Chapter 17
She heard the bikes before she saw them.
The rumble came through the compound walls like distant thunder, growing louder, the unmistakable sound of Harleys in formation rolling up the dead-end street, and Carla set down the dish towel she'd been wringing for the last hour and walked to the gate.
She saw him first. Of course she did. The biggest shape in the formation, rolling through the gate with the lot lights catching the chrome of his bike, and he was upright and moving and alive, and the breath she'd been holding since the engines left went out of her in a rush that left her dizzy.
He killed the engine. Swung off the bike.
Crossed the lot toward her with that unhurried stride—blood on his shirt, his right hand wrapped in tape that was already soaking through, a bruise darkening along his forearm—and she met him halfway and put her hands on his chest and felt his heart hammering under her palms.
"Kessler?" she said.
"Done."
She nodded. Pressed her forehead against his chest and breathed him in—sweat, leather, the metallic edge of blood that wasn't his—and let herself have five seconds of standing still before she pulled back and started checking the rest of the brothers coming through the gate.
She patched cuts. Wrapped a sprained wrist. Made Ratchet hold ice against his split lip even though he kept trying to tell her it was fine. She moved through the great room the way she moved through every room she'd ever worked—reading, tending, keeping the floor alive.
Then she was done, and Bustout was waiting.
He was leaning against the hallway wall outside his room, arms crossed, watching her finish her rounds the way he'd watched her work the Silverline floor on the first night. Patient. Steady. Like a man who knew exactly what he was waiting for and was content to wait as long as it took.
She walked toward him. No rush. No urgency. The fight was over and the adrenaline was gone and there was nothing left between them but the plain, quiet fact that she wanted to be in that room with him and he wanted her there.
He opened the door. She walked through. He followed and locked it behind them.
The room was dark except for the lot light through the window, that familiar blue glow that had become the color of this—of them, of every night they'd spent in this room, of the space they'd made together out of a spare bed and a locked door.
She turned to face him.
He was beautiful in the blue dark. Wrecked and beautiful—the tape on his hand, the bruises, the dried blood on his shirt, the stillness that was just him being him, all the violence spent and the man underneath it quiet again.
She unbuttoned his shirt slowly. One button at a time, her fingers working down the placket, taking her time because there was time. Nothing was chasing them. Nobody was coming. The corridor was quiet and the compound was safe and the only thing in the world that needed doing was this.
She pushed the shirt off his shoulders and let it fall.
Ran her hands across his chest—the familiar landscape of scars and muscle and coarse hair, warm under her palms. She found the new bruise on his forearm and touched it gently, and he flinched, just barely, and she kissed it.
Pressed her lips to the darkened skin and held them there.
She unwrapped the tape from his hand. Underneath, his knuckles were split and swollen, the skin peeled back over two of them, and she brought his hand to her mouth and kissed each one.
He made a sound—quiet, nearly inaudible, a sound she'd never heard from him before, something between pain and relief, and her chest tightened.
She undressed herself the same way. Pulled her shirt over her head without hurry.
Unhooked her bra and dropped it. Stepped out of her jeans and stood before him in the blue light, and his eyes moved over her body with that same steady attention he gave everything, except softer now.
Warmer. The way a man looks at something he's not afraid of losing.
She stepped between his knees. He was sitting on the edge of the bed—their position, the one they'd found their way back to again and again—and she stood in front of him and let his hands find her.
He mapped her. There was no other word for it.
His big hands moved over her hips, her waist, the curve of her belly, the flare of her ribs, tracing the shape of her like he was memorizing it for a test he intended to ace.
His thumbs swept under her breasts and she arched into the touch, and his mouth followed his hands—a kiss pressed to her sternum, to the underside of her breast, to the dip of her navel.
She cradled his head against her stomach and ran her fingers over his scalp and let him take his time.
The gold cross hung forward on its chain and brushed against his forehead, and he tilted his head back to look up at her, and what she saw in his face was not desire or need or any of the big, dramatic things that had driven them into this bed before.
It was peace. The look of a man who'd found the place where the violence stopped and the rest of his life started, and was standing in it, and was not in a hurry to leave.
She pushed his jeans down and he lifted his hips, and she climbed onto the bed and onto him, knees bracketing his hips, her weight settling into his lap.
