Chapter 11
The blood wouldn't come off.
Paige scrubbed her hands in the bunkhouse sink, watching the water run pink and then clear, but she could still feel it. Coldstart's blood on her fingers. Ice's blood on her wrists. The nameless wounded brother whose arm she'd packed with gauze while bullets cracked overhead.
Her hands were shaking.
Not during. Never during. But now, with the compound secured and the bodies cleared and the silence pressing in, the tremor had finally arrived.
She braced herself against the sink and breathed.
You're alive. Everyone's alive. The assault failed.
The logical part of her brain repeated the facts like a mantra. But the animal part—the part that had spent two years driving through kill zones—that part was still running hot, still flooded with adrenaline that had nowhere to go.
She needed—
She didn't know what she needed.
A knock at the door. She didn't answer, but it opened anyway.
Tourniquet stood in the frame, his cut blood-spattered, his forearms streaked with red that wasn't his. His eyes found hers immediately, assessing—always assessing—and whatever he saw made him step inside and close the door behind him.
"You're shaking," he said.
"I know."
"It's normal. After."
"I know."
He moved to the sink beside her, turning on the water, starting to scrub the blood from his own skin. His movements were mechanical, practiced. The routine of a man who'd done this too many times to count.
They stood side by side, washing away evidence of violence, saying nothing.
The water ran. The silence stretched.
And then Paige couldn't stand it anymore.
She grabbed the cloth from his hands, stepped in front of him, and started cleaning the blood herself. Her movements were rough, almost aggressive—scrubbing at his forearms like she could erase what they'd both just survived.
"Paige—"
"Shut up."
She felt his muscles tense under her hands. The corded strength, the restrained power. He could stop her anytime. He didn't.
The blood came away. Underneath, his skin was warm, alive, present. She found herself pressing harder, not to clean but to feel. To confirm.
"You're alive," she said. The words came out fierce. Accusatory.
"So are you."
"I watched you run into gunfire. Watched you disappear into the dark while bullets—" Her voice cracked. She hated that it cracked. "I didn't know if you were coming back."
"I came back."
"This time."
His hands caught her wrists, stopping her movement. The grip was firm, almost bruising. When she looked up, his eyes were burning.
"This time," he agreed. "Every time. As many times as it takes."
The words hit her like a physical blow.
She kissed him.
Not gentle. Not tender. She kissed him like she was trying to climb inside his skin, like proximity wasn't enough and she needed fusion. Her hands fisted in his cut, dragging him closer, and when he opened his mouth to her she took everything he offered and demanded more.
He responded in kind.
His hands released her wrists and found her hips, lifting her onto the sink's edge with a strength that shouldn't have surprised her but did. The porcelain was cold against her thighs. His body between her legs was furnace-hot.
"Paige." Her name was a growl against her mouth. "If you don't want this—"
"I want this." She yanked at his cut, shoving it off his shoulders. "I want you. Right now. Hard. Don't be careful."
Something snapped behind his eyes.
The careful medic disappeared. The dangerous man emerged.
He pulled her off the sink and turned her, pressing her chest against the wall. His body covered hers from behind, heavy and demanding, his mouth finding the curve of her neck.
"You sure?" The words vibrated against her skin.
"Reed." She used his name like a weapon. "Stop asking."
He stopped asking.
His hands stripped her with efficiency—no fumbling, no hesitation.
Her shirt hit the floor. Her jeans followed.
And then his hands were everywhere, claiming territory like a soldier securing ground, his mouth tracing paths that made her gasp and arch and forget that ten minutes ago she'd been shaking over a sink.
She turned in his arms, attacked his clothes with equal ferocity. The shirt tore—she didn't care. His jeans resisted—she conquered them anyway. And then it was skin against skin, heat against heat, two bodies vibrating with the same desperate frequency.
"Mine," he said against her throat. Not a whisper. A declaration. A war cry.
"Prove it."
