Chapter Ten
Steel’s Medic
Steel
Harper sleeps with her hand on my chest like she’s checking whether my heart still works.
I don’t move. Not because I’m comfortable. I’ve slept on concrete, in trucks, against walls with a gun in my hand and blood drying under my nails. Comfort isn’t something I chase. This is something different.
Her cheek rests against my shoulder. One thigh is thrown across mine. Her hair spills over my skin, soft and dark and smelling faintly of hospital soap beneath the sweat and sex. She should look wrong here, tangled in my sheets with the clubhouse humming around us and war waiting outside the door.
She doesn’t. That’s the problem. She looks like something I want to keep. Keeping gets men killed. Wanting gets them stupid.
I stare at the ceiling, one arm around her back, fingers spread over warm skin. She made the choice. I know that. I heard every word. Watched her eyes when she said she was having me. Felt her hands pull me closer, felt her body open beneath mine, felt her trust hit harder than any bullet.
Still, I don’t sleep. Because now I know what she feels like when she comes apart. Now I know the sound she makes when she says my name and means it. Now I know what it’s like to have my hands on something precious and not break it. And that makes me more dangerous than I was yesterday.
The bed shifts, and Harper inhales slowly, then stiffens.
I loosen my hold immediately. Her head lifts from my chest, hair tangled around her face, eyes still heavy with sleep. For one second, she looks soft. Then she remembers where she is and who she’s with.
Her face changes. Not with regret. I would know regret. I’ve seen it on women before when morning strips fantasy down to truth. Harper doesn’t look regretful.
“Morning,” she says, her voice rough with sleep.
“It’s barely morning.”
“Don’t be pedantic while shirtless. It sends mixed messages.”
My mouth curves into a smile. She shifts, then winces.
Every muscle in my body locks. “Did I hurt you?”
Her eyes narrow. “Careful.”
“Answer me,” I demand lowly, my smile long gone.
“Bossy after sex. Shocking.” She rolls her eyes.
“Harper.”
She sighs. “No. I’m not hurt, just aware I made athletic choices while sleep deprived.”
The knot in my chest eases one notch. She pushes herself up, dragging the sheet with her. I keep my eyes on her face because I am not a teenage prospect with no control. Because if I look lower, I’ll want her again. I already want her, that never stopped.
Her gaze flicks over me, lingering on bruises I told her weren’t injuries. Her mouth tightens. “You need those ribs need to be checked.”
“No.”
“I wasn’t asking.”
“Neither was I.”
She exhales through her nose. “You are a medical nightmare.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“I believe that with my whole heart.”
Silence settles. Not awkward but weighted.
Her fingers curl in the sheet. “Last night happened.”
“Yes.”
“We’re acknowledging that?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Because I don’t do the thing where people pretend sex doesn’t change everything.”
“It did,” I admit, honestly.
Her eyes lift to mine. Brave woman. Terrifying woman.
“What did it change for you?” she asks.
A thousand wrong answers sit on my tongue. Everything. Nothing I can safely give you.
I choose the cleanest truth. “The threat level.” Her face stills.
Wrong answer.
No. Not wrong. Incomplete.
She pulls the sheet tighter around herself. “Of course.”
“Harper.”
“No, that makes sense. I become more of a liability after you sleep with me. Very romantic.”
I sit up. “That’s not what I mean.”
“Then use your words, Steel. I know you have at least twelve.”
“Reaper wanted me wild before last night. Now he will...”
Her expression shifts. Anger pauses for fear, and I hate being the one to put it there.
“He’ll know?” she asks.
“If he doesn’t already, he will soon.”
“How?”
“People talk.”
Her face flushes, but not only with embarrassment. Fury too. “So now what? I get locked in a tower because you and I crossed a line?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“But you do need to stay close.”
Her eyes flash. “That sounds tower-adjacent.”
I drag a hand over my head, fighting the urge to reach for her. “I’m trying to keep you breathing.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
“Yes,” she snaps. Then softer, “I also know breathing isn’t the same as living.”
I look away first. The room is too small for this. Too full of her. Her clothes on my floor. Her scent in my bed. Her words asking for parts of me I don’t know how to hand over without putting her in danger.
Her hand comes to my jaw. Light and careful. A medic’s touch on a killer’s face.
“Look at me,” she says, and I do.
Big. Fucking. Mistake.
Her eyes are too clear for morning. Too honest for a room that still smells like sex and smoke and every bad decision I would make again if she asked.
“I chose last night,” she says.
“I know.”
“No. You know it up here.” She taps two fingers against my temple. “I need you to know it everywhere else. I chose your mouth. Your hands. Your bed. I chose you, Steel. Don’t cheapen that by turning it into another threat assessment.”
