Chapter 21 Katana #2
The walls between us are gone. For the first time, I believe this could be real.
We stay tangled together a long time, skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat.
The paused TV across the room throws a muted glow over everything, fighters frozen mid-swing, a silent stutter of violence that feels a lifetime away.
My breath finally evens out. Dante’s does too.
I can feel it against my cheek, warm and steady, the rhythm settling me in a way I didn’t know I needed.
He doesn’t rush me. Doesn’t pry. One hand spreads low over my spine, the other combs slow through my hair like he’s relearning me inch by inch and wants to get it right.
“Water?” he murmurs against my temple.
“Yes,” I breathe, though my body doesn’t want to move, not one inch.
He kisses me once, quick and sure, then lifts me off his lap with care, guiding me down to the couch.
My legs wobble and he steadies me, thumbs pressing circles into my hips before he stands.
He disappears into the kitchen, completely bare, moving with a quiet confidence that makes even the simplest thing feel important.
I watch the lines of his back fade into the shadows and come back again when he opens the fridge. The light sharpens the cut of muscle, the map of scars. Every inch of him is a master piece and there’s so much more of it to explore.
He returns with two glasses. We sit hip to hip, knees touching, and drink like we’ve crossed a desert. The water is cold enough to sting, perfect. When I’ve finished he takes my empty glass and sets both on the table without breaking eye contact.
“Come here,” he says, softer now.
I do. I swing my legs over his, straddling him again, and let my weight settle on his lap.
His cock twitches against my clit and it’s like a match to a wick and I’m on fire again.
His palms bracket my thighs, warm and certain.
I touch his face, the rough drag of stubble scrapes my fingertips.
His eyes track mine like they’re memorizing turns on a road he plans to travel every day.
“When you said it,” I whisper, my voice catching on a truth I don’t know how to admit, “I felt it all the way down to my soul.”
“I meant it all the way down to mine,” he says.
The truth in that moves me. I bow my head, press our foreheads together.
The ache I’ve been carrying since he walked out loosens.
It’s not gone, but eased, like fresh air finally filling my lungs.
We fall into a quieter heat, slow and deliberate.
Not the rush of need taking over, but the kind that smolders, that builds from inside out.
He kisses every inch of skin like he plans to file a claim.
I do the same, mapping him with my mouth over his collarbone, across that hollow where his pulse flutters, the old scar on his shoulder.
His hands skim the outside of my thighs, up to my waist, and down my back.
Reverent. Possessive. Tender. It shouldn’t be allowed to be all three, but with him, it is.
I shift, feeling him harden again against my belly, the slow rise of hunger matching mine.
He cups my cheek, thumb brushing the corner of my mouth where he’s kissed me raw.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” he asks, glancing toward the neat line of stitches at my side.
I take his hand and press his palm to the bruise blooming high on my rib. “I’m okay with you.”
Something in his expression cracks. He kisses the bruise, then the next, like he’s offering benedictions over my shoulder, the ridge of my ribs, the faded scar at my hip. He takes his time. He doesn’t apologize for touching me like I’m precious. He just does it, and the ground steadies beneath us.
I lower myself onto him again, slow and aching and more sure than I’ve ever been.
He sinks in with a groan that reverberates through me, one arm looping around my waist as if to keep me from floating away.
We move in an easy rhythm this time, eyes open, breaths syncing.
He’s deeper like this, the ache sweeter.
The sensation unravels me, not just with pleasure, but with the terrifying certainty that I could lose myself to this man and not want to come back.
Every slide pushes tears close to the surface for reasons I don’t fully understand.
I blink them back until I have no choice but to let them fall anyway.
“Hey,” he murmurs, his thumbs tender at my jaw. “I’ve got you.”
“I know.” My voice splinters. “I know.” No one has ever seen me like this. I don’t tell him that but he feels it. His hands tell me he feels it.
We don’t rush. We take as long as we need.
My hips circle, his hands adjust, anchoring, guiding me.
Heat builds low and steady, a tide dragging me out where the bottom drops away.
He holds me to it, mouths my name, asks me to meet him, and I do, with everything I’ve kept locked up.
When I shatter this time, it’s a quiet, rocking kind of break, breathless and full.
I clench around him and he curses softly, chasing me down, letting go inside me with a rough sound that I’ll keep in my mind when life tries to convince me I’m alone.
Afterwards, we fold into the couch cushions, bodies slippery and boneless. He tugs the throw blanket down with one hand and covers us both, then drags me over his chest until my ear is pillowed on his heartbeat. I could stay here forever.
“What are you thinking?” he asks eventually, voice rough with sleep and sex and something that might be hope.
I think of my girls, of Devyn asleep in the clubhouse with Mama Ru watching over her.
I think of Riot’s grave and the ash of her cut in a wet hole where it’ll never be found.
Survival isn’t all that matters, but it is what loyalty requires.
We survive by making the right people stronger together than apart.
“I’ve been carrying ghosts for a long time,” I admit. “But right now… they’re quiet.”
He hums, a thoughtful little sound in his chest. “Marc’s here whenever I need a talking-to.”
I angle up on an elbow. “Your brother?”
He nods. The corner of his mouth pulls, not a smile, not exactly. “He shows up when I’m being an idiot. He told me to choose love. I told him to go to hell. Then you knocked.”
The laugh that escapes me is small but real. “Guess he knows what he’s talking about.”
“He always did.” Dante’s knuckles glide along my cheek. “You make me want to be the man he believed I could be.”
I swallow. The sentiment feels like a weight and a gift. “You already are.”
He huffs a disbelieving breath. “Working on it.”
I settle again, fitting the curve of my body to his. The red digits of the clock on his media console tick to 5:19. The city outside his window hums the low, tired note it always sings just before dawn starts to break. For a minute, we let the world be simple. But it isn’t. It never is.
