Chapter Eight
Four days.
Four days of reading stories to compound children, of meals in the crowded hall, of Vice's hand finding her waist every time she turned around.
Four days of sleeping in a bed that wasn't hers, surrounded by people who'd accepted her like she belonged, waiting for a war she couldn't fight to be won by men she was only beginning to understand.
Four days of wanting something she wasn't sure she had the right to take.
Diana couldn't sleep. The compound had gone quiet hours ago, families retreating to their homes, brothers disappearing into the clubhouse for whatever business happened after dark. She'd tried reading, tried counting sheep, tried every trick she used to settle restless toddlers.
Nothing worked.
She found herself wandering the main building in bare feet and borrowed clothes—one of Vice's t-shirts that hung to her thighs, soft from washing and smelling faintly of him.
The hallways were dim, security lights casting long shadows, and Diana followed them without conscious destination until she reached a door marked with a red cross.
The medical room.
Light spilled from beneath the door. Diana hesitated, then pushed it open.
Vice stood at the far counter with his back to her, surrounded by open cabinets and scattered supplies.
Bandages. Suture kits. Medications in bottles she couldn't read from this distance.
His hands moved with mechanical precision, counting and sorting and recording, the movements of someone who needed to keep busy or go insane.
She watched him for a long moment. The tension in his shoulders. The rigid control in every motion. The way he held himself like a man who'd seen too much and couldn't figure out how to unsee it.
"You going to stand there all night?"
Diana startled. She hadn't realized he'd noticed her.
"I couldn't sleep." She stepped into the room, letting the door swing closed behind her. "What are you doing?"
"Inventory." He didn't turn around. "Needed to know what we have in case the next assault goes worse than the last one."
"That's not what I meant."
Vice's hands stilled on a roll of gauze. "Diana—"
"What are you looking for?" She moved closer, close enough to see the exhaustion carved into his profile, the shadows under his eyes that said he hadn't slept either. "Not in the supplies. In general. In life."
He was quiet for so long she thought he wouldn't answer.
"Something worth saving," he said finally. "Something that makes the rest of it mean something."
Diana's heart clenched. "The rest of it?"
"The faces. The ones I couldn't reach in time, couldn't help, couldn't—" He broke off, his jaw tight. "I spent ten years learning how to keep people alive. I was good at it. And it still wasn't enough, not for the ones that mattered most."
"Vice..."
"There was a village. Afghanistan, third tour.
" His voice had gone flat, the way people sounded when they were describing something too painful to feel.
"We got intel about an IED factory, went in hot.
By the time we cleared the building, the insurgents had already...
" He stopped. Started again. "Families. Kids.
They killed them all rather than let us rescue them. "
Diana closed the distance between them and pressed her hand to his back. She felt him flinch at the contact, then slowly, carefully, lean into it.
"I was a medic. I was supposed to save people. And I stood there in that village with all my training and all my supplies and there was nothing—nothing—I could do except count the bodies."
"That wasn't your fault."
"I know." His voice cracked. "Doesn't stop me from seeing their faces every time I close my eyes."
Diana moved around him, putting herself between Vice and the counter full of medical supplies. He looked down at her with eyes that held too much grief, too much guilt, too much weight for one person to carry alone.
She understood that weight. Carried her own version of it—the fear that she'd fail the children counting on her, that she'd lose what she'd built, that she wasn't enough to protect the people she loved.
"You saved me," she said softly. "Those children at Little Sprouts—they're safe because of you. Twelve kids who will grow up and have lives and never know how close they came to losing everything."
"Diana—"
"You asked what you're looking for. Something worth saving." She reached up to touch his face, feeling the rough stubble under her palm. "You found it. You just don't believe you deserve it."
Vice's eyes closed. His whole body shuddered, control cracking, and when he opened his eyes again they were blazing with something that made her breath catch.
"I don't deserve you."
"That's not your choice to make."
She kissed him.
Not the hard, claiming kiss he'd given her before the assault. Something softer. A question instead of a demand. Is this okay? Do you want this? Will you let me in?
Vice went absolutely still.
Then his hands came up to cup her face, and he kissed her back like she was oxygen and he'd been drowning for years.
The counter dug into Diana's back as Vice pressed her against it, his body a wall of heat and desperate need. His hands shook—she could feel the tremors against her skin, the dangerous man coming undone because of her, for her, with her.
"Tell me to stop." His voice was ragged, his forehead pressed to hers. "Tell me to stop and I will. I'll walk away, I'll—"
"Don't you dare."
She pulled him back down, and the kiss went from soft to consuming. His hands found the hem of her borrowed shirt—his shirt—and slid underneath, rough palms against her bare sides, and Diana gasped into his mouth at the contact.
"You're sure?" he asked against her lips. "Diana, I need you to be sure, because once I start I don't know if I can—"
"I'm sure." She pulled back far enough to meet his eyes, letting him see everything she was feeling. The want. The trust. The choice. "I'm choosing this. I'm choosing you."
