Chapter Eight
Four days at the compound, and Bethany had learned the rhythms of this place.
Morning meant coffee in the main kitchen, brothers drifting through with grunts that passed for greetings.
Afternoon meant cooking—always cooking, because mouths were always hungry and her hands needed work.
Evening meant the quiet settling of a community that had learned to steal peace where it could.
And night meant Grit.
He'd been scarce during the days, pulled into planning sessions and surveillance runs and whatever else the club needed from a prospect trying to earn his patch.
But every evening he found her. Sat with her while she cleaned up.
Walked her to the small room she'd been given in the residential building.
Stood at her door like he wanted to say something, then left with nothing more than "goodnight. "
She was going to lose her mind.
Thursday night, she went looking for him.
The compound garage was lit by work lamps, casting long shadows across concrete floors stained with decades of oil and effort. She heard him before she saw him—the clink of tools, the patient rhythm of a man who knew machines better than he knew people.
He was bent over a motorcycle, hands moving with the same careful attention he brought to everything. Shirtless, because the garage was warm and he'd probably been at this for hours. The bandage across his ribs was smaller now, the wound healing clean.
She watched.
The way his shoulders flexed when he reached for a wrench. The way his hair fell across his forehead, damp with sweat. The way his body moved—economical, controlled, every motion purposeful.
He knew she was there. She could tell by the slight tension in his spine, the way his movements became fractionally more deliberate. But he didn't turn. Didn't acknowledge her. Just kept working, like he was giving her time to decide what she wanted.
She wanted him.
The realization had been building for days—maybe since the safehouse, maybe since the food truck, maybe since he'd appeared from the shadows and put himself between her and violence without being asked. But tonight, watching him work in the golden light, it crystallized into something undeniable.
She grabbed two beers from the cooler by the door and crossed the garage.
"Thought you might be thirsty."
He looked up then. Those pale eyes finding hers, reading something in her face that made his hands still on the engine.
"Thanks."
She handed him a bottle and sat on a nearby crate, close enough to touch but not quite touching. The beer was cold. The silence was warm.
"Can't sleep?" he asked.
"Don't want to sleep." She took a long pull from her bottle. "Too wired. Too much thinking."
"About Hoyt?"
"About everything." She watched him wipe grease from his fingers with a rag, methodical and slow. "About what comes next. About what I'm building here."
"You're building something?"
"Maybe." She set her beer down. "Four days ago I was hiding in a safehouse, wondering if I'd ever see my truck again. Now I'm cooking for twenty people a day and sleeping in a biker compound and watching a man I barely know work on a motorcycle like it's meditation."
His mouth curved. "It is meditation. Quiets the noise."
"What noise?"
He was silent for a long moment. Then he set down his tools and turned to face her fully, and she saw something in his expression that made her breath catch.
"The noise that says I don't deserve this," he said quietly. "That everything I build is going to disappear. That people who get close to me end up hurt."
"Grit—"
"Mason." The word came out rough, almost reluctant. "My name. My real name. Mason Cole."
She'd wondered. Had known his road name was earned, not given, and had wondered what the man underneath it was called.
Mason.
"Why are you telling me?"
"Because you're sitting in my garage at eleven o'clock at night, looking at me like I matter." He rose from his crouch, moved closer, and she felt the heat of him even before he touched her. "Because you stayed when you could have run. Because you cook for my family like they're yours."
"They feel like mine."
"They are yours." His hand found her jaw, tilting her face up. His fingers were rough with calluses, gentle in a way that made her ache. "You're mine. That makes them yours too."
She should say something. Should have words for this moment, for the way her heart was pounding and her skin was burning and every cell in her body was straining toward him.
Instead, she kissed him.
He tasted like beer and something darker, something that was just him. His response was immediate—one hand fisting in her hair, the other hauling her off the crate and against his chest in a single motion that left her breathless.
"Bethany." Her name came out like a prayer and a warning. "If you don't want this—"
"I want this." She pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. "I want you. I've wanted you since you appeared out of nowhere and told Kenny Marsh to leave me alone."
Something shifted in his expression. The careful control he always wore cracked, and underneath was hunger—raw and desperate and barely leashed.
"I've been trying to give you space," he said, his voice rough. "Trying to be patient. Trying not to—"
"Stop trying."
She kissed him again, and this time there was nothing gentle about it.
