Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Presley
Kissing him is the first thing all day that doesn't hurt.
Everything else has been a knife.
My father's face when he read the ink.
The sound of his truck pulling away.
The awful stretched-out minutes in the yard with every word I'd saved up jammed useless behind my teeth.
All of it still sits in me, raw and bleeding, and the only thing on this earth that dulls it is Thunder's mouth on mine and his hands framing my face like I'm the one thing left worth holding onto.
So, I kiss him like I'm drowning, because I am, and he's the only air in the room.
"Presley." He pulls back just far enough to get the word out, his forehead against mine, both of us breathing hard. "Talk to me. Tell me what you need."
My hands are still shaking as he lets me go and heads to the door.
Thunder turns the lock. One click, as final as a coffin nail.
I stand in the middle of my own kitchen, arms wrapped around myself, staring at the linoleum like it's got answers.
My throat's raw from crying. From screaming. From every word I hurled at my Pops in that yard, each one landing like a bullet I can't call back.
"Presley." His voice is low. Not a question. A line thrown to someone drowning.
I look up. He's still in the doorway, one shoulder against the frame, watching me the way he watches a horse that's about to bolt—steady, patient, like he'll wait all goddamn night.
"I'm fine," I say.
Neither of us believes it.
He crosses the kitchen in three strides. His hands find my face, rough palms against my jaw, thumbs sweeping under my eyes where mascara's bled down in black rivers.
I don't know when I started crying again. Maybe I never stopped.
"Look at me."
I do.
God help me, I do.
And what I see in his face isn't pity.
It's that same controlled heat that's been there since the first time he put his hands on me.
"I ain't goin' anywhere," he says. Drawl thick as honey, each word deliberate. "You hear me, rattlesnake? None of it changes a goddamn thing between us."
A sound comes out of me. Half laugh, half sob. "You sure about that? Because I'm pretty sure I just got disowned."
"Then he's a fool." His grip tightens just enough. "And you're still mine."
Property of Thunder.
The tattoo throbs on my lower back like it knows.
Fresh ink still scabbing under the bandage, a brand I chose, a secret I wore under my clothes until today.
Until my daddy saw it and the whole world split open.
I grab his shirt. Both fists, knuckles white in the worn cotton. "Then prove it."
Something darkens in his eyes. Not anger. Something hungrier.
"You don't know what you're askin'."
"Thunder—"
His mouth comes down on mine.
Hard. No softness.
His teeth catch my bottom lip and I gasp into it.
He takes the gasp like payment, tongue sliding against mine, tasting the salt of my tears and the copper where I bit through my lip in the yard and didn't notice.
He walks me backward. My hips hit the kitchen counter.
His hand drops from my jaw to my throat—not squeezing, just holding.
A collar. A leash.
My pulse hammers against his palm and he feels it, I know he does, because his mouth curves against mine.
"There she is," he murmurs. "There's my girl."
I want to bite back. I want to match him.
But my hands are shaking too hard to unbutton his shirt, and he sees it, and something in his expression shifts. Tender and ruthless at once.
"Let me," he says. Not a request.
He strips me methodically.
Boots first, tugging them off and setting them aside.
Socks.
Then he stands, lifts my shirt over my head, and I'm bare from the waist up except for the sports bra I threw on this morning when the world was still normal.
He unclasps it with one hand.
My breasts spill free and the cabin air prickles against my nipples, already tight.
His gaze drops. Not leering—checking if I'm still in one piece.
"Arms up," he says.
I raise them. He runs his hands down my sides, slow, palms flat, and I flinch when he brushes the rattlesnake coiled on my left ribs. Still tender. Still healing.
His thumb traces the edge of it. "Mine," he says quietly. Like he's reading the ink aloud.
Then his hand slides lower.
He turns me around, gentle but firm, pressing my stomach against the counter.
I grip the edge.
The laminate's cold against my bare skin.
He unbuttons my jeans, drags them down over my hips with my panties in one pull, and I step out of them.
Naked. In my kitchen. In the late afternoon light slanting through the window, catching dust motes, and I'm shaking.
Not from cold, not from crying anymore.
From the way he's looking at me.
From the way his breathing's gone rough and uneven, the only tell he's got.
"Property of Thunder." He reads it off my lower back, voice thick. His thumb presses the script. I hiss—half pain, half something else. "Goddamn, rattlesnake. You walked around with my name on you for weeks. Let your daddy find it. Let the whole world find it."
"I wasn't hiding anymore," I whisper. "I was done hiding."
