I should’ve called out first. Should’ve known better than to come up on her like that, especially after what just happened.
I step back and lift my hands in a silent question, jaw tight. After a beat, she unlocks the door and pushes it open. She swings her legs out and stands, but her knees go soft.
She sways.
I catch her elbow before she can hit the gravel.
Not a pull. Not a drag. Just a steady anchor.
Her breath catches. So does mine.
She’s warm under my hand, all soft curves over coiled muscle, like her body’s still deciding whether to collapse or run.
She smells like coffee and vanilla shampoo. Familiar, safe, the kind of normal that doesn’t belong anywhere near men like me.
And it hits too fast, too hard. A jolt low in my gut.
Not now. Nother.
She pulls away the second she finds her balance, chin lifting like she’d rather bleed than say thank you.
“I’m fine,” she says.
I’ve heard that line from people who are anything but.
“Good,” I say anyway, because pushing never helps in the first five minutes. “Let’s grab your things.”
Her gaze flicks to my vest, to the patch, to my face. The anger in her expression settles into something colder, sharper. Some sort of defense.
“So you’re Saint,” she says, voice steadier than her hands. “Do you always show up out of nowhere, or did I get lucky?”
My mouth twitches.
“Only when someone brings wolves to my doorstep.”
A breath of laughter escapes her, quick and surprised, like it slips out before she can stop it.
Then she moves around me to the back seat for her purse and a duffel. Her jeans shift when she bends, a bare sliver of skin flashing at her lower back.
I look away, jaw tight.
She’s twenty-two. Ava made sure we all knew that.
Too young. Too soft. Too fucking tempting.
I’m thirty-eight, Vice President of the Damned Saints, with blood on my hands and ghosts in my rearview.
I’m not here to notice the way a woman fits inside my space.
I’m here to keep her alive.
That’s the job.
Only my body never did learn the difference between a mission and a mistake.
“Let me take it,” I say.
“No.” One word. Immediate. Clean. “I’ve got it.”
