Chapter 22
RAMPAGE
She was no longer staying in the guest room at the Clubhouse. Now, when they stayed there, she shared his officer’s apartment. The bathroom door opened and Emily came out. The room already smelled like her shampoo and had her blanket on the bed.
He stood.
She crossed to him and put her hands on his chest and looked up at him.
"I'm not in little space," she said. "I'm not scared and I'm not processing anything." She held his gaze. "I just want you. Specifically. All of you.” They’d played some in the last month when he’d visited her at her apartment, but they still hadn’t had sex. He knew exactly what she was asking.
He took her face in both hands.
"You're sure," he said.
She rolled her eyes. He turned her slightly and landed one warning swat to her butt, playfully. “Don’t roll your eyes at me.”
"I'm always going to be sure," she said. "That's who I am. You know that by now." Her chin tipped up. "Daddy, please."
He kissed her thoroughly, with everything he had behind it, his thumbs at her jaw and his hands cradling her face and nothing in the world pulling his attention anywhere else.
She made a sound against his mouth that moved through him like a current.
He walked her back toward the bed, slow, giving her every opportunity to change direction, and she went willingly, her hands moving from his shirt to his shoulders to the back of his neck, pulling him down to her rather than away, and he understood that she was exactly where she'd decided to be.
He broke the kiss long enough to look at her.
She was lying back against his pillow with her hair spread out and her eyes dark and her chest moving fast, and she looked up at him with an expression that was warm and wanting and entirely unafraid.
"Hi," she said softly.
"Hi." He traced the line of her jaw with his thumb. "Still sure?"
"Rampage!”
"Checking."
"Yes." She pulled him back down. "Always yes."
He took his time with her.
He gave her his complete attention, with the deliberate intention of a man who understood that this woman had been carrying herself carefully for years and deserved someone who would handle her like she was worth it, because damn, she was worth it.
He kissed her mouth, her jaw, the curve of her neck, and felt her hands move through his hair and heard the specific sound she made when he found the place below her ear that made her grip tighten.
He took the towel off slowly, watching her face for permission at every stage and finding it, clear and present and unambiguous, Emily's version of consent which was direct eye contact and yes and hands pulling rather than pushing.
He pressed his lips to her collarbone. Her shoulder. The curve of her chest.
"You're so beautiful," he said. Into her skin.
She exhaled. "You say it like it's a fact."
"It is a fact."
Her hands tightened in his hair.
Every place his hands moved he followed with his mouth. She was warm and soft in all the right places. Damn if she wasn’t responsive to his touch.
"Rampage—" His name in her mouth, lower now, breathless.
He grabbed her wrists, pinning them lightly to the sheets above her head, watching how her breath deepened. "Tell me what you want," he said, low and near her ear, meaning every word.
"You know."
"I want to hear you say it."
Her hips shifted restlessly beneath him. "I want you," she said. "I want you to wreck me, and put me back together, and do it again tomorrow and the next day and the day after that." Her voice was steady, audacious, and he almost lost himself then.
Instead, he kissed the inside of her wrist, the hollow of her elbow.
Lower. He nipped her hipbone and heard the air stutter in her lungs.
She squirmed, impatient, her thighs tensing as his mouth made its way down.
His tongue connected with her clit and flicked.
She arched into his tongue, swearing, nearly coming at the first touch; he paused, wrapped a hand around her thigh, pressed her to the mattress until she shivered just at the limit of endurance.
He brought his tongue back to her clit and worshipped it.
Back and forth across the top, then he’d bring the bud into his mouth and suck, grazing slightly with his teeth.
He let her teeter on the edge of an orgasm, enjoying a small bit of sadism. She’d get closer and he’d slow down before building it back up again. Her begs for release filled the room and he smiled before speeding up the motions.
"That's it," he murmured, and she cried out and then clapped a hand over her mouth. “The room is sound proof. I want to hear your screams,” he commanded.
He licked until she bucked, and kept going, listening for the edges of distress and never quite finding them. When she came, finally, her hands wrapped tight in his hair, she shook, every muscle sharp and briefly weightless. He smiled in satisfaction.
He crawled up over her, wanting to devour her whole. He wanted her to be fully his. When he pressed inside her she made a sound more vulnerable than he'd expected, and he froze. She looked up at him, wide-eyed.
"I'm good," she said. "I'm so good."
He didn't move, not yet, but lowered himself until they were skin to skin, full contact, her arms around his shoulders anchoring him to her.
"I don't want to hurt you," he said.
She tilted her chin, stubborn. "You literally can't."
He moved, slowly at first, giving her time to get accustomed to his size. She learned the rhythm at once, moved with him, worked his body and her own as if they'd done this a thousand times instead of for the first.
She was perfect.
The animal logic in him wanted to ride her faster and harder, but instead he held her face and reached a hand between their bodies and stroked her clit again.
He watched her as she tightened and broke open beneath him with her second orgasm.
She clung to him, nails biting into his back, and in that moment she belonged to him completely.
That hit him somewhere deep and permanent.
Her hands moved down his back, pulling him closer, and he dropped his forehead to hers and felt her breath against his mouth.
"Look at me," he said.
Her eyes opened. Found his.
He held her gaze and moved in her faster.
"You're mine," he said.
"Yes." Her eyes didn't leave his. "Yours. Daddy." A breath. "I'm yours."
He moved his hips a few more times and then he exploded above her. The orgasm took his breath away, his legs shook in a way they’d never shook before. When he opened his eyes, she was staring up at him with a look of wonder. As if she was thinking, I did that?!
Afterward she curled against him with her cheek on his chest and her hand flat over his heart and her breathing coming back to something slow and even, and the room was dark and warm and completely quiet.
He thought about Delta Force and Grand Ridge and the MC and the deliberate life he'd built from pieces of himself after the military had given him back to himself. He thought about the calculated choices he’d made, all pointing toward something he could protect and call his own.
He hadn't calculated Emily.
"Daddy," she said.
"Yeah."
"I love you," she said. Simply. "I know it's fast. I know all the reasons it's fast and I don't care
"I love you," he said. "I've been sure of it since the first day we met."
She turned her face into his chest. He felt her smile against his skin.
"You are so—" She stopped. Started again. "You knew you loved me the first time we met?"
"Yeah, I knew."
She was quiet for a moment. Her thumb moved in a small circle over his chest.
"I asked Chloe once what it felt like," she said. "Knowing. With Tyler. She said it felt like recognizing something she didn't know she'd been looking for."
"Yeah."
"That's it," she said. "Exactly that."
He pressed his lips to the top of her head.
"Go to sleep," he said.
"I'm not tired."
"Emily."
"I'm genuinely not—"
"Baby girl." The quiet of it. The specific frequency. "Sleep."
She went still.
"Yes, Daddy," she said.
He held her. He stayed awake a little longer, not out of habit, not out of vigilance, not the old military watchfulness that had kept him up for years.
Just because he wanted to feel it a little while longer.
This specific thing. This woman. This life he hadn't planned and wasn't going to waste a single second of.
He kept his hand in her hair.
The compound settled around them and somewhere in the distance he heard Clover whining.
He slept.