Chapter 8 - Luna
I can't help but chuckle at King's admission about post-sex conversations.
"So I've discovered a weakness in the mighty King's armor—pillow talk." I add.
"One of many weaknesses you seem to be uncovering," he replies with that handsome half-smile.
I shift slightly, feeling his cum continuing to trickle down my inner thigh. "Can I use your bathroom to clean up? You've left quite a... deposit."
His eyes darken at my words, that primal satisfaction returning to his expression. "All yours," he says, gesturing to a door I hadn't noticed before. "Through there."
I slip into the small but surprisingly elegant bathroom and close the door behind me, finally allowing myself a moment to breathe.
Holy shit. I'm in a biker clubhouse, having just had mind-blowing sex with the club president in his office.
Just twenty-four hours ago, I was stepping off a bus in a town I barely remembered, and now I'm literally dripping with the cum of the most dangerous man in Blackwater Falls.
And it was incredible. Not just good, not just great, but fucking life-altering. So that's what it feels like to be thoroughly fucked by a real man—a man who cares about your pleasure as much as his own, who knows exactly how to use his body to make yours sing.
I clean myself up with a warm washcloth, wincing slightly at the tender feeling between my legs.
King wasn't gentle, and I'll probably be feeling him for days.
The thought sends another pulse of heat through me, and I have to take a deep breath to calm myself.
Apparently, my body hasn't quite gotten the memo that we've finished, at least for now.
Looking in the mirror, I barely recognize myself.
My hair is a wild mess, lips swollen from his kisses, a flush still spread across my cheeks and chest. There's a small mark forming on my neck where he bit me during one particularly intense moment.
I look... claimed. Thoroughly fucked. Happier than I've been in years.
I do my best to tame my hair and splash cold water on my face before heading back into the office. King is pulling up his jeans as I enter, and we share a small smile as we both get dressed in comfortable silence.
Once we're decent, he surprises me by sliding down the wall to sit on the floor, then patting the space beside him in invitation.
I join him there, leaning against his broad shoulder as his arm comes around me.
It feels surreal to be sitting like this—intimate, peaceful, safe—when just outside this room is a world of motorcycle clubs and territorial wars and violence.
In this moment, though, we're just a man and a woman in our own little bubble, basking in the afterglow of something that feels bigger than either of us is ready to admit.
I realize suddenly how tired I am of calling him King. It's a powerful name, commanding and appropriate for the leader he is, but I want to know the man underneath. The real person, not just the president of a motorcycle club.
"Will you tell me your real name now?" I ask softly, tilting my head to look up at him.
He's quiet for a long moment, and I worry I've pushed too far. But then he sighs, a sound of surrender rather than irritation.
"Not many people outside the club know it anymore," he admits. "It's Noah. Noah Bradley."
"Noah," I repeat, testing it on my tongue. It feels right, somehow softer than the hard edges of "King" but no less strong. "I like it."
"Most people just know me as King now," he says. "Have for years. Sometimes I almost forget there was a Noah before all this."
"Tell me about him," I encourage, settling more comfortably against his side. "About Noah before he became King."
His chest rises and falls with a deep breath. "Not much to tell. Grew up here in Blackwater Falls. Dad was a mean drunk, mom died giving birth to me. Spent most of my childhood either getting the shit kicked out of me or learning how to fight back."
The flatness in his voice can't hide the pain underneath. I reach for his hand, threading my fingers through his. "That must have been awful," I say softly. "Being blamed for something that wasn't your fault."
His fingers tighten around mine. "How did you know?"
"The way you said it. Like you've been carrying your mother's death as your burden all these years."
King—Noah—is silent for a long moment. "My dad made sure I knew the cost of my existence," he finally says, voice rough with emotion he rarely shows.
"Every birthday, he'd get blackout drunk and tell me exactly how she died.
Every detail. Said if I was going to take her from him, I should at least know what I'd done. "
The casual cruelty of it makes my chest ache. "You were a child. A baby. It wasn't your fault."
