Chapter 11
Dana stood outside Forge's door for a full minute before she found the courage to knock.
The compound had gone quiet around her, the cookout's aftermath cleaned up, the last stragglers retreating to their rooms. She'd tried to sleep—had lain in her bed for an hour, staring at the ceiling, replaying his words until they were carved into her memory.
You're the first person who's made me feel like the world moves at the right speed.
She couldn't stop thinking about it. Couldn't stop thinking about him—the way he'd held her face like she was precious, the way his eyes had softened when she'd told him she meant it.
The way he'd pulled back afterward, kissed her forehead, and walked her to her door like a gentleman even though every line of his body had screamed that he wanted more.
He was waiting for her to be ready.
She was ready.
Her knuckles connected with the wood before she could talk herself out of it.
Silence. Then footsteps, and the door swung open to reveal Forge in a white t-shirt and worn jeans, barefoot, hair damp from a recent shower. He looked at her with those steel-gray eyes, and something hungry flickered beneath the surface.
"Dana."
"Can I come in?"
He stepped back without a word, letting her pass. The room was sparse—bed, dresser, a chair in the corner—but it smelled like him. Leather and soap and something warm underneath.
The door clicked shut behind her.
"You okay?" His voice was careful, controlled. "Did something happen?"
"No. Nothing happened." She turned to face him, her heart pounding so hard she could feel it in her throat. "I just... I couldn't sleep."
"So you came here."
"I came here."
Understanding dawned in his expression, followed immediately by restraint. She watched him physically hold himself back, jaw tightening, hands curling into fists at his sides.
"Dana, you don't have to—"
"I know I don't have to." She stepped closer, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body. "I want to. I'm sure."
"You said that before. At the safehouse."
"I was scared then. Running on adrenaline.
" She reached up, pressing her palm flat against his chest. His heart was racing under her fingers—faster than she'd expected from a man who always seemed so controlled.
"I'm not scared now. I've had days to think about it.
Days to watch you, to learn you, to figure out what I want. "
"And what do you want?"
"You." The word came out steady, certain. "I want you."
Something cracked in his expression. The steel gave way to something rawer, more desperate—hunger held on a leash that was fraying by the second.
"I promised myself I'd wait," he said roughly. "Until you were sure. Until it was your choice, not just—"
"It is my choice." She rose on her toes and kissed him.
For a heartbeat, he didn't respond. Frozen, like he couldn't quite believe this was happening.
Then his control shattered.
His hands came up to grip her hips, pulling her flush against him as he took over the kiss.
Not gentle—desperate, claiming, five years of loneliness and two weeks of wanting pouring out in the way his mouth moved against hers.
Dana gasped into him, her fingers fisting in his shirt, holding on as the world tilted sideways.
He kissed like he did everything else—thorough, intense, completely focused on her. His tongue swept against hers, tasting, learning, demanding response. When she gave it, he groaned low in his throat and walked her backward until her shoulders hit the wall.
"Tell me to stop," he rasped against her mouth. "If you change your mind, tell me to stop and I will."
"I don't want you to stop."
"Thank God."
His mouth found her neck, teeth grazing the sensitive skin below her ear.
Dana's head fell back against the wall, a moan escaping before she could stop it.
His hands were everywhere—sliding under her shirt, tracing the curve of her waist, learning the shape of her like he'd been waiting his whole life for this.
"I've been thinking about this for days," he murmured against her throat. "Couldn't stop. You in that storage room, reorganizing everything, looking at broken things like they were treasure. Wanted to drag you into a corner and show you what you do to me."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because I wanted it to be right." He pulled back just enough to meet her eyes, his gaze blazing. "Because you deserve better than a quick fuck in a storage room. You deserve slow. You deserve thorough. You deserve to know exactly what you mean to me."
Dana's breath caught. He'd said those words before, in the garage. Slow and thorough. Know exactly what you mean to me before I'm done.
He meant to keep that promise.
His hands found the hem of her shirt, and he paused. "Yes?"
"Yes."
He stripped the fabric over her head in one smooth motion, then stood there looking at her like she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Dana fought the urge to cover herself—she wasn't model-thin, wasn't perfect, had the body of a woman who worked hard and ate carbs without guilt.
But Forge was looking at her like none of that mattered. Like she was exactly what he wanted.
"Fucking gorgeous," he breathed. "Do you have any idea—" He stopped, shook his head, and kissed her again.
This time, she pulled at his shirt until he helped her get it off. And then she understood why he'd reacted the way she had.
He was covered in ink and scars.
Prison tattoos climbed his forearms and wrapped around his biceps—symbols she didn't recognize, dates she couldn't decipher.
His chest was broader than she'd imagined, dense with muscle earned in a yard where weakness got you killed.
And when he turned slightly, she saw it—the scar he'd mentioned, running down his spine like a lightning strike.
"The man who gave me that thought quiet meant weak," he said, watching her trace the raised tissue with her fingers. "He was wrong."
"Does it hurt?"
