Chapter Ten
The compound settled into an uneasy quiet as night fell.
Bodies had been moved. Blood had been hosed from concrete. Brothers had retreated to lick wounds and hold families close. But the violence still hung in the air like smoke—acrid, inescapable, impossible to breathe around.
Bethany couldn't find Mason.
He'd been there during cleanup, moving bodies with the grim efficiency of someone who'd done it before. He'd checked on her twice, touch lingering on her arm, her shoulder, her face. Then he'd disappeared.
She found him behind the kitchen.
He sat on an overturned crate, back against the wall, staring at nothing.
Still wearing the same blood-soaked clothes.
Still carrying the rifle he'd used to put down a dozen men.
The moonlight caught the planes of his face and turned him into something carved from stone—hard and cold and utterly still.
The stillness scared her more than the violence had.
She didn't say anything. Didn't ask if he was okay, because what kind of stupid question was that? He'd killed people today. Killed them to protect her, to protect this place, to protect the family that had become theirs.
Instead, she sat beside him on the cold concrete, close enough that their shoulders touched. She took his hand—the one that wasn't wrapped around the rifle—and laced her fingers through his.
His grip tightened hard enough to hurt.
She didn't pull away.
Minutes passed. Maybe longer. The compound breathed around them, recovering from trauma the way living things do—slowly, painfully, one moment at a time.
"I can still hear them," he said finally. Voice flat. Empty. "The sounds they made when they went down. I'll hear them for weeks."
"Does it get easier?"
"No." His jaw flexed. "You just get better at not letting it show."
She shifted closer, pressing her body against his side. He was warm despite the cold night air, vibrating with something she couldn't name—energy that had nowhere to go, adrenaline still flooding a system that had been pushed to its limits.
"I held my position," she said quietly. "Just like you told me."
"I know."
"I would have killed anyone who came through that door."
"I know." His head turned, and she saw his eyes for the first time—wild, bright, burning with something that made her breath catch. "You would have. That's what scares the hell out of me."
"Scares you?"
"Because you shouldn't have to." The words came out rough, broken. "You should be running a food truck. Feeding people. Building something good. Not holding a shotgun in a kitchen while men die in your yard."
"Our yard." She squeezed his hand. "You said it yourself. This is my home now. That means the good parts and the ugly parts."
"The ugly parts could get you killed."
"So could driving my truck on the highway. So could standing up to Hoyt the first time." She turned to face him fully, kneeling on the cold ground so she could meet his eyes. "Life is risk, Mason. The question is whether the risk is worth it."
"And is it?" The question came out like it cost him something. "Being here? Being with me? Is it worth dying for?"
She answered by kissing him.
It wasn't gentle.
Nothing about tonight could be gentle.
He made a sound against her mouth—something between a groan and a growl—and then his hands were in her hair, on her waist, pulling her into his lap with a force that drove the air from her lungs. The rifle clattered to the ground, forgotten.
"Bethany—"
"Don't talk." She kissed him again, harder, demanding. "Don't think. Just feel."
He didn't need to be told twice.
They came off the crate in a tangle of limbs, and then her back was against the kitchen wall and his body was pressed against hers and there was nothing between them but clothes and desperation.
His mouth found her throat—teeth and tongue and heat that made her gasp. His hands yanked at fabric with none of the careful reverence he'd shown in the garage. This wasn't about tenderness. This was about proving they were alive.
"Mine." The word came out fierce against her skin. "You're mine."
"Prove it."
Something dangerous flashed in his eyes. Challenge accepted.
He lifted her like she weighed nothing, pinned her between his body and the rough brick wall, and she wrapped her legs around him to anchor herself. His hips ground against hers, and she moaned—loud and shameless and not caring who might hear.
"Quiet," he breathed.
"Make me."
His kiss swallowed whatever sound she might have made next. Consuming. Claiming. His hands found skin and left trails of fire in their wake. She clawed at his shoulders, his back, yanking his shirt up because she needed to feel him, needed proof that he was here and whole and hers.
The first time had been slow discovery. This was something else entirely.
