Page 54 of Damron
My hands shook, so I jammed them in my pockets. “For trying to carve you out of my life like you were just another part I couldamputate,” I said. My voice sounded small, even to me. “You always said I was a coward. You were right.”
He downed the shot in one go, and even from across the room I saw the way his eyes pinched at the pain. The stitches in his ribs had been done with speed, not skill. “Little late for that, don’t you think?”
Maybe. But I’d run out of choices, or maybe I’d just run out of places to hide. The jukebox in the corner cranked to life—a Patsy Cline cover, something slow and ruined—and neither of us even looked at it. I walked toward him, letting my heels click against the warped linoleum. Each step felt like I was crossing a minefield, and in a way I was. I stopped three feet from him, close enough to see where a new scar bisected the one I gave him years ago in a parking lot brawl that ended with us fucking on the backseat of his Harley. I almost reached for his arm, but caught myself and fisted my hand in the hem of my skirt instead.
“I fucked up, Damron. I thought I could be two people—the senator and the biker’s wife. I was wrong.”
He just stared at me, like maybe I was the one with a hole in my side. “What changed?” The words came out as a challenge, not a question.
“Everything,” I whispered. I moved in, so close I could smell the cheap whiskey on his breath, the iron tang of blood seeping through his bandages, and beneath it all, the aftershave he’d never admit to wearing but always did. “Giammati. The Dire Straits. You. Me.”
He smiled, and it was a mean thing—no light in it. “So what? You want me to say I forgive you? That we’ll play house, and you can give a fuck about me between press conferences?”
“That’s not what I—” I started, but the rest died in my throat. I didn’t know what I wanted. Just that for the first time since the hospital, I wasn’t numb anymore.
His hand flexed at his side, the phantom ache of his missing finger obvious in the twitch of his knuckles. “And what exactly do you want from me now?”
“Give us one more shot,” I said, hating how pathetic it sounded. I’d spent the last four years running from the possibility that I could ever need someone this badly. “Please.”
He let the silence ride for a whole five seconds, maybe longer. The tension vibrated between us, thick as the smoke and just as hard to breathe through.
Then Damron moved. One step, then another. His hand came up—not a slap, not a shove, just a slow slide to the back of my neck, so gentle it made my knees weak. He yanked me into him, and the first kiss was slow, testing. Like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to kiss me or bite a piece out of my cheek. Then his mouth opened and mine did too, and the years, the wars, the fucking heartbreak, all of it collapsed into a kiss that tasted like whiskey, salt, and a promise I didn’t deserve.
His other hand splayed across my back, big and hot and shaking just enough for me to feel it. I pressed up on my toes, one hand sliding under his ruined jacket, careful not to touch the worst of the bandages, the other fisting in his hair. His tongue grazed my teeth, then dove in deeper, desperate and angry and pure. My body went molten—heat pooling between my thighs, heart stuttering so hard I thought I’d black out. I didn’t care. I let him devour me, lost myself in it.
I broke first, lips raw and swollen. We stared at each other, breathing like we’d run a marathon in full gear. I was shaking so hard I thought my knees might give. He gripped my waist with both hands, gentler now, like he was worried I’d break.
“You want a do-over, Senator?” he whispered, and the old spark was back in his eyes. “You get one. That’s all.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
He nipped my lower lip, then smiled, slow and dangerous. “You walk out on me again, I’ll kill you,” he said, and I believed him, even if the death would be his own. The jukebox switched to a slow waltz. Neither of us moved.
Outside, I heard the rumble of bikes, the laughter of club brothers who’d survived another war, but in that room there was only me and him. Two creatures made for violence, tethered by a need neither could kill. My hands slid around his waist, careful of the bruises, and I rested my head on his chest, feeling his heartbeat under the blood and the leather. The future was fucked. The present was worse. But for the first time since I walked out, I thought maybe, just maybe, the two of us could survive it.
I pulled back and met his eyes. “I won’t leave again.”
He just grunted, but his hands never let go.
We stood there, letting the silence stretch, neither one of us needing to fill it. For once, that was enough.