stroke. His hands gripped her hips, holding her exactly where he wanted her. His mouth found hers, swallowing her moans, giving her his own sounds in return.
"Mine." He said it against her lips, her throat, her ear. "You're mine, Angela. Say it."
"Yours." The word broke free without thought. "I'm yours."
He drove into her harder, faster, and the coil inside Angela snapped.
She came apart beneath him with a cry that echoed off the warehouse walls, wave after wave of pleasure crashing through her until she couldn't remember her own name. Edge followed moments later, burying his face in her neck, his whole body shuddering as he spilled himself inside her.
For a long time, neither of them moved.
Angela floated in the aftermath, her body humming, her mind blank. Edge's weight pressed her into the mattress, heavy but welcome, an anchor in a world that had tilted on its axis.
Eventually, he rolled to the side, pulling her with him so she was tucked against his chest. His hand traced lazy patterns on her back while his heartbeat gradually slowed beneath her ear.
"That was..." Angela trailed off, unable to find words big enough.
"Yeah." His voice was rough. Satisfied. "It was."
She tilted her head up to look at him. In the dim light, the hard lines of his face had softened. He looked younger. More human. Less like a killer and more like a man who'd just found something he didn't know he was missing.
"Ryan," she said, just to feel the name in her mouth.
His eyes heated. "Careful. You keep saying that, I'm going to want to hear it again."
"Maybe I want to say it again."
He kissed her—slow this time, deep and thorough, a promise of things to come. When he pulled back, his thumb traced her lower lip like he was memorizing its shape.
"Stay," he said. Not a command. A request.
"I'm not going anywhere."
They tangled together in the narrow bed, her head on his shoulder, his arms wrapped around her like he expected someone to try taking her away in the night. The bay lapped against the dock outside. The compound settled into silence.
Angela should have been thinking about Vitale. About her shop. About the danger that was still out there, waiting.
Instead, she thought about how right this felt. How unexpected. How the man holding her had shown her violence and tenderness in equal measure, and she wanted both.
Something was taking root in her chest. Something that felt like hope and tasted like danger and had no business growing in a place like this.
But it was growing anyway.
And Angela had no intention of pulling it out.