Page 84 of Crave

“Checking the damage.”

“The damage is being corrected. Don’t touch that.”

I swatted his hand away, but he caught my wrists. His grip wasn’t cruel, but it held. And he locked his eyes on mine. For a second, I swear the air between us stopped moving. His pupils were wide, breath shallow, chest rising against the bandage I’d wrapped. Yet he looked at me with such heat, I was stunned into submission.

“You wanna know what happened to the last bloke who tried hitting me?”

I swallowed hard, pulse tripping. “I’ll assume he didn’t have the fortune to find a house with a practising doctor.”

Something shifted in his face then. Pain. Or maybe regret. He let go, sinking back against the headboard. I stayed where I was, my wrists still tingling from his touch. Then I settled in beside him, our shoulders brushing.

“What happened?”

“Best you don’t know.” Razor scrubbed a hand through his hair.

“I don’t doubt it.” I chewed my lip. “But you are in my bed. Bleeding on my sheets. Fixed up by my mate. Surely, I’m owed something.”

He exhaled, tipping his head back against the headboard. It wasn’t exhaustion. It was restraint. As if he was trying to decide whether silence could save us both. For a moment, I thought he might tell me everything. Then his jaw clenched, and he rubbed a thumb over the gauze on his ribs.

“That rival crew I mentioned?” He glanced at me, biting his lip. “They happened. I was meant to sort it. Instead, I got knifed, shot at, and—fuck.” He thudded his head back onto the soft headboard. “I ran. That won’t earn me any stripes.”

He said it like confession. Quiet, heavy, ashamed. And I turned to him, close enough to see the tremor in his jaw, the muscle ticking as he swallowed down the truth he didn’t want to say. The man who’d looked indestructible the other night now looked as if he was holding himself together with sheer stubbornness.

So I said, “Maybe survival’s worth more than stripes.”

He looked at me then, and for the first time neither of us had a clever line to hide behind. “That’s not how this works.”

I nodded, though we both knew I didn’t understand. How could I? I’d read about lives like his, written essays on systemic failure, but that wasn’t the same as living it. Bleeding for it. And I didn’t know if he’d chosen this life, or if it had chosen him. What I did know was that a man like Razor didn’t show up at a stranger’s door unless there was nowhere else he could go.

And maybe that was the part that got me.

The idea that I wasn’t the safe choice, but the only one left.

I should’ve pulled back. Instead, I reached for the edge of the bandage, checking it hadn’t slipped. My fingers brushed his skin, warm and rough beneath mine. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t move at all. He watched me with those sharp, unreadable eyes, as if I was the one bleeding.

“Why here?” I asked, voice lower than I meant it to be, eyes catching on his. “Why come to me?”

He swallowed, throat working around words he found hard to say. “Couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d rather bleed out than on your expensive floor tiles.” He lifted his eyes, meeting my gaze. “Would be a nice place to die.”

Jesus.

Christ.

That hit somewhere it shouldn’t have. It wasn’t a compliment, but it landed all the same. Right beneath my ribs. And I couldn’t help it. Maybe I was high myself. Maybe I’d inhaled too much of the antiseptic Henry had been using or had been downing the vodka instead of water. Maybe it was just pure adrenaline. Whatever it was, I couldn’t fight it. How could I fight this man? He’d never let me win. So I leant up and pressed my lips to his. And, God, he met me halfway. Tight at first, almost cautious, before his hand came up behind my head, threading his fingers into my hair, and dragging me closer. The kiss deepened. Messy. Desperate. He was trembling, bloodied and hurt, and I was too gone to stop.

Too lost in the heat of him.

He kissed me through the pain, breathing hard into my mouth, until somehow he was over me, limbs tangled with mine, heat pressed to heat, breath shuddering between us. It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t even really a kiss. It was a collision: frantic, fevered, two people clinging to the same ledge.

And God, it felt like air.

As if he needed me to breathe.

As if letting go of me meant slipping under for good.

I let him hold on.

Between kisses and broken little winces, he shoved down his borrowed underwear for me to wrap my hand around his thick, hard cock, nothing subtle about it. And when he tipped his head back, a choke caught in his throat, pleasure cutting clean through the pain.