"What happens now?" I ask while settling onto the couch beside him.
"Now we figure out what comes next." He pulls me against his side, and I sink into the solid warmth of him. "The case is closed. Sullivan's in custody. Your company has closure on the insurance fraud investigation."
"So I should go back to the city. Return to my regular assignments. Let you get back to your life without an insurance investigator complicating things." The words taste wrong even as I say them, testing how they feel.
"Is that what you want?" His voice stays level, giving me space to choose.
"No." Simple honesty, no hesitation. "The investigation brought me to Anchor Bay, but you make me want to stay."
Relief floods his expression, sharp and immediate. "Then stay."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that." He turns me to face him fully. "I'm offering you more than case partnership, Mira. I'm offering you a place in my life, in my home, in the Brotherhood family. Because I want you here. Because what we have deserves a chance to grow into something permanent."
My breath catches. "You're serious."
"Dead serious." He cups my face in his hands, and the wrapped gauze on his knuckles—evidence of what he did to Sullivan—presses against my skin. "You started to surrender to me at the Forge. Trusted me with control, with vulnerability, with everything you'd been protecting. I don't take that lightly."
"Shaw." His name comes out soft.
"I want you in my bed every night. Want you wearing my mark where everyone can see it, knowing you chose me and I chose you back." He leans closer until his lips almost touch mine. "Want you as mine, not just for this case but for everything that comes after. You understand what I'm offering?"
"I understand." I close the distance and kiss him with heat and promise and certainty. "I chose this. Chose you."
But the words feel incomplete. There's more that needs saying, acknowledgment of what I'm really accepting.
I pull back enough to meet his eyes. "I saw what you did to Sullivan. Watched you beat him bloody while law enforcement looked the other way. Watched your brothers cover for you, watched Detective Perez write it up as resisting arrest when we both know it was more than that."
Shaw goes still, waiting.
"I should be horrified," I continue. "Should be questioning whether I can be with someone capable of that kind of violence. But I'm not. I watched you lose control when he threatened me, watched the Marine surface, and all I felt was..." I search for the right words. "Safe. Protected. Claimed."
His thumb traces my lower lip. "That concern you?"
"Maybe it should." Honesty between us, always. "I'm accepting a lot here, Shaw. Not just you—the Brotherhood's methods, the moral gray areas, the way rules bend when family is threatened. You told me there was debate in Church about protecting me, that some brothers questioned whether you were compromised. But the club rallied anyway once the decision was made."
"And?"
"And I'm choosing it anyway. All of it. The violence when necessary, the Brotherhood that operates outside normal rules, the man who beats threats bloody and then comes home and wraps me in his arms." I meet his gaze without flinching. "I'm not naive about what I'm accepting. I'm choosing it with my eyes open."
Something shifts in his expression—relief and pride and hunger all at once. "You're sure."
"I'm sure." I kiss him again, deeper this time. "I choose you. Choose submission and partnership and trust and everything that scares me about letting someone in. But I'm also choosing the darkness. The controlled violence. The Brotherhood's version of justice. All of it."
"You're mine now," he says when we break apart. "You understand what that means?"
"It means I trust you to lead. That I want what you're offering." I trace the edge of his jaw, feeling the rough stubble beneath my fingertips. "It means I'm yours, Shaw. Completely.The fire investigator and the Marine, the Dom and the man who protects what's his by any means necessary."
Words settle between us as a promise that goes deeper than any investigation or case work. I'm choosing him, choosing this life, choosing to stay in Anchor Bay to build something permanent with someone who understands what I need—and accepting what he is in return.
He kisses me again with slower heat this time, tasting acceptance and surrender and trust. My hands fist in his kutte and pull him closer, and the heat between us builds into something that demands more than conversation.
"Bedroom," he says against my mouth. Not a question.
"Yes, Sir."
The title sends visible heat through him. I'm giving him everything, offering submission freely instead of fighting the need he recognized in me from the first time we worked together. No more professional distance. No more walls. Just me, surrendering completely, trusting him to catch me.
