Under an Endless Moon: Chapter 42

Fuck, this woman was set on doing me in. Driving me out of my ever-lovin’-mind. Her hot as sin body tucked up close to my back, those bare thighs that were exposed by that godforsaken dress wrapped around the outside of mine. Tits I’d finally gotten a good taste of plastered against my back.

Could feel her dress flapping in the wind, could scent her breaths that she exhaled at my neck, could sense her arousal as she curled herself around me as my bike carried us up the mountain.

I kept my speed contained, though we were still going fast enough that the trees whisked by in green flashes as we hugged the curves.

The powerful engine a roar in our ears.

The road a blur beneath us and the sky a blaze of oranges and pinks strewn across the fading blue.

Here…here was where I found peace.

Freedom.

A feeling of completion.

The open road and this woman tacked to me on the back of my bike.

Which shouldn’t give me so much satisfaction considering she didn’t belong to me, but I was having a harder and harder time thinking of her as anything but that.

Mine.

Her arms tightened around my waist as I took an especially sharp curve, though I could feel the exhilaration roll through her body.

Raven loved it.

Being on the back of my motorcycle like she was cut from the cloth. Hewn from the metals.

I was sure it was here that she felt all of those freedoms, too. In sync with me on the open road.

I slowed when I finally approached the turn-off to my place, and I made the right onto the dirt drive. My attention remained keen, searching through the forest that grew up tight along the path, searching for any sign that the motherfucker had returned.

It was quiet. Exuding that peace, and I relaxed a bit, sure that Raven and I were alone.

We wound down the hill and back up the other side to where my cabin was tucked in the woods. The metal and glass glinted with the rays of sunlight that pierced through the tops of the trees.

Coming to a stop, I stretched my boots out to balance us as I grabbed my phone from my pocket and tapped into the app to turn off the alarm and lift the garage door. The metal rolled up, and I pulled my bike into its spot and killed the engine.

In that one passing second, silence wrapped us whole.

Dense and deep.

An awareness so thick that I could taste it on my tongue.

“Off you go, darlin’.” I went for normal. Same way as I would have talked to her a month ago, except that was fool’s thinkin’ since there wasn’t one goddamned thing that remained the same.

Raven swung off. There was no reason for me to warn her to be careful since she knew the drill. She had already removed her helmet, and she took a couple steps back, facing me, wearing those heels and that dress.

God, she was a vision.

An innocent temptress.

A dark angel.

I didn’t know.

Just knew that I couldn’t breathe when I looked at her like that. Those ink-stained eyes doing dangerous things, watching me like they knew me. Like they had me pegged.

I swung off my bike, and the second I did, Raven turned and started up the stairs.

I followed, keeping three steps back like that would offer enough distance that I wouldn’t want to reach out and touch.

Only thing it accomplished was every time she stepped up, the skirt of her dress would shift and give me the barest glimpse of the perfect round globes of her ass.

Lust clutched me in a vise. Took everything I had not to stretch out a traitorous hand and glide my palm up the outside of her thigh so I could take a good fistful of that ripe, juicy bottom like I’d done at her shop.

Maybe sink my teeth straight into the flesh.

A quiver rocked through her like she had a tap to my brain, and she inhaled an unsteady breath as she pushed open the door into the house. I stalled out at the doorway, watching her stride into my place like she belonged there.

Like she’d become a permanent fixture.

A painting inscribed on the walls.

So stunning it was hard to look at her without dropping to my knees.

The problem was it went so much deeper than the physical. So much deeper than the need that barreled through me on a rampage of greed so severe I didn’t know how I remained standing.

This woman who deserved every fucking thing the world had to offer.

A normal life.

A three-bedroom house with a white-picket fence.

Some dude who would check in to work at eight in the morning and be home by five-thirty in the evening.

Loyal.

Kind.

One who didn’t kill and maim.

She needed out of this life. To stretch those wings and let them carry her someplace safe.

Raven waltzed into the kitchen, light on those heels, hips swishing from side to side in a spellbinding sway.

The woman nothing but a snare.

A hook directly in my soul.

She pulled open the refrigerator and pulled out the half empty bottle of pinot she’d drank last night. She reached into the cabinet beside it and grabbed two glasses, and she waved one in my direction. “You want?”

Fuck, yes, I wanted.

“Why not?”

She poured us each a glass, and I carefully edged her way, feeling like I was making my way through a field of landmines. Unsure of which step was going to cause the blast that would completely annihilate.

Do us in.

Implode the very shaky ground we were walking on.

“Here you go.” Raven passed me a glass, and she tipped those gorgeous eyes up to me.

“Thank you,” I told her, voice rougher than it should be. Standing too close to her as I lifted my glass so I could clink it against hers.

“What are we toasting?” she asked.

“That you’re here. That you’re safe.”

“I think what we should really be celebrating is that you’re still standing.”

“Of course, I’m still standing, darlin’. It’s going to take a whole lot more to take me down than some candy-ass fucker who goes runnin’ scared. Tossing out threats like the night is going to keep him concealed. Going to end him. Make sure he is no longer a threat to you.”

I just laid it out. It wasn’t like she wasn’t fully aware of what was coming for the bastard.

“I never believed for a second that you would let anyone get to me.”

“I won’t. I promise you I won’t let anyone get to you. Promise I’ll stand in the fire.”

She took a sip of her wine, never breaking our stare. “That’s what I want, Otto. I want you to stand in the fire with me.”

A charge struck the air.

A crackle of greed.

Electricity.

Hunger curled through my guts.

