Legend doesn’t pull out as he joins me almost instantly.
When I ease back down to earth, he braces one hand on the wall beside my head, the other gripping my hip like he’s reluctant to let me go.His big brown eyes burn into mine.Biker wants more.He wants all of me.He wants to drag me home, to this club, lock the door, and finish what we started ten different ways to Sunday.
But he tears himself away with a ragged breath, running a hand through his hair.“No time.”
“We’re engaged, Legend.You’re allowed to want me.”
He huffs a laugh through his nose.“Wanting you was never the problem.”
“What is?”
He looks toward the dark, the rolling hills where Pearly Gates sits like a stain.“Monsters.”
“Then let’s kill them,” I say.“Together.”
Legend cups my face with both hands and kisses me once more, soft this time, but no less intense.A promise more than a demand.
Then he pulls away, breath shaky.Duty settling over his shoulders again.
“Tomorrow,” he murmurs.“Full church.”
I nod.
But my legs are still trembling from him when he turns away, lighting a cigarette with hands that aren’t nearly as steady as he pretends.
Paradise Falls is dead quiet when I pull through the iron gate, the kind of quiet that feels staged, like the land itself is holding its breath.
The moon spills silver across the paddocks, glinting off dewy grass and the broad white fences my family built generations before I was ever a thought.My place.My legacy.My sanctuary.
Tonight it feels like the beginning of a lie.
I park beside the barn and kill the engine.My hands still shake on the steering wheel.Not from fear.Not entirely.
From him.
Legend’s fingers are still imprinted on my hips, my throat, the back of my neck.His mouth is still on mine, phantom heat, phantom pressure.I rub my wrist, remembering the way he pinned it above my head like it belonged there.
Like I belonged there.
God help me, I needed it.
I slam the truck door harder than I need to and head for the porch.The boards creak, familiar, grounding.My boots scrape mud off on the steps.My pulse refuses to calm.
Legend gets under my skin.He always has, even back when he was just Hudson, the wild stable boy with a chip on his shoulder and a busted knuckle every damn week.But tonight was different.
Tonight, he felt possessed.
I push into the house, drop my keys, and go straight to the hall mirror.My reflection looks like a woman who’s been dragged behind a truck, windblown, shaken, eyes too bright.My lip is still a little swollen.My hair is tangled where Legend fisted it.
“You absolute idiot,” I whisper to myself.
I should be furious, and I am, but not at the right person.Not only at him.
At me.
I’m engaged to that man.Engaged.And somehow it feels like we’re both still testing the perimeter of something neither of us knows how to hold.
I brace my hands on the sink and splash cold water on my face.It doesn't help.My skin remembers too much.
