Chapter Eleven
Teagan couldn't stop shaking, which pissed her off more than the assault had.
The adrenaline had done its job during the fight—steady hands, clear head, a trigger pull so clean it surprised her.
But now, three hours later, with the bodies gone and the gate propped back into its track and the compound settling into the stunned quiet that followed violence, her hands wouldn't cooperate.
She dealt with it the only way she knew how. She went to her horse.
Ginger was where Teagan had left her—tied to the support beam behind the garage, calm as Sunday morning, nosing at a hay net someone had hung for her while the shooting was happening.
The mare lifted her head when Teagan ducked around the corner, ears pricked, and blew a soft breath against her palm.
"Hey, girl." Teagan pressed her forehead to Ginger's neck and closed her eyes. Breathed. Let the horse's warmth soak into her until her hands slowed from shaking to trembling to something she could use.
Then she got to work.
She ran her palms down every leg. Front left, front right, hind left, hind right.
Feeling for heat, swelling, any flinch that would tell her something was wrong.
She lifted each hoof and checked the soles—no stones, no cracks, no bruising.
She pressed her ear to Ginger's barrel and listened to the gut sounds, counting the rumbles the way Dana had shown her. Normal. Everything normal.
The mare's breathing was even. Her eyes were bright. Her coat was warm but not hot, her pulse steady under Teagan's fingertips.
"She's sound," Teagan said aloud, to no one, to herself, to the universe that kept trying to take this horse from her. "She's sound."
She untied Ginger and led her back to the corral, checking the mare's gait on every stride. Walk. Turn. Walk again. No hitch. No favoring. Sound. Her horse had survived a gunfight behind a cinder-block wall and come out the other side without a scratch.
Teagan latched the corral gate, checked the water, checked the hay, checked the latch again. Her hands had finally stopped trembling.
She walked into the mess hall without washing her face.
The room was loud. Brothers packed the long tables, filling the space with the raucous energy of men who'd won a fight and needed somewhere to put the high.
Bottles lined the bar—whiskey, beer, something clear that Teagan suspected was Ramona's homemade stock.
The air was thick with cigarette smoke and laughter and the sharp copper smell of men who'd bled and hadn't bothered to clean up yet.
Striker was at the far table with Shadow and Rascal, a glass in his hand and a bruise darkening along his left forearm where the tire iron had caught him.
His knuckles were split. There was a cut above his ear she hadn't noticed before—shallow, already crusting, the kind of wound a man didn't feel until the fighting stopped.
He saw her come in. His eyes tracked her across the room—dirt on her face, his shirt still hanging off her frame, the rifle she'd finally set down leaving an indent on her shoulder.
He didn't wave. Didn't call out. Just watched her with that focused heat that made her feel like the only person in a room full of thirty men.
She walked to his table and sat down beside him.
Not across from him. Beside him. Close enough that her thigh pressed against his under the table, close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating off his body and the barely contained energy that combat always left simmering under his skin.
He leaned into her, just slightly. His hand found her knee under the table and stayed there.
Shadow stood up. The VP had blood on his shirt and that crooked grin on his face, and when he raised his glass the room quieted like someone had pulled the volume knob.
"To our Warlord," Shadow said, "who ran through that gate this morning like he was late for a date with the devil and pissed about the traffic.
" Laughter rolled through the room. "Twelve men came at our walls.
Twelve men found out why you don't come at our walls.
Striker planned it, Striker led it, and Striker walked into that motor home alone and came out carrying their whole goddamn operation in a laptop bag. "
Brothers pounded the tables. Glass rang against glass.
Teagan lifted her chin. "I've seen calmer bull riders at the buzzer."
The room erupted. Shadow threw his head back and howled.
Rascal's mouth twitched—which, from what Teagan had learned about the Sergeant at Arms, was equivalent to a standing ovation.
Striker's hand tightened on her knee, and when she glanced at him, his eyes were bright with something that had nothing to do with whiskey.
Ramona appeared at Teagan's elbow with a bottle and two glasses. The woman moved through the clubhouse like she owned it—easy authority, sharp smile, the kind of presence that came from standing beside dangerous men and never being the one who flinched.
"You earned this, honey." Ramona poured two fingers of amber liquid into each glass. "My own stock. Aged four years in charred oak."
Teagan took the glass and drank.
The whiskey hit like a warm fist—smooth, deep, with a burn that started in her chest and spread outward until her whole body hummed. She set the glass down, and Ramona refilled it without being asked.
Shadow leaned across the table. "You any good at this, cowgirl?"
Teagan met his eyes. "Try me."