She reached for the nightstand without breaking eye contact—the condom, the familiar logistics that had become part of their rhythm—and then she took him in her hand and guided him and sank down.
Slow. So slow it was almost unbearable. She watched his face as she took him—the way his eyes went dark, the way his jaw clenched, the way his hands tightened on her hips with a grip that trembled.
She took every inch and stopped at the bottom and just breathed, full of him, pressed against him, their foreheads touching.
She started to move. Rolling her hips in long, slow waves, the rhythm of something that had no end in mind, no finish line to cross.
She wasn't chasing anything. She was living in the sensation—the fullness, the friction, the way his body responded to every shift of hers, the way his breathing changed when she ground forward and held.
He let her lead. His hands stayed on her hips, thumbs tracing circles on her skin, and he watched her face the way he watched everything—seeing all of it, missing nothing, the absolute attention that had drawn her to him in the first place.
She ran her fingers down his cheek. Through his beard. Along the line of his jaw to the busted-flush tattoo on his neck, and she leaned down and kissed it, open-mouthed, feeling his pulse under her lips.
His control broke quietly. Not a snap—a slow surrender, his hands tightening on her hips, his breath going ragged, his body starting to move under hers. He thrust up to meet her on the next roll, and the depth of it made her gasp.
"There," she said softly.
He did it again. And again. Meeting her rhythm, matching it, the two of them moving together in the dark with the unhurried precision of people who'd learned each other's bodies and had time to use what they knew.
Then he flipped her.
Gentle this time—not the fast, driving flip from before, but a smooth turn that laid her on her back and settled his weight over her without breaking the connection.
He was still inside her, and the change in angle was immediate and electric, and she arched up into him with a sound she didn't bother containing.
He took over.
Thorough. Deliberate. Patient past the point where patience should have been possible.
He moved in long, deep strokes that she felt everywhere, his mouth on her throat, his hands braced on either side of her head.
He found the angle that made her shake and stayed on it, not speeding up, not chasing his own finish, just working that spot with a focus that was devastating.
She clutched at his shoulders. Her nails left marks and she didn't care and he didn't flinch.
The sounds she was making—that low, helpless groan she'd made since the Silverline, the one she never swallowed—filled the room and came back to her off the walls, and she could hear herself and she didn't care about that either.
"Don't stop," she whispered. "Don't you dare."
He didn't stop. He dropped to his elbows, pressed his full weight onto her—the weight she loved, the weight she craved, the feeling of being covered completely by this man—and drove deeper.
She wrapped her legs around him and pulled him in and felt the orgasm building from somewhere so deep it was almost frightening.
It broke over her like a wave. Slow and enormous, rolling through her body in long, shuddering pulses that went on and on, pulling sounds out of her that she'd never made before, her face pressed into his neck, her arms locked around his shoulders, her whole body clenching around him.
He followed her close behind. She felt the moment his rhythm broke—the stutter in his hips, the groan buried deep in his chest, the way his hands fisted in the pillow beside her head—and she held him through it, her legs tight, her body still trembling, taking everything he gave.
He didn't collapse. He lowered himself slowly, carefully, all his weight settling onto her inch by inch until she was pinned beneath him, and she spread her arms wide on the mattress and let him have her. All of her weight, all of his, pressed together in the dark.
They lay still.
Sweat cooled on their skin. The lot light made blue patterns on the ceiling. Somewhere in the compound a door opened and closed, and footsteps passed down the hall and faded, and the silence wrapped around them like a blanket.
She ran her fingers up and down his spine. Slow, idle strokes, the way you'd pet a sleeping animal. His face was in the curve of her neck and his breathing was evening out, and she felt his heartbeat slow against her chest until it matched hers.
"Stay right here," she said.
"I'm not moving."
"Good."
She kissed his temple. His ear. The shaved skin behind it, where the stubble was softest. He turned his head and found her mouth and they kissed in the slow, easy way of people who were done proving anything, who had nowhere to be and no reason to hurry, who had found the thing that lasted and were content to lie inside it.
No rush. No clock. No corridor. Just the two of them in a room that was theirs, in a life they were building out of locked doors and steady hands and the plain, permanent fact that they belonged to each other.
Carla closed her eyes and let the weight of him hold her down and the warmth of him hold her together, and she slept the way she'd been sleeping since the first night at the Lucky Cuss—deeply, safely, with the man she'd chosen breathing against her skin.