Chapter Nine #2
I grab his arm anyway and check him because I don’t trust men, bikers, or anyone with testosterone and access to weapons. His forearm is bruised. His shirt is torn near the ribs, but the skin underneath is intact. There’s blood on his jaw, dried and dark.
I touch the edge of it, and his breathing changes.
“You came back,” I say, and I hate how small my voice sounds.
Steel’s eyes go darker. “I said I would.”
Like promises are simple. Like men don’t die after making them every day.
Savage and Saint step out of the elevator behind him. Both look rough. Both alive. Saint has a split lip. Savage has blood on his sleeve and murder still simmering in his gaze.
Savage’s attention goes to Raven first. Her shoulder, the overturned cart, the man on the floor, and his face goes deadly quiet.
Raven points at him. “Don’t start. I’m fine.”
“That looks like fine to you?” He gestures toward her body and the chaos surrounding her.
“It looks like a regular Tuesday.”
“It’s Thursday.”
“Then I’m early.”
Savage’s jaw ticks, and Steel’s gaze snaps to the man on the floor. Then to the syringe in my hand. The air drops ten degrees.
“What happened?” he asks.
“Reaper sent someone for Dante,” I say. “Raven stopped him.”
Steel turns his head toward Raven.
Raven shrugs. “Your medic helped.”
Steel looks back at me. “Of course she did,” he says.
That shouldn’t warm me, but it does right before reality returns.
“Reaper?” I ask, and Steel’s jaw tightens.
“Gone,” Savage says.
The single word lands like a weight. Of course the monster who says my name like a threat survives the night.
Steel watches me absorb it. “We hit the trap, and took eight Vultures, but Reaper wasn’t there.”
“You killed them?”
The hallway goes still. I don’t know why I ask. I know the answer. I can see it on him. Smell it. Copper and smoke and something burnt into his skin deeper than soap will reach.
Steel doesn’t look away. “Some.”
My stomach twists, not because I’m surprised, but because part of me is glad. That’s the other ugly thing. The thing I don’t want to hold. The thing that has been growing in me since a man tapped on my window and I grabbed Steel’s card instead of calling the police.
Part of me is glad those men can’t come for me.
I step back and Steel notices immediately. His expression shuts down, but not fast enough. I see the hurt he tries to hide.
“Harper,” he says.
“I need air.” I turn before anyone can stop me.
The automatic doors open into the ambulance bay, and the night air hits my face hot and dirty. I walk until I reach the edge of the lot, then brace my hands on the low concrete barrier and try to breathe like a normal person.
I save lives. He takes them. Dante is alive upstairs because I refused to see a patch before a patient. Men are dead tonight because Steel saw threat before humanity. And Reaper is still out there.
The door opens behind me, and I listen to heavy steps approaching. I don’t turn because no one else would follow me out here except for him.
“Go away,” I say.
“No.”
Anger flares, sharp and grateful. “I am not in the mood for caveman persistence.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know anything.” I seethe.
“I know you’re scared of what you wanted.”
That shuts me up. Steel stops several feet away, too far to touch, but close enough that I can feel him.
“I didn’t want anyone dead,” I say.
“Yes, you did.”
I spin around. “Don’t put that on me.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
His face is hard under the parking lot lights. Blood stains his throat. His hands hang open at his sides, like he’s forcing himself not to reach for me.
“You wanted the threat gone,” he says. “That’s not the same as wanting blood.”
“It feels the same.”
“No.”
I laugh, bitter and shaky. “You’re really going to explain morality to me?”
“No. I don’t have enough to spare.” That hurts more than it should. He looks away first, jaw tight. “You should go back inside.”
“I thought you didn’t run.”
“I don’t.”
“Then why are you retreating?”
His eyes snap back to mine. There he is. The man under the weapon. Bruised somewhere I can’t bandage. “Because you looked at me like you finally saw it,” he says.
“Saw what?”
“What everyone else sees.”
“The monster?” He says nothing but that silence is answer enough.
I walk toward him before I can think better of it.
“Did you think I didn’t know?” His eyes narrow.
“Steel, the first time I saw you, you had a gun in your hand and blood on your shirt. You looked like violence got bored and built a man. I knew.”
“Knowing and seeing aren’t the same.”
“No,” I whisper. “They’re not.” I stop close enough to touch him, but I don’t, not yet.
“You scare me,” I say, and his face locks down, but I push on before he can retreat again.
“Not because I think you’ll hurt me, I don’t, and that’s the problem.
You scare me because when you’re near, I feel safer than I should.
You scare me because I called you before I called anyone else.
Because you came back covered in blood and my first thought wasn’t to run.
