7. Viper
VIPER
Eden is asleep against me, one knee hooked across my thigh. My arm has gone dead under her. I leave it. I’d let the whole thing rot before I’d move her off me.
I’ve slept next to women before. Never through the night. Never sober, never twice, and never once woke up before them and stayed.
I’m staying.
Her hair is spread across my arm. She runs warm—warmer than me, and I run hot. Her breath comes slow against my chest, and my own keeps trying to slow down and match it, like my body already decided we do that now.
She sleeps like nothing in the world is coming for her. Lips parted. One hand curled loose against my ribs, right over the wound she helped heal.
Weeks ago, she saved my life. Now she’s drooling on my shoulder, and I don’t want her anywhere else.
There’s a knock at the door, hard enough to shake the door in its frame.
“Viper,” Saber calls out.
Eden wakes up. Her head comes up. Her fingers fist in the sheet and drag it to her throat. She’s scared.
I’d like five minutes alone with whoever trained that into her. Then I remember I already know who did, and the wanting goes specific.
“Open up, Viper,” Saber yells. “We’ve got a problem outside. The preacher is here. Says we’ve kidnapped his daughter.”
The color drains from Eden’s face. She stares at the door. Under my palm, her back has gone rigid, and her hands turn into fists.
“Hey.” I turn her to me. “Look at me. Nothing happens to you. He doesn’t walk you out of here unless you want out. Okay?”
She searches my face. Whatever she’s hunting for, she finds it, because the worst of it drains off her. Her shoulders come down. Her hand flattens out of its fist.
“Yeah,” she says.
I’m in my jeans before I finish talking.
I pull the door open.
Saber stands there, knuckles raised up, because he was just about to knock on the door again. He looks past me to the bed where Eden’s got the sheet to her chin.
“Knew she’d be trouble the second she drove you through my gate,” he says.
“She’s not trouble,” I bite out. “She’s my Old Lady now. Mine to protect.”
Saying it out loud lands different than thinking it. Thinking it was private. Saying it to Saber makes this official.
Something in me sets, the same click as a round going into the chamber. Done. Loaded. Hers.
Saber’s eyebrows go up. He looks past me at her, then at me.
“Old Lady.” He lets it sit. “Huh. Okay. Do you need backup?”
“No. I got this.”
The sheet rustles behind me.
“I’m coming down, too,” Eden says.
Stepping into the hallway, I close the door to give her some privacy from Saber to get dressed.
“No point fighting it,” I tell the club Prez.
If she wants to face her father, I’m not going to stop her. Her father shut down her choices. I won’t.
Saber smirks. “I’d tell you to handle it, but we both know who’s handling who.”
The lot is bright and already hot from the Arizona morning sun.
Gravel dust hangs where the preacher’s car kicked it up. Eden’s father stands just inside the gate in pressed slacks, sweating through his shirt, his sedan parked behind him.
He sees Eden come out the door behind me, and his face pulls tight. “Eden. Get your things. We’re leaving.”
She stops at the top of the porch steps and doesn’t move toward him.
I walk down the porch steps and put myself between them.
“You.” His finger comes up, pointing accusingly at me. “I know exactly what you are. I’ll have police out here inside the hour. Kidnapping. She’s my daughter.”
“Eden.” I hold the preacher’s eyes. “Anybody keeping you here against your will?”
“No.” She comes down the steps to stand at my side. Her arm settles against mine. “I want to be here.”
Her father scowls.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, girl. Did you tell him what this will cost you?” His voice is raised and unsteady. “Did you tell him I’ll stop paying for those classes? You think a man like this is going to—”
“Doesn’t matter,” I interrupt.
He stops.
“I’ve got money,” I tell him. “Whatever she needs for school is covered. I’ll give her every single thing you wouldn’t.”
His face goes red from the collar up.
“So that’s your plan?” He’s louder, and he’s yelling at me. “My daughter living in— What is this? An old hotel. A fraternity house full of criminals. That’s the life you’re giving her?”
“No.” I keep it flat. “I live here because I never needed more than a bed and my brothers down the hall. That was before her.” I cut a look to Eden, then back to him.
“She wants a house; I’ll buy her whatever house she points at.
