2. Chapter 2
Grim
The first woman I ever hand a gun to puts a round through me before I learn how she takes her coffee.
Blood runs hot beneath my shirt. The bullet carved through the outside of my shoulder, close enough to the old wounds to wake every nerve that never healed right.
I should be angry.
Instead, I watch McKenna Crane stare at me as if she has killed the only man in Roseburn Falls willing to help her.
“Grim?”
My road name shakes on her lips.
“I’m still standing, Angel.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“You also shot me.”
“You gave me the gun.”
“To keep me honest. You went straight for blood.”
Her mouth falls open. “I didn’t mean to fire.”
“I know.”
The fear in her hazel eyes is too raw for doubt. Her hands tremble at her sides while the rain plasters soft brown waves to her cheeks.
“I shot you,” she whispers.
“Yeah. We covered that.”
Her eyes glisten.
That hits harder than the bullet.
“Don’t cry.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “It barely caught me.”
“I am not crying.”
“Good.”
“I’m assessing the situation.”
“Looks a lot like crying.”
“I can do both.”
The answer has enough bite to ease something tight in my chest.
McKenna pulls the scarf from around her neck and steps toward me. Her fear has not disappeared. I see it in the care she takes and the way her eyes follow my hands.
The woman is scared of me and comes closer anyway.
“Sit down.”
Most men in Roseburn Falls know better than to give me orders. She has known me for minutes, put a bullet through my shoulder, and already points at the station bench as if my obedience is settled.
“It’s a graze.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I’ve done that before.”
“Wonderful. You can reminisce after I confirm you aren’t going to collapse on top of me.”
“I don’t collapse.”
“You’re losing blood and arguing with a nurse. That suggests impaired judgment.”
Her hands are still shaking, but her voice holds steady.
That decides me.
I retrieve my gun from the pavement, secure it, and return it to the holster beneath my cut. McKenna watches every movement, her shoulders tight until my hands come back into view.
Then I sit.
The bench is built for ordinary men. My shoulders take most of the back, and my thighs leave little space beside me. McKenna studies the narrow gap at my injured side before kneeling between my boots.
The position sends blood somewhere it has no damn business going.
Her face is level with my chest. The struggle left her coat hanging open, and when she bends over her purse, the collar of the dark shirt beneath it shifts low enough to give me a glimpse of soft cleavage.
My cock thickens behind my zipper because blood loss has done nothing to improve my judgment.
Pain burns through my shoulder and punishes me for noticing.
It does nothing to stop me.
She pulls a small medical kit from her purse and produces gloves, antiseptic, and gauze.
“You carry that everywhere?”
“I’m a nurse.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I also have anxiety. I could probably treat a minor stabbing and survive two nights in the wilderness with the contents of my purse.”
I look at the broken suitcase lying several yards away. “The luggage might not make it.”
“It has lived a full life.”
Her mouth twitches.
Mine almost follows.
She pulls on the gloves and lifts her hands toward my shirt. “May I?”
The question catches me somewhere beneath the ribs.
People touch a man like me because they want something or believe they have permission they were never given. Women in my bed know what I like, and my brothers know when to keep their distance. Nobody asks before tending a wound.
“Do it.”
Her fingers ease the torn sleeve away from my skin. The movement exposes the fresh path of the bullet and the old scars beneath it.
Three rounds tore through that shoulder during the mission that ended my military career. Men were shouting, sand filled my mouth, and every order that came through the radio asked us to abandon someone who had bled beside us.
The tattoos covering my arms stop before the damaged skin. I leave the scars bare because I need to see them. Forgetting the men who never came home would be another kind of betrayal.
Command buried the truth and pinned the failure on me. The men who gave the order kept their careers.
McKenna looks at them.
She does not ask.
Her gloved fingers follow the edge of the fresh wound with careful pressure, and her breath warms my chest. My cock gives another hard pulse.
She is tending the shoulder she shot while kneeling between my spread thighs, and my body has decided this is foreplay.
Fucking perfect.
“The bullet passed through the top of the muscle,” she says. “You need stitches.”
“I need you to wrap it.”
“You need stitches.”
“You volunteering?”
“I’m newly licensed. Suturing isn’t something I’m going to improvise in a bus station because an overgrown biker refuses to admit he needs medical care.”
“Overgrown?”
She looks from one shoulder to the other. “The evidence supports the diagnosis.”
“The clubhouse is ten minutes away. We have a medical room.”
