Chapter Eleven
Penny couldn't sleep.
She lay in her cabin bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to Professor snore and Ginger pace and Waffle whimper through whatever dream was chasing him. The compound had gone quiet hours ago. Midnight had come and gone.
But her mind wouldn't stop spinning.
The cookout. The hand brush. The way Eddy had sat beside her, shoulder to shoulder, and said then we'll talk like it was a promise.
They hadn't talked.
He'd walked her to her cabin after dinner, stood at the door like he was fighting something, then nodded once and disappeared into the darkness. She'd watched him go, her whole body humming with want, and wondered what the hell she was supposed to do with all this need that had nowhere to go.
At 1:17 AM, she stopped wondering.
She got out of bed, pulled on a hoodie over her tank top, and slipped out the cabin door before she could talk herself out of it.
The compound was silver and shadow in the moonlight. She walked the gravel path on bare feet, barely feeling the stones, moving toward the cabin near the water where she knew Eddy was either sleeping or staring at the ceiling the same way she'd been.
His porch light was on.
She climbed the steps and stood at his door, heart hammering, suddenly unsure. What was she doing? What did she expect to happen?
Before she could knock, the door opened.
Eddy stood in the doorway in jeans and nothing else. His chest was bare, all lean muscle and scattered scars she'd never seen before. His feet were bare. His eyes, when they found hers, were wide awake and burning.
"Penny."
"I couldn't sleep," she said.
"Neither could I."
They stared at each other. The night pressed close around them, humid and warm. From inside the cabin, River lifted his head, looked at Penny, and settled back down with a sigh.
"Can I come in?"
Eddy stepped aside.
She walked past him into the cabin, hyperaware of his presence at her back. The space was small—smaller than hers, or maybe it just felt that way with him in it. A bed against one wall. A chair by the window. A small table with a lamp that cast everything in soft gold.
The door closed behind her.
She turned.
He hadn't moved from the doorway. Just stood there watching her with that intensity she'd come to expect—the focus that made her feel stripped bare even when she was fully dressed.
"I've spent my whole life managing other people's chaos," she said. The words came out without permission. "Cleaning up messes. Holding things together. Being the one who stays calm when everything falls apart."
He waited. Still as the lake at dawn.
"Tonight I don't want to manage anything." Her voice dropped. "Tonight I want someone else to take over. Just for a little while."
Something shifted in his expression. Something dangerous and hungry and barely contained.
"You sure about that?"
"I'm here, aren't I?"
He crossed the room in three strides.
His hands framed her face—big, rough, slightly shaking—and he kissed her like he'd been drowning and she was air. Deep and consuming, his mouth claiming hers with an intensity that stole her breath and her thoughts and everything else.
She grabbed his shoulders, fingers digging into bare skin, and kissed him back.
All the tension of the past week—the fear, the grief, the want that had been building since he'd said nobody threatens mine—poured out of her and into him. She pressed closer, needing more, needing everything, needing to feel something other than the chaos she couldn't control.
He gave it to her.
His hands slid from her face to her waist, gripping hard enough to bruise, lifting her until her feet left the floor. She wrapped her legs around him instinctively, and he groaned against her mouth—a raw, broken sound that sent heat flooding through her whole body.
"Tell me to stop," he said roughly, pulling back just enough to meet her eyes. "Tell me now, because in about thirty seconds I'm not going to be able to."
"Don't stop."
He carried her to the bed.
His hands were everywhere.
Penny had been with men before. Careful men. Polite men. Men who asked permission every step of the way like intimacy was a contract negotiation.
Eddy wasn't careful. Wasn't polite. Wasn't anything like the men who'd come before.
He pulled her hoodie over her head and tossed it aside without breaking the kiss.
His mouth moved to her throat, her collarbone, the sensitive spot below her ear that made her gasp.
His hands mapped her body with a possessive thoroughness that should have felt invasive but instead felt like worship.
"God, you're beautiful." The words were muffled against her skin. "Been thinking about this since the first time I saw you."
"At the shop?" She arched into him, breathless. "I had red eyes and dog hair on my shirt."
"And a spine that wouldn't break." He lifted his head, meeting her gaze. "Made me want to see what else wouldn't break."
