10. Eden
EDEN
Viper doesn’t say ten words for the rest of the night. He eats nothing. He stands at the window by the bar with his arms folded over his cut while Joker and Crash argue about the news footage.
And when I tell him I’m tired, he takes my hand and walks me up the stairs without asking.
Our room is dark except for the lamp on the dresser. The bed is made. It’s always made. My textbooks sit stacked on the dresser beside his knife. The sight of them together does what it always does to me—proof that I live here, in the middle of this chaos, on purpose.
He shuts the door and stands against it.
“We need to talk,” he says.
I stop breathing. “Okay.”
“You need to know what you’re getting into.” Those words shouldn’t be comforting, but they are. When he told me we needed to talk, I thought he was breaking up with me.
He’s just preparing me. Being honest with me.
“It gets worse before it gets better,” he says.
“National is coming in. That means lockdowns. Escorts. Men with guns at the gate. Could be months. Men might die.” I love that he’s not sugarcoating it.
“I can protect you. The club can protect you. There’s not a man downstairs who wouldn’t stand between you and a bullet. ”
“I know you’ll protect me. I trust you.”
That gets through to him. “But protected isn’t free.” His whole body clenches. “If you want out—school in another city or money to leave—I’ll give you anything you need. Nobody will stop you. I won’t stop you.”
The lamp puts half his face in the dark.
“You told me once not to come back,” I say.
“I remember.”
I laugh. “How’d that work out for you?”
He doesn’t answer. He’s not in the mood to joke with me.
So, I tell him straight. “I’m staying, Tanner. Ask me again, and I’ll say it slower.”
He crosses the room before the sentence is all the way out of my mouth.
There’s no gentleness in his actions.
His hand closes in my hair, and his mouth comes down on mine hard enough to tip my head against his palm.
Relief floods through me. He had a hard day. I want to take it from him.
He walks me backward until the dresser stops us. The lamp rattles. His hands drop to my thighs, and he lifts me onto the wood without effort, wedging himself between my knees.
I pull at his cut until he shrugs it off and sets it on the dresser next to us.
“Eden,” he murmurs against my throat.
“Don’t be careful with me tonight,” I say. “I want it rough.”
His smile is dark. Wicked.
He drags my dress up and over my head, and his mouth is on my breast before the cotton lands on the floor.
No patience.
His hands are everywhere. Teeth, tongue, and the scrape of his beard move across my body.
I arch into it with my fingers in his hair, holding him there. He pulls me to the edge of the dresser, and his palm presses flat between my legs, over the damp cotton, and we both make a sound at what he finds.
“I need you,” he says, rough.
“I need you, too.”
My panties don’t survive. The seam gives with a small tearing sound, but I don’t care. Two fingers slide into me, and my head drops against the mirror behind me.
He pumps them with no buildup, knuckles deep, his thumb hard on my clit. His eyes are on my face the whole time.
I’m soaked and riding his hand without one ounce of shame, and when the tension begins to coil inside of me, I grab his wrist.
“I want to come with you inside of me,” I breathe out between kisses.
He lifts me off the dresser, and we make it to the bed in three steps. I land on the mattress, and he undresses—shirt over his head, belt, boots, jeans, and boxers.
No condom this time. We had the conversation—the pill, the bloodwork, and the trust.
He plants my palms on the headboard rails. “Hands here.”
I hold on.
He pushes into me in one fast, long stroke, and my body takes him.
Without giving me time to adjust, he thrusts relentlessly.
His hips snap into mine, the headboard knocks against the wall, and his hand cinches my thigh up around his waist. The angle is so deep that I cry out, relishing the sensation.
The sounds in the room are bodies and breath and the wet slap of us, and underneath all of it his name, leaving my lips on every stroke.
“Louder,” he says against my jaw. “Let everyone know how hard I make you come.”
“Oh fuck, Tanner.”
“Again,” he commands.
“Tanner.”
He hauls me up off the pillow and into his lap, my knees bracketing his hips. His arms band around me, one fist in my hair tipping my head so his mouth can work down my throat.
I ride him with my nails dug into the muscle of his shoulders, right beside the bruise from the bat. He doesn’t flinch. He pulls me down harder.
“This pussy is mine, Eden.”
“Yours,” I respond. “My pussy is yours, Tanner.”
His hand drives between us, calloused thumb on my clit, rough and torturous in the best way.
I come hard, clamped around him, crying out his name. My whole body is one long, pulled-tight pulse. He works me through it without mercy, and he drags a second, smaller orgasm out of me with the first not even finished.
His rhythm goes ragged, and he groans, his arms crushing me to him while he comes inside of me.
My cheek is on his shoulder, his hand opening and closing on my hip, unhurried now, all the urgency spent.
He lays me down, stretches out, and pulls me into his side. His palm is spread wide and warm across my spine. The lamp is still on. Neither of us moves to turn it off.
“Worse before it gets better,” I say into his skin. “That’s what you said.”
“Yeah.”
“Then we’ll be worse together.” I press my mouth to his neck. “Then better together.”
His arm tightens around me.
“I’m glad you came back,” he says. “I told you to go that first night, and you came back.”
I tip my head up, so he has to meet my eyes. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”
“I never want you to leave.” His lips press into my hair and stay there.