"Not anymore." His hands settled on her waist, thumbs tracing circles against her skin. "Nothing hurts when you're touching me."
She kissed the scar. Felt him shudder under her lips.
Then she was being lifted, carried to the bed, laid down on sheets that smelled like him. Forge followed her down, his weight settling over her in a way that felt like safety instead of threat.
"I want to take my time," he said, his mouth trailing down her collarbone. "I've waited five years for something worth waiting for. Let me take my time."
Dana nodded, beyond words.
He kept his promise.
He undressed her slowly, piece by piece, kissing every inch of skin he revealed. When she reached for the button of his jeans, he caught her wrist and pinned it gently to the mattress.
"Not yet. I'm not done learning you."
He learned her thoroughly. Mapped her body with his hands and mouth until she was trembling, until she was begging, until the only word left in her vocabulary was his name.
"Forge—please—"
"I've got you." He finally, finally stripped off his remaining clothes, and Dana's breath caught at the sight of him—all hard muscle and harder desire, wanting her with an intensity that should have been terrifying.
It wasn't terrifying. It was everything.
When he finally pushed inside her, they both stopped breathing.
"Look at me," he commanded, and she opened eyes she hadn't realized she'd closed. His face was inches from hers, his expression raw with something that looked like awe. "You feel that? That's mine. You're mine, Dana."
"Yours," she whispered, and meant it.
He moved, and the world narrowed to the two of them—to the rhythm they built together, to the sounds she made that she'd never heard herself make before, to the way he watched her like she was the only thing that mattered.
He was relentless, patient, pushing her higher and higher until she shattered against him with a cry she couldn't contain.
He followed her over the edge moments later, her name on his lips like a prayer.
Afterward, they lay tangled together in sheets that had been thoroughly destroyed.
Dana traced the tattoos on his forearm, following the lines with her fingertip. "What do they mean?"
"Survival, mostly." His voice was rougher than usual, sated and content in a way she'd never heard from him. "This one is for my first year inside. This one is for a fight I won. This one—" He guided her finger to a date. "That's when I found out the club voted to keep my patch waiting."
"They told you while you were in prison?"
"Patriot came himself. Sat across from me in the visitor's room and told me I'd earned my place." His arm tightened around her. "It's the only time I cried in five years."
Dana's chest ached with the weight of that admission. She pressed a kiss to the tattoo, to the date that had meant everything to a man surviving hell.
"What about the scar?" she asked softly. "You said the man who gave it to you was wrong about quiet meaning weak. What happened to him?"
"He's not a problem anymore."
She didn't ask for details. Didn't need them. She understood now what Forge was—what he'd had to become to survive. A man who met violence with violence, who protected what was his with everything he had.
And somehow, she'd become his.
"You're thinking too hard." His hand came up to smooth the furrow between her brows. "I can hear the wheels turning."
"I'm thinking about second chances."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." She propped herself up on his chest, looking down at him with something she couldn't quite name. "That's what my store was about, you know. Second chances. The belief that nothing's too broken to salvage. That people—things—can be given a new purpose if someone just sees their value."
"You think I need salvaging?"
"No." She shook her head, her hair falling around them like a curtain. "I think you already salvaged yourself. Five years in that place, and you came out stronger. You didn't break. You became someone who could survive anything."
"I'm not sure that's a good thing."
"It's a real thing." She traced his jaw, the edge of his mouth. "You're not broken, Forge. You're forged. Tempered. Whatever prison tried to make you, you turned it into something stronger instead."
He was quiet for a long moment, something working behind his eyes.
"Nobody's ever looked at me like that," he said finally. "Like what I am is something worth being. Like the worst parts of me are just... parts. Not the whole story."
"They're not the whole story." She leaned down, brushing her lips against his. "You're so much more than the worst things you've done. And I see all of it—the steel and the warmth and the man underneath who just wants to belong somewhere."
"I belong with you." The words were rough, certain. "That's the only place I want to be."
Dana's heart cracked open—not breaking, but expanding. Making room for something bigger than she'd ever expected to feel.
"That's a hell of a thing to say to a woman you've known for two weeks."
"I know." His hand came up to cup her face, thumb brushing her cheekbone. "But I spent five years learning that tomorrow isn't promised. I don't want to waste time pretending I feel less than I do."
She had no words. Nothing that could match the weight of what he'd just given her.
So she kissed him instead.
He responded instantly, rolling her beneath him, his mouth claiming hers with renewed hunger. But there was something different this time—softer, more tender. Like he was trying to tell her everything he couldn't put into words.
When he finally pulled back, his eyes were bright with something she'd never seen before.
"You fixed something in me," he said quietly. "I don't know how. I don't know when. But somewhere between your store and that safehouse and watching you reorganize a drink station three times—you fixed something I thought was broken forever."
Dana blinked back tears she refused to let fall.
"Maybe that's what second chances are," she whispered. "Finding someone who makes the broken parts feel whole."
He kissed her again—deep and slow and full of promise.
And for the first time since Ray Stoltz had walked into her store, Dana let herself believe that everything might actually be okay.