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Despite himself, Ash reached slightly closer, running his hand along her arm in a gentle, soothing pattern.

I just don’t want to freak her out.

Yeah. That was it. Had nothing to do with the sudden, nearly violent urge to see if she still tasted like cherries.

“Hanna.”

He brushed her hair out of her face, and in the next second, Ash found himself pinned back against the couch, a switchblade to his throat and a hand in his hair, yanking his head back.

“Oh, fuck. Ash.”

Hanna held him so tightly that Ash could feel the rapid pounding of her heart at his back, the unsteady breathing of an animal caught off guard.

The soft tangle of her curls on his neck.

“Is that anyway to greet your brother?”

Hanna pulled the knife back from his throat and shoved him hard. “Don’t be gross. You only lived here for a year.”

One year. It seemed impossible that so many fundamental things in his life could have happened in such a short period of time.

Ash pushed up, suddenly, desperately needing some space from the nearly naked woman in front of him. “True. But we’re here now. So that has to count for something.”

Hanna sighed and sat back on her heels, tossing the closed switchblade to the table. The movement pushed her small, perky breasts together, and Ash nearly groaned at the sight of her tight nipples straining against the worn Jack Daniel’s tank top.

“Nice shirt.”

Hanna glared at him. “I seem to recall you leaving most of your belongings behind.”

Ash sighed deeply. This was neither the time nor the place for this conversation, but he couldn’t seem to keep himself from rising to Hanna’s bait every fucking time she dangled it.

In that moment, Ash was all too grateful that Nicco knew him so well.

“You always sleep with a knife under your pillow?” Nicco asked.

Hanna raised a brow. “You don’t?”

Ash just shook his head. “Nicco doesn’t sleep.”

Hanna huffed out a breath. “I suppose that helps my cause, then. It’s good to see you again, Captain.”

Nicco gave a short nod. “You too, Sheriff.”

It wasn’t the first time Ash had stared down the barrel of his past where Hanna was concerned. The year prior, Niccolo’s brother Dante had helped a runaway in hot water with a mafia hitman—a mafia hitman who had happened to be Nicco and Dante’s own father, and the man responsible for their mother’s death.

Nicco had been running The Princes Motorcycle Club as a protection detail for folks in trouble for years, and while that often meant they worked with local and state law enforcement, providing the heavy when needed, there was little legal recourse when the time came for justice.

So, they’d called in Sheriff Hanna.

And Ash had been forced to bite his tongue and pretend it hadn’t felt like he was burning alive to be near her again.

Hanna had transported their hitman, and Ash had thought that was the end of that. But then Nicco and Dante had squared off against their own father, taking him down for the count one last time.

The problem was, he had almost taken Nicco down with him.

Ash had never had the privilege of fear, and had learned how to handle himself from a young age, whether that meant with his size, on the back of his bike, or with the weight of a blade in his hand. But seeing Nicco in the hospital, a stab wound to the abdomen and his normally thin features gaunt and wan, had scared him more than the thought of losing control of his Triumph at a hundred miles an hour.

It had been enough to distract Ash from the matching gaping wound he felt at seeing Hanna again. And at leaving her behind.