He lifted her again, and this time she wrapped around him completely—legs locked, arms tight, holding on like the world would end if she let go. He carried her to the bed and dropped her onto it, following her down with predatory focus.
The first time had been revelation. Discovery. Learning each other's landscapes.
This was conquest.
He pinned her wrists above her head, his weight pressing her into the mattress.
His mouth devoured hers while his hips moved with a rhythm that was demand, not request. She met him thrust for thrust, matching his intensity, refusing to be overwhelmed even as pleasure built like a wave she couldn't outrun.
"Look at me," he commanded.
She opened her eyes. Found his inches away, pupils blown wide, the controlled medic completely gone.
"This is what you do to me," he said. "Every barrier I've built. Every wall. You tear them down and I let you."
"Good."
"It's not—" He groaned as she rolled her hips. "It's not safe. What I feel for you. It's not controllable."
"I don't want controlled." She freed her hands from his grip, raked her nails down his back hard enough to mark. "I want you. All of you. The parts you hide and the parts you pretend don't exist."
He buried his face in her neck and let go completely.
The rhythm turned savage. The bed protested. She didn't care, couldn't care, could only hold on and meet him and feel the wave building higher and higher until—
She shattered.
The orgasm ripped through her like the aftershock of an explosion, her body arching, his name tearing from her throat. He followed seconds later, his whole body going rigid, a sound that might have been her name or might have been surrender escaping his lips.
They collapsed together, breathing hard, slicked with sweat, tangled in sheets that had seen better nights.
The adrenaline was gone.
In its place: something deeper. Quieter. More dangerous than any firefight.
Later—minutes or hours, she couldn't tell—Paige lay with her head on Tourniquet's chest, listening to his heartbeat slowly return to normal.
"That was..." She didn't have words.
"Yeah."
His hand traced lazy patterns on her back. The same hand that had killed Owen Beale hours ago. The same hand that had packed wounds and fired weapons and held her like she was the only thing keeping him anchored to earth.
"The brothers," she said quietly. "The ones I worked on during the assault. They looked at me differently after."
"You saved Coldstart's shoulder. Stabilized Ice until I could get to him." His voice was rough, satisfied. "They don't see a woman under protection anymore."
"What do they see?"
"A medic." He pressed a kiss to her hair. "The compound's second medic. Which is exactly what you are."
She thought about that. About the shift in how the brothers had treated her after the battle—not as something to be protected, but as someone who'd earned her place in the violence.
"That's not a bad rank to hold."
"It's the only rank that matters." His arm tightened around her. "You're not a passenger in this anymore, Paige. You're one of us."
The words settled into her chest, warm and weighted.
One of us.
She'd spent six years trying to build a civilian life. Trying to prove she could exist outside the military, outside the violence, outside the brotherhood dynamics that had defined her for so long.
And here she was. In a motorcycle club compound. With a man who killed as easily as he healed. Covered in the aftermath of battle and something else entirely.
She should be terrified.
She wasn't.
"The assault tonight," she said. "It's not over, is it?"
"No. Greer's still out there. He'll send his last enforcer next—Karl Janney. The Duluth muscle." Tourniquet's voice hardened. "And when Janney fails, Greer will finally have to face us himself."
"How long?"
"Days. Maybe a week." His hand stilled on her back. "Are you ready for that?"
She thought about her shop, destroyed. Her cooler, shattered. Everything she'd built, burned to the ground by a man who treated human beings like zoning obstacles.
"I'm ready," she said. "I've been ready since the moment he sent his crew into my shop."
"That's my girl."
She tilted her head to look at him. His face was relaxed in a way she only saw after—when the barriers were down and the dangerous man had spent himself completely.
"Reed," she said, just to watch his expression shift.
"Paige."
"Thank you. For coming back."
"Always." He pulled her closer, and his voice dropped to a murmur. "I will always come back to you."
She believed him.
And for the first time since Mitchell Greer had walked into her life, she felt something other than fear.
She felt ready for war.