9. Chapter 9 - Legion
The feel of Savannah's body pressing against me as I take the turns leading to the trailer is exactly what I needed after nearly a month of stacked tension.
She loves the cut, I can tell. And I love the way it looks on her. The way my name is written across her heart. The way she is so thoroughly and completely mine these days.
And it's weird because she's not any closer to my daily life now than she has been in the past. She's exactly the same distance away.
But everything about us is different now.
She hasn't mentioned the post she wrote on her social page. The one where she declared her love for me over Marcus. The one where she burned her entire reputation to the ground.
But I saw it.
Read it.
Memorized those words…
There is no time, no distance, no consequence that could make me stop loving him.
She really is mine.
Possession wasn't the only reason I had the cut made for her. Mostly I just wanted to see her wearin' it. Wanted to see my name sittin' right there across her chest like it belonged, like it was always gonna end up there, like the leather already knew what I was gonna do before I did.
And it does look right. Looks more right than just about anything I ever put eyes on.
But she's part of me now, and that means she's part of Badlands. That isn't sentiment—that's structure.
That's how the club works and that's how I work and those two things aren't separate anymore. Haven't been separate since the brand went on my chest and I put that cut on my back for the first time.
What's mine gets claimed.
What gets claimed gets marked.
Simple as that.
And if she hadn't posted what she posted—if she hadn't stood up in front of four million people and torched everything Marcus White Jr. thought he owned, hadn't said there is no time, no distance, no consequence—if she'd kept quiet and played it safe like she’s been trained her whole life to do, I'd have waited.
I'd have held my tongue.
Let it come in its own time, let her find her own way to the thing that was already true. The day would've come when she looked around and realized her position in the club hadn't been acknowledged yet, and I'd have fixed it then.
But she didn't keep quiet.
So I felt like the claim needed to be made public on my end too.
The sun is just dropping over the horizon when we reach the driveway to the new trailer. Before tonight, I hadn't been out here in months. Not since Colt and I rescued Savannah from the cabin and I took her home with me.
I roll the bike up to the porch and kill the engine. Things go silent the way they always do after the rumble dies and I take off my helmet as Savannah gets off and starts takin' off hers.
I put our helmets on the seat and take her hand, smiling like some normal guy who doesn't have a pit of dead bodies haunting his every moment.
Because right now, they're not.
All I care about is her.
"I hope you’re hungry."
"Are you gonna cook for me?" she sasses. "Because that would be beautiful."
I just laugh and open the door, wavin' her in with my hand.
No, I'm not cookin' for her. That would not be beautiful, it would be a disaster. But I dropped food off here earlier. Because Savannah Ashby and I are gonna have ourselves a fuckin' date.
For the first time in our lives we are not gonna make love in an old silo or in a dirty, smelly room above an outlaw biker clubhouse, or in a dilapidated hunting blind, or on the floor of a sandstone canyon.
Not that I would take back any of those experiences, but we gotta get past that stage.
And this is how I'm gonna do it.
This trailer is now ours and even if we don't live here, I want her to feel at home.
Savannah steps inside and I watch her take it in—the way her eyes move slow and deliberate across the room, the way she does that thing where she doesn't react right away, just catalogs everything.
Her gaze lands on the counter and stays there.
Seven bags of Chinese food, lined up like they're waitin' for inspection. I don't know what she likes so I got one of everything.
On the coffee table is a movie. I set it out deliberate, leanin' against the edge so she can't miss it. Big Trouble in Little China. It felt like it went with the food—felt like the kinda thing you pair together without overthinking it.
Chinese food and Kurt Russell bein' confidently wrong about everything for two hours. Man spends the whole film thinkin' he's the hero when he's actually the sidekick, and the thing is, he never figures it out. Just keeps on goin', loud and certain, like certainty is the same thing as bein' right.
I respect that in a fictional man.
Real life version of that guy gets somebody killed, but on screen? Fuckin' perfect.
Then there's the tub of popcorn sittin' on the counter next to the bags, and that one was a mission all its own.
