Epilogue
SHELBY
Three Months Later
Saber’s mouth is on my shoulder before I’m fully awake.
His arm is across my waist, heavy and warm, and his hips press against me from behind. I’m on my side in the tangle of sheets we kicked to the foot of the bed at some point during the night, and the early Arizona sun is cutting through the curtains in long gold slashes across the floor.
His hand slides under the hem of my shirt. His shirt. His palm spreads flat across my stomach, and his fingers drag down, slow and deliberate, until they slip beneath the waistband of my underwear.
I arch back against him. He’s already hard, thick, and hot against my lower back, and his mouth finds the spot below my ear that makes my brain go blank.
“I need to get ready for my first day of school.” It comes out breathless. Useless.
His fingers slide between my legs. Two of them, dragging through the slick heat he’s responsible for, gliding over my clit.
“I’m helping you get ready. Starting your day off right.” His mouth is on my neck. His teeth graze my skin, and I grab his wrist—not to stop him. To keep him exactly where he is.
He rolls me onto my back. The sheets are gone, and his body covers mine, and his mouth drags from my throat to the swell of my breast. He pushes my shirt up and his lips close over my nipple, and the sound I make fills the quiet bedroom and bounces off the walls of the ranch house that is ours.
Ours.
His fingers are relentless. Stroking, pressing, curling inside me while his mouth works my breast, and the orgasm is already building at the base of my spine—a tight, hot coil that winds tighter every time his thumb drags across my clit.
“Saber, oh my god.”
My orgasm crashes through me in rolling waves that lock my thighs around his hand and pull a sound from my chest that isn’t a word. His mouth comes back to mine, swallowing it, kissing me through the aftershocks until my body goes liquid beneath him.
He pulls back. Looks down at me. Those blue eyes, sharp and hungry, and he’s not done.
He hooks his thumbs into my underwear and drags them down. I kick them off, and his boxers follow—shoved down with one hand while his mouth stays on my throat. The head of his cock drags through the wetness of my arousal, and my hips roll up to meet him.
He pushes in. One long, slow stroke that stretches me open and drives the air from my lungs.
My nails dig into his shoulders. He’s thick and hard and buried to the hilt, and neither of us moves.
His forehead drops against mine, and the sound he makes is raw—scraped up from somewhere deep, like he’s been needing this since before he opened his eyes.
He pulls back and drives in again. Harder.
My spine arches off the mattress, and my legs wrap around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back.
He fucks me in deep, grinding strokes that hit every nerve ending I have, and the headboard knocks against the wall with a rhythm that would embarrass me if I could think.
I can’t think. His hand slides under my hip, tilting me, and the new angle drags his cock across the spot that makes my vision go white at the edges.
“Saber! Fuck, don’t stop!”
He doesn’t stop. His pace builds, rougher, more desperate, and his mouth finds mine in a kiss that’s all teeth and breath and want.
My second orgasm hits. Every muscle locks down, and I clench around him so hard his rhythm breaks.
He lets out a broken, filthy curse that sends aftershocks rippling through me.
His hips slam forward twice more, erratic, uncontrolled, and he buries himself deep and goes rigid. His cock pulses inside me, releasing his seed, and the groan that tears out of him vibrates against my neck where his face is pressed. His arms are shaking. All that composure, all that control—gone.
He collapses onto his forearms above me. His breath is ragged against my collarbone, and his thumbs stroke lazy circles on my ribs.
I push his hair off his forehead.
“Now you’re ready for your first day,” he murmurs against my skin.
He won’t tell me where we’re going.
The route from the ranch should take us straight through town toward the community college, but Saber turns off the highway a mile early and heads for the clubhouse. I tap his arm, but he doesn’t look back, and the Harley rumbles down the dirt road.
We pull into the lot behind Bones and Bucks. The bar is closed—it’s barely eight in the morning—but there are two trucks parked out front.
Saber kills the engine and swings off. He holds out his hand, and I take it, and he walks me around the side of the building to the front entrance.
I stop.
The old sign is gone. The one that was a clip-art catastrophe and had a font that belonged on a ransom note.
In its place is a new one—hand-painted wood, clean lines, the crown-and-skull logo reimagined in a style that looks rough and vintage and deliberate.
Below it, BONES AND BUCKS in block lettering that reads from fifty feet.
My sketch. My design. Translated from charcoal on paper into paint and wood, and bolted to the front of a building.
My hands go to my mouth.
Saber is standing behind me. His arms cross over his chest, and he’s watching my face for this reaction—shock and pleasure.
My throat closes. “How did you do this?”
“Took the sketch from your book. Had Razor’s guy build it.” He drops his arms. “The club voted. And if you want it, you’re the marketing person for the bar. Part-time, on your schedule, around classes. Paid.”
Part-time. On my schedule. Paid.
I’m not broke anymore. I’m enrolled in school. I have a bank account in my name. And the president of the Hellborn Kings is standing in a gravel parking lot offering me a job that I want to do while I’m in school.
“I want it.”
He pulls me in by the front of my cut and kisses me hard.
How did I get this lucky? How did I find a man who will never stop giving me things I didn’t know I was allowed to want.
The community college sits on the east side of town. Low buildings, a parking lot that’s mostly dust, and a handful of students milling around with backpacks and iced coffees.
Saber parks the bike. I swing off and pull my bag onto my shoulder, and my stomach flips. Nerves. Good nerves. The kind that mean you’re about to do a thing that matters.
Three bikes idle near us. Prospects. I recognize them from the clubhouse. They’re young and trying very hard to look casual. They’re failing miserably.
I turn to Saber. “You can’t be serious.”
“They’re keeping an eye on things.”
“It’s a community college. I’m taking a marketing class, not infiltrating a cartel.”
He doesn’t answer. He’s looking past me, toward the entrance, where two guys in their twenties are leaning against a pillar.
They’re staring at me, or they were. Then their eyes land on Saber, six-three and covered in ink with a president’s patch and a face that has never once been described as friendly. Both of them pivot so fast they nearly trip over each other.
Saber tracks them until they’re inside the building. Then he looks at me.
“You were saying.”
I press my lips together. He’s impossible. “I’m young, Saber. Guys are going to check me out. Having prospects follow me around is overkill.”
“No, it’s not.” He tucks my hair behind my ear.
His phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out, reads the screen, and his jaw tightens.
I catch the name and message before he angles it out of my view.
Duke: Warriors spotted near the county line. Scouting.
I shouldn’t have read that. It’s club business, but still, I can’t hide what I’m feeling.
Saber pockets the phone. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Don’t worry about it.” He says it softer this time, and his hand cups my face, and I let it go. Not out of ignorance. I trust the man standing in front of me to handle what needs handling. He’s handled everything since the night I swung a water bottle at a stranger’s skull.
He kisses my forehead. “Go learn something.”
I turn toward the building. Three steps. Then I stop and look back.
He’s on his bike, engine idling. Watching me.
His phone buzzes again. He reads it. And this time, his face does a thing I haven’t seen before—not anger, not danger. Surprise.
He types a reply, pockets the phone, and catches me looking.
“Duke’s got a situation,” he says. “Violet is back in town.”
I don’t know Violet personally, but I know who she is. And I know that Duke’s life is about to get complicated.
I lift my hand and blow him a kiss. He smirks and then gives me a nod.
I walk through the doors of the community college with my cut on my shoulders and a man on a Harley at my back who would burn the whole valley down for me.
And for the first time in my life, I am exactly where I am supposed to be.