Chapter Thirteen
Becca's hands wouldn't stop shaking.
She stood in the compound bathroom with the door locked, staring at her reflection in the industrial mirror while the shower ran hot behind her. Soot on her cheeks. Smoke in her hair. A scrape across her knuckles from the fire escape window that she didn't remember getting.
Three hours since the fires. Three hours since she'd climbed through a stranger's window into smoke and heat because a woman was too scared to move and a baby was screaming and nobody else was there.
Three hours since she'd watched Blast walk toward her with blood on his hands and violence still burning behind his eyes, and she'd understood—really understood—what it meant to love a man who solved problems by ending people.
She turned off the shower without getting in.
She didn't want clean. She didn't want calm.
She wanted him.
The hallway was quiet. Brothers had dispersed after the debrief—Alpha handing out assignments, Scout tracking the fallout, Fang disappearing into whatever shadow Fang called home.
The celebration had been muted, the victory tempered by the knowledge that Frank Dvorak was still out there, diminished but not finished.
Becca walked to Blast's door without thinking about where she was going. Her body knew. Her body had been pulling toward him since the moment he'd kissed her on that sidewalk with smoke still drifting past their faces.
She pushed the door open without knocking.
Blast was standing in the center of the room, his shirt stripped off, his cut draped over the back of the chair. He'd washed the blood from his hands but not from the rest of him—she could see it on his jeans, on his boots, in the dark stains at his waistband where Carl Witte's life had ended.
His eyes were wild. That manic energy cranked past anything she'd seen before, vibrating through him like a wire carrying too much current. He was pacing—two steps one way, two steps back—hands flexing and releasing at his sides.
He stopped when he saw her.
"You're here," he said.
"I'm here."
The air between them changed. She could feel it—the way the room compressed, the way every molecule of oxygen seemed to lean toward the space between their bodies.
His eyes dropped from her face to her soot-stained clothes, to her scraped knuckles, to the way she was standing with her chin up and her shoulders back like a woman who'd survived a war and was ready for the aftermath.
"I watched you climb into that building." His voice was raw. Shredded. "Watched you disappear into smoke while I was two blocks away with—"
"I know."
"I couldn't get to you." He moved toward her, two steps that ate the distance between them, his energy crackling off him in waves. "Couldn't protect you. You were inside and the fire was—"
She grabbed the front of his cut and yanked.
The kiss was nothing like the first time. Nothing like the slow, careful discovery in the garage, the tender revelation of scars and stories. This was collision. Impact. Two bodies slamming together with the force of everything they'd survived in the last twelve hours.
His hands fisted in her hair, tilting her head back, and she opened for him with a moan that came from somewhere deeper than thought. He tasted like bourbon and gunpowder and the raw edge of adrenaline that hadn't found its exit yet.
She bit his lip. Hard enough to feel him jolt, hard enough to taste copper, hard enough to make his groan vibrate through her jaw and down her spine.
"That how you want it?" he growled against her mouth.
"That's how I need it."
Something snapped in him. She felt it—the last thread of restraint burning through like a fuse reaching its charge. He lifted her off the floor and she wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms locked behind his neck, her body pressed against his with nothing gentle about the contact.
He carried her to the bed like she weighed nothing. Like the arms that defused bombs and killed men could hold her forever without strain. She hit the mattress and he followed her down, his weight pinning her, and she arched into the pressure because she needed to feel him everywhere.
"You scared the hell out of me," he said against her throat, his teeth scraping the sensitive skin below her ear. "Walking into that smoke like you had a death wish."
"Those families needed—"
"I know." His hands were at her shirt, pulling, and buttons scattered across the floor because neither of them had patience for anything as civilized as undressing. "I know why you did it. Doesn't make me less insane about it."
"Now you know how I feel." She gasped as his mouth found the curve of her neck, biting down, marking. "Every time you ride out. Every time you come back with blood on you."
"Different."
"The hell it is." She grabbed his hair and forced his head up, made him look at her. "I'm not fragile. Don't you dare treat me like I am."
His answering grin was feral. Sharp and dark and nothing like the cheerful mask he wore for the world.
"Wouldn't dream of it."
He stripped her with an efficiency that matched the way he breached doors—fast, focused, zero wasted motion.
Her shirt was gone, her bra unhooked and discarded, her jeans peeled away while his mouth followed the path his hands cleared.
She shoved at his jeans, got them open, felt him kick free without breaking contact.
Skin to skin. Scar to softness. The heat between them was its own kind of fire—the kind that didn't destroy, the kind that forged.
"Mine," he growled, settling between her thighs.
"Prove it."
He drove into her and the sound she made wasn't gentle.
Wasn't quiet. It was the sound of a woman who'd climbed through a burning window and survived, who'd held a stranger's baby while smoke choked the hallway, who'd kissed a man with blood on his hands and chosen this life with her eyes wide open.
Blast set a pace that matched everything he was—fast, relentless, overwhelming.
The bed hit the wall with every thrust, a percussive rhythm that matched the pounding of her heart.
She wrapped her legs tighter, pulled him deeper, her nails raking down his back hard enough to leave marks that would still be there tomorrow.
"Look at me," he demanded.
She forced her eyes open. His face was inches from hers, his expression stripped of every mask he'd ever worn. No grin. No jokes. No manic deflection. Just raw, desperate hunger and something underneath it that looked like terror.
Terror of losing her. Terror of the smoke he couldn't reach her through. Terror of counting who was missing and finding her name on the list.
"I'm here," she said. "I'm alive. We're both alive."
