Contracted Wife to the MC President

Chapter 7

Harper POV

The Charger's engine cut, and the sudden silence after it was almost worse than the noise before. No sirens, no gunfire, no city glow bleeding through the trees. Just the brutal, freezing wind tearing through the pines somewhere overhead.

"We're here," Reaper said. His voice was gravelly, giving nothing away.

I pushed the heavy passenger door open and stepped out into air cold enough to burn my lungs. The oversized tactical boots hit the frozen dirt, heavy and clumsy. I pulled the inside-out leather jacket tighter around myself, shivering violently as the wind found every gap in the ruined silk of my wedding dress underneath, and the oversized men's t-shirt I wore over it. I felt ridiculous. Dirty, exhausted, and completely out of my element.

Reaper didn't say anything else. He just popped the trunk, grabbed the heavy duffel bag and his rifle, and led the way up a set of rotting wooden steps. The cabin was buried under thick tree cover, dark, dilapidated, and impossible to find unless you knew exactly where to look.

He unlocked the heavy wooden door, pushed me inside, and stepped in after me.

Click.

The deadbolt slid into place. Hard. Final.

It was freezing inside, too. The air tasted like dust, dry pine, and absolute isolation. A single grimy window let in just enough moonlight to throw long, distorted shadows across the wooden floor.

I took in the space, my heart sinking into my heavy boots. One room. A rusted cast-iron wood stove, a small rickety table, a kitchenette barely worth the name.

And a bed.

It was tucked into the far corner. Narrow, sagging, and nothing like the massive, comfortable bed back at the MC compound. One single bed in a room the size of a walk-in closet. There was nowhere to hide. Nowhere to disappear to. I was entirely alone in the middle of nowhere with a dangerous outlaw.

Reaper set the rifle on the table with a hard clatter that made me flinch. He shrugged out of his leather cut, the heavy patches flashing in the dim light, and tossed it over a chair. Without a word, he grabbed the hem of his black t-shirt and pulled it over his head, throwing it down after the vest.

I stayed pressed flat against the front door.

His chest and back were a brutal record of everything he'd survived. Thick slabs of muscle layered over old ink, silver scars cutting through both. But the moonlight caught something new this time. Something wet and dark on his left side.

A nasty graze, burned black at the edges, with fresh blood still tracking a slow path down his ribs.

He didn't even wince. He just picked up his Glock from the table, dropped the magazine, and checked the chamber like the bleeding wound belonged to somebody else.

"You're bleeding." My voice came out louder than I meant it to, echoing in the tight space.

He barely glanced down, looking at the injury with mild annoyance. "Graze. It'll clot."

"It'll get infected."

The part of me that had been trained to be silent, useful, and composed in my father's house took over. The adrenaline of the ambush was gone, leaving my bones feeling like lead, but I forced my clumsy boots to move.

I set my own pistol down on the table, dropped the leather jacket over the back of a chair, and crossed into the tiny, freezing bathroom. A rusted first-aid tin sat in the medicine cabinet. I grabbed it and walked back out.

Reaper was sitting on one of the wooden chairs now, elbows resting on his knees, watching me.

"Sit back," I ordered.

One dark eyebrow lifted. There was something highly dangerous and faintly amused lurking behind his eyes, but he leaned back against the chair and spread his knees wide to make room for me.

I swallowed hard and stepped between them.

The pure, radiating heat coming off his body fought the freezing cold in the room outright. My hands shook a little as I popped the tin open, pulling out rubbing alcohol, gauze, and medical tape.

"This is going to burn," I warned him, keeping my eyes firmly fixed on his ribs.

"Had worse."

I uncapped the alcohol, soaked a thick square of gauze, and pressed it directly to the open wound. He didn't flinch. He didn't hiss. He didn't make a single sound. He just locked his jaw, his abdominal muscles flexing hard under my touch, and held my eyes the entire time.

I worked in silence, cleaning the blood and ash away from his skin. The contrast was jarring. My hands looked pale, soft, and unsteady against skin that felt like hot, immovable stone. Thick scar tissue and raised ink dragged under my palms. The smell of harsh alcohol mixed with the metallic tang of copper and his natural scent—cedar, leather, and gunpowder. It tangled together in the suffocatingly small space between us.

I kept my eyes on the wound. Looking up at his face felt like a massive risk I couldn't afford to take. My breathing went shallow. The quiet in the cabin got heavier, thicker, pressing in on my chest by the second.

I finally taped the clean gauze down, pressing the edges flat. But my fingers lingered. I let my hand rest flat against his hard stomach a beat longer than the medical job required.

The air in the cabin instantly shifted.

His massive, calloused hand snapped up, catching my wrist before I could pull back. It wasn't a painful grip. It was just absolute. Immovable.

I slowly looked up.

The calculating, amused look was gone from his eyes. The hunger on his face now was raw and primal. This wasn't the MC President running numbers on a fake marriage deal. This was the violent man who had just torn through a room full of armed mercenaries strictly to keep me alive.

His chest rose and fell hard under my trapped hand, his heartbeat thudding violently against my palm.

"You didn't run," he said, his voice dropping an octave, low and vibrating in the quiet room. "The gate blew, the tunnel opened, and you stayed right behind me."

"We have a contract." I whispered, unable to look away from his dark eyes. "I don't break deals."

His thumb moved over the frantic pulse at my wrist. Slow. Deliberate. Heat pooled low in my stomach and stayed there, a heavy, terrifying ache.

He suddenly let go of my wrist and stood up to his full, towering height, forcing me to take a quick step back. My oversized boots dragged clumsily against the floorboards.

His dark eyes drifted past me, landing deliberately on the tiny, single bed in the corner, before cutting back down to my face.

"Boots off, Harper." His voice was quiet. Absolute. Certain. "You're sleeping next to me."