24. Epilogue
IVY
FIVE WEEKS LATER…
The beaming smile on my sister’s face as she talks animatedly with the two women sitting with her warms my soul.
I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure what to expect when May said she was hosting her birthday party at her workplace, but Temptation’s not as sleazy as I thought it would be.
Sure, the floor’s sticky in places, and it’s a little rough around the edges, but I can see Maylie’s fingerprints all over the bar. My sister has this way of leaving a mark on everything she touches—even strip clubs.
“We should come here when the girls are working,” Katie says from my side. Her gaze is locked on the stage and the two poles at either end of it.
“I can’t imagine why you’d want to come and watch busty women swinging around in their underwear,” Dayna teases.
I smile at my friends, breathing in this moment of normality. The calm after the storm.
“No reason.” Katie turns to me. “I can’t believe your sister works in a strip bar.”
“And all her friends are strippers,” Dayna adds as Candy—or maybe she’s Star—laughs loud enough to yank our attention towards her. “Pretty sure the only real tits in the room are ours.”
Katie looks over at the girls sitting with my sister, tilting her head. “Nah. They’re not all fake.”
“How can you tell?” Dayna demands as awareness prickles along my nape, a ghost of a touch.
“Oh, babe, practice. Lots and lots of practice.”
I twist towards the bar area, and as I suspected, he’s watching me.
His gaze scorches my skin like a brand and sends shivers trailing along my spine.
Riot.
My Riot.
Seren is strapped against his chest, his hand resting on her back like he’d take a bullet for her. It’s at odds with the molten heat pinning me to my seat.
If he keeps looking at me like that, I’m going to crawl up him like a cat in heat.
His dimple slices through his cheek, and I almost give up on pretending I don’t want to cross the room and rip his clothes off.
It’s been five weeks since the attack, but it feels like an eternity.
It changed him, changed us both. Beneath the smouldering, there’s something new. It’s not fear, but an understanding that life’s fragile.
That we’re fragile.
He clung tightly to me and Seren in the weeks after the attack, and I let him. I needed him close too.
He arches a brow at me, a challenge, and I bite my bottom lip like I’m a giving him a lesson in seduction.
He smirks and turns to Mace, breaking our contact. Game over… for now. I breathe freely for a moment and rub my thighs together under the table. My underwear is damp, and I’m straining to get the relief only he can give me.
Once he’s healed.
He shouldn’t be carrying Seren like that, but this whole incident showed me that my man doesn’t listen to orders. He’s not a good patient, and I’ve given up trying to nurse him.
My gaze moves from him to my sister. It’s amazing the difference a few weeks can make. She’s lost that unhealthy pallor since her morning sickness stopped, and she’s finally started putting weight on. Her bump is noticeable under the swell of her dress, and her glow is soul-deep, like she can’t get any happier than this moment.
I love that for her.
“I don’t want to start your pulse racing,” Katie says, leaning into me, “but you’ve got a hot biker staring at you.”
I don’t tell her he’s been staring since we got here.
Dayna smirks into her straw. She’s four cocktails deep already, her cheeks flushed and her eyes twinkling. Two more and she’ll be dancing on the tables.
“Do Mace and Riot have a brother or ten? I really need some string-free fun. My vagina’s getting dusty.”
Katie snorts.
I shake my head. “The only bikers I hang out with are in the room.”
She groans. “Pity.”
“He’s been a little… overprotective since the attack.” Remembering that day churns my stomach, and for a second, I feel the blood on my hands.
We’re okay. We’re safe.
He’s still here.
“Babe, he’s at DEFCON one,” Dayna says. “If any one of your sister’s friends so much as looks at you wrong, we’re going to have pasties and silicon flying everywhere.”
I snort. “He’s not going to cause a scene at Maylie’s party.”
“No, but he’s definitely contemplating dragging you over the table and fucking you until your legs are jelly.”
Heat blasts through my veins like molten lava. The thought of him taking me like that sends my mind spinning.
“How long until you can… you know?” Dayna grins.
And my face is heating for a different reason now. We haven’t had sex yet, though not because we don’t want to.
I’m nervous, sure, but I want him to take this next step with me. I’m just scared I’ll hurt him.
But his patience is wearing thin. He wants this too and I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.
“Worry about your own dusty vagina,” I fire back.
Dayna’s laughter stutters as her gaze shifts past me, and I follow her line of sight.
A tall blond guy, lean and rough around the edges, is standing at the bar, talking to Mace and Riot. He eats up the space around him like he owns it, brooding and intense, like a loaded gun. The kutte means he’s club, but I don’t know his name.
“Where the hell did he come from?” Katie asks.
“This is a Sons business,” I say. That’s how my sister and Mace first met.
Dayna’s lips part slightly, just for a beat, then she blinks it away and takes another sip like she wasn’t just floored.
