Chapter 39 #2
“You don’t get to tease me like that anymore,” he mutters. “You’re mine. Ring on your finger means you don’t deny me shit.”
My pulse jumps.
“You gonna make me?” I whisper.
His laugh is low and dangerous. “No. I’m gonna fuck that attitude right out of you.”
He carries me into the shadow beside the back door, where the neon can’t reach, where the noise of the bar covers the sounds we’re about to make. My back hits the wall gently, then not gently at all when his hips press into me and I feel exactly how little self-control he has left.
“Careful,” he warns, breath hot at my ear. “You keep grinding on me like that and I’ll take you right here. Let half the county hear who you belong to.”
“Maybe I want them to,” I say.
His hands slide under my shirt, palms hot and rough, claiming skin like he’s memorizing it. I bite my lip to keep from moaning, and he notices.
“Oh, don’t do that,” he growls. “Don’t pretend you’re shy now.”
“Says the man shaking,” I tease.
He stills, jaw tightening. Then he leans in, mouth brushing my ear.
“You know what I’ve been thinking about?” he murmurs. “About how good you’d look swollen with my kid. About filling you up and keeping you that way so everyone knows you’re spoken for.”
My breath stutters.
He feels it. Smiles against my skin.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “That thought does things to you.”
His fingers hook at my waistband, not rushing, not gentle either. Just deliberate. Possessive.
“Sophie,” he says, voice fraying. “If I don’t quit now, I won’t.”
I nod once.
That’s all the permission he needs.
His eyes darken.
“Sophie…”
A warning. A plea. A promise.
He curses softly, reverently. His fingers unbutton my jeans with a rough urgency. He undoes his belt. Then after an undignified dance, us working hard to make it all possible, he’s back in place, sliding inside, hard enough to make my knees give out.
I come first, shaking, gasping, burying my face against his neck while the world narrows to his cock and his breath and the way he murmurs my name like a vow.
Legend doesn’t pull out as he joins me almost instantly.
When I ease back down to earth, he braces one hand on the wall beside my head, the other gripping my hip like he’s reluctant to let me go.
His big brown eyes burn into mine. Biker wants more.
He wants all of me. He wants to drag me home, to this club, lock the door, and finish what we started ten different ways to Sunday.
But he tears himself away with a ragged breath, running a hand through his hair. “No time.”
“We’re engaged, Legend. You’re allowed to want me.”
He huffs a laugh through his nose. “Wanting you was never the problem.”
“What is?”
He looks toward the dark, the rolling hills where Pearly Gates sits like a stain. “Monsters.”
“Then let’s kill them,” I say. “Together.”
Legend cups my face with both hands and kisses me once more, soft this time, but no less intense. A promise more than a demand.
Then he pulls away, breath shaky. Duty settling over his shoulders again.
“Tomorrow,” he murmurs. “Full church.”
I nod.
But my legs are still trembling from him when he turns away, lighting a cigarette with hands that aren’t nearly as steady as he pretends.
Paradise Falls is dead quiet when I pull through the iron gate, the kind of quiet that feels staged, like the land itself is holding its breath.
The moon spills silver across the paddocks, glinting off dewy grass and the broad white fences my family built generations before I was ever a thought. My place. My legacy. My sanctuary.
Tonight it feels like the beginning of a lie.
I park beside the barn and kill the engine. My hands still shake on the steering wheel. Not from fear. Not entirely.
From him.
Legend’s fingers are still imprinted on my hips, my throat, the back of my neck. His mouth is still on mine, phantom heat, phantom pressure. I rub my wrist, remembering the way he pinned it above my head like it belonged there.
Like I belonged there.
God help me, I needed it.
I slam the truck door harder than I need to and head for the porch. The boards creak, familiar, grounding. My boots scrape mud off on the steps. My pulse refuses to calm.
Legend gets under my skin. He always has, even back when he was just Hudson, the wild stable boy with a chip on his shoulder and a busted knuckle every damn week. But tonight was different.
Tonight, he felt possessed.
I push into the house, drop my keys, and go straight to the hall mirror. My reflection looks like a woman who’s been dragged behind a truck, windblown, shaken, eyes too bright. My lip is still a little swollen. My hair is tangled where Legend fisted it.
“You absolute idiot,” I whisper to myself.
I should be furious, and I am, but not at the right person. Not only at him.
At me.
I’m engaged to that man. Engaged. And somehow it feels like we’re both still testing the perimeter of something neither of us knows how to hold.
I brace my hands on the sink and splash cold water on my face. It doesn't help. My skin remembers too much.
The girl I rescued. Cider. Names familiar. I probably met her in town at some point, heard about her. That terror, her bruises, her warning, should be the only thing in my head right now. It should be.
But Legend’s hands won’t stop replaying.
His voice in my ear.
His growl when I pushed him. The way he said my name.
I yank open the drawer where I keep my pistol and check the magazine. Full. Good. I put it away for the night. But tomorrow, when I see the Kings again, when I sit across from Royal and Becki and tell the club what I found, I need to show up steady.
Not shaken.
Not like that I figure the only real monster is my old daddy living under this very roof.
I lock the door, kill the lights, and fall into bed without undressing. The sheets smell like home. Earth and hay and faint cedar.
But all I feel is the ghost of Legend’s hands.
And the bone-deep certainty. I plan to keep him. I plan to keep my family’s sins hidden. Even from him.