Had to pick it up from the dollar theater in Terry before I ever got to the food, which means I was haulin' that thing back on the bike inside a garbage bag, and I'm not gonna pretend that looked anything other than what it was—a man on a motorcycle with a trash bag full of popcorn flappin' in the wind at sixty miles an hour, butter smell soakin' into the plastic, which is now soakin' into the popcorn, which is now smellin' like somethin' you'd find at the bottom of a gas station dumpster.
Not ideal. It's the thought that counts, I tell myself, which is somethin' people say when the execution went sideways but the intention held.
It counts. It's gotta count.
I also got Milk Duds. M&M's. Mike and Ike's—the whole box, not one of those sad little movie packs. I got 'em at the checkout because I didn't know which one she'd want, and I still don't know, and that's fine. She can have all of 'em. She can have whatever the hell she wants tonight.
There are not one, not two, but three candles lit on the coffee table, all of 'em smellin' like lavender, which is somethin' I had to ask the woman at the dollar store about because I didn't know what I was lookin' for, just knew it was supposed to smell soft and not like me.
I even put a fuckin' blanket on the couch.
Savannah looks at all of it—the candles burning low, the blanket folded over the couch arm, the trash bag of popcorn still sweating butter grease on the kitchen counter—and lets out this long, slow, theatrical sigh that comes all the way up from her chest. The kind of sigh that's hiding a smile underneath it.
"Legion Kane," she says, dragging my full name out like she's reading it off a tombstone. "You really know how to treat a girl."
I laugh and kick the door shut behind me with the heel of my boot. "I do, don't I."
"Is this movie night? Is that what this is?"
I check the scene real quick, not sure if I got it wrong and this is a real question, or if it's just rhetorical banter. "Does it look like movie night?"
She snickers. "I'm not sure. I've never had a movie night."
"What?" My disbelief is real. "Is there no movie theater hidden in that fuckin' log mansion of yours? I figured you'd have the popcorn machine and everything. Maybe a legit Slurpee station like they got at 7-Eleven."
She points at me. "While that would've been very photogenic in a provincial way, you and I both know Eleanor Ashby has never once in her life embraced the provincial."
"Huh. So you've never had a movie night either."
She shakes her head.
"Perfect," I declare. "That means I can't lose. Because you can't tell a good one from a bad one."
She turns to me, grabbing the collar of my cut with her fingers, pulling me towards her a little as she looks up into my eyes. My god, hers are blue. "Demon," she coos, using my club name like it's a real thing. "There isn't even a chance in hell that you will ever lose with me."
And then we're kissin'. Tearin' at each other's clothes. And the food can wait, and the movie can wait, and the popcorn can go fuck itself. Because we are dyin' for each other. Dyin'.
Savannah Ashby's mouth kisses me the same way she fucks—like she's been starving and she's not gonna apologize for it. Fingers digging into the back of my neck, pulling hard enough that it hurts.
I get her jacket off—peelin' it off her shoulders without breaking the kiss and she shrugs it the rest of the way down her arms herself.
Then I get both hands in the front of that prairie top and rip. Buttons scatter across the floor like shrapnel.
"Legion!" she gasps into my mouth.
"I'll buy you a new one." I push the ruined shirt off her shoulders and unclasp her bra one-handed. She's bare from the waist up and I'm already on my knees working her boots off. One then the other. Each one hitting the floor hard as I toss them over my shoulder.
She's got her hands in my hair, tuggin' and pulling, as I pop the button on her jeans and drag them down over her hips.
She steps out of them and grabs my cut by the collar, shoving it off me as I shrug it down my arms. Then she's got the hem of my t-shirt in her fists yanking it up and I duck my head so she can pull it over. It gets tossed behind her, same way I did her boots.
Her hands go straight for my belt, fingers already working the buckle while I get my own boots off—one heel against the other—and she's got my jeans open by the time I straighten up.
Savannah reaches in… slow, smilin' at me. Her hand wraps around my cock as she takes it out. I shove my pants down, careful not to interfere with her hand job, and then we're standing there in the candlelight with nothing left between us.
Her blue-eyed gaze has been taking me apart since we were kids, and it works the same way now too.
I grab her face with both hands and kiss her again. Harder. Not gentle, not careful, not the kind of kiss you give someone you're still figurin' out. This is the kind that says I already know you and I'm still not done learnin'.