Chapter Four
Harley
Edge fell into bed, exhausted, completely clothed, as soon as I helped him into the bedroom.
He was asleep almost instantly. Ten minutes later, I’m still standing here beside the bed, letting my eyes trace around the room like a gentle caress, soaking in every single detail of the room I’ve imagined a thousand times over in my mind.
Like the rest of the house, it’s sparsely furnished.
No décor on the walls, the blinds at the windows broken and hanging askew, the comforter on the bed old and faded with too many washings.
The bed looks soft and comfortable though.
There’s a small, beat up nightstand beside it, and a larger dresser in the corner.
The house is even smaller than my father’s.
Edge’s is white, but the paint is peeling off the boards on the outside.
It has a small, sagging wrap-around porch that is barely holding on.
There’s a stretch of soggy land behind it, not good for anything, and a small patch of better ground that Edge always said he was going to turn into a garden, but never did.
The kitchen is worn, the cupboards brown and battered from use, original from the seventies along with the stove and fridge. I know that the fridge barely works, because the milk is always going off before the date on it.
The living room has a huge flat screen TV mounted up on the wall and two leather couches.
It’s the nicest part of the house, since that’s where the guys come over to have beers and talk about guy stuff, sports, club shit.
I used to come with my dad sometimes as a kid, but not so much over the last few years.
But nothing’s changed. The hole in the drywall from where Snake got mad at Shadow and put his fist through the wall is still there.
Not for the first time I think that the house needs a woman’s touch. But as I stand by the bed, watching Edge’s chest rise and fall, thankfully with easy regularity, I realize, with muted shock, that it’s now my home.
Not officially, but it will be in the morning.
I know Edge won’t stop me moving in. We would have liked to have waited, had my dad’s blessing, and let people get used to the idea of us being us, but that’s all shot to shit now.
I don’t know if it ever would have been a possibility.
I don’t have anywhere else to go, but even if I did, my place is here, with the man I love.
My eyes shift to his face, the streetlights creeping through the blinds, playing garishly over the bruises and cuts, the swelling, the black eye and his split lips.
The untouched side is shadowed, illuminating the hollows of his cheeks and the high cheekbones above it.
Edge doesn’t look like my dad. He’s all raw energy and latent power, even in sleep a commanding force, a tower of granite muscle wrapped up in leather and cloaked in denim.
He’s nearly as tall as my dad and just about as broad, but his face is different.
My dad used to bug him about being pretty enough to be a model.
I don’t know if that’s true, because he’s too rough for that, but maybe in another life, he could have been. His face is beautiful, even now, bearing the marks of violence. I know he’s seen a hell of a lot worse over the years, but still, my heart aches.
I remember being a thirteen year old girl and kind of just…
waking up and realizing that the men around me were actually men and that meaning something for the first time.
They weren’t like the boys at school. I never wanted any of them.
No, I only ever wanted Edge. I was basically just a kid, fresh into puberty, when I started looking at him like I actually had eyes.
I realized that his face was beautiful in that rugged way, sculpted with a chisel by forces I couldn’t see.
Even though I know his nose was broken once before, it’s still remarkably straight.
As a kid, I grew up with rough looking tattooed, leather wearing, bike riding, swearing, drinking men.
I thought that it was normal, until I was older and realized that other people’s dads weren’t covered in tattoos and didn’t ride bikes.
That mine was the world that was considered on the fringe, or strange, a world most people would never understand.
My eyes sweep over Edge’s prone form, loving how he takes up most of that bed, even though he’s pressed right up against the edge.
I trace the lines of dark ink that swirl down his arms, knowing that it extends to cover most of his chest and back and creeps up along his neck.
My belly tightens and heat pools between my legs when I realize that I’ve never seen him with his pants off.
I mean, not even in shorts. I wonder if the ink continues lower, over his granite muscles there.
I’ve hungered for Edge for a long time. Years.
But the crush morphed into something else and when I was sixteen, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, I shed those notions for something deeper, darker, a hunger that’s eaten at me for two years.
The hunger of a woman. Though it wasn’t until last summer when we were working together every day, that I finally got the courage to tell him how I feel.
Even then, nothing physical has happened between us, I guess the worry over what my dad would say hung over us both.
There’s been times, in our stolen moments together, where I’ve noticed the outline of his erection in his jeans.
I’ve ached, thinking about his cock, imagining the perfect shape of it, how it would fill me up, stretch me until it hurts.
I’m not ashamed to say that there have been nights in the silence of my dorm room, when I couldn’t sleep because I ached for him, my body frustrated at the separation we had to endure.
When I slipped my fingers between my legs and eased the pressure there, thinking about taking him inside of me, wishing it was him bringing me to climax, and not my fingers on my clit.
I’m soaking wet just thinking about it, Edge is so close that It’s hard to breathe. My panties are so wet that I feel beads of moisture trailing down my thighs. Even my dress feels damp, the weight of it unbearable against my skin.
I stalk over to the dresser. It feels both wrong and thrilling to crack open the first drawer and look inside.
Everything is different now. I always knew Edge was going to be mine, because a man like Edge doesn’t make promises he won’t keep, not to anyone.
