Chapter 13
Debbie's hands didn't start shaking until the compound gate closed behind them.
The whole ride back, she'd been steady. Cleaning up supplies in the truck bed, checking on the prospect with the split lip, talking Maggie through the turn onto the side street that avoided the main drag.
Steady and useful and holding it together because people needed her to hold it together, and that was what she did.
But the gate clanged shut and the lock turned and the compound walls rose up around her and her hands started vibrating like something inside her had come loose.
She pressed them flat against her thighs and breathed.
In the courtyard, brothers were dismounting, pulling off gloves, talking in the clipped shorthand of men coming down from a fight.
Ash was recounting something to a prospect with wild hand gestures.
Gibbet walked past without a word, heading inside, his jacket still dark with someone else's blood.
She looked for Hollow.
He was across the courtyard, talking to Pitt by the garage bay.
His arm was bandaged where she'd wrapped it, blood already seeping through the gauze.
He was standing like it didn't hurt, like the cut and the fight and the man he'd killed in the street were just items on a checklist. But she could see the tension in his shoulders from thirty feet away.
The switch was still half-flipped, the violence still humming under his skin, looking for somewhere to go.
He turned his head and found her across the courtyard like he had a compass in his chest that pointed at her.
She didn't wave. Didn't smile. Just held his gaze and felt the adrenaline in her blood answer the adrenaline in his, a frequency only the two of them were tuned to.
He said something to Pitt. Pitt nodded. Hollow crossed the courtyard toward her, each step deliberate, his eyes never leaving her face.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Fine."
"Your hands are shaking."
"I know." She curled them into fists. "It'll pass."
"Come inside."
"I should help Maggie put the supplies—"
"Maggie's got it. Come inside." His hand closed around her fist, engulfing it, and he pulled her toward the building. Not gentle, not rough—urgent. The same energy that had driven him through Sykes's men in the parking lot, redirected. Focused on her.
She went.
They made it through the clubhouse without speaking. Past the bar where brothers were opening bottles, past the hallway where someone had turned on music, up the stairs two at a time. His hand on hers the entire way, grip tight, pulling her forward like if he let go she'd disappear.
His door. He pushed it open. Pulled her through. Kicked it shut.
The room was dark and she didn't care. She grabbed the front of his cut and yanked him down to her, her mouth finding his with a desperation that had been building since she'd watched him walk across that parking lot toward fifteen men like he was invincible, like bullets couldn't touch him, like the idea of losing had never once crossed his mind.
He kissed her back hard enough to bruise. His hands were on her immediately—not the gentle exploration of their first night, not the patient discovery. This was possession. His fingers dug into her hips, hauled her against him, his body pressing hers back until her shoulders hit the door.
"I told you to stay in the truck," he growled against her mouth.
"And I didn't." She bit his lower lip. Felt him jolt. "What are you going to do about it?"
Something shifted in him—the last thread of restraint snapping, the leash he kept on himself fraying through.
He lifted her off her feet and she wrapped her legs around him, her back against the door, his body pinning her there.
His mouth moved to her neck and he bit down—not gentle, not careful, a claim pressed into her skin with his teeth.
"Mine," he said. Harsh. Ragged. The word torn out of him like it cost something. "You walked into a fight zone. You put yourself in the middle of—do you know what that did to me? Seeing you out there?"
"I was helping."
"You were scaring the hell out of me." His hands tightened on her thighs. "Nobody touches you. Nobody gets near you. And you walked right into—"
She grabbed his jaw and forced his eyes to hers. "I'm right here. I'm fine. Nobody touched me."
"Because I would've killed them."
"I know." She kissed him, hard, swallowing whatever he was going to say next. "I know you would've. But I'm not breakable, Hollow. Stop trying to put me somewhere safe and then getting angry when I won't stay."
He made a sound in his throat—frustration and want and something animal—and carried her away from the door to the bed.
They hit the mattress together, his weight driving her into the sheets, and she arched up into him, needing the pressure, needing proof that they were both solid, both real, both alive.
Clothes came off in pieces. Her shirt, ripped over her head. His cut, shrugged off with reverence even in the frenzy—always respect the patch, even now. His shirt, her pulling it up his back, her nails dragging across his skin and his breath hissing through his teeth.
This wasn't like the first time. The first time had been discovery—slow hands, soft questions, two people learning each other's geography. This was a collision. Two bodies running on combat adrenaline and the primal, screaming need to feel something other than fear.
She pushed him onto his back and straddled him, her hands on his chest, feeling the hammer of his heart under her palms. He looked up at her with dark eyes, his chest heaving, his hands settling on her hips with a grip that would leave marks.
