“This house is a piece of shit. It’s falling down around me. It isn’t anyone’s home, especially not yours. You deserve better than this. Better than this house, better than this town, sure as shit better than me.”
I have to swallow hard again to clear my throat. “I wasn’t talking about the house.” He blanks for a second, staring down at me. I thump my hand against his chest. “I was talking about this. About your heart. Because we both know I’m there and I’m never leaving. You want to bail now? I’ll haunt you for the rest of your life. And you’ll haunt me back, because there isn’t anyone like you. You think I don’t know what I’m talking about because I’m young? Fuck that. I know that I want you. I know that I’m always going to want you. I know that you pushing me away doesn’t help either of us.”
Edge shocks me when his hands close around my arms so savagely that his fingers bite into my skin. I let out a yelp at the pain on my wounded arm and he releases me immediately, a stunned expression on his face. He looks so contrite when he takes a step back that I take one forward.
“You’re not quitting on me. I’m fine, Edge. Something terrible could have happened to any of us, but it didn’t. Lucky for us, the walls of The Canteen are thick, or those bastards had piss poor aim and a bad gun dealer. That wasn’t your fault. None of it was. My dad being pissed off isn’t your fault. You’re a good man. The best of men. You’re the VP of the Riders because those men respect you. My dad respects the hell out of you. He loves you, Edge, he’s just acting like a brat throwing a fit. He’ll come around.”
He shakes his head, fire blazing in his copper eyes. “I can’t give you what you want.”
“You don’t even know what I want.”
“What- what do you want? Tell me now so I can tell you that I can’t and then you can leave.”
“I want you. I want you just the way you are. All your good and all your bad—”
“That’s not what you really want,” he cuts me off. “So tell me. What do you reallywant?”
I take a deep breath, forcing air into a chest that feels like it’s been compressed with the weight of a mountain. I thought it would be easier than this. That the passion sizzling between us would just naturally flow into… well… into him making me his in all the ways I want him to. I didn’t think he’d demand that I tell him.
“I wantyou. I want you to take me to your bed and fuck me. I want all your wrath and your rage and your terrible desire, and after, when it’s spent, I want you to make love to me. I want all your tenderness and your passion.”
He drags a hand down his face, rough palm, like he’s trying to hold himself together by force. When he looks at me again, his jaw’s locked tight, eyes dark and wrecked.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for, Harley. Not really. What if I can’t be what you think you need?” His voice drops, low and dangerous. “I don’t give—I take. I’d take your first time. I’d ruin you for anyone else. I’d get so far under your skin you wouldn’t know where you end and I begin.”
He steps closer, like gravity’s pulling him in whether he wants it or not. “I wouldn’t be gentle about it, either. I’d tear you down and put you back together my way. That’s the truth. If you stayed, it wouldn’t be you offering anything—I’d be taking it. All of it.”
A bitter laugh cuts out of him. “I thought maybe I could be better for you. Take it slow. Be the guy you deserve.” He shakes his head once. “But that’s not me. I ain’t some hero. I’m dark, straight through, and that’s all I’ve got to give.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then back to my eyes. “You’re too damn good. Too clean. And if I touch you, I’ll stain you. I’ll burn up everything soft about you with all the fucked-up parts of me I can’t wash off.”
I know I’m losing him, as the seconds tick on, and it makes me frantic. My entire body goes cold, my veins flooded with ice. I feel wrung out and spent by the force of my love for him and what it’s going to do to both of us if we can’t get past this.
I know Edge. Iknowhim. I love him and there is no way that I can lose him or I might as well be as good as dead, because there is no living without him.
I barely register what I’m doing before I stalk forward. I bring my hand back and smack him.Hard. The echo of my palm striking his beautiful face fills up the bathroom. He blinks back at me, too stunned to react. My palm stings unmercifully, because his face is a hell of a lot harder than my dainty palm is. I draw back and hit him again, harder than the last time, so hard that it sends a sickening pain straight to my stomach. When I draw back a third time, his hand snakes out and closes around my wrist. He squeezes, applying enough pressure that I gasp.
“Hit me again and I’ll fuck you so hard you won’t remember your fucking name. Virgin or not, I’ll tear you apart and fill you up with my cum so that every single time you take a step for the next fucking week, it will pour out of you, reminding you just who it is that owns you. Reminding you just what you’re waking up by striking me.”
“Then let go of my hand,” I hiss. “Because obviously I need to hit you again, you fucking bastard.”
“I used to think you were like the clouds, thunder and lightning, but now I realize those clouds aren’t bringing rain. They’re bringingfire.”
A shiver ripples through his massive shoulders and a swatch of dark hair falls over his forehead when he leans in, his face only inches from mine.
“Last chance, because once I mark you as mine, there isn’t any going back.”
I arch into him, so close that when I try to bite him, I nip his bottom lip with my teeth before he pulls back, raw hunger obliterating and twisting his face. His lips curl up and histongue snakes out, tasting the place where I bit him and I know that I’ve roused the beast that I always knew was inside of him.
Desire crawls up my spine, using the bones, notch by notch to climb higher and higher, until it reaches my neck and floods my cheeks red hot. It spreads, wrapping around my chest and my heart, pooling in my lower belly and between my thighs, where a rush of wetness soaks my panties.
He pulls back and I watch his hands move. Those hands, forming signs… It’s been so long since anyone signed anything more than something basic to me that I’m so shocked I can’t react.
His hands speak to me in the most intimate of ways.
You’re mine now. You’ve always been mine. You will always be mine, and I will be yours. I love you.
Chapter Fifteen
