Chapter Eleven #2
"Don't make me do that again."
"Can't promise that." His mouth traced her collarbone, her sternum, the hollow of her throat where her pulse hammered. "Can promise I'll always come back."
"Liar."
"Maybe." He caught her wrists and pinned them above her head—one hand holding both of hers, his body covering hers completely. "But I'll die trying."
Laura surged against his grip, not to escape—to match him.
To prove she wasn't fragile, wasn't breakable, wasn't the scared florist who needed protecting.
She hooked her leg around his hip and twisted, using leverage he didn't expect.
His eyes went wide as she reversed their positions, straddling him, her hands flat on his chest.
"My turn," she said.
His hands found her thighs. "Take it."
She did.
Laura moved against him with an intensity that surprised them both—fueled by the same desperate energy that had driven her to strip roses at midnight, to photograph evidence with shaking hands, to call a man she barely knew and trust him with everything she had.
She wasn't gentle. Gentle was for flower arrangements and sympathy sprays and the careful construction of beautiful, fragile things.
This wasn't fragile.
This was two people burning through the aftermath of violence with the only fire that matched it. His hands on her hips, guiding and demanding. Her hands on his chest, bracing and claiming. The rhythm they built together—urgent, relentless, a frequency neither of them could jam.
"Tommy—" His name came out shattered. Wrecked.
"Right here." His voice was gravel. "I'm right here."
She fell forward, mouth finding his, swallowing the sounds they were making together. His arms wrapped around her back—not pinning now, but holding. Fierce and absolute. The grip of a man who'd walked through gunfire to come home to her.
The release built like a signal gathering strength—pressure mounting, frequency rising, every nerve ending broadcasting at full power. Laura felt it crest and tried to hold on, tried to make it last, because lasting meant he was still here, still alive, still hers.
She couldn't hold it.
It broke through her like a jammed signal suddenly clearing—pure, overwhelming, a wave of sensation that whited out everything except the man beneath her and the sound of her own voice saying his name. His real name. The one nobody else used.
He followed her over the edge thirty seconds later, his hands tightening on her back hard enough to leave marks she'd find tomorrow. His breath came in ragged bursts against her neck, her shoulder, her hair.
They stayed tangled together as the aftershocks faded. Breathing slowing. Heart rates dropping. The adrenaline finally, finally burning itself out.
Laura pressed her forehead against his chest, listening to his heartbeat settle from a sprint into something approaching normal.
"Your knuckles," she murmured.
"What?"
"Your bandage came off."
She lifted her head and found the gauze wrap she'd carefully applied twenty minutes ago was now hanging loose, half unraveled, the tape unstuck from sweat. The cut had opened again—a thin line of fresh blood across his knuckles.
Laura sat up and reached for the gauze where it trailed across the sheets.
"Hold still."
She rewrapped his hand in the dim light, her fingers precise despite everything. Strip. Wrap. Secure. The same motions she'd use on a damaged stem—careful, practiced, steady.
Cipher watched her work. His free hand rested on her thigh, thumb tracing slow circles on her skin.
"You just rewrapped my wound while sitting naked in my bed," he said.
"A florist's hands don't stop working just because the rest of her is occupied."
His chest rumbled with quiet laughter. Laura secured the final strip of tape and brought his wrapped hand to her lips, pressing a kiss to the gauze.
"Don't break it again," she said.
"Yes ma'am."
She settled against him, her head on his chest, his arm pulling her close. The scanner on his desk blinked green in the darkness—the only light in the room, steady and rhythmic, like a heartbeat made visible.
"Two down," she said.
"Two down."
"How many left?"
"Morrow and seven crew. But without Henley's muscle and Devane's books, his operation is bleeding out." Cipher's hand moved through her hair, slow and absent. "He's running on reputation now. And reputation doesn't stop bullets."
Laura closed her eyes. She should feel something about that—horror, maybe, at the casual arithmetic of death. Guilt at how easily she'd accepted that men were dying so her flower shop could survive.
But the only thing she felt was the rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek. The warmth of his skin. The steady thrum of a heart that had kept beating through a warehouse breach and come home to her.
"Come to the shop tomorrow," she said. "I have something I want to show you."
"What?"
"Devane's ledger pages. I want to cross-reference them against my father's betting slips. See if the numbers match."
His hand stilled in her hair. "That can wait."
"No. It can't." She lifted her head to look at him. "Every day those records sit unprocessed is a day we don't know the full picture. You taught me that—signals don't lie, but they go dark if you don't capture them."
Something moved across his face. Pride, maybe. Or recognition.
"Using my own words against me."
"Using your own logic. There's a difference."
He pulled her back down against his chest, and Laura let herself be held. Outside, the compound settled into its nighttime quiet—bikes cooling in the lot, brothers behind closed doors, the Carolina pines whispering against the perimeter fence.
Tomorrow there would be ledger pages and laptops and the grim accounting of her father's destruction. Tomorrow there would be Morrow, still breathing, still dangerous, still claiming she owed a debt she'd never agreed to.
But the cut on Cipher's knuckles was wrapped clean. His heartbeat was steady under her ear. And somewhere in the dark room, the scanner blinked its quiet green signal—constant, faithful, keeping watch while they slept.
Laura matched her breathing to his and let the silence hold them both.