Chapter 4 Don’t Die
Chapter four
Don’t Die
The warehouse chilled to the bone after sunset, sucking warmth from exposed skin until nerves went numb. Shadera had grown accustomed to it. It made her sharp, kept her from dulling around the edges.
The cold crawled over her as she sat on the concrete floor, knees spread, ankles crossed, guns and knives meticulously laid out in front of her, while she fieldstripped the Veyra-issued nine-mil.
Each click, each metallic slide, was as soothing as another’s heartbeat.
She let herself vanish into the work, until the rattle of the outer fire door knifed through the quiet.
She palmed the pistol one-handed, eyes on the crosshatch of shadow in the entryway. Only two people knew the passcode to her rooftop entrance. Jaeger and Jameson Vine. And Jaeger would rather walk on broken glass than show up uninvited.
Jameson’s tread was softer than most, but Shadera still heard the whisper of worn boots on steel stairs, the way the second step always betrayed the weight of him.
He didn’t knock, instead he shouldered through the door, letting it slam at his back.
Jameson stepped into view and stopped, his brows pulling together as he looked at Shadera on the floor.
He grinned at her, canines catching in the half light.
He leaned against a steel pillar, his threadbare T-shirt stretching tight against the muscles on his scarred and tattooed arms as he crossed them over his chest.
“Shit, Shade,” he said, his voice amused. “You ever fucking sleep?”
“Sometimes,” she answered, twisting a silencer into place. “You look worse than usual.”
“You still think I’m pretty, though, huh?” he teased as Shadera’s eyes rolled to the back of her head.
He came to her in three long strides, then crouched by her side, elbows on his knees. “We got a problem. Jaeger’s boys just hit a Veyra patrol down in the sixth—”
“Not my sector. Not my problem,” she cut in, finally setting the gun down and reaching for a bottle on the floor beside her. She took a long pull. “I’m busy tonight.”
Jameson glanced down at her kill kit. “So I see.”
He let the silence hang, scanning her face for a crack in her armor, then snatched the bottle from her and gulped down a heavy swig.
Shadera quirked a brow at the gash on his forearm. “You here for something, or just to bleed on my floor?”
His hand moved to her face, slow and cautious, as if she might bite. Maybe she would. But she let him trace the line of her jaw, let him hook a thumb behind her ear and drag the elastic free from her hair. Auburn curls tumbled loose, spilling around her face.
He leaned in and Shadera didn’t pull away.
Their mouths met with the same violence as every other part of their lives—teeth knocking, lips splitting, tongues pushing past the barricades. His hands were everywhere at once. She bit his bottom lip, and it unlocked a noise in his throat, almost a groan.
The first time they’d done this, neither of them had undressed at all, just pressed into each other against an empty wall and fucked like the world was ending. Since then, the routine had gained only a fraction of tenderness on her part.
Her hands slid up the back of his neck into his silver hair, feeling the way the cropped sides bristled against her palms as the longer strands on top caught between her fingers.
“I missed you,” he breathed against her lips, but the words didn’t land anywhere.
“Don’t get clingy,” she warned, shoving him back, then rising from the floor.
Jameson grinned again as he looked up at Shadera with sharp green eyes, and rose to his full height.
In the next heartbeat, he’d swept her off her feet and set her on top of her desk, hands greedy on her hips, lips pressed into the pulse at her throat.
The force of it startled the desk chair backward, made it clatter against the desk, then tip sideways.
Shadera let her head fall back, eyes closed, jaw working as he bit a line up her neck to the place she always kept a razor blade tucked behind her ear.
She arched against him, feeling the hard line of his body through both their clothes. He was already hard—he was always hard for her, like a dog starved for too long and afraid it would never eat again.
She cupped the back of his skull and twisted her fingers in his hair, pulling him off her throat, then pushing him onto the bed tucked in the corner. He let her have her way with him, he always let her. Because the part of him that was as broken as she was, liked it best when she played rough.
They landed on the nest of blankets, and she climbed on top of him with all the grace of a wolf mounting its prey as she dragged his shirt over his head.
His own body was covered in wounds similar to hers, under his heavily tattooed flesh—stitches that never quite faded, puckered pink welts from Veyra shock batons, a ragged knife scar running from collarbone to rib cage.
