"Try not to get titillated or anything. It's just a sports bra," she said. She squirmed her hips a little to make more room for herself beneath the bike, conscious of his eyes on her naked abdomen, and not exactly hating it.
"Don't flatter yourself," Maxim fired back. "Why don't you show me what you can do?"
"Fine," Savannah said. "Tell me what tools you need, and I'll grab them for you. Unless that single screw really is all you planned on working on today?"
They worked on the undercarriage of the bike together in silence, with Maxim occasionally murmuring the name of something he needed from his toolbox, and Savannah using her long arms and closer proximity to pass them over to him. I think I can see the appeal of this line of work. It's meditative. Simple. I bet it makes for a nice change from smashing skulls together, or worse.
She watched Maxim's hands. She was certain those hands had killed men in the past. Hell, Savannah wasn't green; she had put a bullet through a few perps, all of them terrible people. It never got easier, but she'd learned to stop hesitating after a while and trust in her instincts. Everything in her world was black and white-figuratively speaking, and not literally, like the world Maxim perceived-so she didn't lose a lot of sleep most nights.
Most nights.
She turned her head in toward Maxim, studying his profile as he worked. "Tom's not going to pay for the taillight, by the way," she mentioned. "He says getting to pretend-date a smoke show like me is payment enough."
"That guy is a pain in my ass. I see him driving by here all the time-he thinks he's incognito, but I had to stop Travis from calling the cops on him." Maxim drew the back of his wrist across the crease in his forehead, banishing beads of sweat and tracking a smear of grease near his temple. It reminded Savannah of their first date, and the way she had transferred paint onto him when she had-
"And also, you did not just fucking call yourself a 'smoke show'?" Maxim said.
"I didn't. Tom did. I'm just relaying what other people tell me," she protested.
"Nobody calls you that to your face," Maxim stated. "Especially not someone you work with professionally."
"You might be surprised," Savannah muttered.
"Yeah? Is this where I get the 'woman-in-a-man's-world' spiel?"
"This is where you get bent, Karev," she said. "I didn't come by to hold your hand and kiss away your tears while you cry about your broken taillight."
"You still haven't told me why you came by. Not anything specific," he reminded her. He shifted himself closer-intentionally, Savannah suspected-and she tried to move away. Unfortunately, her shoulder knocked one of the horses, striking a sweet spot that made the entire carriage tilt. Maxim swore in the same instant that Savannah's heart lodged in her throat; she could see the hulking frame tipping toward them both as if in slow motion. She raised her forearms up and braced herself for impact, squeezing her eyes tightly shut.
She heard the metal thunk heavily against a human body, but she never felt the bike come crashing down. Savannah squinted one eye open, before they both widened in astonishment. In the split second it had taken the bike to come crashing down to earth, Maxim had rolled over on top of her, using his wider body to shield her from harm. He strained visibly beneath the weight of the frame, bracing himself with both arms on either side of her. His own eyes were clenched closed, his teeth bared with the effort it took to keep her out of harm's way.
She couldn't spare a moment to think about what he had done. Savannah reached around him and, with a grunt, managed to combine her strength with his and hurl the bike off his back. She wasn't in a position to immediately worry about whether or not she had damaged the bike. Nothing Maxim can't fix, she assumed. There were more important matters to address at the moment.
"Are you all right?" she demanded. Her voice shook with adrenaline. A bead of sweat rolled off Maxim's left shoulder and splashed onto her skin. She tracked the rise and fall of his chest until it had slowed below the rhythm of her pulse. She was out of danger, so why did her heart race faster than before?
"I'm all right." Maxim let out a ragged breath, before cracking one eye open at her. "Just remind me to never let you near one of my bikes again."
Savannah craned herself upward, snaking one hand behind Maxim's neck, drawing him down to her before he could punctuate his thought. Her lips had already met his before she knew that she was kissing him-she didn't know how. She barely knew why, only that she craved something different than their usual back-and-forth. Maybe this was her way of thanking him.