Chapter Fourteen
Harley
I can only sit, numb. Numb on the outside, broken and raw on the inside, old beyond my years. I feel absolutely ancient, exhausted beyond simply tired.
My eyes hit the whiskey bottle. They burn, but it’s from the dryness in the room, not because I’m going to cry. There are no tears for a wound this deep, a wound that severs all nerves and feeling, a wound that you don’t even feel before you realize that you’ve bled out.
My fingers curl around the cool, smooth glass but I don’t raise it to my lips. I’m comforted just by grounding myself to something tangible. I don’t need that burn like an old friend, to wash away the pain that no substance will ever drown out.
Slowly, I raise my head, uncurl myself from the ball I’ve bent into over the table.
I was raised the daughter of Steel Vanderbilt, President of Steel Riders MC.
A band of misfit men who went to hell and back to come out on the other side.
I was proud to be a part of that family, a family who would fight and die for each other.
I was taught that’s what love is. Fighting.
Dying. Not just a physical death. A death of ego.
A death of pride. A death that puts your club brother before yourself.
That’s the vows that those men take when they swear in.
For those men, the love of their brothers is the only thing they have left in the world.
They’re fighters.
And so am I.
Because I was taught that above all, love is worth fighting for.
I push myself up from the table on unsteady feet.
I realize that my arm is throbbing, burning into my wrist and hand and fingers, sending sharp little pricks of glass flowing through my veins, but I don’t care.
I use that pain to ground myself, to still the disastrous current sweeping through my shattered heart.
Surprisingly, it works, and when my bare feet pad across the vinyl tile and old hardwood floor that long ago lost any of its luster, they’re sound.
There are two bathrooms in the house. A small half bath that adjoins the master bedroom and a larger one, with a tub and stand up shower, just down the hall, past the living room, across from the smaller bedroom that doubles as a storage room.
I can’t hear it, but I’m sure that the shower isn’t running.
The door to the bathroom is closed, but I know it doesn’t lock.
I creep up to it and set my palm flat against it.
It’s cool to the touch, no warmth or steam escaping beneath to tickle my feet, so I know the shower definitely isn’t running.
I trace the rough grain of that door, an old wood door, with cracked white paint.
I trace one of those cracks with my index finger before I ball my hand into a fist. I’m going to knock before I think better of it.
I’ve never just pushed open a door before, when someone obviously wants their privacy, but I sense the pain in there like a beacon, like red light flooding under the door, sweeping up my feet and legs, enveloping me and holding me in its thrall.
I turn the handle slowly, enough to give an obvious warning, but the door isn’t tugged open in my face or braced shut from the other side.
I slowly swing it open, inch by inch. It gives with a creak of hinges that I feel in the knob as a distant shiver.
The same shiver that traces its way up my spine, permeating my muscles and bones.
The sink is set back a few feet, in an ancient wooden vanity.
Edge stands there, his leather jacket hung up on the backside of the door where the peg is, so that he’s just in his black t-shirt and jeans.
The same kind of black t-shirt that I’m currently swimming in, is stretched tight across his chest, straining over his muscles.
His forearms are extended straight, the striated muscles straining and the snakelike veins that twine their way up, straining against his sun bronzed skin.
The smattering of dark hair stands out in stark contrast against his skin, some of it lightened by the sun, some of it still the same mahogany color as the hair on his head.
He leans hard, like that vanity is the only thing holding him up. His knuckles are completely white where his hands are fisted at the edge of the wooden lip. Even though he’s standing like he wants to look himself in the eye in the square mirror above, his head is bowed.
The vulnerability of the stance shoots through me, an arrow that lodges in my chest. Pain blooms from the spot, wringing me out and rendering me useless. He could have stopped me from coming in, from seeing him like this, but he didn’t.
I release that door handle, though it feels like letting go of the only lifeline I have left. I say nothing as I walk slowly behind him. I wrap my arms around his waist and press my cheek to the warm, solid wall of his back.
“Just let me love you, Edge,” I plead softly, into the fragrant cotton of his shirt.
He smells like him, but more intimate, all the smells that I never was privy to before rushing up to meet me because of our proximity.
I love that he smells like leather and the rush of the open road.
He smells like something darker and I know it’s not aftershave and he never wore cologne.
The last lingering effects of the pomade he uses for his hair maybe, or the delicious scent that’s just him, clinging to his skin.
He’s raw and terrifying. A low rumble flows through his chest and then suddenly, in a dizzying rush of movement, he falls out from under me as he whirls. He steadies me, a hand on each shoulder. I love the way his heat leaches into me and I lean into his solid touch.
I hate that when I look up at him, his face looks so ruined, and not because of the bruises.
I wish I could reach up and run my hands over it, to undo the damage, the pain and distress, the regret and loathing, with just my touch the same way he used to pick me up when I was a kid and did stupid shit like fall off my bike or fall out of a tree.
He touches me first, running a brutal knuckle down the side of my face so gently that it makes tears finally prick at my eyes. I swallow hard and stare up into his electric gaze.
“You don’t know what you’re asking. You think you do. You think you want this, but it was a fantasy for both of us. I can’t even protect you when you’re supposed to be my own fucking woman. So what I need you to do is get your clothes on and go back home.”
I don’t flinch at his words, even though it breaks me further, tears at those fissures already formed in my insides, ripping them wide open, to see the anguish contort his beautiful face.
I reach up and set my hand on his chest, right above his wildly beating heart.
I’ve never felt it slam like that before, but then again, I’ve barely ever felt it at all.
I can count the amount of times I’ve ever touched Edge of my own volition over the years, on both hands.
He might have kissed me here and there, and I always let him take the lead on that, but I never touched him.