If he wanted to get laid, he could have, by any woman in town.
I know he’s had many before me. I also know that he hasn’t hooked up with anyone in months. Even before we got together.
The first drawer contains nothing but socks and underwear.
I close it gently and open the second. Folded neatly—a little too neat, even, is a series of black t-shirts.
I tuck my hand in the drawer and wrap my fingers around the soft well-worn fabric.
I cradle it reverently, as I bring it to my nose, so that I can inhale deeply.
Past the clean scent of laundry soap, my sensitive nose picks up something deeper, darker, all the scents I’ve come to associate with Edge.
Spicy aftershave, the piney scent that clings to the oil he slicks back his hair with.
Underscoring it all is the scent of leather and freedom.
Okay, maybe I just imagine those two, because I know full well what Edge looks like, proud and mighty, a god among men, when he’s mounted up on his bike.
His bike.
I let out a groan when I remember that I still have to call someone to go get it. I’ll deal with it in the morning. It’ll be safe at The Canteen, no one would dare touch one of the Steel Riders’ bikes.
Suddenly the dress I have on feels like a cage, confining and uncomfortable.
I slip the straps off my shoulders and tug it around so hard that it rips along the seams. I don’t care.
I keep tugging and pulling until I can reach around to get the zipper undone.
I nearly snag my skin in the process, and let out a sigh of relief when the dress pools around my ankles on the floor, a puddle of ruined silk and lace.
I slip Edge’s t-shirt over my naked body, the cool rush of the light material like heaven after the cloying dress.
I nearly sway when I glance back at the bed again, at the sleeping form, the giant of a man there. My man. My Edge. I have to take a steadying breath and remind myself that this is real. That he’s real. That I’m really here.
Even if everything’s a mess, we’ll face it together.
As us.
Even thinking it is thrilling and terrifying and sends a shiver straight up my spine, a coil of heat pooling in my thighs, and tingles assaulting my insides like a flutter of butterflies.
I walk carefully to the bed, ready to slide under the covers, even though Edge is on top, when I realize that he still has his boots on.
Something about seeing them resting on the covers makes me want to cry.
He passed out there so fast, vulnerable and unguarded in a way I’ve never seen before because it’s me and he knows he’s safe with me, aching, hurting, my wounded warrior.
He could have fought back. He could have defended himself.
God, maybe he would have even beaten my dad in a war of blows, but he didn’t.
He took those brutal punches for me. He’s bearing this pain, the pain of everything, not just the physical, for me. Because of me.
I undo the laces on his boots and slowly, gently, so carefully that it takes me minutes, I work them off. I set them at the end of the bed, lined up reverently together before I slide under the cool, crisp sheets for the first time.
I lay on my back for a long time, staring up at the ceiling, listening to Edge’s even breaths. I don’t dare tuck myself up against him, for fear that the hunger gnawing away at me will consume me completely.
When a rough, warm hand twitches up against mine, the blunt, calloused fingers twining through my own, I nearly jump out of my skin.
The bed dips as Edge shifts, and even though I can’t feel the creak or protest, I can feel the shudder that the bedframe gives off.
He half rolls over, letting me stare into his face. The room is dark, but the light from the streetlamp spills in, illuminating his face so I can watch his lips move.
“What are you thinking about so loud over there that it woke me up?”
I laugh softly and reach up to cup his face. “Nothing. Just couldn’t sleep.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
I laugh again, and god, it feels good, after everything that happened. “I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”
“You’re in my bed, wearing my t-shirt and nothing more. You think I can just go back to sleep, easy as that?”
My whole body heats up as excitement tears through me, white hot, unfurling like a proud flag in my belly, spreading to each of my limbs, making them languid and heavy.
“It’s not tomorrow yet,” I pant.
“It ain’t,” Edge agrees. “But I have to taste you, Harley. Have to mark you as mine. Have to have something of you, even if it ain’t everything.”
My eyes tear up, because, even though the rest of the town might see Edge as just some biker in some club, to me, he’s my knight in shining armor.
He’s honorable. So fucking honorable that he’ll deny himself to make everything special for me.
To give me a chance to try and smooth things over with my dad so that’s not between us when we finally come together.
I stare up into his beautiful, broken face, into his dark right eye, with the thickest fringe of black lashes that I’ve ever seen.
An anxious flutter of nerves erupts inside of me, the doubts already springing forth.
No one has ever touched me this way. Seen me this way.
God, imagining his mouth on me anywhere is enough to send me to the brink, but also to scare the hell out of me.
What if I’m not what he wants? He’s had so many women. What if I’m… lacking.
“Stop. Stop thinking that shit right now. You’re fucking perfect.”
I flush at the compliment. I always thought I was lacking. My dad would tell me I was perfect, but I never believed him.
“You good with this, Harley, cause once I start, I’m not coming back. Not fucking ever. You better be sure this is what you want, because after tonight, you’re mine.”
I reach up and twine my fingers through the long strands of his hair. It’s longer than it’s ever been, a strange version of a Mohawk with the sides shaved so short they nearly glisten. I’ve always loved it, even crusted with dirt and blood.
“I’ve always been yours,” I say huskily, right before he slams his broken lips to mine.