Chapter Eleven
The cookout had gone quiet by the time Pitfall found her again.
Nadine had moved from the fire pit to the porch, watching the compound settle into evening rhythms. Families had filtered out.
Children had been carried to cars, sleepy and protesting.
What remained was the core—brothers, old ladies, the heartbeat of the club winding down from celebration to something softer.
She heard his boots on the steps before she saw him.
"Church ran long." He dropped onto the bench beside her, close enough that his thigh pressed against hers. "Sorry."
"Important?"
"Updates on Maggard. Intel from the guy we kept alive." He rubbed a hand over his face. "Nothing that can't wait until tomorrow."
"Then let it wait."
He turned to look at her, and something in his expression made her pulse jump. The fire from earlier—the almost-kiss, the interrupted moment—hadn't faded. If anything, the hours apart had made it worse.
"Walk you to your room?" he asked.
"You do that every night."
"I know."
They stood together, moving through the compound in comfortable silence. Past the common room where a few brothers still lingered over drinks. Down the hallway that had become familiar over the past few days. To the door that led to her borrowed space, her temporary home.
Every other night, this was where he stopped. Where he said goodnight, touched her cheek or her hand, and retreated to wherever prospects slept when they weren't working themselves to exhaustion.
Tonight, Nadine didn't let him retreat.
She caught his wrist before he could step back. Felt his pulse jump under her fingers.
"Come inside."
His jaw tightened. "Nadine—"
"I know what you said. About waiting, about patches, about doing things right." She stepped closer, eliminating the space between them. "But I'm tired of waiting. And I think you are too."
"If we do this—"
"Then we do it." She held his gaze, letting him see everything she was feeling. The want. The certainty. The choice she'd already made. "I told you at the fire. I'm planting my flag. This is me planting it."
For a long moment, he didn't move. She could see the war happening behind his eyes—duty against desire, patience against need, the prospect's caution against the man's hunger.
The man won.
He followed her inside, closed the door behind them, and the click of the lock was the loudest sound in the world.
The room was dark except for moonlight through the window.
Nadine turned to face him, heart hammering against her ribs. She'd been brave at the door, but now, alone with him in the shadows, the magnitude of what she was asking for crashed over her.
Not just sex. Not just bodies. Something more. Something real.
"Hey." His voice was rough, but his hand when it found her face was gentle. "We can stop. Anytime you want, we stop."
"I don't want to stop."
"Then tell me what you do want."
"You." The word came out simple, honest. "Just you."
Something broke open in his expression. The control he'd been holding onto so tightly, the restraint that had kept him at arm's length for days—it crumbled.
He kissed her.
Not gentle. Not careful. A claiming kiss, his mouth on hers like he was trying to memorize the taste of her, like he'd been starving for this and couldn't hold back anymore. His hands cupped her face, tilted her head, gave him better access to devour her completely.
Nadine kissed him back with everything she had.
Her fingers found his cut, pushed it off his shoulders. He let it fall without breaking the kiss, his hands already moving—down her neck, across her shoulders, tracing the line of her back like he was mapping territory he intended to own.
"Nadine." Her name was a groan against her lips. "Tell me to slow down."
"No."
"I'm trying to be—"
"Don't." She pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. "Don't be careful with me. I'm not fragile."
The sound he made was almost pained. His hands shook when they found the hem of her shirt, and that tremor—the dangerous man undone by wanting her—sent heat flooding through her entire body.
"Your name," she whispered as he lifted the fabric over her head. "Your real name. I want it."
He paused, hands stilling on her bare waist. In the moonlight, his face was all shadows and sharp angles and something vulnerable underneath.
"Vernon." The word came out like a confession. "Vernon Eldridge. Nobody uses it except—" He swallowed. "Nobody uses it."
"Vernon." She tested it on her tongue, watched his eyes darken at the sound. "I like it."
"Only you." His grip tightened. "Understand? That name is only for you."
"Only me."
"Mine." He kissed her again, harder this time. "You're mine."
"Yours."
The word was barely out before he was moving her backward, toward the bed she'd been sleeping in alone for days. The backs of her knees hit the mattress and she went down, pulling him with her, his weight settling over her like something she'd been waiting for her whole life.
He touched her like she might disappear.
Every press of his fingers, every brush of his lips—careful at first, reverent, mapping her body with an attention that made her arch into him. He found the places that made her gasp and lingered there, learning her responses like they were a language he intended to speak fluently.
"You're beautiful." His mouth traced the curve of her collarbone. "Been trying not to think about this. About you. Couldn't stop."
"Then stop trying."
