Chapter 5
His hand was still on her throat.
Nora could feel the blood drying on his knuckles against her skin, the rough scrape of it, the heat of him pouring through his palm into the place where her pulse hammered.
Behind them, the lot was dark and still and finished.
In front of them, the Ace High's back door stood open, and through it she could see the glow of the emergency exit sign washing green light across the silent machines and the dryers still turning in bay three where Mrs. Pak's forgotten load tumbled soft and steady.
She should've been thinking about the body on the concrete. About the phone call she should make or shouldn't make. About what came next.
She wasn't thinking about any of it.
She was thinking about the way his thumb was moving against her jaw — small, slow circles on the hinge of her bone, like he'd forgotten he was doing it or like he couldn't stop, and the scrape of dried blood on her skin was doing something to the wiring in her chest that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the fact that she'd just watched this man kill for her and her body had made its decision before her brain caught up.
She grabbed the front of his cut with both fists and pulled him toward the door.
He came. No hesitation, no questions, just his hand sliding from her throat to the back of her neck as she hauled him through the doorway and into the back room where the dryers rumbled.
The heat hit them both — the wet, cottony warmth of machines running in a closed space, the air thick with it, and the vibration humming up through the floor into the soles of her boots.
She shoved him back against the folding table.
It was the big one, the industrial steel table where she sorted the morning loads, bolted to the floor and strong enough to hold a week's worth of linen.
His hips hit the edge and his hands came to her waist, and she took the lapels of his cut in both hands and kissed him.
Not gentle. Not careful. She kissed him the way the whole night had gone — fast and hard and fueled by the adrenaline that was still screaming through her blood like a fire looking for something to burn.
His mouth was hot and he tasted like copper and sweat and he kissed her back with the same raw, desperate energy, one hand fisting in the brassy pile of her hair and the other gripping the small of her back hard enough to pull her flush against him.
She bit his lower lip. He made a sound low in his throat — not pain, something darker, something that went straight through her — and his hand tightened in her hair and pulled her head back.
His mouth dropped to her throat, to the spot where his thumb had been drawing circles, and he put his teeth there and she felt her knees try to go.
"Off," she said, pulling at his shirt. The flannel was soaked with sweat and rain and she dragged it up his chest until he let go of her long enough to strip it over his head.
The T-shirt under it went with it, and then he was bare from the waist up in the green emergency light, the route-map tattoo across his left shoulder blade catching the glow as he turned, the wiry build she'd glimpsed at the folding table two nights ago now right here under her hands.
She put her mouth on his neck. Tasted the salt of him, the sweat from the fight still damp on his skin, the heat pouring off him like an engine that hadn't cooled down.
His hands came up under her torn top, rough palms dragging up the lean lines of her ribs, her back, the muscles she'd built hauling wash carts and wrestling dryer drums. He peeled the top over her head and tossed it, and the air from the dryer vents hit her bare skin and she arched into him.
He lifted her onto the table.
His hands gripped her hips and he set her on the edge like she weighed nothing, and she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him in between them.
The steel was warm under her from the dryers running beneath the table, a low vibration humming up through the metal into her thighs, and she could feel every inch of him pressed against her — chest, hips, the hard length of him through his jeans.
"Nora." His voice was wrecked. Raw. Her name in his mouth like something he'd been holding behind his teeth all night.
She reached for his belt. Got it open, got the button, got the zipper while his hands worked her jeans down her hips with a roughness that matched hers — not patient, not asking, just need.
She lifted for him and he stripped them off one leg, leaving the other boot still on, and she didn't care.
She didn't care about anything except getting him closer.
His hand slid up her inner thigh and she sucked air through her teeth.
His fingers found her and she was already wet, already aching, the fight and the adrenaline and the two nights of looking at each other across machines and towels and a dead man's paper all of it compressed into the slick heat between her legs.
He stroked her and she grabbed his wrist — not to stop him, to feel the tendons moving under his skin, the same hand that had killed a man twenty minutes ago now touching her like she was the only thing in the world worth being careful with.
"Now," she said. "I don't want to wait."
He didn't make her wait.
He pushed into her and she gasped and her hands flew to his shoulders, fingers digging into the muscle on either side of the route map inked across his back.
He filled her and she felt it everywhere — in her hips, in her stomach, in the breath that left her lungs in a rush.
He held there for a beat, forehead pressed against hers, both of them breathing each other's air, and then she rolled her hips and he groaned and they started to move.
She set the pace. She'd always set her own pace — at the machines, at the bar, at every job she'd ever worked and every man she'd ever taken to bed — and she set it now, rocking against him on the edge of the steel table with her legs locked around his waist and her hands braced on his shoulders.
He matched her. Thrust for thrust, breath for breath, his hand fisted in her hair and the other gripping her hip hard enough that she'd have bruises tomorrow and she wanted them.
The dryers rumbled under them. The vibration climbed through the table and into her body and joined the rhythm of them, the whole back room humming with heat and motion.
Sweat slicked the space between their chests.
His mouth found her collarbone, her shoulder, the swell of her breast, and she arched her back and drove down onto him harder.
"Mine," he said against her skin. Not a question. Not a request. The word pressed into her like a brand, and instead of fighting it she pulled his head up by the hair and kissed him and said the only word left in her.
"Yours."
The pace broke. Faster, rougher, both of them chasing it now with the adrenaline still burning underneath.
She felt it building — the heat coiling low and tight, the edge of something enormous — and she locked her ankles behind his back and pulled him deep and held him there while it crested.
She arched up off the table and came apart with a sound she didn't recognize from her own throat, and he drove into her twice more and followed her over with her name on his breath and his hand gripping her hip like an anchor.
They stayed.
She didn't let go. Her legs stayed wrapped around him, her arms looped over his shoulders, her face buried in the crook of his neck where the sweat was cooling and his pulse was still hammering against her lips.
He held her on the table with both arms around her waist, his face in her hair, and the dryers turned behind them and the green light washed over them and neither of them moved.
Her fingers traced the route map on his shoulder blade. The ink was raised slightly under her fingertips — old work, set deep — and she followed the lines of it like a road she was memorizing.
"Your hands," she said. She could feel the split knuckles against the bare skin of her back, the dried blood flaking where his fists pressed.
"They'll keep."
"You should clean them."
"Later." His arms tightened. His mouth moved against her hair and he breathed her in — dryer sheets and cheap sweet perfume and the menthols she snuck out back and the sweat they'd made together. "Not moving yet."
She smiled against his neck. The adrenaline was fading now, the wildfire banking into something steadier, and what was left underneath it wasn't the nothing she'd expected.
It was warm. It was heavy. It was the feeling of a man still inside her who'd said mine like he meant it past tonight and a woman who'd said yours back and meant it too.
Outside, the lot lights she'd cut were still dark. Dell Rourke's body was a problem for the next hour. The block was quiet and the Ace High was hers and the man between her legs was still breathing hard against her hair.
Nora Whitfield, who'd never stayed anywhere long enough to be held, stayed.