She wants a yard; she gets a yard. You raised her to think a man like me can’t give her a life.
I’ll give her a better one than the cage you kept her in. ”
The preacher opens his mouth to speak, but it takes him a second to get words out. “I can still call the police.”
I don’t like talking much, but it turns out words come easy when they’re for her.
“Here’s where we are. We’ve established nobody kidnapped your daughter. She’s a grown woman who’s telling you that she’s staying. So the only illegal thing happening on this property is you, trespassing.”
His eyes go to Eden. “Eden. Please.” Sweat tracks down his temple, a father watching his kid pick the wolf. “Come with me. Come home.”
“No, Dad.” Her hand finds mine. Hers is small and warm, and it doesn’t shake. “I am home.”
Her fingers thread through mine and hold on, and I close mine around them.
Saber comes down off the porch, and he’s not alone. Crash, Jinx, Joker, and Duke fan out behind me. Not one of them opens their mouth. They’re letting me handle this, but they’re there if I need them.
I’ve stood in lines like this since joining the Hellborn Kings. First time I’ve ever been the reason for one.
Saber steps up to my other side.
“This is Viper’s Old Lady.” He says it easy. “Makes her one of ours. So think real hard about those police. We get protective of our family.”
The preacher takes in the line of us. He takes in his daughter’s hand in mine. Whatever he’s adding up comes out short, and he knows it.
He turns without a word, walks to his sedan, and drops in. The door slams. Gravel sprays. Then he’s a shape going small down the dirt road, and then he’s gone.
Eden doesn’t watch him go. She’s watching me. Her thumb moves once across the back of my hand, slow, and the sensation carries up my arm, across my shoulders, and down into the muscle along my spine, unlocking it a notch at a time. I didn’t know how wound up I was until she undid it.
Crash claps a hand on my shoulder and says something I don’t catch, grinning the whole time as he walks away. The rest drift off to whatever they were doing.
Then it’s Eden and me in the heat, her hand in mine. A crow calls off the fence line. The dust her father kicked up settles back onto the gravel.
“What does that mean?” She tips her face up to me, squinting against the sun. “Old Lady. You keep saying it. Saber said it. What is it?”
I turn to her. I take my time because she should hear this right the first time.
“Means you’re mine, and everybody here knows it now. Not a girl I’m seeing. Not a girl who comes around with a casserole. Mine. The club guards an Old Lady the same as a patched brother. Anybody puts a hand on you or threatens you, they answer to all of us. That’s what just happened out here.”
She takes that in. “And the rest of it? The house, the school. Were you saying that to scare him?”
“It’s true.” I wrap both hands along the curve of her jaw and tip her face up.
“I’ve never needed much. I have money saved.
A lot of money. Don’t think about paying for school again.
I’m buying you a house the day you tell me where.
I’ll take care of you, Eden. That wasn’t a line for your father. It’s real.”
Her eyes shine wet. Her mouth wobbles. She pulls it together.
“And I’m going to take care of you,” she says.
Those words are true. She’s already saved my life.
People have leaned on me my whole life. Not one of them ever offered to hold up the other end.
I run my thumb along her cheekbone. Her skin’s impossibly soft against my calluses.
There’s a thing rising up my throat that I’ve never thought possible. I don’t try to choke it down. “Eden. I love you.”
I’ve never said it. Not to a living soul.
The second it’s out, the strangest thing happens—nothing caves in. The sky stays put. She’s still here. Turns out the words don’t cost what I always figured they would. Turns out they pay.
She doesn’t wait to respond.
“I love you too, Viper.”
I bend down and kiss her right there in the dirt and the heat, where the whole club can see. She comes up on her toes, fingers hooking into my shirt, and she’s smiling against my mouth.
A whistle cuts across the gravel.
“Took the man thirty-two years to put that many sentences together,” Joker calls from the porch, “and he spends every one of them on a preacher and a girl. I’m gutted.”
“Shut up, Joker,” I say against Eden’s mouth.
She’s laughing when I kiss her again. Her happiness moves through her and into me where we’re pressed together, and I hold her a little tighter, so I don’t lose any of it.
I never wanted anything for myself. Wanting is how you hand somebody a thing to take away.
I want this one.
I’m keeping her.