Something broke in his expression. The control he'd been holding onto, the distance he'd maintained, the careful walls he'd built around himself—all of it crumbled.
"Mine," he growled, and lifted her onto the exam table like she weighed nothing.
Diana wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him closer, feeling the hard length of him against her core. His hands were everywhere—her thighs, her hips, her ribs—mapping her like he needed to memorize every inch. Like she might disappear if he didn't hold on tight enough.
"Vice—"
"Colton." His mouth found her throat, teeth grazing her pulse. "My name is Colton. I need you to say it."
Colton. His real name, the one nobody used, the one he'd kept hidden behind road names and club identity. He was giving it to her. Trusting her with something private and precious.
"Colton." The name felt like a secret on her tongue. "Please."
He groaned against her skin and pulled back just far enough to strip the shirt over her head. Diana sat before him in nothing but cotton underwear, exposed and vulnerable, and Colton looked at her like she was everything he'd ever wanted and never believed he could have.
"God, you're beautiful." His voice was wrecked. "I've wanted this since—since the first night, when you sat in that tiny chair and told me everything."
"You hid it well."
"I was trying to be professional." His hands traced up her sides, thumbs brushing the undersides of her breasts, making her arch into his touch. "I was trying to protect you. Not take advantage."
"This isn't taking advantage." Diana reached for his shirt, pulling it over his head, revealing planes of muscle and scattered scars she wanted to trace with her tongue. "This is me taking what I want."
Colton's eyes went dark. "Then take it."
She pulled him down and kissed him again, and this time there was no hesitation. His hands found her breasts, palming them, teasing her nipples until she was writhing against the exam table. His mouth followed his hands, trailing fire down her throat, across her collarbone, lower.
Diana's head fell back as his lips closed around one peaked nipple. Her hands fisted in his hair, holding him close, sensation building between her thighs until she thought she might shatter.
"Colton—I need—"
"I know what you need."
His hand slid between her legs, pressing against her through the thin cotton, and Diana cried out. He stroked her through the fabric, watching her face with fierce concentration, reading every response like he was cataloging exactly what made her fall apart.
The healer's hands. Precise. Attentive. Learning her body like a map he intended to travel forever.
"Please," she gasped. "Please, I want—"
"Tell me."
"You. Inside me. Now."
Colton groaned and stripped away the last barrier between them. Diana heard his belt, the rasp of a zipper, and then he was pressing against her entrance, hot and hard and everything she'd been craving.
"Look at me."
She opened eyes she didn't remember closing. Colton was poised above her, every muscle trembling with restraint, waiting for her permission.
"I've wanted you from the first moment," he said, voice raw. "You stood behind that desk and told men who threatened children to get out, and I knew. I knew you were going to destroy me."
"Colton—"
"You're mine, Diana." He pushed inside her, inch by devastating inch, filling her completely. "Say it."
"Yours." The word came out broken, overwhelmed. "I'm yours."
He started to move.
There was nothing gentle about it—Colton took her like a man possessed, like he'd been starving for her his entire life.
His hands gripped her hips hard enough to bruise.
His mouth found hers, swallowing her cries.
The exam table creaked beneath them, medical supplies rattling on nearby shelves, and Diana didn't care about any of it.
All she cared about was him. The way he felt inside her, around her, consuming her. The way his control shattered with every thrust, the dangerous man coming completely undone because of a daycare teacher who'd somehow become his whole world.
"Colton—" She was close, so close, pleasure building like a wave about to crash. "I'm going to—"
"Let go." His hand found where they were joined, thumb pressing against her most sensitive spot. "Let go, Diana. I've got you."
She shattered.
The orgasm tore through her, whiting out everything except sensation—his body, his hands, his voice in her ear telling her she was beautiful, perfect, his. She heard herself cry out his name, the real one, and felt him follow her over the edge with a groan that sounded like surrender.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Colton's forehead rested against hers, both of them breathing hard, still joined. His hands had gentled on her hips, stroking instead of gripping, the fierce possession fading into something softer.
"Diana." Her name was a prayer on his lips. "I—"
"Shh." She pressed a finger to his mouth. "Don't apologize. Don't overthink it."
"I wasn't going to apologize." He caught her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. "I was going to say that whatever happens next—Barron, the daycare, any of it—I'm not letting you go. I can't. You're in me now, and I don't know how to get you out."
Diana's heart turned over in her chest.
"Good," she said softly. "Because I don't want out."
Colton kissed her again, slow and sweet this time, a promise instead of a claim. And when he finally pulled back, his gray eyes held something she hadn't seen before.
Hope.
"Stay with me tonight," he murmured against her lips. "Not in the guest room. In my bed. Where you belong."
Diana smiled and pulled him closer. "I thought you'd never ask."
The medical supplies could wait until morning. So could the war, the club, the danger lurking beyond compound walls.
Tonight, there was only this—a man who'd found something worth saving, and a woman who'd found someone worth trusting with her heart.
Everything else could wait.