Finally, near seven, four hours after Edge left, I shove off the couch. My restless energy needs an outlet. I stalk to the kitchen and make myself busy. When Leah brought a bag of my clothes around yesterday, she also dropped off some groceries, figuring that Edge’s cupboards would be empty. Right now I’m grateful for the non-spoiled milk, butter, bread without green bits, and some vegetables, that join the eggs and bacon which were the sole occupants of his ancient refrigerator. I also find a small bag of flour, some oats, and a candy bar.
I have enough supplies to make oatmeal cookies.
I force myself to keep busy, mixing ingredients together in a large bowl with my good arm. I try to keep theother one as still as I can, since the extra movements make the throbbing worse. I don’t like the tight heat that crawls down my arm, how the stitches feel like they’re going to burst open if I so much as flex the muscles below the wrong way.
I’m just taking out the second batch of cookies to cool when I feel that low rumble that I’d recognize anywhere. I can’t even describe what it’s like, the way that the air shifts so subtly like the very composition of it has changed. It’s like that smell you can breathe in right before it starts to rain, or the sense of cleanness and newness right after it has.
That’s what I feel as that rumble intensifies. I feel it straight through the soles of my bare feet, up my bare legs peeking from below the hem of Edge’s massive t-shirt. It’s like a dress, so big that it falls to my knees. I feel it in the pit of my belly, a strange wild heat that has never failed to exhilarate me and my heartbeat increases its tempo until my pulse points are jumping at my throat and wrists.
My skin flushes, and not from the heat of the oven that I’ve just closed up. My nipples harden into sharp points under the thick cotton fabric. Even the soft shirt chafes against my sensitive skin and I feel warm, hot and sticky all over even though the real heat of the day hasn’t broken over the place yet, as it’s just past eight in the morning.
Lust burns to life in the pit of my stomach and blazes through my chest, heating my veins and igniting every single one of my cells and nerve endings. I’ve always been nothing but a pile of dry tinder, sparking and burning to life whenever Edge is near.
I don’t leave the kitchen. Instead, I wait by the oven, my arms wrapped protectively around myself. I don’t hear thescrape of his key in the lock, but I feel it, the way I felt his bike rumble up before any normal person would have known that it was there.
I feel the vibration of his heavy footfalls echoing in the entrance.
He stops when he sees me, filing up the entire doorway to the kitchen. His eyes rake over me, and a shiver of molten pleasure runs up my spine at the predatory heat in them. We both inhale at the same time. He probably scents freshly baked cookies. I scent him.
I drag that beautiful, deep, masculine scent into my lungs. Dark and spicy. Smoky and dark. Raw and brutal. I love his scent, all the smells that make him, him. Edge. My wonderful, incredible Edge.
I reach over on autopilot, quickly shutting off the oven.
Edge cocks a brow at the cooling cookies, some on the counter on paper towels, the others on their pans. His dark caramel eyes scan my face and then they slowly do a leisurely sweep of the rest of me, taking me in like he can’t believe I’m really there. Like he thought that maybe he’d pull open that door and find me gone, all of this just some crazy dream that we both never thought would ever come true.
I stare back, taking in the pronounced lines at the corners of his eyes, the angry purple black bruising around the one that he still can’t open, the mottled purple yellowy bruises along his face and jawline, the hard set of his lips with the slight downturn at the corners. The lines there are deep too, etched in far deeper than normal.
There isn’t anything that’s not wonderfully beautiful about Edge. From the hard set of his massive shoulders to his barrel chest, to the way his waist narrows like a born athlete, to the flare of his powerful leg muscles underneath worn jeans that cup every single bit of him just right, to the wide set of his boots on the floor.
I’ve always known that he’s the only man for me. The one man who had the power to change everything about my life, to bring me fully and truly alive.
“You look tired,” I say gently, and I can tell the exact moment my words reach his ears and register deeper, sinking and settling in, because his shoulders bow a little with his next breath. “The adrenaline’s wearing off.” I swallow hard. “You’re probably hungry. Thirsty. Sit down and let me take care of you.”
Because Edge was forced to be a man long before his time, he scoffs at the idea of being taken care of. To my surprise, a faint hue of color forms on his cheeks, visible on both sides, beneath the bruising and as a dull mar on the otherwise sun-burnished copper gold of his skin.
He rolls his shoulders, more because they’re stiff and not as a shrug, and dodges past me to scoop up four of the still hot cookies right off the pan. He ambles over to the cupboard, pulls out a bottle of whiskey and sits down hard at the table. The chair groans, protesting his massive bulk. He slams one cookie into his mouth, chews fast and swallows faster. The other one disappears just as quickly. Midway into the third, he catches himself and almost stops, but then, afraid of discovery, he takes another bite and chews more slowly.
I remember I once asked my dad why Edge ate like he did. Even as a little girl I noticed the way he’d shovel food inlike there wasn’t going to be a tomorrow. He’d be finished a full plate of food before I’d even start on mine. My dad explained to me, a little girl who’d never gone without a meal, that years of hunger give a person a rare appreciation for food. He told me to watch—Edge always ate slower on seconds or thirds, almost like he’d filled up that child sized void inside himself and came back to the present to remember where he was.
I pull out the chair beside Edge, wishing that I had a box of tea in the house. I’ve never developed a taste for coffee, but I do like tea.
Edge’s gaze roves to my face and he chews thoughtfully on the last cookie before he lets out a mumbled, “these are good.”
I barely catch it, since his lips hardly move, but I know what he’s saying. I allow him a gentle smile before I reach out and set my palm on the table. The tension rolling off of him is something I’ve seen my own father battle with quite often.
I wait, but he doesn’t start, so I realize that I have to.
“Tell me,” I say softly. “What happened at the meeting?”
Edge’s gaze darts around the room before his coffee hued eyes flit back to me. A tendril of heat spirals through my chest and pools in my lower belly. He lets out a hard sigh that shakes his big shoulders. Even though his face is a mask, since that’s what he’s used to putting on for the world, I see past it, to the shadows, worry, and fears below.
“Not used to being debriefed,” he says curtly, but then his face softens just a little. Other people might missit, but not me. Both because I’m perfectly attuned to reading expressions because it’s the way I ‘hear’ and because his face is one that I’ve known my whole life, and I know those subtle nuances like I know my own.
“I know…”
He sighs again, unscrews the top on the whiskey and takes a long pull. “A few of the guys saw our doctor. Jack pulled out four bullets, one out of each guy. No one took a slug to anything vital. Gage, Gun, Pops, and Bleak. Legs and arms, thank fuck. Christine broke her arm when she got knocked to the ground, but she’s thankful it was just that and not the bullet that lodged in the wood right above where she was standing. Leah is fine, Ginger walked away with a few bruises, and you…”
I shake my head. “I know about me. I don’t want to talk about that yet. I want to know what you’re going to do. What the Riders are going to do. This is our town, Edge. It’s always been our town. I was raised the Prez’s daughter. I know there’s going to be an answer to this, that it could mean war.”
