Chapter 11
Maggie stood outside Pitt's door at eleven-thirty at night, barefoot on the cold hallway floor, wearing a t-shirt she'd borrowed from the laundry and shorts that were too thin for November.
She'd been standing here for two minutes, which was about a minute and fifty seconds longer than she needed to know what she wanted.
She knocked.
Footsteps. The door opened, and Pitt filled the frame the way he filled every frame—completely, like the architecture had been built to his specifications and came up short.
He was shirtless. Low-slung sweatpants, bare feet, dog tags hanging against a chest that looked like it had been assembled from hard use and harder living.
Scars she hadn't seen before—a raised line across his ribs, a puckered circle below his collarbone, the kind of marks that came with stories she'd only heard fragments of.
His eyes swept her once. Head to bare feet and back. Something ignited behind them that he didn't bother hiding.
"Maggie."
"Can I come in?"
He stepped back without a word. She walked past him into his room, which was bigger than hers—President's quarters, overlooking the street through a window he'd covered with a dark curtain.
Sparse. A bed that was just a mattress on a steel frame, a dresser, his cut hung on a hook by the door like a second skin waiting to be put back on.
It smelled like him—leather and soap and the warm undertone she'd been breathing in every time he stood too close.
He closed the door. Leaned against it. Watched her.
"You sure?" he asked.
She turned to face him. The room was small enough that three steps would put her against his chest, and she could feel those three steps pulling at her like gravity.
"I've been sure since the cookout," she said. "I've been sure since before that. I just needed to stop arguing with myself long enough to walk down the hall."
"And who won the argument?"
"I did. I always do."
His mouth twitched. But his body was rigid against the door, every muscle locked, holding himself back with a discipline she could see fraying at the edges. He was letting her lead. Giving her the space to choose this—or not—without the weight of him tipping the scale.
She crossed the three steps.
Her hands landed on his chest, palms flat against warm skin, and the sound he made—low, involuntary, somewhere between a breath and a growl—sent heat flooding through her so fast her knees went soft.
She felt his heartbeat under her right hand, hammering hard, faster than she'd expected from a man who looked carved from stone.
"Maggie." His voice had dropped into a register she hadn't heard before—raw, stripped, the voice under the voice. "If you touch me, I'm going to touch you back. And I won't want to stop."
"Then don't stop."
His hands found her waist. Not grabbing—settling.
Fingers spreading across her hips, thumbs pressing against the thin cotton of her shirt, feeling the shape of her like he was memorizing it through his fingertips.
He pulled her closer, slow and deliberate, until her body was flush against his and every inch of contact registered like a brand.
She tilted her head back. He was right there—mouth inches from hers, breath warm on her lips, eyes so dark the blue had nearly disappeared.
"I need to tell you something," he said.
"Now?"
"Now." His hands tightened on her waist. "My name. My real name. Dominic. And I want to hear you say it."
"Dominic," she whispered.
He kissed her.
Not the careful, testing kiss she might have expected from a man who did everything with control and precision.
This was the wall breaking—months of tension compressed into the press of his mouth against hers, his hands sliding up her back, pulling her so tight against him that she couldn't tell where she ended and he started.
He kissed like he fought—direct, consuming, no wasted motion—and Maggie kissed him back with everything she had, her fingers digging into his shoulders, her body arching into the solid wall of his chest.
He made a sound against her mouth—something between need and surrender—and walked her backward.
Not rough, not gentle. Purposeful. Three steps, four, until the backs of her knees hit the bed and he caught her before she fell, one arm around her waist, the other braced against the mattress as he lowered her down and followed.
His weight settled over her. Not crushing—controlled, held on his forearms, enough to feel without being trapped.
She pulled him closer anyway, wanting the weight, wanting the pressure, wanting to feel every pound of this man who'd been circling her for days like she was something precious and dangerous in equal measure.
"Maggie." He pulled back just enough to see her face, his hand pushing hair from her forehead with a tenderness that cracked something open in her chest. "Tell me what you want."
"You. Just you."
His forehead dropped against hers. Eyes closed, breathing hard, his whole body trembling with the effort of going slow when everything in him clearly wanted to do the opposite. She felt it—the restraint, the control, the leash he kept on himself—and she reached up and took his face in both hands.
"Hey," she said. "Look at me."
He opened his eyes.
"I'm not fragile," she said. "I'm not going to break. And I didn't walk down that hallway for careful."
Something shifted in his expression—the last lock turning, the final door swinging open. His mouth found her throat, and the sound she made when his teeth grazed her pulse point was something she'd deny later and remember forever.
He took his time. That surprised her—this man who moved through the world like efficiency was a religion somehow found patience here, in the dark, with her.
His hands mapped her body with the focused attention he gave to everything that mattered, finding the places that made her gasp, returning to them, learning her like a language he intended to speak fluently.