"Good." He leans in, mouth against my ear, and his belt buckle's cold through his jeans where it presses my bare ass. "'Cause I'm done bein' careful with you."
I hear the zipper. Hear him shove his jeans down.
Then his hands are on my hips, and he's lifting me onto the counter.
I sit on the edge, legs dangling, and he steps between them.
His shirt's still on. I reach for it but he catches my wrists, pins them behind my back with one hand.
"No. You just hold on."
He kisses my throat. My collarbone.
Takes my nipple in his mouth and sucks hard enough that I arch into him, a moan dragging up from somewhere deep. His teeth graze and I clench around nothing, empty and aching.
"Thunder—please?—"
"Tell me what you need."
"You. Just stop fucking making me wait."
He pulls back and looks at me.
Flushed, wrecked, tears drying on my face, sitting naked on my own kitchen counter with my wrists pinned.
I must look like a disaster. He looks at me like I'm the only thing keeping the sky up.
"Wrap your legs around me."
I do. He notches himself against my entrance and I feel the blunt head of him, thick and hot.
My body opens for him because it knows him, knows this, knows the shape and weight of him. He pushes in slow. Too slow. Inch by inch until I'm full and stretched and shaking.
"Christ," he groans. Forehead dropping to my shoulder. "Always so goddamn tight."
I dig my heels into the backs of his thighs. "Move."
He does.
Pulls almost all the way out, then drives back in deep, and the sound I make isn't a word.
It's just need, raw and animalistic.
He sets a rhythm that's not gentle.
Each thrust pushes me back on the counter and I brace my free hand behind me, the other still held captive, and he fucks me like he's trying to exorcise both our demons.
The counter rattles.
A coffee mug slides toward the edge.
Neither of us catches it.
It shatters on the floor and he doesn't stop, doesn't even glance at it.
"That's it," he says, voice gone gravel-rough. "Take it. Take all of it."
I'm close.
The tension coils low in my belly, tightening with every stroke.
He reaches between us. His thumb finds my clit, circles it, and I come apart.
It hits like a thunderclap.
I clench around him and cry out, back bowing, vision going white at the edges.
He fucks me through it, grinding deep, and when I finally stop shaking he pulls out.
"Turn around. Hands on the counter."
I obey on shaking legs.
Bent over, palms flat, and he kicks my feet wider. He enters me from behind and the angle's different—deeper, more punishing—and I feel the tattoo on my lower back stretch as he grips my hips.
"Look at you," he says, thumb tracing the script again. "Mine."
"Thunder—"
"Mine." He thrusts hard. "Even when you tried to stay away." Another thrust, grinding, and I whimper. "Even when you put my name on your skin where anyone could see."
His pace turns ragged.
I feel him losing control—my big, steady, unshakeable man finally fraying at the edges.
His fingers dig into my hips hard enough to bruise and I want it.
Want the marks. Want to carry proof of this night on my body tomorrow when I have to face the wreckage.
"Presley—" His voice breaks on my name.
"Come inside me," I whisper. "I want to feel it."
He shudders.
Buried deep, he breaks—a groan torn from his chest, and I feel him spill hot inside me, pulse after pulse, his forehead pressed between my shoulder blades. His breath comes in harsh, uneven bursts against my skin.
For a long moment, neither of us moves.
Then his arms wrap around me from behind.
He pulls me upright, my back against his chest, and just holds me.
His heart's pounding against my spine.
Mine's still racing.
We stand there in the wreckage of the afternoon.
A broken mug on the floor, my clothes in a pile, his jeans around his ankles, and he holds me like I'm the only solid thing in a world that just fell apart.
"You okay?" he asks finally. Mouth against my hair.
I think about my father's face.
The betrayal. The rage. The way he looked at Thunder like he was a monster, and at me like I was a stranger.
"No," I say. "But I will be."
His arms tighten. "Yeah. You will."
Outside, the sun's going down over the Texas hill country, painting everything gold and red. Like fire. Like a brand.
I watch it through the kitchen window, naked in his arms, and I don't look away.
We head into the bedroom, and the sun goes down.
In my bed, we lie there in the blue dark and let the quiet hold us.
His fingers trace idle up and down my spine, over the script that started all of this, and the exact moment he reaches it he lingers, his thumb moving slow across the letters that spell him out on my skin.
"He's gonna come around," Thunder says after a while.
"Your daddy. I know him better than most, and I heard what was under all that yellin'.
He's not done with you. Not by a long shot.
He's just gotta lick his wounds and get past the part where his pride's involved, and then he's gonna remember the only thing he ever really wanted was for you to be happy. "