This was war translated into want.
She pulled at his belt, and he cursed against her mouth—the kind of filthy word she'd never heard from him before. His hands joined hers, fumbling, urgent, neither of them patient enough for finesse.
"Now," she demanded. "Right now."
"Bethany—"
"Now."
He gave her what she wanted.
The first moment drove the breath from her lungs. She cried out—not quietly, not carefully—and he swallowed the sound with his mouth while his body moved against hers with desperate urgency.
This wasn't the garage couch, soft and patient. This was brick scraping her back through her shirt, his fingers bruising her hips, both of them chasing something they couldn't name. Release. Oblivion. Proof that death hadn't claimed them today.
She matched him move for move. Met his intensity with her own. Challenged him to give her more, harder, everything. Because she wasn't fragile, wasn't delicate, wasn't the kind of woman who needed to be handled with care.
She was the woman who'd stood in a kitchen with a shotgun and refused to run.
She was the woman who'd chosen this life, this man, this beautiful brutal world.
She was his.
"Say it," he growled against her throat. "Say you're mine."
"Yours." The word tore out of her on a gasp. "I'm yours."
His rhythm stuttered, control shattering. She felt it happen—the moment he stopped holding back, stopped trying to be careful, stopped being anything except raw and desperate and hers.
They broke together.
The world went white and silent, pleasure crashing through her in waves that stole thought and breath and everything except the feeling of him surrounding her, inside her, everywhere at once.
When she came back to herself, she was trembling.
So was he.
They slid to the ground together, backs against the wall, legs tangled, breathing ragged.
The concrete was cold beneath them. She didn't care. Her body was still humming with aftershocks, and Mason's arm was around her, keeping her close even though they should probably get up, get decent, go inside like rational people.
She wasn't feeling particularly rational.
"We just..." He trailed off, half-laughing, sounding almost drunk. "Against the kitchen wall."
"We did."
"Anyone could have walked by."
"Don't care." She turned her face into his neck, breathing him in—sweat and gunpowder and something that was just him. "I needed that. Needed you."
"Yeah." His voice was rough, raw, stripped of everything except honesty. "I needed you too."
They sat in silence for a while, the night settling around them like a blanket. Somewhere in the compound, voices murmured. A child laughed—proof that life continued even after violence, that joy could exist in the same space as grief.
"I killed three men today," Mason said quietly. "Four, if you count Reese."
"I know."
"Does that bother you?"
She considered the question. Considered the men who'd come to this compound to destroy it, to hurt the women and children inside, to end the family she'd claimed as her own.
"No." The truth of it surprised her a little. "They came here to kill us. You stopped them. That's not murder, Mason. That's protection."
"Some people wouldn't see it that way."
"Some people haven't had men with guns show up at their food truck." She lifted her head, met his eyes. "Some people haven't watched their father die slowly and learned that life is too short for judgment without context."
He was quiet for a long moment. Then: "Your father would've liked you here. Seeing what you've built."
"My father would have had questions about the whole 'biker compound' situation." She smiled despite herself. "But yeah. I think he would've understood eventually. About finding people worth fighting for."
"And you found them?"
"I found you." She kissed him softly—a contrast to the ferocity of before. "And you came with a whole damn family attached."
He laughed, low and tired but real. "We're a package deal."
"I'm starting to figure that out."
They sat a while longer, neither ready to move. The adrenaline had finally drained, leaving exhaustion and peace in its wake.
"Some things are worth rebuilding more than once," she said finally. "The truck. The business. The life I thought I was going to have."
"And us?"
She looked at him—this man who'd killed for her, bled for her, loved her without reservation or restraint. This man who'd lost everything once and was building again anyway.
"Especially us," she said. "Whatever this is between us—it's worth every rebuild. Every fight. Every terrifying beautiful moment of not knowing if we're going to survive."
His arm tightened around her. "I love you."
"I know." She smiled against his shoulder. "I love you too. Even when you're covered in blood and sitting on cold concrete behind a kitchen."
"Romantic."
"We're not exactly traditional."
"No." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "We're better."
She believed him.