"Your arm," she said, catching sight of the bandage, the blood seeping through.
"Don't care."
"It needs—"
"Don't. Care." He sat up, his mouth on her collarbone, his teeth scraping skin, his good hand fisting in her hair. "Right now I need you more than I need to not bleed."
She should have argued. Would have, with anyone else, about anything else.
But his mouth was on her and his hand was in her hair and the adrenaline was pouring through her veins like gasoline and she was done arguing.
Done being careful. Done being the responsible one who held everything together while everyone else fell apart.
She pushed him back down and took what she wanted.
He let her lead—for about thirty seconds.
Then his hands tightened and he rolled them, pinning her beneath him, and the sound she made wasn't a protest. It was an invitation.
His weight on her, his hips between her thighs, his mouth claiming hers with a ferocity that matched the way he fought—total commitment, overwhelming force, nothing held back.
"Harder," she said, and he listened.
The tenderness would come later. Right now there was only this—heat and friction and the desperate, clawing need to be as close as two people could get.
She matched his intensity beat for beat, her nails on his back, her teeth on his shoulder, giving as good as she got because she wasn't the kind of woman who lay still and let things happen to her.
He seemed to love that—every time she pushed back, challenged him, refused to be gentle, something lit up in his eyes that was pure hunger.
"Yours," she gasped, and felt his whole body respond.
"Say it again."
"Yours. I'm yours, you impossible—"
He swallowed the rest with his mouth and drove her past the point of words.
The intensity built like a wave she couldn't outrun—pleasure and adrenaline and the raw, animal relief of being alive tangled together until she couldn't separate them.
His name tore out of her—his real name, "Brendan," spoken like a battle cry—and he came apart at the sound of it, his forehead pressed to hers, his breath ragged, his body shuddering against her.
They lay in the wreckage of the bed, breathing hard, hearts slamming, sweat cooling on skin that still felt electric.
His arm was bleeding again—the bandage had come loose, blood smearing across the sheets—and she couldn't bring herself to care yet.
Not yet. Not while the aftershocks were still rolling through her and his weight was the only thing keeping her anchored to the planet.
He rolled to his side, pulling her with him, their legs tangled, his face buried in her hair. For a long time, neither of them spoke. The compound noise filtered up through the floor—muffled music, distant voices, the sounds of men celebrating survival. Up here, it was just breathing.
"You bandaged my arm in a combat zone," he said finally, his voice rough. "While bodies were on the ground. You just walked up and started wrapping gauze like it was a Tuesday at the diner."
"It was a Tuesday."
He laughed. Weak, exhausted, his chest shaking against hers. "God, Debbie."
"Somebody had to do it. You weren't going to take care of yourself."
"I was busy."
"You were bleeding." She traced the edge of the ruined bandage on his forearm. "You're still bleeding."
"Worth it."
She propped herself up on her elbow and looked at him. Really looked. The scars, the shrapnel marks, the new cut on his arm, the bruises forming on his ribs. A map of violence that should have terrified her and instead made her chest ache with something fierce and protective.
"I wasn't scared," she said. "Today. At the shop. I should have been scared, and I wasn't."
"I know. That's what terrifies me."
"Why?"
"Because it means you're not going to stop. You're not going to stay in the truck or wait at the compound or let me put you somewhere safe." His hand came up and cupped her face, his thumb on her cheekbone. "You're going to walk into every fight I walk into, aren't you?"
"Not every fight. Just the ones where you need me."
"I always need you. That's the problem."
She kissed his palm. Tasted blood and salt and the particular flavor of his skin that she was learning like a new language. "That's not a problem. That's the deal."
He pulled her down against him, her head on his chest, his heartbeat under her ear—slower now, steadying. His hand moved up and down her back in long, lazy strokes, the frenzy burned out, replaced by something quieter and just as consuming.
"Gibbet called me good," she said into his chest.
"What?"
"After I bandaged you. Gibbet looked at my work and said 'she's good.' I think that's the most words he's ever directed at a woman."
Hollow's laugh rumbled through her. "That's the Gibbet equivalent of a marriage proposal. You should be honored."
"I'll add it to my collection. One proposal over meatloaf, one via single adjective."
"Mine was better."
"His was more sincere."
He squeezed her, and she felt his grin against the top of her head. The room was dark, the compound settling around them, and the adrenaline was finally, fully gone—replaced by the heavy, liquid warmth of two people who'd survived something together and found each other on the other side.
"Stay," he murmured, already half-asleep.
She pressed her ear to his heartbeat and closed her eyes.
She stayed.