Page 50 of Property of the Bikers

“Damn right.” He thrusts deeper, still careful of my belly but relentless. “This pussy belongs to me. This body belongs to me. No more outside systems. No more institutions Viktor can buy. You’re caged here for safety, and I’m the one who decides when that cage opens. This cunt is club property, and I’m marking it tonight.”

His words push me over again. I come hard around his cock, clenching tight while pleasure crashes through me. Cade curses low and keeps fucking me through it, deep, possessive strokes that claim every inch.

He buries himself to the hilt one final time and comes with a guttural groan, pulsing hot and deep inside me. His arm tightens under my breasts, and his hand presses firmer over my belly as he fills me.

We stay locked together, breathing hard. His cock still twitches inside me. His hand never leaves my belly.

My voice comes out quiet in the dark. “This is real, isn’t it?”

“Always was,” he says, direct and brief. “Didn’t want to drag you into this world five years ago, but you’re in it now. Not letting you go.”

Morning light eventually creeps through the window. Cade is still there, his body wrapped around mine, one hand still resting possessively over the swell of my belly. He hasn’t moved. He hasn’t softened.

I stare at the ceiling and accept the weight of it. I’m contained now. No external access. No system contact unless the club vets every single person involved. Every institution is off limits unless Reeve clears it first. This is the cage they built to keep the ambulance away.

The alternative was Monday morning in the back of that transport, heading somewhere I would never return from.

I lie there in Cade’s arms and feel the permanence settle in. He stays because this body is his jurisdiction now. Not because of tenderness. Because he claimed the ground, and he’s not letting anyone else touch it.

It’s done.

Chapter Twenty-Three

JAX

I see it happen at breakfast.

Cade is at the far end of the long table with a coffee and a plate he’s mostly ignoring, going through something on his phone.

Mira is beside him, and close enough that when he reaches past her for the salt, his forearm brushes her shoulder, and he doesn’t move it away.

He doesn’t move it away.

It stays there for maybe four seconds while he shakes salt onto his eggs, and she doesn’t shift or lean away or do anything that suggests the contact registered as something she needed to respond to. She just keeps eating, and he keeps reading on his phone.

I look at my coffee.

I’m across the room at the counter with Hayes and Priest, and Hayes is saying something about the supply chain restoration timeline that I should be tracking, but I catch about half of it because the other half of my attention is on a forearm resting against a shoulder at the far end of a table.

I put my coffee down, and I pick it up again, and I listen to Hayes finish his point.

I’ve been in this club for seven years. I know what it means when Cade doesn’t move his arm. Cade is the most deliberate man I’ve ever met. He doesn’t do things accidentally.

He doesn’t rest his forearm against a woman’s shoulder for four seconds while he salts his eggs unless the four seconds are a statement, and the statement is not for her because she already knows. The statement is for the room.

The room got the message.

Briggs, two seats down from Cade, glances at the forearm and then at his plate. Holloway, across the table, looks at the contact, then at Cade’s face, then back at his coffee, with the expression of a man filing something he’ll think about later.

The prospect at the end of the serving line, Walsh, looks at it too long and then looks away when Ghost passes behind him.

The president’s forearm is on the woman’s shoulder.

Reeve appears beside me. He pours coffee into the mug he’s carrying and stands at the counter next to me and looks at the far end of the table the way I was looking at it.

“You’ve been staring at that forearm for too long,” he says.

“I’ve been listening to Hayes talk about supply chain restoration.”