He lifted his head, met her eyes. "I've never had anything that was really mine. Everything I've ever wanted, I've had to fight for. Earn. Prove I deserved it."
"You don't have to earn me."
"Yeah." He kissed her, soft and fierce at once. "I do. And I will. Every day, Nadine. I'll earn you every day."
She pulled him closer, hands sliding under his shirt, feeling the muscles bunch and shift as he moved against her. He was all coiled strength, barely contained power, the same lethal energy she'd seen him unleash on men who threatened her—but here, with her, it was tempered by something else.
Tenderness. Care. The desperate need to be enough.
They shed clothes in stages, urgency building with every layer removed. His shirt. Her jeans. His belt, the buckle cold against her fingers before it hit the floor with a heavy thunk.
When they were skin to skin, nothing between them, he stopped.
"Look at me."
She did. Saw the man who'd climbed out of a mine shaft with bloody fingers. Who'd broken arms for her, killed for her, would do worse without hesitation. Who was shaking now, actually shaking, because this mattered more than violence ever could.
"I've got you." She pulled him down, kissed his jaw, his neck, the pulse that hammered under his skin. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise."
"I promise."
He moved then, and she stopped thinking.
The world narrowed to sensation.
His hands, rough and reverent. His mouth, hungry and giving. The weight of him, solid and real, anchoring her to something that felt permanent even though nothing else in her life was certain.
She'd been with men before. None of them had felt like this—like being claimed and freed at the same time, like giving herself over while somehow finding more of herself in the process.
He was careful even when he wasn't careful.
Fierce and tender in alternating waves, reading her body like a map he'd been studying his whole life.
When the pressure built, when her breath came in gasps and her nails dug into his shoulders, he watched her face like it was the most important thing he'd ever seen.
"Let go." His voice was wrecked, barely recognizable. "I've got you. Let go."
She did.
The release crashed through her like a wave, and he followed moments later, her name on his lips like a prayer.
Afterward, they lay tangled together, sweat cooling on skin, hearts gradually slowing.
Pitfall had pulled her against his chest, one arm wrapped around her like he couldn't bear to let go. His other hand traced lazy patterns on her hip, a unconscious claiming that made her smile.
"Vernon."
He tensed slightly at the name, then relaxed. "Yeah?"
"Thank you. For telling me."
"Couldn't not tell you." He pressed a kiss to her hair. "You asked."
"Most people don't."
"Most people don't get to ask." His arm tightened. "You're different."
She shifted, propping herself up to look at him. In the aftermath, he looked younger somehow. Less guarded. The walls he kept so carefully maintained had crumbled, leaving just the man underneath.
"You belong here," she said. "You know that, right?"
His expression flickered. "I'm still prospecting. Still proving—"
"I don't mean the club." She touched his face, felt him lean into her palm. "I mean here. With me. With whatever this is." She smiled. "You belong here, Vernon. You don't have to keep climbing. You've already reached the top."
For a long moment, he just looked at her. Something shifted in his eyes—hope, maybe. The first fragile belief that what she was saying might be true.
"Nobody's ever..." He stopped, swallowed. "I don't know how to do this. The staying part. The belonging part."
"Neither do I." She kissed him, soft and slow. "We'll figure it out together."
His hand came up to cup the back of her neck, holding her close.
"Together," he repeated, like he was testing the word.
"Together."
The moonlight had shifted, painting new shadows across the room. Somewhere in the compound, voices murmured and engines rumbled and life continued the way it always did. But here, in this small space they'd carved out for themselves, everything had changed.
She watched him settle back against the pillow, watched the tension finally drain from shoulders that had been carrying weight since before she'd known him. His eyes drifted closed, then opened again, finding her face.
"You should sleep," she whispered.
"Don't want to miss this."
"Miss what?"
"You. Here. Looking at me like—" He shook his head. "Like I'm something worth looking at."
Her heart cracked open a little more.
"You are," she said. "You always have been."
His expression said he wasn't sure he believed her. But there was something underneath the doubt—a fragile, growing certainty that maybe, just maybe, she was right.
"Stay," she whispered. "Tonight. Don't go back to wherever prospects sleep."
"That's against about a dozen rules."
"I don't care about rules."
His mouth curved into something that was almost a smile. "Yeah. I'm starting to figure that out."
He pulled her closer, tucked her against his chest like she was something precious. His heartbeat was steady under her ear, and his breathing gradually deepened as sleep pulled at them both.
The last thing she felt before she drifted off was his hand on her hip, fingers splayed wide.
Holding on. Claiming. Refusing to let go even in sleep.
She smiled against his skin and let the darkness take her.