Chapter 11
The waiting was the worst part.
Amy paced the compound kitchen, counting tiles, wearing a path in the industrial linoleum. The clubhouse was quiet—most of the brothers had ridden out hours ago, leaving behind a skeleton crew and a handful of old ladies who watched her with knowing eyes.
That was sixteen hours ago.
Sixteen hours of pacing. Sixteen hours of imagining the worst. Sixteen hours of realizing how much she'd come to depend on a man she'd known for two weeks.
The kitchen door banged open.
Trauma walked in like he'd just finished a shift at the garage—steady gait, controlled expression, nothing in his posture suggesting he'd spent the night killing men in a warehouse.
Except for the blood soaking through his shirt.
"Oh my God." Amy crossed the distance between them in three strides. "You're hurt."
"It's nothing."
"That's not nothing." She grabbed his shirt, pulled it up, and felt her stomach drop. A gash ran across his ribs—four inches long, deep enough to see muscle, already field-dressed with gauze that was soaked through red. "Christopher—"
"I said it's nothing." But his voice cracked on the last word, and she saw what the steady posture was hiding. Exhaustion. Pain. The adrenaline crash that came after violence.
"Sit down."
"Amy—"
"Sit. Down."
She pointed at the kitchen counter. He stared at her for a long moment—that assessing gaze she'd learned to recognize—and then, slowly, he sat.
His med bag was still in his saddlebag.
Amy retrieved it herself, ignoring the looks from the brothers gathered in the main room. She didn't care what they thought. She didn't care about anything except the man bleeding in the kitchen.
She found the supplies she needed—antiseptic, fresh gauze, suture kit. Her hands were steady as she laid everything out on the counter beside him.
"You know how to use that?" he asked, nodding at the sutures.
"No. But you're going to teach me."
She peeled away the soaked gauze, forcing herself to look at the wound without flinching. The gash was ugly—jagged edges, probably from a knife or broken glass. It needed stitches, and it needed them now.
"Clean it first," Trauma said. "Antiseptic. Don't be gentle."
She wasn't.
The antiseptic made him hiss, made his hands clench on the counter edge. But he didn't pull away, didn't tell her to stop. Just watched her work with those steady eyes.
"Now the sutures." His voice was rough. "Thread the needle. Small bites, about a quarter inch apart."
"Like this?"
"Tighter. You want the edges to meet cleanly."
She made the first stitch. Her hands didn't shake.
Years of crimping pie crusts, of kneading dough, of steady work that required precision and patience—it all translated. She worked the needle through his skin with the same focused calm she brought to her most delicate pastries.
"Good," he said. "Again. Keep the tension even."
Stitch after stitch. She closed the wound one careful bite at a time, feeling his breath hitch with each pass of the needle. By the time she tied off the last suture, her shirt was damp with sweat.
"Done," she said.
He looked down at her work. The stitches were neat, even, professional-looking despite being her first attempt.
"You're a natural."
"I had a good teacher." She set down the needle and met his eyes. "What happened tonight?"
"We hit them before they could hit us."
"How many?"
"Six. Plus their coordinator."
"And you?"
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're bleeding in a kitchen and pretending you're invincible." Her voice cracked. "I thought you were dead. I've been pacing this room for sixteen hours imagining—"
He kissed her.
This wasn't like the diner.
The diner had been slow. Deliberate. Two damaged people finding each other in the quiet of a closed restaurant.
This was fire.
Trauma pulled her between his legs, his hands rough on her hips, his mouth demanding against hers. She could taste blood—his split lip, probably, from something that had happened in that warehouse—and she didn't care.
"I thought I'd lost you," she gasped when they broke apart.
"You didn't."
"I didn't know that. I was here, pacing, imagining—"
"I'm here now." His hands tightened on her hips. "I'm alive. I came back."
"You came back bleeding."
"I came back breathing." He pulled her closer, impossibly close. "That's what matters."
She kissed him again—harder this time, pouring sixteen hours of fear into the contact. He responded in kind, his hands sliding under her shirt, his touch rough and urgent.
