Chapter 11
Elise's hands wouldn't stop shaking.
Not from fear. The fear had burned off somewhere between the first gunshot and the moment she'd watched Roughcut crush the life out of a man with his bare hands.
This was something else—adrenaline with nowhere to go, survival instinct screaming through her nervous system with no threat left to fight.
She stood in the bunkhouse bathroom, gripping the edge of the sink, staring at a face she barely recognized in the mirror. Blood spatter on her cheek. Dirt in her hair. Eyes that looked like they belonged to someone who'd been through a war.
Because she had.
The door opened behind her.
Roughcut filled the frame, still in his cut, blood soaking through the makeshift bandage on his shoulder. His chest heaved with ragged breaths, and his eyes—those sad brown eyes that had been so gentle when he touched her—were wild. Feral.
Hunting for her.
"You should be at the medic," she said. Her voice came out wrong. Too high. Too tight.
"Don't care."
"Your shoulder—"
"Don't care." He crossed the small space in two strides and his hands were on her face, tilting her head, checking her eyes, her throat, running over her body with frantic intensity. "Are you hurt? Tell me you're not hurt."
"I'm not hurt."
"You're shaking."
"So are you."
His hands stilled on her shoulders. She could feel the tremor running through him—this massive man, this killer, vibrating like a wire strung too tight.
"I watched you fight," he said, his voice low and rough. "I watched you stand there with a shotgun and put down men who came to kill you. And all I could think—" His grip tightened. "All I could think was that if I lost you, if something happened to you—"
"Nothing happened."
"Something could have."
"But it didn't." She grabbed fistfuls of his cut and yanked him down to her level, close enough that their breath mingled. "I'm here. I'm alive. We're both alive."
The words broke something in both of them.
His mouth crashed into hers with none of the gentleness from the truck cab. This was combat translated into contact—teeth and tongue and desperate, clawing need. She kissed him back just as hard, biting his lip, tasting blood, not caring whose it was.
"Mine," he growled against her mouth. Not a whisper. A claim. A war cry.
"Prove it."
He lifted her like she weighed nothing. Spun them both and slammed her back against the wall hard enough to rattle the mirror. She wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him closer, grinding against him, feeling the proof of what she did to him even through layers of denim.
"This isn't—" He was breathing hard, fighting for control. "This isn't how I wanted—"
"I don't want gentle." She dug her nails into his shoulders, right next to the bullet wound, and felt him shudder. "I want you. Right now. Hard."
His control shattered.
He pinned her against the wall with his hips and tore at her clothes, buttons scattering across the bathroom floor. She returned the favor, shoving his cut off his shoulders, yanking his shirt over his head, desperate to feel skin against skin.
When they finally connected, there was nothing careful about it.
He drove into her with a force that knocked the breath from her lungs, and she cried out—pleasure and relief and something primal that had been building since the first gunshot.
He swallowed the sound with his mouth and started moving, each thrust punctuated by the impact of her back against the wall.
"Say my name," he demanded.
"Sam." She gasped it against his throat. "Sam, Sam—"
The sound undid him. He buried his face in her neck and fucked her like the world was ending, like this was the only thing that mattered, like they had to burn through everything they'd survived before it consumed them both.
She matched him. Met every thrust with her hips, raked her nails down his back hard enough to draw blood, bit his shoulder when the pleasure threatened to overwhelm her.
This wasn't the tender exploration of the truck cab—this was war by other means, two people trying to prove they were alive through the most fundamental act of existence.
"Don't stop," she panted. "Don't you dare stop—"
"Couldn't if I wanted to." His voice was wrecked, raw. "You're everything. You're mine. Every inch of you belongs to me."
"Then take it." She pulled his face up to look at her, held his wild eyes with her own. "Take everything. I'm giving it to you."
He kissed her again—brutal, claiming, absolutely filthy—and his hand slid between them to find the place where they joined. His thumb pressed and circled, and Elise felt the wave building, cresting, threatening to drag her under.
"Come for me," he ordered against her mouth. "Now."
She shattered.
The orgasm ripped through her like lightning, like violence, like surviving. She screamed his name—his real name—and felt him follow a heartbeat later, his whole body going rigid as he poured himself into her, his teeth sinking into her shoulder hard enough to leave a mark.
They stayed pressed against the wall for a long moment, breathing ragged, hearts pounding in tandem. Elise could feel him trembling—aftershocks or adrenaline crash or both. Her own legs were useless, held up entirely by his grip on her hips.
"Bathroom floor," she managed. "Not romantic."
His laugh was more of a groan. "Don't care."
"We should move."
"Can't."
"Sam—"
"Give me a minute." He pressed his forehead against hers, his breath hot on her face. "Just... let me hold you for a minute."
She wrapped her arms around his neck and let him.
Eventually, they made it to the bed.
He carried her there, laid her down, and collapsed beside her with a sound that was half relief and half exhaustion. The adrenaline was finally fading, leaving behind a bone-deep weariness and a strange, floating calm.
Elise curled against his side, her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow from a gallop to something approaching normal. His hand moved through her hair in those slow, careful strokes—the gentleness returning now that the fire had burned out.
"I killed people tonight," she said quietly.
"You survived tonight."
"Is there a difference?"
His hand stilled. Then started moving again, slower. "Yeah. There is."
"Does it get easier?"
"No." His voice was honest. Raw. "But you learn to live with it. To understand that some people don't give you a choice."
She thought about the men who'd come through the garage door. The ones she'd shot without hesitation, without regret, because the alternative was dying.
"I don't feel guilty," she admitted. "Is that wrong?"
"It means you understand what was at stake." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "They came to kill everyone here. The brothers. The old ladies. You. Feeling guilty about stopping them would be lying to yourself about what kind of fight this is."
"And what kind of fight is it?"
"The kind where only one side walks away." His arm tightened around her. "I'm making sure it's our side."
She traced patterns on his chest, following the lines of muscle, avoiding the fresh bandage someone had finally applied to his shoulder. The wound would scar. Another mark on a body already mapped with them.
"Your shoulder," she said.
"Told you. Just a graze."
"It's going to scar."
"Good." His voice was quiet. Certain. "I want to remember this night."
"The night you got shot?"
"The night you stood beside me." He tilted her chin up, made her look at him. "The night I knew for certain you were strong enough to be here. Not just with me—here. In this life. With the club."
She searched his face. The wildness was gone, replaced by something deeper. Steadier.
"You didn't know before?"
"I hoped. I wanted." He traced her cheekbone with his thumb. "Now I know."
The words settled into her chest like something taking root. She'd spent ten years proving herself to bar managers and venue owners and crowds who didn't want to listen. None of that mattered the way this did.
She'd stood in a gunfight beside a man she was falling for, and she hadn't broken.
"What happens tomorrow?" she asked.
"Funerals. Church. Planning." His jaw tightened. "Wennberg sent those men to die. He's sitting somewhere right now thinking he's untouchable, that his money and his muscle can keep buying him safety."
"He's wrong."
"Yeah." Roughcut's voice was quiet and cold and absolutely certain. "He is."
Elise pulled his flannel shirt from the floor—the one he'd been wearing under his cut—and shrugged into it. It smelled like him. Diesel and smoke and something clean underneath.
"I'm keeping this," she said.
"I know."
She curled back against his side, wrapped in his shirt and his arms and the strange peace that came after violence.
Sleep pulled her under before dawn.
When she walked through the compound the next morning, flannel hanging to her thighs and hair still messed from the night before, the brothers who passed her in the yard stopped calling her "the singer."
They started using her name.