Chapter Eighteen
Harley
I’ll never be the same.
We’ll never be the same.
It’s the first thought I have when I wake in the inky blackness of the bedroom. I blink hard, coming too quickly. My arm hurts, but it’s a distant soreness compared to the pounding pulse between my legs. My whole body flushes when I think about it.
We sat for a long time and Edge just held me, before we both realized the shower was still running.
Instead of going to shut it off, he picked me up and carried me back and placed me under a spray that was still inexplicably warm.
He soaped up my body with such care that I nearly started crying all over again.
I was exhausted when he wrapped a towel around me and carried me back to bed. He laid me in it and arranged the blankets around me, but the best part was when he got in, still soaking wet, wrapped me in his arms, and hauled me up against his chest.
I loved the feel of him at my back, his hard edges slammed up against my curves. I loved his breaths, rapid at first, then slower, gentler, until they evened out and he was asleep. I loved the warmth of those breaths, fogging at the base of my neck where he swept my hair away to rest his chin.
Edge isn’t awake yet, and even though I’m hungry and I really need to get up and use the bathroom, my heart is so full it feels like it could explode right out of my chest. I inhale gently, scenting Edge, warm and sleepy and all man behind me.
He’s still tucked just as tight, so tight that his chest hair makes my back mildly itchy.
I love it. I love everything about him. About us. About there finally being an us.
I used to lie awake at night and dream about what it would feel like, Edge’s naked length pressed against me, his hard masculine ridges, how he’d be warm and smell like dusky scented heaven.
He’s not awake yet, but I lift his heavy arm from my hips and wriggle free so that I can turn to face him. It’s dark in the room, as we slept all day, both of us exhausted after everything that happened, but I don’t need light.
I start at his shoulders, gently trailing my finger down over the ridges of muscle.
His arms are tattooed, but when I run my finger over his biceps, the skin feels smooth, and I wouldn’t be able to tell the ink was there if I didn’t know.
He has tattoos on his back, a few on his granite legs, and some on his chest.
I love that ink, even the stuff that’s not particularly well done, that’s blown out or faded with time.
I love it because it’s a part of him. Edge might be an anti-hero of sorts, but he’s my anti-hero.
I never wanted a Prince Charming. Just him.
My warrior. My protector, and now he’s truly mine, and for the first time in my life, I feel completely whole.
I trace the lines of his body, every ridged scar, the ropey veins, the soft hairs.
I inhale the scent of him, the smoke and the fresh air, the leather and oil that is ingrained in him, the scent that no amount of showering can wash away.
He comes alive under my fingertips, and it takes me a minute to realize that his breathing has changed cadence and he’s no longer asleep.
He grasps my hand in his, entwining our fingers together. The room is really dark, no light from the hall entering, and I can’t see his lips. It doesn’t matter. We don’t need words.
He captures my face in his big, strong hands, the callouses rasping a trail over my cheeks as he guides my face up to his. His lips are warm and slightly chapped, and infinitely gentle against mine.
I moan and part them, eager to deepen the kiss, the throbbing between my legs already turning into something deeper, darker, a renewed hunger firing to life in my belly.
His tongue sweeps through the seam of my lips to stroke mine, but his movements are measured and slow, and somehow that fires the burn inside of me the same way that his roughness did.
He trails away from my mouth, placing scalding kisses on my lips, my cheeks, my nose, before he trails lower, sucking and nibbling at my neck, my earlobe, my collarbones, until I’m slippery and wet.
I wriggle against him until his hard length presses into my belly.
He lets out a hiss that I feel escape his massive chest because it flexes under my fingertips.
His hands sweep down to my hips and he shifts me gently underneath of him. He props himself up, keeping most of his weight off of me and I part my legs on instinct, wrapping them around his firm hips. He shifts, setting his cock at my entrance, and I moan against the scalding heat of him there.
Edge goes rigid above me, and I look up at him, at the sudden change. Now that my eyes have adjusted to the dark, I see the indecision written on his face. He doesn’t want to hurt me.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. I curl my hand around his neck protectively and play with the whisper soft hairs that trail down from his head. “I’m sore, but I want you. I need to feel you inside of me.”
A groan rumbles through his body, or maybe it was a shudder. I can’t be sure, but I feel it and it makes my entire body clench up in response.
Edge flexes his hips and pushes in gently, as gently as he can. Even though he trembles above me, his arms shaking at either side of my neck, caging me in. I can tell that it hurts him to go slow, to be careful, but he’s doing it for me, being gentle after he warned me, he wasn’t capable of it.