In the next second, his hands were up her shirt, hot against her scars. He traced every raised edge like he was reading braille, mapping out the damage with a reverence that made her stomach knot. She grabbed his wrists and held them above his head, pinning him to the bed.
“Stop stalling,” Shadera hissed, and Jameson’s smile turned crooked.
“You always fuck me like you’re mad at me,” he said, voice muffled as she leaned forward and raked her teeth down his throat.
“I am,” she replied. “You came into my house without permission, again.”
She let his hands go, and he stripped her shirt over her head, mouth on her chest before the cloth even hit the floor. She felt his breath catch in his lungs as his fingers found an old bullet wound just under her ribs, the jagged oval where a Veyra officer had tried to end her three years ago.
“This should have killed you,” he whispered against her skin.
“They’ll have to do better than a bullet.” She pushed her hips down, and ground against him.
He pulled at the buttons on her jeans, and she lifted her body just enough for him to slide them down her legs.
Jameson moved to touch her face, but she caught his hand and drove it down to her hip, guiding his grip exactly where she wanted it.
He didn’t protest. Instead, he looked up at her like she was the only thing in the world worth dying for.
Shadera leaned down, auburn curls falling over her shoulder, and her lips met his. Her nipples brushed against his skin, hard and dark against his chest. The room was freezing, but her body ran hot as engine coolant.
She ground herself against the rough denim still clinging to his hips, then, growing impatient, reached down, and unfastened his belt with a single jerk. The button popped, and she slid his jeans down, dragging his briefs with them, leaving him fully exposed.
His cock stood up straight, thick and veined, the head glistening with proof of his need for her. Shadera wrapped her hand around it, squeezing just enough to make his eyes flutter shut. She let him see her, all of her, just for a moment, then sank down, taking him in a single, unhesitating motion.
They both groaned at the contact, the sound coming out of Shadera’s mouth too close to a whimper for her liking. She rode him slow at first, her pace measured and controlled.
Jameson’s hands found her waist, then her ass, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.
“Fuck, you feel good,” he said, letting his head drop back onto a bundled blanket. “You always feel so fucking good.”
She leaned forward, bracing her hands on either side of his head, and picked up the pace.
Each roll of her hips was deliberate, calculated to draw out the exact sounds she wanted from him.
His breathing went ragged, chest heaving beneath her as she worked him with the same precision she used to dismantle her guns.
“Shut up,” she breathed, but her body betrayed her, clenching around him at the praise.
She hated how he could make her respond like this, hated the way her pulse hammered when he looked at her like she was more than just a weapon.
His thumb found her clit, circling with practiced strokes.
“You like it when I tell you how perfect you are,” he murmured, voice rough with want. “You get so wet for me.”
Shadera’s rhythm faltered, a sharp intake of breath escaping her lips. She pressed her palms flat against his chest, using the leverage to ride him harder, faster. “I said shut up.”
Jameson wouldn’t be silenced.
His free hand tangled in her hair, pulling her down until their foreheads nearly touched. “Tell me you want this,” he demanded. “Tell me you want me.”
“I want—” The words caught in her throat as he drove up into her, meeting her movement with a brutal thrust. “Fuck. I want you to stop talking.”
He laughed, the sound dark and knowing. “That’s not what your body’s saying.” His grip tightened in her hair. “You’re so tight around me, Shade. So perfect. Like you were made for this.”
Heat coiled low in her belly, building with each stroke. She could feel herself losing control, her composure cracking under the assault of sensation, and his relentless words.
“You think about this when you’re alone?” Jameson’s voice dropped to a whisper, intimate and devastating. “Think about me inside you? About me fucking you breathless?”
“No,” she lied, but her hips screamed the truth, grinding down frantically against him.
“Liar.” His thumb pressed harder against her clit, and she bit back a cry. “I think about you all the time. Think about making you come undone like this.”
The admission hit her with surprising force. She could see it in his eyes—the raw honesty, the desperate need that went deeper than flesh. It terrified her more than any blade or bullet ever could.
“Fuck you,” she spat at him.
“You already are.” He grinned up at her, that infuriating smile that made her want to kiss and kill him at the same time. “And you’re about to come all over me, aren’t you, Shade?”