"Not here," she managed.
"Why not?"
"Because your brothers are in the next room and I'm about to—"
He was off the counter before she finished, pulling her toward the back hallway. His wound must have screamed with the movement, but he didn't slow down. Didn't hesitate.
They made it to his room in thirty seconds.
The door barely closed before he had her against the wall.
This was different.
Their first time had been discovery—slow exploration, careful attention, the tenderness of two people learning each other's damage.
This was claiming.
Trauma pressed her against the wall with his full weight, his mouth hot on her throat, his hands working her clothes with an urgency that bordered on desperation. She matched him—grabbing, pulling, tearing at fabric that stood between them.
"Mine," he growled against her skin.
"Prove it."
He did.
He lifted her like she weighed nothing, carrying her to the bed with a possessiveness that made her blood sing. Her back hit the mattress and he was on her before she could catch her breath, covering her body with his.
"You waited for me," he said, voice rough.
"Where else would I go?"
"Anywhere. You could've left. Could've run."
"I don't run." She pulled him down, bit his lower lip hard enough to sting. "Not from you. Not from this."
Something broke behind his eyes. The last shred of control, maybe. The final wall he'd been keeping between them.
He stopped being gentle.
They crashed together like storms meeting.
His hands were everywhere—rough, demanding, leaving marks she'd feel for days. She gave as good as she got, raking nails down his back, pulling him deeper, harder.
This wasn't lovemaking. This was survival.
Two people who'd spent sixteen hours imagining the worst, burning through fear and adrenaline and the desperate need to prove they were still alive.
"Christopher—" His name tore out of her throat.
"Say it again."
"Christopher."
He drove deeper, and she stopped thinking entirely.
The world narrowed to sensation—his weight, his heat, the rhythm they built together. She matched him thrust for thrust, refusing to be passive, refusing to be gentle when he was giving her everything raw and unfiltered.
"You're mine," he said, the words ragged. "Not Kyle's. Not anyone's. Mine."
"Yes."
"Say it."
"I'm yours." She pulled his face down, forced him to look at her. "And you're mine. Every scar. Every wound. Every part of you that walked into that warehouse tonight."
His rhythm faltered. His eyes went dark with something that looked like wonder.
"Every part," he agreed.
They shattered together.
Afterward, the adrenaline crash hit like a freight train.
Amy lay in the wreckage of his sheets, her body humming, her mind finally quiet for the first time in sixteen hours. Trauma was beside her, one arm thrown across her stomach, his breathing slowly evening out.
"I should check your stitches," she murmured.
"Later."
"You could have torn them."
"Worth it."
She laughed—a surprised, exhausted sound. "You're impossible."
"I've been told." His arm tightened around her. "Stay."
"I wasn't planning to leave."
"I mean... after. When this is over. When Kyle's handled." He shifted, propping himself up to look at her. "Stay."
The word hung in the air. Heavier than it sounded. Full of meaning neither of them had fully articulated.
"I thought we weren't talking about after."
"We weren't. Now we are." His hand found her face, traced her jawline with surprising gentleness after the roughness of what they'd just done. "I want you in my life, Amy. Not just until Kyle's dead. After. Always."
"Always is a long time."
"I'm aware."
She studied his face—the exhaustion, the fading adrenaline, the vulnerability he only showed her. This man who'd killed to protect her. Who'd come back bleeding and still kissed her like she was the only thing that mattered.
"Ask me again tomorrow," she said. "When we're not running on fumes and adrenaline."
"And if my answer's the same tomorrow?"
"Then mine might be too."
He kissed her—soft this time, tender in a way that made her chest ache.
"Get some sleep," he said. "We can fight about the future when we wake up."
"We're not fighting."
"We will eventually. That's how this works."
She smiled against his lips. "Is it?"
"Best relationships are the ones worth fighting for."
She didn't have a response to that. Didn't need one.
She curled against his chest, feeling his heartbeat slow beneath her ear, and let exhaustion pull her under.
They didn't come out until Sunday.