She explored him with equal intent—the topography of scars across his chest and back, the tension in his shoulders that softened under her fingers, the way his breath hitched when she traced the line of his dog tags down his sternum.
Every scar had a story. She kissed the puckered circle below his collarbone without asking for it, and he shuddered hard enough that she felt it in her spine.
"Mine," he said against her skin, and the word was rough and reverent and absolute.
"Yours," she answered, because it was true, because she'd known it was true since he'd thrown a man through her window and touched her bruised wrist like it was made of glass.
They moved together with the urgency of people who'd been waiting too long, tempered by the awareness that this wasn't adrenaline or circumstance.
This was a choice. Her choice to walk down the hall, his choice to open the door, and every moment after was theirs—built deliberately, no excuses, no taking it back.
He was careful with her in ways she hadn't expected and fierce in ways she had, reading her body with the same intensity he read every room, every threat, every situation.
When she arched against him, he responded.
When she pulled him closer, he came. When she whispered his name—Dominic, the real one, the one he'd given her like a key—his whole body shook and he buried his face in her neck and held on like she was the only solid thing in a world that kept shifting.
Afterward, they lay tangled in sheets that smelled like him, her head on his chest, his arm around her shoulders with his hand curled possessively over her hip.
His heartbeat was slowing under her ear—that steady, strong rhythm she'd memorized during their dance, now accompanied by the warmth of bare skin and the lazy circles his thumb was drawing on her hip bone.
She traced the scars on his chest. The long one across his ribs. The small ones scattered like shrapnel—because they were shrapnel, she realized.
"Fallujah?" she asked.
"Some of them." His voice was different now. Open in a way she hadn't heard—the walls down, the vigilance banked, just a man talking to a woman in the dark. "The one on my ribs is from a bar in Bakersfield. Knife fight over a pool game."
"You got stabbed over pool."
"I was winning. He took it personally."
She smiled against his chest. "And this one?" She touched the circle below his collarbone.
"That one's real. Bullet. House-to-house clearing, second deployment." A pause. "Kid pulled the trigger. Couldn't have been more than fifteen. I didn't shoot back."
"Why not?"
"Because he was fifteen." Another pause, longer this time. "My CO wanted to go back in. I refused. Got written up, didn't care. Some lines you don't cross."
She pressed her lips to the scar. He went still, then pulled her tighter against him.
"My brother Mikey used to say I collected scars like other people collected stamps," he said. "Ugly hobby, but at least they're free."
Maggie propped herself up on his chest, looking down at him.
In the low light, with his guard down and his eyes soft, he looked younger.
Not young—the lines and scars and silver at his temples wouldn't allow that—but lighter.
Like a weight he'd been carrying had set down somewhere between the door and the bed.
"Tell me about building the Outlaws," she said.
"Now?"
"Now. While you're like this."
"Like what?"
"Human."
His laugh was quiet and real, the first full one she'd heard from him. It vibrated through his chest into her hands.
"Came home from my second deployment. Mikey was dead six months by then—OD, dealers who'd moved into the neighborhood while I was gone.
Cops didn't care. City didn't care. The whole South Side was just bleeding out one block at a time, and nobody with the power to fix it gave a damn.
" His hand moved in her hair, slow, absent.
"So I found men who did. Hollow first—met him at the VA, both of us too angry to sit in a waiting room.
Then Parkway, Gibbet, the others. Men who needed a mission and a family and were willing to build both from nothing. "
"And the bikes?"
"Bikes are freedom. Freedom's the point." His eyes found hers. "No bosses, no masters, brotherhood or nothing. That's what we are. That's what I built."
"For Mikey."
"For Mikey. For the neighborhood. For every person getting squeezed by some predator who thinks nobody's going to push back." His hand tightened in her hair. "For you."
The words landed in her chest like a fist—not painful, just overwhelming. The force of being seen that completely, that deliberately, by a man who didn't waste words.
"My dad would've liked you," she said. "He had a thing for stubborn men who couldn't mind their own business."
"I would've liked him. Any man who raised you had to be something."
She kissed him. Slow this time, tasting him, learning the shape of his mouth without urgency. His hand cradled the back of her head, and when she pulled away, his eyes were half-closed and his expression was something she wanted to photograph and keep forever.
"Maggie," he said.
"Yeah."
"You're not fighting alone anymore. Not the bar. Not Petrak. Not anything." His thumb traced her lower lip. "That's not a promise. That's just how it is now."
She settled against his chest, pulling the sheet around them, letting his arms close around her like walls that kept everything else out.
His dog tags pressed cool between their bodies, and she hooked a finger through the chain without thinking—holding on, anchoring herself to this man and this moment and this choice she'd made with her eyes wide open.
"Dominic," she murmured against his skin.
His arms tightened. His lips pressed against her hair.
She fell asleep to the sound of his heartbeat and the warmth of his body and the absolute, bone-deep certainty that she was exactly where she was supposed to be.