Dante shifts under me, sitting up on the couch and dragging me with him until I’m perched on his lap again, chest to chest, breath to breath.
His hands grip my thighs, steady, like he’s afraid if he lets go I’ll vanish.
Then, in one motion, he rises, lifting me effortlessly.
My arms loop tighter around his neck, my legs cinching his waist as he carries me through the apartment.
We pass the table, the laptop screen still throwing cold light across the mess of papers. It stops me cold.
“Put me down.” My voice is sharp, cutting through the haze between us.
He hesitates, his brow tightening, but he obeys, setting me on my feet. I pull free of his hold just enough to lean over the table, scanning the mess. “What is this?”
“I’ve been chasing leads on Isadora Vale. Trying to find the cracks in her empire.” His hand scrubs down his face, then he shakes his head. “But that can wait. The only thing that matters right now…” His fingers catch my chin, tilting my face back to his. “is us.”
Before I can speak, his mouth claims mine again, hot and certain. His kiss drowns out the danger Vale promises, until all that’s left is him.
I don’t fight it. I sink into it. He scoops me back into his arms and carries me the rest of the way to his bedroom, the shadows inside swallowing us whole.
We fall together onto the bed, soft and unhurried this time, like the world outside doesn’t exist, like tonight belongs to us alone.
Heat unfurls low and slow for the third time, as inevitable as sunrise.
“Again?” he asks, not cocky, just hopeful.
I answer with my mouth. With my hands. With every piece of me that refuses to stay away.
We take our time, longer even than before.
We kiss until the boundaries blur and reform and blur again.
He turns me under him, not to take control but to carry it with me.
His hands are patient, his mouth is generous, his body is a question I answer yes to in a dozen different ways.
I guide him back inside me with a sigh that shivers us both.
He props on one forearm, the other hand threading our fingers together and pinning them by my head.
Our palms fit like this was always the plan.
He watches me while he moves, eyes wide open, as if blinking might make me disappear.
I meet that gaze and hold it, not flinching from what he’s offering or what I am giving in return.
“Say it again,” I whisper, not ready to say it back, but wanting it like breath.
“I love you,” he says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world.
My body responds, heat catching, rolling, cresting.
I clutch at him, at the sheets, at the edge of a future I’m no longer too proud to want.
I shatter around him, my climax ripping through me harder than before, sharper, deeper, in ways I didn’t think was even possible.
Dante follows, shuddering, saying my name like it’s the hinge his whole life swings on.
After, he stays exactly where he is, covering me with his weight until the tremors fade.
Then he eases out and gathers me into his chest again, cradling my head under his chin.
“What now?” I ask, my voice low.
Dante shifts to see me better. “Now, you keep leading your women. I keep digging into Vale and bring you what I find. We work together. We don’t undercut each other. We don’t lie. We don’t disappear when it gets ugly.”
“It’s not going to be easy,” I say.
“I don’t do easy,” he answers. “And neither do you.”
We lie there longer, letting the plan be simple before the world complicates it. I should go but I don’t want to.
He must feel it in the way my muscles coil. He tightens his arm around me. “Stay.”
His request lands right at the heart of me. I inhale, count to five, let it out.
“I can do a few hours,” I concede, though the thought of leaving makes something inside me ache.
“Good.” He tucks the blanket up over my shoulder. “In the morning, you’ll make coffee and I’ll make breakfast.”
I snort. “We’re not that domestic.”
“We could be.”
The quiet that follows isn’t heavy. It’s full. He strokes my hair until my eyes slide shut.
When I wake, I roll and find him watching me like he didn’t expect to find me still here in his bed. He kisses me slow and unhurried. We move together again, not for the fireworks this time, but for the way it knits last night to today.
“Dante,” I say, and my voice doesn’t shake. “I’m not good at this.”
“Neither am I,” he admits. “We’ll be bad at it together until we’re not.”
I laugh softly, because maybe that’s the truest thing I’ve ever heard. Maybe that’s what hope looks like.
I sit up, tug a shirt from the floor over my head, and pad to the bathroom.
When I return, he’s in the kitchen with the coffeemaker, swearing under his breath at a filter that refuses to behave.
It’s absurd, and perfect, and a flash of normal in a life that doesn’t allow much of it.
I wrap my arms around him from behind, press my face between his shoulder blades, and feel him smile beneath my cheek.
The machine finally sputters to life. “I thought I was supposed to make the coffee?”
“Do you know how?”
My eyes narrow in him as he pours the sludge into a chipped mug and hands it over. I take a sip and make a face. “Do you?”
He laughs. “Pretend.”
“Oh alright,” I grumble, taking a sip to prove I can.
We stand at the window, mugs warm in our hands, the city wide awake below. In the glass, our reflections overlap, me with his shirt hanging off one shoulder, him unshaven and bare-footed, both of us marked up, both of us softer around the edges than yesterday.
He slides a glance at me. “Come back tonight.”
“Ask me again later,” I say, but we both hear the yes in my tone.
I finish the coffee because he made it. He takes the mug from me and sets it aside, kissing me again. A promise of what’s to come.
By the time I leave to return to my duties, my body aches in all the right ways and I don’t mind. I think of Dante’s mouth at my ear, of the words he laid bare without asking for anything back. I’ll say it to him when I’m ready. Not now, not as a reflex. When I do, it’ll stick.
I ride toward the clubhouse. Toward the fight that’s to come. Toward whatever Dante and I are building between us. The road unwinds, and for once, it feels like it’s taking me somewhere I chose.
Happy isn’t soft. It’s scars and steel, fire and flesh. It’s my patch, him, and the road ahead. And I’ll ride it, Hell or high water.