They matched each other shot for shot. Shadow drank like a man who'd been practicing since he could reach the bottle—smooth, easy, never rushing.
Teagan drank like a woman who'd grown up pouring for professionals—steady, measured, refusing to let the burn show on her face.
The brothers gathered around, laying bets, cheering every glass.
Four shots. Five. Six.
The room was spinning pleasantly and Shadow's grin was getting sloppy when Carmen materialized at Teagan's shoulder.
"That's enough."
"I'm fine—"
"You're six shots deep on an empty stomach after a gunfight, and you've got a horse to ride in the morning." Carmen's voice carried the same no-arguments authority it always did. "You're done."
Teagan opened her mouth to argue and then closed it. Carmen was right. Carmen was always right, in the specific, immovable way of women who'd learned that someone in the room had to be.
"Fine." Teagan set her glass down. "But I was winning."
"You were." Shadow saluted her with his glass. "And I'm man enough to admit it."
The party rolled on around them. Brothers drank and argued and relived the fight in the way men did—louder each time, the details sharper, the punches harder.
Teagan sat in the middle of it, Striker's hand still on her knee, the whiskey warm in her blood and the adrenaline finally, finally starting to fade into something else.
Something hotter. Something that had been building since she'd watched him sprint through the compound gate with a shotgun and a grin, since she'd seen him walk back from the motor home with blood on his hands and victory in his eyes.
She leaned into him, her mouth close to his ear. "Take me to your room."
Striker's hand tightened on her knee hard enough to bruise.
He didn't ask if she was sure. Didn't hesitate.
He stood, pulling her up with him, and walked her through the mess hall with his arm around her waist and his palm flat against her hip.
Brothers whistled. Someone yelled something crude that Teagan didn't catch and didn't care about.
The hallway was dark and quiet after the noise of the mess hall. Striker's door was barely shut before she grabbed his cut and hauled him into her.
This was nothing like the first time.
The first time had been a slow burn catching—tender, raw, two people peeling back layers.
This was a detonation. Teagan shoved his cut off his shoulders and yanked his shirt over his head, her hands finding the bruises on his ribs, the cut above his ear, every mark the fight had left on him.
She kissed the bruise on his forearm—the tire iron, the one that could have been worse, could have been a knife, could have been the thing that took him from her—and felt him shudder.
"I watched you come through that gate," she said against his skin. "I had the rifle up and I was covering the flank and all I could think was—" She bit down on his shoulder. "—if he goes down, I'm going out there."
"I didn't go down."
"You better never go down." She pulled back far enough to look at him—bruised, bleeding, alive, hers—and something savage and exhilarant surged through her chest. "You're mine, you understand? You don't get to die on me."
"Say that again."
"Mine." She said it like a war drum. Like a brand. "You're mine, Patrick."
He made a sound—half growl, half groan—and lifted her off her feet.
Her back hit the wall and her legs wrapped around his waist, and then his mouth was on hers and the wall was the only thing keeping them vertical.
He kissed her like he was trying to climb inside her, desperate and fierce, his hands gripping her thighs hard enough to leave marks she'd wear for days.
She laughed against his mouth. She couldn't help it—the absurdity of it, the joy of it, the sheer reckless aliveness of being bruised and half-drunk and wrapped around a man who'd killed for her before breakfast.
"What's funny?" he growled.
"Nothing. Everything." She grabbed his face in both hands. "We just survived a war and you're carrying me like I weigh nothing and I shot a man four hours ago and I have never been more turned on in my entire life. That's what's funny."
His laugh was low and dark and it vibrated through her whole body. They made it to the bed, barely. Fell into it in a tangle of limbs and laughter and the sharp, electric need of two people who'd looked death in the face and chosen each other instead.
They weren't careful. The first time, he'd trembled when he touched her.
This time, his hands were sure and demanding and everywhere—mapping her body like territory he was claiming, every touch a statement of ownership that she answered with her own.
She matched him. Challenged him. Bit and pulled and arched and demanded, because Teagan Duvall had never been gentle and she wasn't going to start now.
They were fierce and loud and when the bed frame cracked against the wall hard enough to chip the plaster, they both laughed and didn't stop.
Afterward, she lay across his chest, her fingers tracing the bruise on his ribs. His hand was tangled in her hair—not holding, just there, fingers moving through the copper strands in slow, absent passes.
"I fight better," she said quietly, "when I have something to come back to."
Striker's hand stilled in her hair. She felt his chest expand beneath her cheek—a deep breath, held, then released.
His arm tightened around her, pulling her closer, and he pressed his lips to the top of her head without saying a word.
He didn't need to. She heard it anyway.