I took a sip of the wine, the tart but fruity flavor on my tongue, my gaze glued to hers before I set the glass aside. I reached out and ran my fingertips down the sharp angle of her cheek, overcome with the urge to touch her.

“Thought we discussed that we were going to forget about what happened last night and this morning?”

Raven leaned into the bare connection, her voice going raspy. “You know that I can’t, even if I wanted to. And you’d be a liar if you said you didn’t want it, too.”

Keen eyes flashed with the challenge.

“What fuckin’ man wouldn’t want you, Raven? What man wouldn’t want to get lost in this fuckin’ perfect body? Wouldn’t want to get lost in these eyes?”

My fingers brushed the corner of her right eye before I moved to settle my hand over the raging in her chest. “Who wouldn’t want to get lost in this kind, magnificent, brave heart?”

She tipped up her chin. “I don’t want any of those men.”

“Fuck, Raven.” It was a last-ditch effort that only served as a call.

“Tell me you don’t want me,” she demanded.

I had her hoisted in my arms and propped on the island before I could even make sense of the movement.

A knee-jerk reaction.

My hips wound between her lush legs, my jean-covered cock pressed up close to her mind-numbing heat.

Raven gasped, and her glass clinked against the granite as she set it aside. One second later, her arms were around my neck, holding on but leaning back far enough that she could read every desire scored on my face.

“I’m not what you need, Raven.” It fucking hurt saying it. Thinking of some squirrely motherfucker’s hands on her. Sharing meals with her. Curling up with her at night. Putting a baby in her belly. Lucky bastard getting to live in this tight, hot body.

“I know exactly what I need,” she refuted.

My hands glided down her sides until they were cinching around her waist. Half in possession and half in restraint.

Leaning in, I ran my nose along the delicate flesh of her neck, inhaling that intoxicating moonflower scent. Voice a rumble of reticence. “Don’t you see? I’m no good. No fuckin’ good. I can’t be the one to hurt you. I can’t.”

The words cracked on my desperation. With the plea for her to see.

I rocked back in surprise when her hands suddenly shoved against my shoulders.

Girl a flame.

A fire.

She slid off the edge of the counter and onto her feet. Appearing so damned tall, a force of nature, spite and determination in her stance.

She shoved me again.

“Don’t you dare tell me what I need, Otto Hudson. Don’t you dare. And don’t you dare try to convince me that you’re not a good man because that’s a lie, too.”

Clenching my jaw, I forced myself to move across the kitchen from her. Searching for a way to put an eternity between us all while wanting to erase every inch that could ever separate.

“I’m not. The things I’ve done…” A warning lined the words.

Disbelief shook her head. “Do you think I don’t know the things you’ve done? Do you think I don’t understand this life? Do you think I don’t understand the cost? Do you think I don’t see that you’re scarred and carry the burden of setting people free? Do you think I don’t know that always comes with a price?”

She took another step toward me as she said it, the woman a riot of emotion. Anger and hope and belief.

Every single one of those things were directed at me.

But she didn’t know. She didn’t know everything.

I had to wonder right then if it would even matter, though. If it would change a thing. If it would dim the light in those magic eyes.

“I’m finished pretending, Otto. I’m finished pretending about the way I feel about you. This either begins tonight or it ends tonight.”

She jammed a pointed finger toward the floor.

Alarm churned through my being. “What are you saying, Raven?”

“I’m saying I’m finished tiptoeing. I’m finished shuttering. I’m finished keeping this inside.”

She took another step toward me.

Intensity thrashed.

The woman an earthquake.

“Raven.” Her name murmured out of me while urgency battered my chest. Ribs stretching so tight around the fullness I thought I would blow.

Come apart.

“I might be inexperienced, Otto. I might have been wounded so deep that I’ve been terrified of letting anyone get close to me, but you are the only one who’s ever been able to do it. The only one I’ve wanted right next to me.”

Her entire body angled toward me as she whispered, “I love you, Otto.”

She touched her chest right over that beautiful heart as she took another step forward.

“I love you so much, and I have my entire life. And it’s not infatuation or hero worship or bred of this trauma. It is what my heart knows. It’s my truth. And if it’s not yours, then I’ll accept it. I’ll walk away and I’ll never look back. But the one thing I’m asking right now is for you not to lie to me. Don’t be a coward and give me some camouflaged truth. Tell me what you feel when you look at me.”

She gazed up at me with that boldness that was underscored in all her vulnerability.

Bared.

Chin lifted and those eyes weeping with her petition.

This?

This I couldn’t resist.

I couldn’t form a lie that great. So I let the truth ride free.

“You want to know how I feel, Raven? You want to know if my heart fuckin’ bleeds every time I look at you? You want to know if I toss at night thinking about holding you in my arms?”

My brow pinched in emphasis. “You are the first thought I have when I open my eyes in the morning and the last one before I go to sleep. You are the thunder in my veins and the chaos in my spirit. You are everything I want and the one thing I’m not supposed to have.”

I took a single step toward her, voice going gruff. “What I feel for you is endless, Raven Tayte. So, you want me to tell you exactly what that means?”

My hand fisted against the center of my chest. “It means I’m so fuckin’ in love with you, so fuckin’ gone for you, that there’s no chance my world could spin right without you in it. So fuckin’ in love with you that I feel like I’m ripping apart every time I look at you. You are my heart, and that’s the truth.”

Moisture blurred her eyes, and her delicate throat bobbed as she swallowed, and there was absolutely nothing I could do.

No restraint left.

No barrier high or wide enough that could hold me back.

I stormed across the space separating us, and one second later, I had my girl in my arms.