My chest tightens until breathing takes work. “I don’t know how to separate them,” I admit.
Her thumb brushes the corner of my mouth. “Then learn.”
The order should piss me off. Instead, it goes straight through me.
I catch her wrist, but I don’t hold it tight. “If you keep saying things like that, I’m going to want to keep you here.”
Her eyes darken. “You already want that,” she challenges.
“Yes.” I won’t lie to her.
“And yet you’re still sitting there pretending you’re the reasonable one.”
“I am reasonable.”
She looks pointedly at my bruised ribs, the gun on the nightstand, and the blood-stained shirt discarded on the floor.
“Emotionally?” she asks. “Sure. Very stable. Like a grenade with abandonment issues.”
A rough laugh scrapes out of me before I can stop it, and her face softens.
I lean in before sense can stop me, and she meets me halfway. The kiss is slow at first. Morning-slow. Dangerous because it has no adrenaline to blame. No bullets. No Reaper on the phone. No blood cooling nearby.
Just her and me, and the thing between us, breathing.
Her mouth opens under mine, and the restraint I spent the whole night rebuilding starts cracking apart. I cup the back of her neck, drawing her closer, and she comes willingly, the sheet sliding lower between us.
My eyes stay on hers. Not because I don’t want to look but because I want too much.
Her mouth curves against mine. “You’re trying very hard to be noble.”
“No.”
“Liar.”
“I’m trying very hard not to make you even more sore before coffee.”
Her breath catches. Then she laughs, low and breathless, and it turns into a soft sound when my mouth moves to her throat.
Fuck.
I want that sound again. I want it louder. I want it buried in my sheets until every man in this clubhouse knows she chose me.
The thought is ugly and possessive, and I drag myself back before it can own me.
Harper’s fingers dig into my shoulders. “Don’t stop because you’re thinking too loud.”
“You need rest.”
“I need a lot of things.”
Her hand slides down my chest, over bruises she wants to inspect and I want her to ignore. Lower. Testing. Asking without words.
My hand clamps gently over hers, not stopping, Checking.
Her eyes lift to mine. “Yes,” she says.
“You sure?”
“No,” she says, honest enough to ruin me. “But I still want you.”
My forehead drops to hers. “Harper.”
“If you say this a bad idea, I’m going to bite you.”
Heat punches through me. “You already did.”
Color rises in her cheeks. “That was different.”
“It was effective.”
“Steel.”
I kiss her again because if she keeps saying my name like that, I’m going to forget every reason the world is waiting outside this room. She shifts beneath me, and the sheet falls away enough that my control takes a direct hit.
I look down, I can’t fucking help it.
She is all warm skin, dark hair, exhaustion, and the kind of beauty that doesn’t ask permission before ruining a man. My hand slides over her waist, her ribs, the curve of her hip. She arches into me, not shy, not pretending, and the groan that leaves me is rough enough to make her shiver.
“That,” I mutter against her mouth. “That fucking sound.”
Her nails scrape down my back, and my body answers hard and immediate.
A knock hits the door like a bullet and Harper startles. I’m out of bed before the second knock, jeans on in one movement, gun in hand.
“Steel,” Saint calls from the other side. “Church. Now.”
Of course. The world doesn’t wait because Harper Quinn is naked in my bed, and my entire life has become an exposed nerve.
Harper gathers the sheet tighter, eyes on my gun. “Church?”
“Club meeting.”
“That sounds less holy than advertised.”
“It is.”
Saint knocks again. “Savage said bring your head and leave your temper.”
Harper mutters, “Ambitious.”
I glance at her, and she lifts one shoulder, her face guarded now. I hate that too.
“I’ll walk you to your room first,” I say.
She stands, sheet wrapped around her. “I can walk myself.”
“I know.”
“And yet?” she asks, quickly dressing.
“And yet.”
Her mouth opens, likely to cut me open with something sharp. Then shouting erupts in the hall. Not in anger but alarm. I move first, and Harper is behind me before I can order her to stay.
I turn. “No.”
“Someone might be hurt.”
“Stay.”
“No.”
The door across the hall slams open, and Fury appears, blood on his cheek, eyes hard. “Steel, get to the gate.”
I shove my cut on over bare skin. “What?”
“There’s another package.”
Harper goes still behind me. I feel it and so does Fury. His gaze flicks to her, then away fast. Smart man.
I step into the hallway. “Stay behind me.”
“For once, I wasn’t planning to sprint ahead,” she deadpans.
We move fast. The rest of the clubhouse is already armed and awake, men flowing toward the yard. Mama M catches sight of Harper wrapped in yesterday’s clothes, thrown on crooked, and my shirt over them. Her expression changes.
Not judgment but understanding swiftly followed by worry.