I was afraid of what would happen if I did.
To both of us.
“This is my home.”
“This house is a piece of shit. It’s falling down around me. It isn’t anyone’s home, especially not yours. You deserve better than this. Better than this house, better than this town, sure as shit better than me.”
I have to swallow hard again to clear my throat.
“I wasn’t talking about the house.” He blanks for a second, staring down at me.
I thump my hand against his chest. “I was talking about this. About your heart. Because we both know I’m there and I’m never leaving.
You want to bail now? I’ll haunt you for the rest of your life.
And you’ll haunt me back, because there isn’t anyone like you.
You think I don’t know what I’m talking about because I’m young?
Fuck that. I know that I want you. I know that I’m always going to want you.
I know that you pushing me away doesn’t help either of us. ”
Edge shocks me when his hands close around my arms so savagely that his fingers bite into my skin. I let out a yelp at the pain on my wounded arm and he releases me immediately, a stunned expression on his face. He looks so contrite when he takes a step back that I take one forward.
“You’re not quitting on me. I’m fine, Edge.
Something terrible could have happened to any of us, but it didn’t.
Lucky for us, the walls of The Canteen are thick, or those bastards had piss poor aim and a bad gun dealer.
That wasn’t your fault. None of it was. My dad being pissed off isn’t your fault.
You’re a good man. The best of men. You’re the VP of the Riders because those men respect you.
My dad respects the hell out of you. He loves you, Edge, he’s just acting like a brat throwing a fit. He’ll come around.”
He shakes his head, fire blazing in his copper eyes. “I can’t give you what you want.”
“You don’t even know what I want.”
“What- what do you want? Tell me now so I can tell you that I can’t and then you can leave.”
“I want you. I want you just the way you are. All your good and all your bad—”
“That’s not what you really want,” he cuts me off. “So tell me. What do you really want?”
I take a deep breath, forcing air into a chest that feels like it’s been compressed with the weight of a mountain.
I thought it would be easier than this. That the passion sizzling between us would just naturally flow into…
well… into him making me his in all the ways I want him to.
I didn’t think he’d demand that I tell him.
“I want you. I want you to take me to your bed and fuck me. I want all your wrath and your rage and your terrible desire, and after, when it’s spent, I want you to make love to me. I want all your tenderness and your passion.”
He drags a hand down his face, rough palm, like he’s trying to hold himself together by force. When he looks at me again, his jaw’s locked tight, eyes dark and wrecked.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for, Harley. Not really. What if I can’t be what you think you need?” His voice drops, low and dangerous. “I don’t give—I take. I’d take your first time. I’d ruin you for anyone else. I’d get so far under your skin you wouldn’t know where you end and I begin.”
He steps closer, like gravity’s pulling him in whether he wants it or not. “I wouldn’t be gentle about it, either. I’d tear you down and put you back together my way. That’s the truth. If you stayed, it wouldn’t be you offering anything—I’d be taking it. All of it.”
A bitter laugh cuts out of him. “I thought maybe I could be better for you. Take it slow. Be the guy you deserve.” He shakes his head once. “But that’s not me. I ain’t some hero. I’m dark, straight through, and that’s all I’ve got to give.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then back to my eyes. “You’re too damn good. Too clean. And if I touch you, I’ll stain you. I’ll burn up everything soft about you with all the fucked-up parts of me I can’t wash off.”
I know I’m losing him, as the seconds tick on, and it makes me frantic. My entire body goes cold, my veins flooded with ice. I feel wrung out and spent by the force of my love for him and what it’s going to do to both of us if we can’t get past this.
I know Edge. I know him. I love him and there is no way that I can lose him or I might as well be as good as dead, because there is no living without him.
I barely register what I’m doing before I stalk forward.
I bring my hand back and smack him. Hard.
The echo of my palm striking his beautiful face fills up the bathroom.
He blinks back at me, too stunned to react.
My palm stings unmercifully, because his face is a hell of a lot harder than my dainty palm is.
I draw back and hit him again, harder than the last time, so hard that it sends a sickening pain straight to my stomach.
When I draw back a third time, his hand snakes out and closes around my wrist. He squeezes, applying enough pressure that I gasp.
“Hit me again and I’ll fuck you so hard you won’t remember your fucking name.
Virgin or not, I’ll tear you apart and fill you up with my cum so that every single time you take a step for the next fucking week, it will pour out of you, reminding you just who it is that owns you.
Reminding you just what you’re waking up by striking me. ”
“Then let go of my hand,” I hiss. “Because obviously I need to hit you again, you fucking bastard.”
“I used to think you were like the clouds, thunder and lightning, but now I realize those clouds aren’t bringing rain. They’re bringing fire.”
A shiver ripples through his massive shoulders and a swatch of dark hair falls over his forehead when he leans in, his face only inches from mine.
“Last chance, because once I mark you as mine, there isn’t any going back.”
I arch into him, so close that when I try to bite him, I nip his bottom lip with my teeth before he pulls back, raw hunger obliterating and twisting his face.
His lips curl up and his tongue snakes out, tasting the place where I bit him and I know that I’ve roused the beast that I always knew was inside of him.
Desire crawls up my spine, using the bones, notch by notch to climb higher and higher, until it reaches my neck and floods my cheeks red hot. It spreads, wrapping around my chest and my heart, pooling in my lower belly and between my thighs, where a rush of wetness soaks my panties.
He pulls back and I watch his hands move. Those hands, forming signs… It’s been so long since anyone signed anything more than something basic to me that I’m so shocked I can’t react.
His hands speak to me in the most intimate of ways.
You’re mine now. You’ve always been mine. You will always be mine, and I will be yours. I love you.