His strokes are smooth and even though it hurts, though my muscles are so sore I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out, after a few strokes, the pain fades away to be replaced with a growing heat.
Edge goes back to worshipping my neck again, his kisses hot and lazy, his heated tongue swirling over my body the same way I traced the outline of his with my fingertips. He fucks me slowly, with those measured strokes that are going to drive me mad.
“I love you,” I rasp past my closed up throat, and he raises his head and responds by slamming his mouth over mine.
The kiss is hungry and insistent, but still so much more gentle than I expect.
He takes his time, exploring my mouth, my lips, my tongue, like he wants to memorize every single detail.
He kissed me until I couldn’t breathe, stroked me long and slow with his tongue, echoing what he was doing with his cock.
I shift, opening my hips to take him deeper and he lets out a hiss and nips my lower lip.
I whimper and his tongue licks over the spot, easing the pain.
I love that I feel completely alive with him inside of me, like I was made for this, for him.
I love that he holds me like I could break, gives me each long, luxurious stroke like a sacred gift.
I move my hands, caressing the muscles of his broad back. They bunch and strain and come alive under my touch and I realize how close he is, how he’s holding himself back just for me, waiting for me.
I was too busy enjoying what he was doing before, but I close my eyes, letting the fiery shivers of arousal creep into my thighs and spread higher.
He changes the pace, pistoning into me a little harder and faster, pulling out and driving home slowly, letting me savor each long, thick inch of him, and I take him deep, all of him, every single time.
His strokes are so slow, so languid, so deliciously hot that I feel myself falling, icy cold tendrils of bliss already curling through me.
He drops his head and takes my nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue over the straining bud and I come apart at the seams. It’s a deep shattering, different from my other climaxes, hotter, darker, a swirling vortex that sucks me under.
Edge shudders above me. He thrusts hard, seating himself so deep inside of me that I gasp and spread my legs around him, trying to accommodate him, but then his shoulders tremble and his breathing turns ragged against my overheated skin, and I feel his cock kick, filling me as he bursts deep inside of me.
We shake together, our bodies trembling, him pulsing inside of me and my body responding in kind, as we come down from our high.
I feel dizzy when I open my eyes, light-headed, and so, so happy. I know I’m probably grinning like a fool and that I probably look ridiculous, but I can’t stop. I smile until my face aches from it and I feel Edge’s deep chuckle shake his massive shoulders.
My eyes adjust to the dark enough that I can see the hard outlines of Edge’s face. He’s so handsome, even with those bruises. His lips are parted, a dark shadow of stubble outlining his jaw. He’s so ruggedly and darkly beautiful that it steals my breath.
The momentary spell is shattered when my stomach growls. Edge laughs before he shifts away. He stands and reaches down for me, hauls me up against his warm, damp chest, still heaving with the force of his rapid breaths. His pulse jumps at his neck erratically and I reach up and press my lips to it.
He sets me down gently at the foot of the bed while he produces one of his t-shirts for me to wear. He throws on some boxers of his own before he turns the light on.
I blink against the harsh sting, but I watch his hands, love welling up inside of me all over, threatening to burst the heart that’s knocking so hard on the underside of my ribs it’s probably doing some real damage in there.
Morning, wife, he signs to me and I will never, ever, forget the look on his face as my eyes swivel up in stunned surprise.
His black eye is finally open a crack and even though the eye is red and sore beneath, he blinks at me nearly shyly, his shoulders rolled forward, slightly tense, his breath hitched up, his face a mask of uncertainty as he waits for me to respond.
Wife. The rest of the world wouldn’t see what we’ve done as marriage, but in the club, in the eyes of the other men and the women too, I’ve been claimed. Edge has marked me as his and that’s as good as any stupid ceremony or a gold ring.
It takes me a minute, because I have to blink hard to keep the pinpricks dancing at the backs of my eyes from spilling over.
I feel my lips wobble, but I get them turned up in a smile and Edge lets out a hard breath of relief.
I know that I don’t imagine that glistening in his eyes, the way they darken or the way his whole face suffuses with love and tenderness.
“I think it’s actually night,” I say.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m still going to make you breakfast.”
“I think the cupboards are pretty much empty,” I tell him. I used most of the groceries in my cookie baking marathon yesterday.
He winks at me, and oh my god, the bottom of my stomach drops out and that familiar heat is back, pooling between my legs, insatiable and red hot, and I know, even before his lips move, what he’s going to say.
“I wasn’t talking about food.”