Page 14 of The Enforcer (Damn! #2)

Then she stepped closer, fingertips brushing his side where the soaked gauze had started to peel away.

Without asking, she reached for the cabinet above the sink, pulled down the supplies, and gestured for him to sit.

He edged his hip on the countertop and watched her work.

She peeled the wet bandage off with a surgeon’s precision and a hacker’s nerves, quick and efficient, but careful not to make it worse.

“You’re lucky this isn’t infected,” she muttered, dabbing the area clean. “You keep going at this pace, it will be.”

“You sound like you care.”

She didn’t look up. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m not hauling your half-dead ass out of another ambush.”

He smiled, but only with his eyes. “Noted.”

She taped the fresh gauze into place, then stepped back, hands on her hips. “Done. Try not to rip it open in the next ten minutes.”

He stood, crowding into her space. “Depends what you do next.”

She didn’t back down. Just looked up at him with that same infuriating mix of defiance and heat, like she knew exactly what she did to him and wasn’t even sorry for it.

Zane reached for her chin, not rough, but not soft either. His thumb dragged across her lower lip, slow and deliberate.

“You keep looking at me like that,” he said, voice dropping, “and I’m going to forget we’ve got bullets to dodge.”

Lily’s lips parted, breath catching. But she didn’t look away.

“Maybe I want you to forget.”

That was the problem. He already had.

For a heartbeat too long, they just stood there, caught between heat and something more dangerous. Something real.

Then he exhaled hard, muttered a curse, and turned to lead her back into the bedroom, not saying a word. Once inside, he reached for one of his robes, black silk, too long for her, the sleeves falling past her wrists, and slid it over her shoulders like an offering. Like a claim.

She stared up at him with a dry lift of her brow. “Yours?”

“Everything in this room is mine,” he said. “Including you.”

Lily’s breath caught. Her chin tilted up a fraction, eyes narrowing, not in anger, but in something sharper. Something she hadn’t quite decided how to feel.

“You don’t get to own me, Zane.”

He didn’t move. Didn’t so much as blink.

Just held her gaze like her resistance only confirmed the inevitable, that she was his now, whether she admitted it or not.

It wasn’t a threat. It was a truth. One she could fight, mock, even try to ignore, but it wouldn’t change the way the air shifted when she entered a room.

Or the way his blood moved when she touched him.

“Too late,” he finally said.

That landed harder than he expected. Not because of the words themselves, but because he saw it hit her. Saw that flicker in her eyes, the barest shift in her breathing, like some part of her, buried and guarded, believed it. And that part of her? That was the part he’d get to. One way or another.

She opened her mouth. Closed it again. Turned away like that would help.

It didn’t.

He dressed quickly, jeans slung low on his hips, nothing else.

The wound on his side pulled tight beneath the fresh gauze Lily had just taped down, still tender but clean.

She’d taken care of it with quiet, focused hands, another reminder he didn’t deserve the kind of attention she gave so freely, even when she pretended it didn’t mean anything.

But when she turned away, heading toward the kitchen, he moved.

Fast. Reckless. He caught her around the waist, lifted her straight off the floor, and crushed his mouth to hers before she could get a word out.

Her gasp was lost against his lips, arms flying up to his shoulders, her fingers curling into his skin.

The kiss was deep, greedy, full of all the things he hadn’t said, wouldn’t say.

The burn in his side flared sharp and instant, ripping through the bandages with a heat he deserved. But he didn’t stop. Didn’t slow. Because for a few seconds, she was in his arms again, and everything else, blood, pain, bullets, could wait.

“Of course you’re bleeding again,” she muttered the instant he set her down, eyeing the gauze like it had personally offended her. “Two minutes. That’s how long it lasted. Maybe don’t bleed all over my handiwork next time.”

“You were distracting.”

She made a face but tugged him to sit on the bed, grabbed fresh gauze from the cabinet and carefully redressed his wound. Her fingers were gentle, precise.

“Distracting?” she echoed, pressing a little harder than necessary as she cleaned the wound. “I walked away, Zane. That’s it. I didn’t even sway my hips.”

He bit back a grin. Barely. “You didn’t have to do anything, Lily. You just walked away, and it wrecked me. That should tell you something.”

“Maybe that’s the problem,” she said, glaring up at him.

