Chapter 8
AXLE
I crossed to the shadowy corridor that led to the back rooms and paused. The standing lights were set low, just enough to keep a toe from stubbing and a drunk from dying. My boots went soft out of instinct, and I silently crept forward.
Ten yards from the exit, I spotted a small dark shape sliding along the wall.
One hand skimmed the paint, and the other tucked to her belly like she was holding her ribs in place.
Every line of her said purpose. They also said ache.
The thought of her in pain pissed me off, but it was even more maddening knowing she was doing it to herself, while disobeying my instructions.
I closed the distance between us in seconds.
“Keep going, Ashlynn,” I growled in a menacing tone. “And we’re gonna have a problem.”
She jolted, spun, and flat-palmed the wall to steady herself, breath catching when her eyes locked on mine. No scream. No gasp. Just that sharp inhale and the kind of focus that told me she was already deciding how to get past me.
“You walk very quietly for a man your size,” she murmured, her voice guarded.
“Nature of the beast.” I closed the distance with deliberate and unhurried steps, cornering her without touching her. “Where, exactly, were you planning to go at one in the morning wearing my shirt and a borrowed pair of sweats?”
Her chin tipped up. “Same place I’d go at one in the afternoon. Away.”
“That’s not happening.”
“It is.”
She slid sideways along the wall like she could melt into it and slip past me if she timed things right.
I moved with her, blocking her with little effort.
There was no fear in her eyes, just that stubborn spark that told me she was trying to protect me and everyone else under this roof. It was admirable, but infuriating.
“Ashlynn,” I said, soft in sound but hard everywhere else, “you’re not making it past the garage before my brothers stop you. You know that. And I’m not letting them drag you back when I can do it myself.”
Her jaw tightened. “I’m trying to keep you out of this.”
“Too fucking late.” I stepped in. She tried to slip the other way, but I caught her with one arm hooked under her, then I tossed her over my shoulder like she weighed nothing.
“Mason!” She smacked my back, furious and breathless. “Put me down.”
“No.” I was already moving, my hand locked at the back of her thigh to keep her steady. Heat from her skin burned through the fabric, and I swore under my breath because my body didn’t give a shit about the lecture on restraint being delivered by my brain.
“You can’t just carry me around like”—she squirmed, hips shifting over my shoulder, and I bit back a groan—“like a sack of potatoes!”
“A sack of potatoes wouldn’t fight me this hard.” I climbed the stairs two at a time. “And it doesn’t run straight toward trouble because it thinks it’s doing the right thing.”
“I’m not?—”
“Yeah, you are. And you’re done.”
“You’re impossible,” she growled.
It was so damn cute, I almost smiled.
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all week.”
At the top of the stairs, I pivoted down the hall. The prospect at the far end took one look and suddenly found the wall very fascinating.
I stopped when I reached him and waited for him to look me in the eye. Ashlynn started wiggling again, and I popped her ass once, but she didn’t get a chance to do more than gasp because the prospect finally looked at me.
He was scared as shit. And he fucking should be. Ashlynn had slipped by him unnoticed, and it was gonna cost him.
“You’re lucky I’m otherwise occupied at the moment, asshole. If not, you’d be crawling down the stairs to Kane’s office, battered and broken. Instead, you're gonna march your pathetic ass down there, leave your patch on his desk, and pray you never see me again.”
He swallowed hard and practically ran away. Fucking pussy.
In my room, I kicked the door shut, crossed to the bed, and set her down. Not gently or roughly. Just…final. She hit the mattress, her hair a wild mess, shirt rumpled, eyes burning with frustration and something hotter that she hadn’t figured out how to hide.
I planted my hands on the mattress on either side of her, leaning in until her breath mingled with mine. “Run again, angel. I dare you.”
Her chin lifted a fraction, a movement I was already learning meant a head-on collision was incoming. “Or what?”
My gaze dropped to her mouth, lingered, then dragged back up slowly. “Next time, I’m putting you over my knee and spanking that pert little ass until you remember what ‘stay’ sounds like.”
Her breath hitched, sharp and unsteady. Heat rose in her cheeks, spreading down her throat, and for half a second her lashes dipped—trying and failing to hide the heat my threat had induced.
She looked like every sin I’d ever wanted to commit and every prayer I’d never learned to say.
“You wouldn’t,” she whispered.
“I will,” I warned. “And it won’t be gentle, angel.”
Her breath hitched at my threat, heat climbing her cheeks even while she tried to hide her reaction under a mask of defiance.
She didn’t have to say a word for me to know she was thinking about what it would feel like.
Her eyes held mine a beat too long before she looked away—just enough to tell me the idea wasn’t entirely unwelcome.
I didn’t give her a chance to recover. Just backed off one step and raked a hand through my hair as I toed my boots off one at a time.
She tensed like a cornered cat, eyes tracking my every move as I gripped the hem of my tee and peeled it over my head.
Her gaze dragged down my chest before she caught herself and yanked it back up, a scowl snapping into place like it could undo what she’d just seen.
