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The ground under Kat’s feet started to shake, another bomb had gone off somewhere a little too close for comfort, and she rode the tremor out. Once her legs had stopped shaking, she stumbled back until a large van took her weight. She was breathing hard, through her mouth so that she couldn’t smell the fires, and she did a quick catalogue of her injuries. Legs were steady. Torso whole. Left ribs sore but not enough to affect functionality. Her right shoulder had been dislocated but then popped back in, and she carefully rolled her shoulder to make sure it was in working order. Blood was itchy against her skin, streaking down the right side of her face, but the blood seeping from her temple hadn’t gotten into her eye so she counted that as a win. She was standing, in one piece, and could still hold her weapon. She was okay.
“Kat!” She felt the deep voice rumbling through her, and she immediately pushed off from the van to look around. Didn’t take her long to spot him. He moved around the scattered debris with a kind of ease that shouldn’t be possible, not in this situation and not with his size, but he reached her in seconds. Curled one hand around the side of her neck and crowded her back against the side of the van, and she closed her eyes and dropped her face against his chest. Shielded between him and the van, she was completely safe for the moment.
“Miss me, Jake?” she asked as she let her head fall back. He was so close that her chin brushed his chest with every syllable, and she still had the irrational urge to pull him closer. When his eyes narrowed at both the nickname that he claimed to hate and the teasing tone in this admittedly dire situation, she softened her wide grin into something more honest. Because while she hadn’t had time to miss him, not while dodging bullets and exploding shrapnel, she had worried about him. Worried that he wouldn’t make it back to her. Worried enough that she pushed up onto the toes of her boots and locked her eyes with his as she asked, “Jakob?”
“Do you trust me?” He smelled like ashes, like burned things, and the hand she didn’t have clenched to hold a weapon reached out to grip the collar of his shirt. He was still holding the side of her neck, keeping her tight and close, and she wanted to do the same. To keep him right here, with her, against her. It was the complete opposite of how they started out. The complete opposite of how they’d been spending time together. She had initially reached out to Jakob as a favor, to Mia and Dom, but she could admit that she had stayed with him for herself. For him.
“Yeah, I do,” she said quietly. When she nodded to back up the claim, his thumb brushed her jaw. Just that simple touch felt like too much and not enough all at once, and she wanted to cling to him. Wanted to grab him and hide them both, away from the continuing destruction and away from the rest of the world while they were at it. They’d been moving towards something, before this mess had gotten started. They could be happy together, she just knew that they could be happy together if given the chance, but they had to get through this first. Had to survive this first.
“I’m going to get us out of this,” he promised her. Everything around them was being destroyed and literally set on fire, it looked like something out of an apocalypse movie, but she believed him. He was looking at her, really looking at her and not just trying to look right through her, and her fingers tightened around the collar of his shirt.
“We’ll get each other out. We’ll get out of this together,” she promised him. Bullets peppered the other side of the van, rocking her forward and pushing her harder against him, and his hand shifted to grab the back of her neck. Ready to twist them, to reverse their positions and shield her if needed, and lightning shot through her veins.
With one hand holding tight to her gun and the other almost ripping at the collar of his shirt, she pushed up and pulled him down. Shots rang out behind them as she kissed him for the first time, and his lips were dry and soft. Then firm and hard against hers as he kissed back, as he took advantage of her quick intake of air to taste her. The ground shook again, violent quakes that rocked them together, and Kat groaned against the corner of his mouth as another hail of bullets popped against the ground only a few feet away. Jakob’s lips sealed over hers again as he locked his arm around her back and pulled her to the side, keeping her safe, and she leaned up enough to nip at his ear and look over his shoulder. She saw movement, raised her gun behind his back, and set her teeth against the bolt of his jaw as the body she had aimed at dropped.
“We will revisit this later,” she whispered into his ear. He moved them to the side, fired off two quick shots, and pressed his lips against her temple as they both scanned their surroundings.
“Looking forward to it,” was whispered into her hair before she was spun away. They had a job to do, a job to finish, and they could figure everything else out afterwards.