“Maybe we should come for a night out then.” She tries to hide it, but she’s a little breathless.
I would push her, but I’m coming out of my skin myself.
“I need to use the bathroom.” I stand abruptly and leave the table.
My pussy is throbbing by the time I slip into a cubicle and slide the lock closed.
Just a few more weeks and I can be his in every way that matters.
The creak of the door grabs my attention before footsteps move slowly across the tile. I expect to hear one of the girls, not his gruff rasp. “Vee?”
I grin and slide the lock back.
He watches me step out the cubicle, his eyes scanning my body deliciously.
I don’t ask where Seren is. I know she’s safe.
Instead, I move into his space and press my hands to his chest.
“Hey, handsome.”
“You finished eye-fuckin’ me from across the room?”
My stomach heats. “Is that what I’m doing?”
He grabs my chin, tilting my head, and then presses a scorching kiss to my lips. “You know it is.”
His hand slides down my belly and between my legs. Fire licks along my pussy everywhere his fingers touch.
“We have to wait,” I warn, though I don’t stop him as he rubs me through my leggings.
“I’m done waitin’, babe. Tell me you are too.”
That pause, that moment to check if I want this, means everything to me. It reminds me why I’m standing in front of him, exposed, open… his .
“I want to fuck my boyfriend,” I whisper against his ear, “but if you pull your stitches, you can explain it to your brother.”
He steps back and offers me his hand. I take it without hesitation and follow him as he leads me out the bathroom, down a dark corridor, and into a small office.
As soon as the door is shut, our mouths are fused together and my fingers are in his hair. The scorching heat between us is dangerous and addictive.
My body sings, every nerve ending buzzing with need as he claims me completely. There is no thought but him and me, the world outside this room disappearing.
“I’m gonna spend the rest of my life makin’ shit right with you,” he says between kisses.
“There’s nothing to make right.” And I mean it. Almost losing him unhinged my sanity. I can live without knowing things that will hurt me, but I can’t live without him. “Now, stop talking. I need you.”
“You got me, baby.”
He guides me onto the desk and tugs my pants down. Then he parts my thighs like I’m a goddess he’s about to worship.
There’s no fear, no anxiety… just complete and utter submission.
I’m his in every way.
And he’s mine.
My hips lift as his nose instantly goes to my core, breathing me in. I’m already wet, and he runs his fingers through my slick heat before he licks between my folds.
My body lights up as my breath hitches.
This isn’t going to be hearts and flowers. We’ve waited too long for that. It’s feral, unrepressed desperation as his fingers slide inside me, stretching, preparing me to take him.
“Fuck.” His voice is a guttural groan, matching my soft pants of pleasure as he strokes my clit.
I tumble through my climax seeing stars, and I sit up long enough for our mouths to crash together.
The raw, unfiltered passion is too much and yet not enough. I’m sure there’s mindless desperation in my eyes as our mouths torment each other.
Safe. Happy. Feral.
My hands are under his shirt, touching every part of him I can. Then I move lower. He growls into my neck as I scrape my nails over his cock
“I need you inside me,” I whimper.
He shoves his jeans down, just enough to free himself, then his eyes flick to mine. The question dances in them.
“Please.”
He moves between my legs, and I cling to his shoulders as he feeds his shaft into my body.
The stretch, the intrusion, it drags a groan from me, and I hold him tight as he starts to move.
Riot’s pace is slow then builds, like he’s hanging onto control by his fingertips.
My pussy squeezes him with every thrust, our eyes locked together.
I love him.
Every part of him. The broken. The damaged. The funny. The obsessive. The protective.
All of him.
And he loves those parts of me too, the ones I hid away for so long. Now, there’s no need to wear masks or build walls. He can see behind them anyway.
One more savage thrust and I shatter. He spills inside me, his hips stuttering, and his throat tightens, like a scream is caught behind his teeth.
Chests heaving, still pulsing and joined together, I didn’t think things between us could get any better, and yet this was everything.
This was me and him finally coming together.
I trail kisses down the side of his face, loving every inch of him, showing him without words what he means to me.
“Fuck,” he groans into my shoulder.
“Your side okay?”
“Yeah, baby, it’s fine.” He lifts his head, and the way he’s looking at me, like I’m his reason for existing, chases away any doubts I might have had lingering. “You’re fuckin’ perfect.”
I’m not, but neither is he. And that’s okay. We don’t need to be perfect. We just need to be.
I glance at the desk I’m sitting on the edge of and wince at the mess we’ve made. “I really hope this isn’t Maylie’s desk.”
His dimples appear. “Babe, you think her and Mace ain’t fucked on it?”
A full body shiver works through me. “I didn’t need that image in my head.”
He holds my face like I’m his anchor in the storm, and I lean into it.
“Say you’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” I whisper. “And I love you. Do you love me?”
His eyes are soft. “Until my last breath.”