His rhythm broke. She felt the moment control shattered—felt it in the way his body shuddered against hers, in the rough sound he made against her throat, in the way his arms tightened like he could hold her hard enough to make the world stop threatening to take her away.
She grabbed his face with both hands. "Keith. Stay with me."
His real name hit him like a detonation.
His hips slammed forward and she cried out, pleasure and intensity blurring into something she couldn't separate, didn't want to.
She was climbing, her whole body tightening around him, and he was right there with her—she could feel it in his breathing, in the way his muscles coiled, in the desperation of his mouth against hers.
"Come with me," she gasped. "Right now. Come with me."
He buried his face in her neck and let go.
The explosion was mutual. She felt herself shatter at the exact moment he broke apart above her, his groan vibrating against her pulse point while her back arched off the mattress and everything whited out.
Pleasure crashed through her in waves that wiped the slate clean—no smoke, no sirens, no blood, no fear.
Just him. Just her. Just the proof that they were both still breathing.
The aftermath was its own kind of silence.
Not the terrible silence Blast feared—the one that came after explosions, when you counted who was missing. This was different. This was two bodies cooling in tangled sheets, heartbeats slowing from a sprint to a walk, breathing finding its rhythm again.
Blast hadn't moved. His face was still pressed against her neck, his weight still pinning her to the mattress, his arms still locked around her like he'd forgotten how to let go. She could feel his pulse hammering against her skin—fast, then slower, then steady.
She ran her fingers through his hair. Down the back of his neck, across the burn scars that she'd learned by touch, over the ridged skin that told the story of the worst day of his life.
"You're heavy," she murmured.
He didn't move. "Don't care."
"I can't breathe."
"Breathing's overrated."
She laughed—a small, exhausted sound that vibrated through both of them. He shifted just enough to take his weight off her chest, propping himself on one elbow, his other hand still splayed across her ribs like he needed to feel them expand.
"Your hands are shaking," she said.
He looked at them. She was right—the fine tremor was back, the one he hid behind noise and motion. But he wasn't hiding now. Wasn't filling the silence with jokes or deflection or the constant energy that kept the ghosts at bay.
"Adrenaline crash," he said. "Happens after."
"After what? The fighting or the sex?"
"Both." His mouth curved—not the sharp grin, but something softer. Something that belonged only to this room. "Though the sex is a better exit strategy."
She traced his jaw with her fingertips. "Is that what this was? An exit strategy?"
"This was me proving you're real." He caught her hand, pressing his lips to her scraped knuckles. "That you're here. That the smoke didn't—"
"It didn't."
"You climbed through a window into a burning building, Becca."
"And you killed a man on a sidewalk." She held his gaze. "We both did what we had to do."
"That's not the same thing."
"It's exactly the same thing." She shifted closer, pressing her body against his side. "You protect people your way. I protect them mine. The methods are different. The instinct's the same."
He was quiet for a long moment. His hand moved to her hip, pulling her tighter against him, his thumb tracing the same lazy circles he'd drawn the first night. The compound was silent around them—late enough that even the post-operation energy had burned itself out.
"You smelled like smoke when you walked in," he said.
"I still smell like smoke."
"I know." He pressed his nose to her hair, inhaling. "Smoke and flowers. You always smell like both."
"Occupational hazard. The smoke's new. The flowers are permanent."
"I like the combination." His arm tightened around her. "Reminds me of you. Beautiful things that survive fire."
Her throat ached. She pressed her face against his chest, feeling his heartbeat under her cheek—steady now, slow, the racing finally over.
"I wasn't scared," she said quietly. "In the building. When I climbed through that window, I wasn't scared."
"You should have been."
"I know. But all I could think about was the baby crying and the mother frozen and nobody else was there." She swallowed. "I didn't think about the fire. Didn't think about the smoke. I just moved."
"That's what courage is." His voice was rough. "Moving when the smart thing is to stay still."
"Or the opposite. Staying still when every instinct says move."
He knew she was talking about him. About the way stillness cost him, the way silence was his enemy, the way he drowned out the ghosts with noise and motion because stopping meant counting who was missing.
"You're getting better at that," she added.
"At what?"
"Being still." She pressed a kiss to his chest. "Right now. You're not moving. You're not talking just to fill the space. You're just... here."
He considered that. His hand stroked down her spine, slow and deliberate, the restless energy banked to embers.
"You make it easier," he admitted. "When you're here, the silence doesn't feel empty. It just feels... quiet."
"That's because I'm in it."
"Yeah." He pulled her closer, his chin resting on top of her head. "That's exactly why."
She closed her eyes. His breathing evened out under her ear, his body relaxing by degrees until the last of the combat tension drained away. The compound settled around them—distant creaks, the hum of electrical systems, the faint sound of wind against industrial windows.
She thought about the Reyes family. The mother clutching her baby, frozen in the smoke. The father gathering his children on the sidewalk while their apartment smoldered above them. People who'd almost lost everything because a man with a spreadsheet decided their building was a line item.
Carl Witte was dead. Blast had handled that with the same efficient brutality he brought to everything.
And Becca had handled the rest. The human part. The part that required steady hands and a calm voice and the willingness to climb through a window when someone needed help.
They were a matched set. Destruction and creation. Noise and patience. The man who tore things down and the woman who built them back up.
She fell asleep with her face against his neck, right where his pulse beat strongest. The smell of cordite and flowers mixed on both of them, and the combination didn't seem strange anymore.
It smelled like them.
It smelled like home.