Chapter 7 Ambush #3
Tyler considered the question. In the dim light, his face was all planes and shadows.
"Like remembering a language I thought I'd forgotten." His voice was quiet, reflective. "Like coming home. Even though home was never a good place."
"You weren't weak out there. You weren't scared. You were—"
"I was terrified." Tyler cut me off. "Every second. Terrified something would happen to Ghost, to Irish, to—" He stopped, his jaw tightening.
"To me?"
"Yes." The word came out rough. "To you."
The air between us changed.
"Tank." Tyler's voice was barely above a whisper. "What are we doing?"
I moved.
One step, two, closing the distance until I was close enough to see the pulse jumping in his throat, close enough to smell the blood and smoke that still clung to his skin beneath the soap.
His breath caught.
I kissed him.
It wasn't gentle. Wasn't tentative. It was hard and desperate, tasting of adrenaline and copper, my hand finding the back of his neck and pulling him in. Everything I hadn't let myself feel pouring out through the press of my mouth against his.
Tyler went still.
For one endless heartbeat, he didn't respond. His body frozen, his lips unmoving, and I thought—I'd misread everything, I'd ruined everything—
Then he kissed me back.
His hands fisted in my cut, dragging me closer.
His mouth opened under mine, hungry, desperate, matching my intensity with a ferocity that stole my breath.
He kissed like a man drowning, like a man who'd been waiting for this without knowing he was waiting.
The sound he made—a low, broken groan that vibrated against my lips—sent electricity down my spine.
We stumbled backward until his back hit the workbench, tools scattering, neither of us caring. My hands found his hips, his waist, the warm skin beneath the hem of his shirt. His fingers tangled in my hair, pulling, and the slight pain only made me press harder against him.
Blood and smoke and want. The taste of him, the feel of him, the way his body fit against mine.
I wanted—
I pulled back.
My breath was ragged. Tyler stared at me, his lips swollen, his eyes dark and dazed.
"Tank—"
I turned and walked out.
I didn't look back. I just walked, out of the garage and across the lot and into the clubhouse, where I locked myself in my room and pressed my back against the door.
My hands were shaking.
I could still taste him. Could still feel the phantom pressure of his mouth, his hands, his body pressed against mine.
I'd kissed a man.
I'd kissed Tyler.
And the only thing I felt, beneath the confusion and the panic, was the desperate urge to do it again.
I slid down the door until I was sitting on the floor, my head in my hands, the events of the night crashing over me in waves.
Ghost bleeding out on the asphalt. The muzzle flash of Tyler's gun, saving my life.
The cargo of stolen pharmaceuticals. The drive home through darkness, Tyler's bike a constant presence at my shoulder.
And then the kiss.
The kiss that had changed everything. That had taken whatever was building between us and set it on fire.
I'd been with women my whole life. Had never questioned it, never wondered if there was something else, something different.
Women were soft curves and familiar territory, the expected path that I'd walked without thinking.
I'd had girlfriends, hookups, the occasional thing that lasted longer than a few weeks. Normal. Easy.
This wasn't normal. This wasn't easy.
But God, it felt inevitable.
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to block out the memory of Tyler's face in the moment before I'd pulled away. The hope in his expression. The way his whole body had been leaning toward mine, wanting more.
And then the devastation when I'd walked out.
I'd left him there. In the garage, alone, his lips still swollen from my mouth. I'd left because I didn't know what else to do, because the intensity of what I'd felt had scared me more than the gunfire, more than the blood, more than the Wolf who'd almost put a bullet in my chest.
I wanted him.
Not in the abstract way I'd been trying to tell myself. Not as a passing thought, a momentary confusion. I wanted him the way I'd wanted air during the explosion, the way I'd wanted the next breath when the shockwave had stolen everything from my lungs.
Fundamental. Necessary. Terrifying.
I thought about the way he'd moved during the fight—fluid and precise, every action purposeful. The way he'd saved Ghost's life with quick hands and calm words. The way he'd looked at me across the wreckage of the van, blood on his collar and certainty in his eyes.
I thought about his body against mine in the aftermath of the explosion, the way he'd shaken in my arms, the way I'd held him without thinking about what it meant.
I thought about every morning in the garage, every riding lesson, every moment he'd stood too close and I'd felt the air between us thicken with something I couldn't name.
Now I could name it.
I just didn't know what to do about it.
The night stretched on. I heard the others return in ones and twos—Hawk's heavy footsteps, Blade's quieter tread, the murmur of voices as they debriefed in the common room. No one knocked on my door. Maybe they thought I was sleeping. Maybe they knew better.
I should shower. Should wash Ghost's blood off my hands, change out of clothes that smelled like gunpowder and gasoline. Should do something productive with the hours before dawn.
Instead, I sat on the floor and replayed the kiss.
The way Tyler had frozen, that single heartbeat of stillness that had felt like a rejection. Then the way he'd come alive—hands fisting in my cut, mouth opening under mine, that sound he'd made when I'd pressed him against the workbench.
He'd wanted it too. That much was clear. Whatever this was, it wasn't one-sided.
But wanting and having were different things. And walking away, leaving him alone after something that raw—that was a kind of cruelty I hadn't intended but had delivered anyway.
I needed to talk to him.
I needed to explain—except I didn't know how to explain something I didn't understand myself.
Eventually, I pulled myself off the floor.
Stripped out of my bloody clothes and stood under water hot enough to hurt, watching rust-colored streams swirl down the drain.
I scrubbed at my skin until it was raw, but I couldn't scrub away the memory of Tyler's mouth, the feeling of his body against mine.
I climbed into bed as the first gray light of dawn started seeping around the curtains. My body was exhausted, every muscle screaming for rest, but my mind wouldn't quiet.
Sleep came in fragments.
And when I dreamed, I dreamed of Tyler.
His face in the firelight. His hands on my skin. His voice, rough with want, saying my name like a prayer.
I woke with the sun in my eyes and his name on my lips.
And I knew, with a certainty that sat heavy in my chest, that nothing was ever going to be the same.