"In my head, I know that." He taps his temple. "But in here—" he touches his chest, "—those wounds never really heal."
I lift his hand and press my lips to his knuckles, the same hands that dealt such violence just hours ago. "Is that why you joined the military? To get away?"
"Left the day I turned eighteen. Figured anywhere was better than staying here." His voice takes on a distant quality. "Found purpose there. Structure. Excelled at things that would have gotten me arrested in civilian life."
"Like violence," I say, not a judgment but an understanding.
"Like violence," he agrees. "Turns out I had a talent for it. Special forces was a natural fit."
"Is that where you met your club members?"
"Just Tank," he says. "He was different from the other guys. Ex-cop who got fed up with the corruption in his department, thought the military might be more straightforward. Found out the hard way that humans are humans, no matter what uniform they wear."
I think of the man I met earlier. Intense, suspicious, fiercely loyal to King. "You two seem close."
"We survived things together that would have broken most people. When we got back, civilian life was... impossible. The nightmares, the rage, the feeling that everyone around you is living in a fantasy world while you know the truth about what humans are capable of."
The matter-of-fact way he describes the aftermath of war breaks my heart a little. I've treated veterans in the ER, seen the thousand-yard stares and the jumpy reactions to loud noises. But hearing King describe it from the inside makes it more real somehow.
"So you started the Savage Riders," I prompt when he falls silent.
"Not right away." His voice takes on a harder edge.
"Tried to do things the 'right' way first. Got a job at the lumber mill, rented a shitty apartment, tried to pretend I was just like everyone else in this dying town.
But the nightmares got worse, and the drinking got out of hand, and one night I nearly killed a guy at the bar who grabbed my shoulder from behind. "
I can picture it so clearly—a younger King, wound tight as a spring, violence simmering just below the surface.
"What changed?" I ask.
"Tank found me," he says simply. "Dragged my ass out of the drunk tank, told me I needed purpose, not just a paycheck.
Said there were others like us, guys who couldn't fit back into the world they'd left behind.
We started meeting, just talking at first. Support group for fucked-up soldiers, basically. "
"And it evolved from there?"
King nods against the top of my head. "Town was dying.
Businesses closing, drugs moving in, law enforcement too underfunded to handle it.
We saw an opportunity to create our own order in the chaos.
Started small. Security for local businesses, keeping the nastier elements out of certain neighborhoods.
People started seeing us as protection rather than trouble. "
"And now you run the whole town," I observe, without judgment.
"Someone has to," he says with a weariness that suggests the responsibility weighs on him more than he lets on.
The way he talks about the club, I can hear how much it means to him. Not just power or control, but a genuine sense of purpose and belonging. Something he built from nothing after coming back to a town and a country that didn't know what to do with men like him.
"What about you?" he asks, shifting the conversation. "How did you end up fighting with your mother over a house three thousand miles away from where you live?"
The question touches on wounds that are still raw, and I tense slightly before forcing myself to relax.
"It wasn't always like that between us," I admit.
"When I was little, before I started spending summers with Grandma, Mom and I were close.
She worked so hard to keep us afloat after my dad left…
Double shifts at the diner, picking up cleaning jobs on the weekends, always exhausted but still making time to read me bedtime stories. "
"What changed?" King asks, his voice gentler than I've heard it before.
"When I was ten, she couldn't afford summer camp anymore, so she sent me to stay with Grandma Emma for the summer.
" I smile at the memory. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Grandma was so different from Mom. Calm, patient, always teaching me things instead of just telling me what to do. "
"And your mom was jealous," King guesses.
"I didn't understand it at the time, but yes.
Every summer I spent here widened the gap between us.
I'd come home talking about the books Grandma had given me, the medical techniques she'd taught me, how I wanted to be a nurse just like her.
" My throat tightens. "I didn't realize how much it hurt Mom to hear me idolize Emma when she was the one sacrificing everything to raise me. "
King's arm tightens around me. "You were a kid. You couldn't have known."