Chapter Eleven #2
She peeled the hoodie off herself, then reached for his shirt, pulling it over his head to reveal the full map of damage underneath.
Burn scars ran from his hands up his forearms, fading at his biceps.
A shrapnel scar crossed his ribs. His body was hard, scarred, built for the violence he'd chosen as a career—but under her hands, the tension drained out of him one degree at a time.
"See?" she murmured, her fingers tracing the scar on his ribs. "Slow."
"You're killing me."
"You'll survive."
His laugh was quiet—not the bright, sharp sound she was used to, but something softer. Unguarded. The laugh of a man who'd forgotten he knew how to be still.
She pulled him down, and he came willingly, his mouth finding her collarbone, her shoulder, the curve of her neck. His hands—those scarred, steady, devastating hands—learned her the way they learned everything. With focus. With precision. With a thoroughness that left her gasping.
He undressed her slowly because she'd asked him to, and the restraint cost him.
She could feel it in the tremor of his fingers on her skin, in the way his breathing went ragged when she arched into his touch.
Every inch of her he uncovered, he studied, mapped, committed to memory with the intensity of a man who understood that beautiful things could disappear in a heartbeat.
"You're staring," she breathed.
"You're worth staring at."
He covered her body with his, and the contact—skin to skin, scar to softness—made them both shudder. She pulled him closer, her legs tangling with his, her hands finding the scars on his back and tracing them with the same careful attention she gave her most delicate arrangements.
When they finally came together, Blast went still.
Completely, absolutely still.
Not frozen. Not hesitating. Just... present. Feeling everything, drowning in nothing, holding himself inside her with a stillness that she understood was the hardest thing he'd ever done.
"There you are," she whispered.
He moved. Slow at first—painfully, exquisitely slow, his body learning a rhythm that had nothing to do with explosions or adrenaline or the frantic pace he usually ran. She matched him, her hips rising to meet his, her hands anchoring him to the moment when the silence tried to pull him away.
"Faster," she said against his ear, and felt his whole body tighten at the word.
"You said slow—"
"I said you didn't have to rush." She rolled her hips and his groan was guttural, torn from somewhere deep. "There's a difference."
He buried his face in her neck and gave her what she asked for.
Not the frantic pace his body wanted—something between.
Deliberate but deep, each thrust hitting a place inside her that made her fingers curl into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks.
She wrapped her legs around him and pulled him closer and the angle changed and she gasped his name—his real name—against his jaw.
His control cracked. She heard it in the sound he made—half groan, half something broken open—and felt it in the way his hands went from careful to desperate, gripping her hip hard enough to bruise, pulling her body against his like he could fuse them together through sheer force.
"Say it again," he said roughly. "My name. Say it again."
"Keith." She pulled his head up, made him look at her while they moved together. His eyes were dark, wet, stripped of every defense he'd ever built. "Keith. I'm here. I see you."
He shuddered—his whole body, a tremor that started in his chest and radiated outward—and his rhythm broke into something raw and urgent. She met every thrust, her back arching off the mattress, her nails scoring his shoulders, the pleasure building in her core like a wave gathering height.
It built like something organic. Like a flower opening—slow, inevitable, each layer revealing the next until the whole thing bloomed. She felt the crest coming, felt her body tightening around him, felt the precise moment when everything peaked and held and then shattered.
She came apart with a cry she didn't try to muffle, her body clenching around him in waves that pulled him with her.
He followed her over with his face pressed against her throat and a sound that wasn't a word—raw and broken and beautiful—his hips driving deep one last time as his body shook apart in her arms.
The sound he made was the opposite of an explosion.
It was the silence after, finally filled with something other than grief.
They lay tangled in sheets that smelled like motor oil and the faintest trace of roses from her hands.
Blast's heartbeat was slowing under her ear, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm that was almost—almost—calm. His arm was heavy across her waist, his scarred hand resting against her hip.
"Still alive?" she murmured.
"Barely." His voice was rough. Wrecked. "You might actually be dangerous."
"I arrange flowers for a living."
"Exactly. Lulled me into a false sense of security with daisies, then destroyed me with—" He gestured vaguely. "Whatever that was."
"That was slow."
"That was lethal." He pulled her tighter against him. "Do it again sometime?"
"Count on it."
His thumb traced circles on her hip, lazy and warm. The compound was silent around them—no engines, no music, no brothers arguing about whose turn it was to stock the bar. Just the distant hum of the city and the sound of two people breathing in the dark.
"Danny would've liked you," Blast said quietly.
Becca's throat tightened. "Yeah?"
"He had a thing for stubborn women. Said they were the only ones worth the trouble." A pause. "He was right."
She pressed a kiss to his chest, right over his heart, and felt the steady beat against her lips.
"Sleep," she said. "I'll keep the silence company."
His arm tightened. His breathing slowed.
And for the first time since she'd met him, Blast was completely, perfectly still.