He kissed her again, deeper this time, and she stopped thinking about anything except the feel of him—hot skin and hard muscle and the steady strength of his arms bracketing her body.
She tugged at his jeans. He dealt with them efficiently, then turned his attention to hers, stripping her down with the same calm focus he brought to everything else. When they were both bare, he pulled back and just looked at her.
"Eddy—"
"Corbyn."
She blinked. "What?"
"My name." His voice was rough. Raw. "Corbyn Pierce. That's... that's who I am. Under the patch. Under all of it."
The intimacy of it hit her harder than any touch. His real name. The one nobody used. The one he kept hidden beneath the road name and the stillness and the man the club needed him to be.
He was giving it to her.
"Corbyn," she whispered, testing it. Tasting it.
His whole body shuddered.
"Say it again."
"Corbyn."
He kissed her like the sound of his name in her mouth was the sweetest thing he'd ever heard.
When he finally sank into her, Penny understood what the water imagery meant.
He moved like a current—slow and deep, an undertow that pulled her under without warning. That calm surface she'd studied for days was gone now, replaced by something fierce and desperate and barely controlled.
His forehead pressed against hers. His breath came ragged against her lips. His hands gripped her hips hard enough to leave marks—and she wanted them. Wanted proof that this had happened. That the man who held everything beneath the surface had let it break for her.
"Mine," he said, low and rough. "Tell me you're mine."
"Yours."
The word released something in him. His rhythm changed—faster, harder, chasing something they were both racing toward. She clung to his shoulders and matched him stroke for stroke, letting the sensation build and crest like waves against a shore.
"Look at me," he demanded.
She opened eyes she hadn't realized she'd closed.
He was watching her with an intensity that should have been terrifying. Pinned beneath him, lost in sensation, she was more vulnerable than she'd ever been in her life.
But she wasn't afraid.
Because underneath the intensity, underneath the hunger and the possession and the overwhelming need—she saw something else.
Wonder. Like he couldn't believe she was real.
"Corbyn," she breathed, and watched his control shatter.
Afterward, they lay tangled together in his narrow bed, her head on his chest, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on her back.
Penny felt hollowed out in the best possible way. Empty of the fear and the tension and the constant vigilance she'd carried for so long. Filled with something warmer instead.
"I've never done that before," Eddy said quietly.
She lifted her head. "Sex?"
A ghost of a smile. "Told someone my real name. Not since I prospected in."
"Why me?"
He was quiet for a long moment. His hand kept moving on her back, slow and steady.
"Because you see what's underneath," he said finally. "The currents. The things I keep hidden. Most people look at me and see calm. You look at me and see everything I'm holding back."
"Is that a good thing?"
"I don't know yet." He met her eyes. "But I think I want to find out."
She laid her head back on his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow. Steady and strong, like everything else about him.
"This is crazy," she murmured. "We've known each other less than two weeks. My life is falling apart. There's a drug lord who wants me dead—"
"None of that changes how I feel."
"How do you feel?"
Another long pause. His hand stilled on her back.
"Like I've been treading water my whole life," he said slowly, "and you're the first solid ground I've found."
Her throat tightened. She pressed closer, and his arms wrapped around her—tight, protective, possessive.
"Stay," he said. "Tonight. Stay here."
"I shouldn't. My dogs—"
"Will be fine until morning." His voice dropped. "Stay. Let me hold you. Let me have this one night where everything isn't on fire."
She thought about her empty cabin. The cold bed. The spinning thoughts that wouldn't stop.
Then she thought about this—warmth and safety and the steady beat of his heart beneath her ear.
"Okay," she whispered. "I'll stay."
He pulled the blanket over them both. River, who'd been politely ignoring the whole proceedings from his bed in the corner, padded over and settled at the foot of the bed with a contented sigh.
Penny smiled against Eddy's chest.
"He approves," she said.
"He's got good taste."
She laughed softly, and his arms tightened around her.
Outside, the lake was black and still. Inside, the lamp cast everything in gold. The man beneath her was warm and solid and hers—at least for now, at least for tonight.
She closed her eyes.
For the first time in weeks, the chaos in her head went quiet.
She fell asleep with the dog at the foot of the bed and the man curled around her like water around stone—gentle but absolute, reshaping everything it touched.
And for one perfect night, she let herself be shaped.