“What are you doing?” she asked, suspicion thick in her voice.
“Exactly what I said I’d do.” My belt came loose with a snap, the sound seeming extra loud in the tense silence between us.
I shoved my jeans down my hips, stopping at my black boxer briefs because I wasn’t a complete idiot.
The look she gave me said she hated that I didn’t take them off too.
“Protecting you even if I have to tie you to the bed. Or sleep beside you. Since you can’t be trusted to stay where I put you, you choose—me in boxers or me going to find cuffs. ”
Her pupils blew wide, the gray of her irises shrinking to a thin ring. Curiosity flickered. Then heat. Finally, that stubborn tarp of defiance was slung over both. “You…wouldn’t.”
“Cuff you?” I climbed onto the mattress and stretched out on my side facing her, one arm pillowed under my head, so we were eye to eye, breath to breath. “Only if you ask nicely.”
Something soft and wrecked slipped past her guard—not a laugh, not quite a sigh.
It sounded like a woman who’d never been handled right.
One so innocent that she had no idea why the thought of it made her body ache.
The possibility crawled under my skin and rewired everything I thought I knew about patience.
“Fuck,” I muttered, because my cock had been firmly knocking since I’d lifted her off the floor, but now it was banging on the door with a battering ram.
I shouldn’t have gotten into bed with her.
I knew better. But better didn’t mean shit when the room now smelled like her—clean skin and a whisper of citrus that clung to my sheets.
It did stupid things to my head. Made it too easy to picture Ashlynn rolling over, reaching for me, whispering my name with sleep-rough edges.
Mason. Not Axle. She’d said it last night like she was tasting it. I’d been hearing it on loop in my head ever since.
She opened her mouth—probably to get one last jab in—but I cut her off by placing my hand on her jaw, thumb skimming just shy of the split in her lip. The skin there was silky, warm, and it seemed fragile under my calluses.
“Come here.” It wasn’t a request.
She came. No hesitation, no coy games. She closed the inch between us, and I met her halfway, then the taste of her erased everything else.
She didn’t kiss like she was hedging bets—more like she’d slammed the throttle open and thrown the map out the window.
The small, desperate sound in her throat lit me up like a match striking flint.
My mouth slanted over hers, heat licking between us, her hands fisting in the sheets before one slid over my shoulder, the other gliding down my ribs to my waist like she was claiming territory.
My brain turned to white noise when she made that little sound again.
I shifted us until she was on her back and I was half over her, careful of her ribs, though less careful of anything else.
She tasted like joy. Like the first time I’d seen chrome catch sunlight—beauty and power wrapped in the same skin.
“Fuck, angel,” I breathed against her mouth, reverent and ruined. “You don’t even know.”
She trembled under me, not with fear but with something deeper. Desire. And need.
“Then show me,” she whispered shyly.
That nearly broke me. Would have, if her body hadn’t flinched the second my palm slid lower.
Not the kind of reaction that said no—just the kind that told me where the bruises were.
That tightened the leash I’d looped around my own throat the second I saw her and decided to be the man who made sure she healed.
I pulled back an inch. Then another. Her mouth followed mine like she couldn’t help it, and the sound she made when I finally broke the seal would haunt me for the rest of my fucking life.
“Not like this.” My voice was rough with restraint. “Not when you’re hurting. Not when you don’t trust me enough to tell me who I’m about to bury myself inside.”
Her eyes shone, frustration bright in them. “I do trust you.” It came out small and fierce. “I don’t know why. I just…do.”
“Good.” I dragged a hand through her hair, letting it spill over my knuckles. “Then trust me when I say I’m not wrecking you worse because I don’t know how to keep my hands to myself.”
“It’s not my ribs I’m worried about,” she said, too raw and honest to be teasing. “It’s…everything else.”
“Everything else,” I echoed, pulling her with me as I rolled onto my back, “is mine to worry about.” I settled her against my chest, her knee hooked over my thigh, and her cheek finding that spot above my heart like it’d been marked for her since long before I knew her face.
My arms locked around her, keeping her exactly where I wanted her. “Yours to sleep through.”
“I should argue.”
“You can,” I replied with a yawn. “In the morning.”
I bent my head, breathing her in. Citrus shampoo, fresh air tinged with the scent of an oncoming storm. And something pure that had no business smelling this good to a man like me. “Close your eyes and sleep, angel. I’ve got you.”
She exhaled, the sound broken and beautiful, and something in me fused together around it.
“Okay, Mason,” she whispered, so soft it might’ve been a dream if I hadn’t felt her breath on my skin. Then her hand slid under my shirt, a warm palm flattening against my ribs, and I went still because I knew what that meant. Trust not earned but offered.
The machine under my ribs throttled down from redline to a steady hum.
I lay there, listening to the building breathe—the distant hum of tires, the creak of settling wood, her inhale matching mine—until the only thing left was her weight in my arms and the fact that I’d kill anyone who tried to take it from me.