Fucking makes me jump out of my skin.
He fills the room like smoke thick enough to choke on.A shadow leaning against the wall, long legs braced, tattooed arms folded like he’s trying to hold the whole world still.
When my eyes adjust, he comes into focus.
His tongue ring catches the light when he licks his bottom lip, slow, tense, controlled.He tosses a folded blanket onto the bed like that makes this room less of a prison.
Biker’s tall and cut lean, all prison-yard muscle, the kind of body built to fight or cage someone against a wall without breaking a sweat.His skin is ink, poppies blooming up one arm, skulls and saints battling on the other, a chain of script winding down his throat like a spell.Even his fingers are marked, rings glinting black against the dim light.
His face is worse.Or better.There’s a tiny cross tattoo under one lined eye.Another word, impossible, curves above his pierced brow, like he carved his own prophecy into his skin.
Biker’s fucking impossible, alright.
Sharp cheekbones.Sharper piercings.Full mouth.Black-lined eyes like midnight glass, flat, unreadable, watching me like I ain’t a person but a puzzle he intends to take apart slowly.His hair is dark and slicked back, a knife-blade part that makes him look less like a biker and more like something dangerous that crawled out of the gutter.
Dangerously sexy, that is.
Dressed all in black, always.Black boots, black jeans that fit too well, black tank or mesh shirt clinging to tattooed muscle.Longish, pointy, black-painted nails tip his fingers.
Even his jewelry is dark, rings like knuckle weapons, a chain around his throat that looks part fashion, part warning.Nothing about him is accidental.Every piece he wears says don’t touch unless you want the consequences.
His clothes shouldn't appear costly, but they seem to on him.The mesh clings to the ink on his shoulders, the flowers and skulls shifting with every slow breath he takes.His jeans hang low on narrow hips, a blade holster strapped against his hip like a second skin.He always looks half-dressed and fully dangerous, like he walked out of the kind of nightmare girls pretend they don’t have.
Royal doesn’t dress like a biker.He dresses like a rock star at a funeral, beautiful, dark, inevitable.
I shouldn’t notice any of it.
But I do.
And he moves too slow.Deliberate.Every step controlled.Predatory.Like a man who never lifts his voice because he never needs to.This is Royal.The Kings of Anarchy’s quiet menace.The poet with blood on his hands.The man who put a chain on my wrist.And the worst part?
He doesn’t look a bit sorry.
Biker looks like he’s been waiting for me to wake up.Suddenly, he moves like something half feral.Stares at my bare feet, then at the fresh bruise on my wrist, then at my chopped hair like each detail is a clue he is assembling.
“You get off on this, jailer,” I bite out.
He doesn’t speak.Royal rarely speaks unless he must, and when he does, it is rarely comforting.His silence is pressure.Weight.Heat.
“I want out,” I say.
“You stay,” he answers, voice low enough I feel it in my ribs.“Until the farm deal is dead.”
Paradise Falls.Always the damn farm.My daddy wants it.Sophie already survived hell keeping it.I’m the stupid girl wedged between two worlds that both want to use and abuse me.
“You think chaining me up will fix anything in this damn town?”I snap.“Legend should’ve killed me last night.Sophie probably begged him to.Why the hell am I here?”
Royal tilts his head.
“Because I’m leverage?Leverage doesn’t break.It bends.You think crazy Becki’s gonna cry?”My laugh is sharp as I answer my own question.“You really don’t know me at all.”
Still nothing.Those dark eyes burn steady.
“You want me to break,” I whisper.“But you ain’t Legend.You ain’t even the man in the mask.”
He freezes.A breath caught in his chest.A tiny shift, but enough.
I push harder.“You liked hiding.”
