Page 27 of Mustang

Mustang stood near the dresser.One hand rested on the grip of the handgun without picking it up, his fingers curled around the textured polymer the way a man’s hand rests on something familiar.His black t-shirt was thin enough that I could see the bruise forming along his ribs — purple blooming under the skin, dark at the center, fading to something greener at the edges.He’d taken a hit.Not a bullet.Something blunt.A rifle stock, maybe, or someone’s boot.He hadn’t mentioned it.Hadn’t winced when Ace wrapped Loch’s arm or when Socket cursed over the prospect’s shoulder.Had just kept moving, the way he kept moving through everything, and now the bruise was there, and he was standing in his private room with a gun under his hand and his eyes on me, and neither of us was speaking.

The radio chatter continued.Muffled, insistent, the sound of a world that wouldn’t stop demanding things just because we’d closed a door.Another distant crack, single shot this time, isolated, the kind a sentry fires to check a shadow.Mustang’s expression didn’t change.His hand stayed on the gun.His eyes held mine across the room, and the silence between us felt stolen, finite, the way certain silences do when you know exactly how much time you have before something else happens.

I stood up.

The concrete was cold through the soles of the boots he’d bought me in Pine Creek.I crossed the distance between us in three steps, not rushed, not hesitant, just moving the way my body had decided to move, and pressed my palm flat against his chest over the bruised ribs.His skin was warm through the thin cotton.I could feel his heartbeat under my hand, steady and unhurried, the rhythm of a man whose body had calibrated itself to violence so thoroughly that even now, with a bruise darkening along his side and gunfire in the distance, his heart didn’t see the point in racing.

Mustang covered my hand with his.His tattooed fingers wrapped around mine, callused and warm, the silver rings cool against my knuckles where they pressed into skin.He held my hand against his chest the way a man holds something he’s decided not to let go of, and I tipped my face up to look at him.

“I’m not scared,” I said.The words came out quieter than I’d meant them to, but they held.“Not of tomorrow.Not of any of it.”

His jaw worked once.The scar pulled.His voice, when it came, was low and rough, the texture it got when he was holding something back that wanted out.“You should be.”

I shook my head.Not arguing.Just answering.“I’m choosing this.I’m choosing you.”

Something broke in his face.Not collapse — release, the way a door gives when the lock finally yields.His hands came up to cup my jaw, both of them, his thumbs tracing the line of my cheekbones with a gentleness that belonged to a different man than the one who’d walked through my back door with a gun.His palms were warm against my skin.I could feel the ridges of old scar tissue along the edge of his right hand where it curved around my jaw, and I leaned into the touch because leaning was the only honest response I had left.

He kissed me.

Slow, at first.Careful.The way a man kisses something he’s afraid to break, testing the weight of it, learning the shape.His mouth was warm and certain against mine, and I felt his breath catch, just once, a fractional hitch, before his control settled back into place.Then deeper.His fingers slid into my hair, curled around the back of my neck, held me there with a steadiness that had nothing to do with force and everything to do with the way Mustang committed to things.Once decided, fully.No take-backs.No half-measures.

I kissed him back.My hands found his shoulders, the solid warmth of him under the thin cotton, the ink beneath my palms — tribal patterns, dark and raised, mapping a history I was only beginning to understand.The radio chatter continued under the door, muffled and urgent, and somewhere outside the compound walls, the distant gunfire had gone quiet.The room held us.The bed frame creaked when his weight shifted closer, when my back met the edge of the dresser and the handgun sat inches from my hip, cold metal against warm skin, and I didn’t care about either one because his mouth was on mine and his hands were in my hair and for the first time since the mountain cabin, since the herbs on the windowsill, since the moment I’d watched him fix a chair leg without being asked, the space between wanting and having collapsed into nothing at all.

He pulled back from the kiss.Just enough that his mouth left mine but his hands stayed on my jaw, his thumbs tracing the line of my cheekbones the way they had a minute ago, and his eyes, steel-gray, flat, the shade they got when he was making absolutely sure of something, searched my face like he was reading terrain.The overhead bulb cast his features in yellow light, turning the scar along his jaw into something pale and raised, a geography I’d been learning for days without touching it.His breath was warm against my lips.Close enough that I could count the individual beats of silence between us, and in each one, the question hung unspoken: last chance.Change your mind now or don’t change it at all.

I reached for the hem of his black t-shirt instead of stepping away.

My fingers found the cotton, gripped it, and pulled.He let me.Arms lifting, the fabric sliding over his head with a soft rustle, and then he was bare from the waist up and the room felt smaller because he took up more of it than the walls had accounted for.Broad shoulders.Scarred chest, old wounds healed into pale ridges that mapped across his skin in patterns I couldn’t decipher.Tattoos covered his ribs and shoulders — tribal work, dark ink, the designs disappearing under the muscle and reappearing along his collarbones, older pieces faded at the edges where the skin had thickened with age.The bruise along his left side was darker than it had looked through the shirt — purple black at the center, spreading outward in a bloom that followed the contour of his ribs where something had connected hard enough to leave a mark.