She looks up at me. “Your motorcycle club has a medical room?”
“My club has whatever I say it needs.”
Those hazel eyes narrow. “Do you always answer questions like a dictator?”
“You’ll get used to that.”
“I sincerely doubt it.”
So do I.
Women usually agree with me because of the cut, the club, or what they want from my bed. McKenna argues while holding gauze against a gunshot wound she put in me.
I should find her exhausting.
My cock finds her fascinating.
Her gaze drops to my shoulder again, and she presses folded gauze over the wound.
White heat tears down my arm.
The rain changes.
The station disappears beneath rotor wash and sand. Blood runs between my fingers, too hot and too fast. Diaz lies ten feet away with half his chest gone while Mercer screams for someone to help him.
Command keeps telling us to move.
Nobody is coming back for the bodies.
My lungs lock.
“Grim.”
McKenna’s voice reaches me through the gunfire.
A hand covers mine.
“Look at me.”
I find hazel eyes instead of desert brown. Freckles replace blood. Rain replaces sand, but my body has not received the message.
“Breathe with me,” she says.
I do not take orders during an episode. Striker served with me, and he learned that years ago. The rest of the club knows to give me space until I drag myself out.
McKenna gives me a route through the noise, and I take it.
I follow the rise of her chest and the cadence of her breath. Four counts in, a pause, and six counts out. My pulse quits trying to tear through my throat.
The station returns around us.
McKenna’s hand remains over mine.
She does not ask if I am all right. The lie would insult both of us.
“Is Grim the only name I get?” she asks.
“For now.”
“That sounds suspicious.”
“Good instinct.”
“At least you’re self-aware.”
Her laugh escapes before she can stop it. The sound is warm, soft, and completely wrong for the life I built.
I want to hear it again.
Women leave my bed before morning, and I prefer it that way. Wanting anything from one after she walks out has never been part of the arrangement.
McKenna has been in my town less than an hour, and I already want another laugh.
That should concern me more than the erection trapped behind my zipper.
I reach for my phone and call Striker.
My enforcer answers on the first ring. “Package secure?”
“Her name is McKenna. Use it.”
She becomes still between my boots.
Striker hears the warning in my voice. “Understood. What happened?”
“Vegas is off. The transport team put hands on her after she refused to go.”
“Client paperwork says she agreed to the transport.”
“She withdrew that agreement. The client also neglected to mention the paperwork was attached to a marriage contract.”
A pause follows.
“The fuck?”
“Find the sedan. Pull every camera between the station and the highway, then put Lock on the original request. I want the payment source, the hotel reservation, the broker, and every name attached to the contract.”
“I’ll get the brothers moving. You hit?”
“Minor graze.”
McKenna’s eyebrows rise.
“She’s looking at me like she disagrees,” I add.
“Who managed to shoot you?”
“McKenna.”
Silence holds for a single beat before Striker starts laughing.
McKenna bites her lower lip. That draws my attention to her mouth and makes the pressure behind my zipper worse.
“Open the medical room,” I tell him. “Secure the gates and let the brothers know we have a guest.”
Striker is still laughing. “Anything else?”
“Yeah. If you’re smiling when I arrive, I’ll put you on the second table.”
The laughter stops.
“Understood, Prez.”
I end the call.
McKenna folds her arms beneath her breasts. The position lifts them, testing both my patience and the fit of my jeans.
“You’re the prez?”
“Yeah.”
She studies me as if that explains several things at once. “Your friend has a strange sense of humor.”
“He has poor survival instincts.”
“You threatened to put him on a medical table.”
“It worked.”
A reluctant smile touches her mouth. “You sounded fond of him.”
“Keep that opinion to yourself.”
She removes the bloodied gauze and replaces it with a fresh pad before using her scarf to bind it against my shoulder.
“This will hold until someone stitches it.”
She strips off the gloves and seals them with the bloody gauze in a plastic bag from her kit.
I stand, forcing her to rise with me.
The top of her head barely reaches my chin. My body blocks the rain, and she has to tilt her face back to meet my eyes.
The size difference does something primitive to me.
So do her curves.
The assignment gave me a photograph and enough identifying details to find her.
It failed to show how full her mouth is, how freckles scatter across her nose, or how the belt of her coat pulls tight around a waist made for a man’s hands.
A single flat image could never have warned me that every soft inch of her would make my palms itch to learn how she feels beneath them.
Her scent reaches me beneath the rain, something warm and faintly sweet.
My cock goes from really interested to rock hard.