Chapter 12 #2
I open the top drawer of the dresser. My own gold band is where I left it. The light catches the rim of it. I set Garrett's ring in the drawer next to it. The two rings sit together. They look like they belong together. They look like they should've been together a long time before now.
I close the drawer.
The chain is still in my left hand. I look at it. I think about putting it back on. Empty. As something I keep. I think about putting it in the drawer with the rings. I think about throwing it in a kitchen junk drawer where I won't remember to look for it.
I lay it on top of the dresser instead. A small loop of gold against the wood. Visible. Available. Not gone. Not on me.
I look at myself in the mirror. The skin of my throat is bare for the first time in twenty-two months. My hand goes up and presses flat against the place where the chain used to be. The skin is warm, naked and mine.
I breathe out a long slow breath I didn't know I was holding.
I leave the bedroom and cross the front room. I let the screen door slap shut behind me on the porch and walk across the gravel to Rogue's cabin.
He opens the door before I get to the steps. He must've seen me coming on the camera.
I come up the steps and he's standing in the doorway with his hat off and his hand on the frame and his eyes are on my face. Then his eyes drop to my throat.
He goes still. Not the way a man goes still when he's surprised. The way a man goes still when something he has been waiting for has shown up.
I stop on the porch boards in front of him. His eyes come back to mine. He doesn't speak.
He lifts his hand from the doorframe and reaches out and his fingers come to my bare collarbone. One fingertip runs along the skin where the chain used to lie. Slow. Like he is reading something. His finger comes to rest at the hollow of my throat. "Baby."
His voice is rougher than it was a minute ago.
"Yeah?"
His eyes don't leave mine. His fingertip is warm where it sits at the hollow of my throat and he isn't moving it. "You doin' what I think you're doin'?"
I cover his hand with mine and hold it there against my skin. "I took the chain off, Rogue."
His thumb moves once against my collarbone. Just once. "I see that."
"I put the ring in the drawer with my own."
The smallest exhale comes out of him. His other hand comes up off the doorframe and finds my hip. "Yeah?"
I step closer. Close enough that the front of my shirt touches the front of his. My free hand goes to his chest, flat over his heart, and I can feel it going faster than it should be.
"I'm yours."
His hand moves. It comes up off my throat and to the side of my face. He cups my jaw the way he cupped it the first night on the porch.
This kiss isn't the one from the other day. This is the kiss he didn't give me on the porch. The one I felt him hold back. The one that's been burning through every look he's ever given me since I stepped onto his land.
His mouth hits mine like a match to dry grass.
Sure and hot, and there's nothing tentative about it—he takes the kiss deep, his tongue sliding against mine before I'm ready, and I gasp into him.
My hands fist in his cut. I rise on my toes, pressing my body into his, feeling the hard wall of his chest, the heat radiating off him.
His beard scrapes my chin, my jaw, and I want that feeling everywhere.
He breaks the kiss just enough to speak, voice thick and low. "Bedroom or out here in the open, Hadley? Trust me, I wouldn't mind if everyone saw me claimin' you."
His words make me blush. "Bedroom, please."
He doesn't hesitate. One arm hooks under my thighs, the other bands across my back, and he lifts me like I'm nothing but air.
My legs wrap around his waist. His mouth finds my throat as he carries me, teeth grazing, tongue soothing, and I arch into him, fingers twisted in his shirt.
He shoulders the door open as we head through his cabin.
He sets me on the edge of the bed, but doesn't step back. He kneels in front of me. Eye to eye.
He takes his hat off at last and sets it on the nightstand, and now I see the auburn hair, a lock falling over his forehead. I want to push it back but I can't move yet. "I want to make you scream for me, Hadley Cross."
His voice is sure, but there's a ragged edge beneath it. Desire sharp enough to cut.
"Then you'd better get to work."
This kiss hits different. There's no hesitation in it.
No holding back. His mouth slams into mine like he's been starving for it, like every look he's held back on the porch is finally let loose.
His tongue pushes past my lips before I'm ready, and I groan into him, my hands fisting in his cut hard enough to twist the leather.
He breaks it just enough to speak, his voice rough. "God, you have no idea what you fuckin' do to me. Being on my best behavior all the time is killin' me, woman."
His mouth finds my throat again, teeth grazing, tongue soothing, and I'm already soaked, already aching. "Fuck, Rogue."
He hikes me up off the bed and turns me around, until I'm looking at a small mirror propped on the nightstand—the kind you'd use to check yourself before leaving. I don't think about it until he speaks. "Look."
Our reflection is in the glass. Him behind me, all that ink and muscle, his chest pressed to my back, his hands already at my jeans. I see my eyes go dark, my lips swollen from his kiss.
"Watch," he says against my ear.