It was to make sure none of it was yours. ”
His breathing changes and mine does too.
“And yes,” I say, voice breaking around the truth, “some part of me is relieved those men can’t come for me. I hate that part. I hate this world. And I fucking hate that you fit inside it so well.” His gaze burns into mine. “But I don’t hate you,” I whisper.
Steel moves then. Not fast. He lifts one hand slowly, giving me every chance to step away. His fingers stop beside my face, hovering. Waiting. So I make the choice, and I lean into his palm.
His eyes close, just for a second, like the touch hurts, and then his hand cups my jaw, rough skin warm against my cheek.
“Harper.” My name sounds ruined in his mouth.
I reach for his shirt and pull him down.
The kiss is not careful this time. I don’t want careful.
I want proof. Heat. Breath. The living, solid weight of him against me.
I want to stop thinking about blood and death and the shape of my own fear.
I want Steel, and that’s the most reckless truth I have ever held.
He groans against my mouth, low and rough, and the sound goes straight through me. His hands stay on my face, only my face. Even when I press closer, when my body lines up with his and heat sparks between us so hard I nearly shake from it, he keeps himself leashed.
I break the kiss, breathing hard. “You can touch me.”
His eyes open. Black. Hungry. Devastated. “Don’t say that unless you mean it.”
“I mean it.”
“Harper.”
“I mean it,” I repeat, sharper now. “I am terrified and furious and probably making questionable trauma choices, but I know what I’m saying.”
His hand slides from my jaw to my throat. Not squeezing. Holding. His thumb rests over my pulse, and I feel the moment he finds it. The wild beat of me under his touch.
“You tell me to stop,” he says, “I stop.”
“Yes.”
“Any second.”
“Yes.”
“No pride. No punishment.”
I swallow under his palm. “Steel.”
“I need the words.”
My chest aches because he is bloodstained and brutal and asking for consent like it matters more than his own need. Maybe it does.
“If I say stop, you stop,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
“And if I don’t?”
His gaze drops to my mouth. “Then I make you forget the whole fucking world for a while.”
Heat floods me so fast I grip his shirt tighter. “Yes,” I breathe.
He kisses me again, and this time, his hands move. One slides to my waist. The other cups the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair, anchoring without trapping. He turns us, backing me into the shadow beside the ambulance bay wall where the cameras won’t catch more than shapes.
I should care, but I don’t.
His mouth leaves mine and drags down my jaw, to the side of my throat. He kisses over my pulse, open-mouthed and hot, and my knees nearly give.
“Steel.”
“I’ve got you.” He does, and that’s the dangerous part.
His hand slides under my shirt, palm spreading over my bare waist. Rough and hot, but careful enough to break me. I arch into him, and he makes a sound like restraint being carved out of bone.
“You’re shaking,” he says against my skin.
“So are you.”
His laugh is dark and breathless. “Yeah.”
That does something to me. Knowing I’m not alone in this. Knowing the man who terrifies everyone is trembling because my hands are under his cut, sliding over his chest, feeling muscle jump beneath my palms.
The door opens behind him.
“This is a hospital,” Raven says dryly. “It’s public, there are cameras, and a very emotionally inconvenient witness standing right here.”
I jerk back so fast my shoulder hits the wall, but Steel doesn’t move away immediately. He looks over his shoulder, and I swear the entire ambulance bay reconsiders living.
Raven raises both hands. “Don’t murder the messenger. Savage says Reaper’s hospital rat is secure, Dante’s alive, and if you two are about to combust, he would prefer it happen somewhere with fewer security reports.”
My face burns. “Wonderful,” I mutter. “Great. Fantastic.”
Raven’s gaze slides between us. Then she looks at me. Only me. “You choose this?” she asks quietly.
Steel goes still. I understand the question beneath the question.
Not sex. Not heat.
This.
Him.
The danger. The blood. The man who waits for permission while wearing death on his skin. I look up at Steel, and his eyes stay on mine. No command. No demand. Only the same terrible restraint that keeps undoing me.
“Yeah,” I say. “I choose it.”
Raven nods once. “Then make sure he remembers that choosing isn’t the same as owning.”
Steel’s voice is low. “I know.”
Raven’s mouth curves faintly. “Good. Savage learned eventually too. I only had to maim him a dozen times emotionally.”
Despite everything, I laugh. Steel looks back at me, and the hunger in his eyes softens into something worse. Need, not just sexual, but something deeper.
I look up at him. “Take me back to the clubhouse.”
His entire body goes still. “Harper.”
“I am not having sex in a hospital parking lot while Raven judges our technique.”