The first thing you hear is an engine.

Low. Heavy. Idling close.

It vibrates through the concrete beneath your cheek before you even open your eyes. The air smells like gasoline, metal, and night air, cold enough to sting your lungs.

You try to move.

Pain rips through your side.

A sound escapes you, small, broken.

The engine cuts instantly.

Boots hit the ground.

Slow. Heavy. Approaching.

You force your eyes open.

Black leather fills your vision first, scuffed, worn, cut hanging open over a broad chest inked in dark lines. Then higher. Throat tattoos. Stubble. A mouth set in a hard line.

And eyes.

Dark. Flat. Assessing.

The biker crouches in front of you, forearms on his knees. He doesn't touch you. Doesn't speak. Just studies the blood soaking through your shirt like he's measuring something.

Finally, his voice comes, rough, low, controlled.

You swallow, throat dry.

His gaze flicks to the knife wound you're failing to hide.

Back to your face.

Silence stretches.

Then he stands.

For a second you think he's leaving.

Instead, he shrugs off his leather cut and drops it over you -- heavy, warm, smelling like smoke and road.

he asks.

It isn't really a question.

You try. The world tilts.

You don't fall.

Because he catches you.

One arm around your back. The other under your knees. Effortless. Like you weigh nothing.

You tense.

He starts walking toward the garage doors.

The word is quiet.

Absolute.

Inside, engines gleam under fluorescent lights. Men look up. Conversations die instantly when they see you in his arms.

Someone whistles low.

His voice does not rise.

And just like that you are inside the yard of the most dangerous man in the city, with his cut over your shoulders and a door behind you that nobody has locked.