I should give her a version that doesn’t include the words “my Old Lady” or the fact that I shot two men in the legs and pressed a gun between Deacon’s eyes.
I don’t lie.
“I told them you’re mine.”
Her chin lifts. I expect a fight. For her to tell me she’s not my property. But she doesn’t give me the fight I’m expecting.
She gives me something I’m not prepared for.
She closes the distance. One step, then another, until her bare feet are between my boots and her chin is tipped all the way back to hold my eyes.
“Did you mean it?” Her voice is low, stripped down. No challenge in it. No accusation. A question she needs the answer to before she can take her next breath. “That I’m yours.”
The smart play is to tell her I said it to keep her safe. That “Old Lady” is a title, a shield, a word that keeps Crimson Warriors from putting a bullet in her. That it doesn’t have to mean what it sounds like.
But that’s a lie. And I’m not going to lie to her.
“I meant it.”
Her hands come up. Both of them. Fingers curling into the front of my cut, knuckles pressing hard against my chest. She pulls herself up on her toes and drags my mouth down to hers.
The kiss hits like a detonation.
Her lips are soft, and she kisses me like she’s been needing me for weeks. And now that she’s let go, she’s not interested in being careful about it.
Her mouth opens against mine, and I’m done. Every wall I built, every inch of distance I put between us, every night I stood in her doorway and kept my boots on the other side of the threshold—gone. Burned down in the time it takes her tongue to slide against mine.
My hands find her waist. I lift her onto the counter, and she wraps her legs around me, heels digging into the backs of my thighs, pulling me in. I fist her hair and tilt her head back, and the sound she makes against my mouth is one that I won’t forget.
I kiss her like I’ve been starving. Because I have. Weeks of wanting her, lusting after her, and now she’s in my hands, and she’s real.
And she’s mine. Not because I told Deacon. Because she’s telling me.
Her fingers rake up the back of my neck and into my hair, and she bites my bottom lip hard enough to sting. I press her back against the cabinet, one hand flat on the counter beside her hip, the other tangled in her hair, and we’re not gentle.
This isn’t soft. This is weeks of want crashing, and neither of us is pretending anymore.
I pull back. Not far. An inch. My forehead against hers, both of us breathing hard, her fingers still twisted in my hair.
Her lips are swollen. A flush crawls up her neck and across her cheeks.
She smiles. And it’s not the almost-smile that I’ve seen from her a dozen times. It’s a real, full, devastating thing that takes apart everything I thought I knew about what I could afford to want.
“I like that I’m yours,” she tells me.
Five words. My undoing.
She lets go of my hair. Slides off the counter. Picks up the fork.
She takes a bite of the eggs, chews, and looks up at me like she didn’t just change my entire goddamn life.
CHAPTER 7
SHELBY
The yelling wakes me up.It’s the middle of the night. Or maybe it’s morning, but the sun still hasn’t come up.
The voice is male and angry. There are words I can’t make out from up here, but the cadence is unmistakable.