He lifted her like she weighed nothing, carried her to the workbench, set her down on the edge with her legs wrapped around his waist. His mouth found her neck, her collarbone, the sensitive spot below her ear that made her gasp.
"Tell me to stop and I stop," he murmured against her skin. "Anytime. Any reason. Just tell me."
"Don't stop." She pulled at his shoulders, needing him closer. "Don't you dare stop."
His hands slid under her shirt, rough palms against smooth skin, and she arched into the contact like she'd been starving for it. Maybe she had been. Maybe this whole week had been one long exercise in starvation, in wanting something she wouldn't let herself have.
She wasn't starving anymore.
"You're shaking," she whispered, feeling the tremor in his fingers as they traced up her spine.
"Terrified." He admitted it without shame, his forehead pressed to hers. "Terrified I'm going to wake up and you'll be gone. That this isn't real."
"I'm real." She took his hand, pressed it flat against her racing heart. "This is real."
He kissed her like he was trying to memorize her.
Like she was something precious he'd found and couldn't believe he got to keep.
His mouth traced paths across her body that left her gasping, and when her shirt disappeared—when had that happened?
—she didn't care because his hands were everywhere and his mouth was following and she couldn't think about anything except more.
"Mason." His name felt different on her tongue. Intimate. A secret shared between them. "Please."
He groaned—a sound that vibrated through her—and then his hands were at her hips, pulling her closer to the edge of the workbench, positioning her exactly where he wanted her. Where she wanted to be.
"Been dreaming about this," he said against her throat. "Every night since the safehouse. Every time I walked you to your door and didn't come inside."
"You should have come inside."
"Wasn't sure you wanted me to."
She laughed, breathless and slightly unhinged. "I wanted you to. God, I wanted you to."
His answer was to lift her again, to carry her to the old couch in the corner of the garage—the one the brothers used for breaks, covered in a blanket that smelled like motor oil and leather.
He laid her down like she was something fragile, then covered her body with his like she was something worth protecting.
And then there were no more words. Just sensation.
His weight pressing her into the cushions. His hands, rough and reverent, learning every inch of her. Her nails scoring down his back as the tension built and built. The sound of his breathing, ragged and desperate, matching hers.
She'd been with men before. Men who touched her like she was a means to an end, like her body was a transaction they were completing. Men who took what they wanted and left nothing behind.
Mason touched her like she was a revelation.
Like every gasp she made was a gift. Like every time she arched into him was a miracle he didn't deserve. Like the pleasure building in her body mattered more than his own.
When she finally shattered, his name on her lips, he held her through it—anchored her when she might have flown apart. And when he followed her over that edge, when his whole body went taut and trembling, he said her name like it was the only word he knew.
Bethany.
Like she was home.
After, they lay tangled together on the narrow couch, her head on his chest, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on her shoulder. The garage was quiet except for the distant sounds of the compound settling into sleep.
"I should get you back to your room," he murmured.
"Don't want to move."
"People will talk."
"Let them talk." She pressed a kiss to his chest, right over his heartbeat. "I don't care."
His arms tightened around her. "You should care. The brothers—"
"—will see a woman who knows what she wants." She lifted her head, met his eyes. "That is, if you're okay with them knowing."
"Okay with them knowing you're mine?" His laugh was low, rough. "Baby, I want them to know. Want everyone to know. Want Hoyt himself to know that the woman he's trying to destroy belongs to me."
Belongs to me.
The words should have chafed. She'd built her whole life around not belonging to anyone, not depending on anyone, not giving anyone the power to take things from her.
But when Mason said it—when he looked at her like she was something precious, something worth fighting for, something he'd burn the world down to protect—it didn't feel like ownership.
It felt like partnership.
"I belong to myself," she said, but there was no heat in it. "I just happen to be choosing you."
"I'll take it." He kissed her forehead, her nose, the corner of her mouth. "I'll take whatever you're willing to give."
She settled back against his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow, feeling the warmth of his skin against hers. Tomorrow there would be more danger, more planning, more of Hoyt's threat hanging over them.
But tonight, she let herself have this.
A man who touched her like she was valuable. Like she mattered in a way that went beyond what she could do for him. Like her pleasure, her safety, her happiness were things worth bleeding for.
Her father had told her to build something for herself.
Maybe she finally had.