He unbuttons my jeans, yanks them down with my pants and panties in one rough motion. I step out of them, and he pushes me forward, palms flat on the nightstand. The mirror is right there. I see everything.
His hand slides between my thighs from behind. His fingers find my pussy, and I'm so wet they slide right in.
"Christ," he breathes. "You're so ready for me."
Two fingers push deep, and I gasp, my forehead dropping forward.
"No. Watch."
I force my eyes open. In the mirror, his hand is moving in the glass, fingers pumping into me and the look on his face—hungry, focused, completely wrecked.
His thumb finds my clit. I almost scream.
He circles it slow at first, teasing, watching my face in the glass while his fingers curl inside me.
I'm already close—too close, too fast, but he doesn't slow down.
He presses harder, faster, his thumb pressing down on that slick bundle of nerves until I'm gasping, my hips rocking back against his hand.
"That's it, baby. Let me see you fall apart. "
"I can't—"
"You can."
He pushes a third finger in. I cry out, my hands scrabbling on the nightstand. His thumb works my clit in tight, merciless circles, and I'm gone—shattering with a sob, my cum soaking his fingers, my body convulsing in the mirror as he holds me through it.
He doesn't stop. He keeps rubbing, pushing me past the edge, into that oversensitive space where every touch is too much and I need more. I whimper, trying to buck away, but his arm is locked around my waist. "One more, baby."
"I can't—"
"One more, Hadley."
His fingers drive into me deeper, his thumb grinding against my clit. The second orgasm hits before I'm ready—harder, darker, pulling a scream out of my throat that I can't hold back. My reflection in the mirror—mouth open, eyes wet, cum running down his hand.
He pulls his fingers out, slow.
And then he pushes my hips forward, bends me over the nightstand, and I feel the head of his cock pressing against my entrance.
"Now."
"Yes."
He slams into me. No slow, no gentle. One hard, deep thrust that fills me completely, and I scream—a raw, broken sound that hangs in the dusty afternoon air.
He fucks me like that. Hard. Deep. His hands gripping my hips, pulling me back onto his cock with every stroke, the mirror showing me everything—the sweat on his chest, the flex of his thighs, the way my tits bounce with every thrust.
His hand snakes around, finds my clit again.
"Oh god—"
"Come on my cock, Hadley. Now."
His fingers work me while he pounds into me, and I can't breathe, can't think, can't be anything but the place where he's filling me and the fire he's stoking between my legs.
I come with a scream that tears out of my chest, my pussy clenching around him, and I feel him groan as I tighten.
He pulls out just before he comes. I watch in the mirror as he strokes himself, his cum spilling hot and thick across my lower back, dripping down to where his fingers are still inside me. He growls my name as he finishes, his forehead pressed to my shoulder.
For a long moment, there's nothing but our breathing, ragged and wet.
Then he turns me around, pulls me into his chest, and carries me to the bed. He lays me down on the dark grey quilt, his body covering mine, his hand already sliding between my thighs again.
"Round two," he says against my mouth.
And I don't say a word. I just open for him.
* * *
I don't know how much time passes.
It turns out Nash being at a sleepover means we can be as loud and crazy as we want, and we took full advantage.
After a while he shifts to his side and pulls me against him. My head on his chest. His hand at my collarbone, tracing slow, the place where the chain used to be.
The ranch is quiet outside. The sun has gone down enough that the room is mostly dark.
His fingers keep tracing the bare skin at the base of my throat. "Hadley."
"Yeah?"
"Thank you."
The word goes through me. "For what, Rogue?"
He looks me right in the eyes. "For trustin' me with it all. Your heart. With Nash. With all of it."
I can't speak for a long moment. "Rogue."
"Silas McCrae. That's my real name, baby. 'Bout time you know you can call me somethin' other than Rogue. Rogue is for the club, but Silas, that's for you."
I scoot up to him and kiss him softly. "Silas, I… I know we haven't talked about it officially, but I want to be yours. I want what Banshee and Bex have, Shadow and Grace, Spur and Dakota, Phantom and Marlena. I want everyone to know I'm yours and vice versa."
His hand stops at my throat. Then it moves again, slow, back to its slow tracing. "Yeah, baby. That's what I want too. There is somethin' we have to do to make it official."
I close my eyes. "What's that?"
His heart is steady against my ear. "Tattoos. We get Property of tattoos."
"Sounds good to me, baby. All I want is you."
Outside, in town, Diesel is on a couch in Mama Lou's living room watching a movie with Nash and Raine, Banshee is on the gate, and Hartley is a threat coming for us. Somewhere, somebody is making a decision about what comes next.
Right here, in this bed, my naked throat is under a man's hand and my body is humming. For the first time since I buried my husband—a whole woman lying in the arms of a whole man.
Whatever's coming tomorrow can come.
It's going to have to come through both of us.