I traced the ink on his ribs with my fingertips.One tattoo in particular, a pattern that wrapped around his side and disappeared under his arm, the lines thick and raised under my touch.Mustang went completely still.Not the controlled stillness he used when he was processing information or calculating a response — something deeper.His breath held.His eyes on my face, watching me look at him, and the weight of being seen by me settled across his features in a way that made my throat tight.

His hands found the buttons of my shirt, the flannel I’d borrowed from his duffel at the cabin, sleeves hanging past my wrists, collar loose at the throat.He worked each button with the same deliberate precision he brought to everything, his calloused fingers moving slowly enough that I could feel every point of contact: knuckle against fabric, thumb against the buttonhole, the occasional brush of skin against skin when his hand grazed my sternum.The shirt came open.He pushed it off my shoulders without rushing, letting the fabric slide down my arms and fall to the concrete with a sound too soft to hear over the radio still bleeding under the door.

My bra next.His fingers found the hook between my shoulder blades, unhooked it with a deftness that suggested he’d done this before, many times, in rooms darker than this one.The straps slid down my arms.Cool air hit my skin, and then his hands were there, warm and certain, palms flat against my shoulder blades, holding me the way a man holds something he’s decided not to let break.

The rest followed the same rhythm.His jeans, unbuttoned, pushed down over his hips with my help, his hands guiding mine when I fumbled with the belt.My borrowed canvas pants, unzipped, sliding down my legs until I stood bare in front of him on the cold concrete, and the only thing between us was the overhead bulb and twenty years of decisions neither of us could take back.

He didn’t rush.His hands moved from my shoulders down to my waist, tracing the contour of my ribs, the dip above my hipbone, the curve where waist became thigh.Holding me there, his palms flat against my skin, and when he spoke, his voice was rougher than it had been all night.

“I’ve got you.”

Three words.No performance in them, no hedge, just the same conviction he brought to everything that mattered.The kind of truth that didn’t need dressing up because it stood on its own, solid as the concrete under our feet.

We moved to the bed together.His hand on the small of my back, guiding me backward until my knees hit the edge of the frame, and then we were down, the springs complaining under our weight, the narrow mattress protesting the presence of two bodies when it had been built for one.Mustang’s size was evident in every point of contact — his shoulders wider than the pillow, his forearm braced beside my head taking up space the headboard hadn’t accounted for, his weight settled over me with a careful distribution that said he knew exactly how much of himself to give and how much to hold back.

His mouth found my throat first.Warm, open, the scrape of stubble against sensitive skin pulling a sound from me that I didn’t recognize as my own until it was already in the air between us.His hand slid up my side, palm flat against my ribcage, thumb brushing the underside of my breast with a deliberateness that made my breath catch.I arched into the touch because arching was the only honest response my body had, and his mouth followed the line of my collarbone, down to the soft curve where breast met ribs, and then lower, across my stomach, his tongue tracing a path that made my hips lift off the mattress without permission.

My hands were in his hair.Short, thick, the texture rough under my palms, and I gripped it without gentleness because gentleness wasn’t what either of us needed tonight.His mouth moved lower.His hands spread my thighs with a pressure that was firm but never forcing, and when his tongue found me, hot and flat and exactly where I needed it, the sound I made was louder than the radio, louder than the creak of the bed frame, loud enough that his free hand came up to cover my mouth without breaking rhythm.

He worked me with the same unhurried precision he brought to everything.Tongue flat, then pointed, then flat again, reading my responses the way he read a room — thoroughly, silently, missing nothing.My hips moved against his mouth.My nails dragged across the tattoos on his back, following the raised lines of ink from shoulder blade to spine, and when his fingers joined his tongue, curling inside me with a pressure that had me seeing white at the edges of my vision, I bit the heel of his hand and came with his name in my throat.

He didn’t give me time to recover.His mouth was on mine again, tasting himself on my tongue, and I felt him between my thighs, hard and warm and pressing, and then he was inside me, slow, careful, the way a man enters something he’s afraid to break, and the fullness of him drew another sound from my chest, lower this time, something that lived in the space between a groan and a sigh.

The bed frame creaked.Steady, rhythmic, keeping time with the pace he set — unhurried at first, then deeper, his hips rolling against mine with a control that said he was holding back even now, even here, even with my legs wrapped around his waist and my nails digging into the ink on his shoulders.His mouth was at my throat again.My collarbone.The junction where neck met shoulder, and when his teeth grazed the skin there, not quite biting, the sound he pulled from me was sharp enough to cut through the radio chatter under the door.

I moved with him.Hips rising to meet each thrust, my body finding the rhythm his body had decided on, and the warmth of skin against skin built into something that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the days we’d spent holding this back.His hand slid under my lower back, lifting me into him, and the angle changed, deeper, fuller, a pressure that made my vision blur at the edges, and I heard myself say his name, just his name, the word broken into syllables I didn’t recognize.

He said mine once.Just once.Hannah, low, rough, a texture his voice got when something cost him more than he wanted to admit, and then his control finally, fully broke.His hips drove into me harder, his hand tight on my thigh, his mouth against my throat where the pulse hammered under his lips, and I felt him come with a groan that he muffled against my shoulder, his body shuddering above mine, every muscle locked tight for three long beats before the tension bled out of him all at once.