Finally, I stood, legs shaking, and started to clean up the mess. I ran the water, grabbed towels, and wiped down the blood from the tile. Shivs watched me, eyes soft, almost sad. “You don’t have to,” he said.
I looked at him, and for the first time, I let him see everything I was feeling—the fear, the fury, the fucking need to survive. “I want to.”
He nodded, and we finished the job together. The room smelled like iron and bourbon and sex. It was perfect.
We sat on the floor, backs to the tub, my head on his shoulder. The wound was barely a bruise now. I traced a finger along his collarbone, memorizing the shape of him.
“I’m not letting them take you,” I said.
He kissed the top of my head. “Good. ‘Cause I’m not going anywhere.”
The sun was low in the sky by the time we came up for air. The world was waiting, but I knew I could face it with him at my side. Blood may be thicker than water, but nothing is thicker than the bond you forge in the space between pain and pleasure. We belonged to each other now. And I was never letting go.
We stayed on the bathroom floor long after the sun lost interest in our side of Kentucky. The tile was cold under my ass, but I wouldn’t have moved if the house caught fire. My head rested in the notch where his chest met his shoulder. Every timeI inhaled, I got the copper tang of drying blood, but underneath that was his scent—deep, woodsmoke and iron, the ghost of sweat sweetening as his skin cooled.
He traced lazy lines on my bare thigh, then up across my ribs, always circling back to where the wound had been. Already, it was barely more than a scab, the pink and purple bruising receding by the minute. It didn’t seem possible, but I’d seen enough not to bother doubting. I poked it, gentle, testing. He flinched, but only a little.
“That should hurt worse,” I said, voice still husky from sex or adrenaline or both.
He grunted. “It does. We heal fast, but pain’s part of the deal. The wolf feels everything the man does. Pain, pleasure—it’s all amplified.”
I rolled onto my side so I could watch his face. In this light, he looked younger. Less the monster who’d torn apart a hit squad in my living room, more the man who’d risked everything to keep me breathing.
“Why do it, then?” I asked. “Why keep taking bullets for people like me?”
He closed his eyes, thinking, then opened them slow. “Pack matters. And you’re pack, even if you don’t know it yet.”
I let that hang between us, wondering what it would mean to be “pack,” to belong in that way. My life had always been one long, lonely string of boardrooms and backstabs. The idea of someone protecting me not for a paycheck, but out of some deep, primal loyalty, made my throat tight.
I propped my chin on his chest. “So it’s a wolf thing? Or a you thing?”
He smiled, showing a hint of tooth. “Both. We pick our people, and when we do, that’s it. Forever.”
He reached up and brushed a strand of hair from my face. The gentleness made my skin prickle.
I trailed a finger down the spiral of black ink across his shoulder, following the tattoo to where the skin had already closed over the bullet track. “When you change, does it feel like this?” I asked, meaning the pain, the pleasure, the aftermath.
He shook his head. “Change is worse. Every bone breaking, then knitting back together. But after… everything is sharper. Colors, sounds. Hunger. The scent of a marked woman is even stronger.”
He said “hunger” in a way that made my lower belly twist. I thought of the way he’d fucked me up against the marble, the way I’d begged for it, and didn’t feel shame—just a wild, bright pride. I was the one who could handle him. That counted for something.
He must’ve read my mind. “It’s not always like that,” he said, voice low. “Only when the wolf wants something bad enough.”
I thought about the fight at the distillery, the car, the gun. “How long have you been like this?” I asked.
“Since I was a kid.” He looked away, jaw tensing. “Never got easier. Then I became a wolf. But I learned to control it.”
“How?” I asked, unable to hide the curiosity.
He smirked. “Sheer willpower. And bourbon.”
I laughed, and he joined in, the sound echoing weirdly in the sterile, white-tiled room. For a second, we were just two people in the aftermath, every wound out in the open.
My hand wandered up his chest, memorizing the topography of scars and muscle, the hot ridges of tattoo ink, the places where pain had remade him. I wanted to ask more questions, but I knew some things were better learned slowly.
We sat in companionable silence, our bodies a puzzle of limbs and bandages, until the world came creeping back. I heard the hum of the HVAC, the faint tick of the grandfather clock in the hall, and somewhere far off, the growl of a motorcycle engine. It made my heart race. I wanted to stay right here, in this littleisland of stillness, but I also wanted to face the outside world with him at my side.
I looked at him, trying to gauge if he felt the same.