“You think I’m some kind of spell you’re under instead of a person who happens to exist in your line of sight.

Newsflash, Zane, me walking away isn’t witchcraft.

You just have zero impulse control.” she added, taping the gauze into place with a finality that felt suspiciously like a warning.

“Bottom line... You shouldn’t be lifting me. ”

“You shouldn’t be on your knees in the shower.”

Her cheeks flushed. She opened her mouth, closed it again, then shook her head like she couldn’t believe she was even having this conversation.

“Unreal,” she muttered under her breath, grabbing the tape with a little more force than necessary.

But she didn’t argue. Because maybe he wasn’t wrong. And maybe that was worse.

The knock on the front door came just as she finished.

Zane answered, retrieved a large, grease-spotted paper bag that smelled like garlic, butter, and spice, heavy with calzones still hot enough to burn fingers through the foil wrappers.

There were three of them, stuffed with sausage, spinach, and enough mozzarella to glue a man’s mouth shut, plus a side of roasted potatoes and a container of arugula salad that neither of them would touch.

He brought it to the small table tucked beside the open kitchen, set it down, and pulled out a chair for her. Waited until she sat.

They ate in companionable silence, the kind that didn’t require filling.

Lily devoured her food like someone who’d survived off caffeine and code for days, and knowing her, she probably had.

She didn’t bother with utensils at first, just tore into the calzone with her hands, cheese stretching in molten threads.

Zane watched her, biting into his own with less urgency but equal appreciation.

The silence between them wasn’t awkward. It was earned. Something solid to rest in after too much heat and too many bullets. And for a moment, it almost felt normal, like they weren’t just one wrong word away from igniting again.

Halfway through his calzone, Zane set down his food and looked at her. “Time to get serious.”

Lily didn’t stop chewing, but her gaze flicked up, wary and sharp, like a blade half-drawn.

She swallowed slowly, her shoulders tensing just enough to betray that she already knew where this conversation was heading.

She was bracing for it, Zane could see that.

Weighing what to admit, what to hold back, and how long she could stare him down without blinking.

“About what exactly?” she asked.

“The account you breached,” he replied, voice even.

“The Dante shell company. You didn’t just trip a wire, Lily.

You detonated something. And now you need to figure out who you were working for, who gave you that access, and what they pulled, money, data, or leverage.

Maybe all three. Whatever it was, it mattered enough for someone to bury the trail deep and fast.”

She leaned back slightly, calzone forgotten.

“Someone hired me, obviously,” she said, tone clipped.

“But I don’t know who. It was all anonymous.

Protected on both sides. No names, no faces.

Just a single-use key, a timed shell, and a payout address that led to nothing traceable.

It was built to protect everyone involved, mutual invisibility. That’s how high-level ops stay clean.”

Zane stiffened. “And yet, they know who you are. That’s the difference. You were supposed to be invisible, mutual protection, you said, but somehow your name ended up on someone’s list. You were exposed the moment that breach tripped, and now whoever hired you has the upper hand.”

Lily crossed her arms. “Maybe. Or maybe the men who came after us were aiming for you. The Dante name isn’t exactly low-profile, and you’re not exactly a ghost. You’ve got enemies, Zane, old, loud ones. You think I tripped the wire, but maybe you were already standing in the blast zone.”

He considered that. Nodded, slowly. Then reached over and nudged her plate back toward her, the edge of his knuckles brushing hers.

It was absurd, this big, brutal man with blood on his jeans and a fresh wound under his ribs, pushing food toward a hacker who looked like she hadn’t slept in days.

He caught the irony of it, sharp and dry, and let it sit there.

Tough guys handled threats, not calories.

They didn’t feed girls dinner for breakfast or track their bites like a bodyguard with a soft streak. Except apparently, he did.

“Eat,” he said.

She looked at him like he’d grown a second head.

“You’re going to need your brain firing at full capacity,” he added, tone flat but not unkind. “And no one does good work running on fumes and adrenaline, not even you.”

She didn’t move at first. Just stared at the food like it might be part of some larger test. Then, slowly, she picked up a piece of calzone and took a bite. Her eyes stayed on him as she chewed, deliberate and unbothered, like she was testing him now, gauging how far he’d push, how much he’d care.

He’d noticed. That much was obvious.