It is surreal. Seeing them there. Watching their connection as their lives suddenly took on a new meaning, solidify my thoughts that Sadie was meant to be in my life. I never believed in fate or any mystical shit like that, but she was part of this world from the very beginning of her life. She’s meant to be here—it’s in her blood, and I’m meant to make her mine. I certainly have no intention of her being anyone else’s.

JJ is a different man around her, much like he is with Lia. Under that tough exterior, he has so much love for these women, but along with that comes responsibility. He’s warned me of it previously. That protective urge that colors everything else around you and can lead to really fucking bad judgment. It makes a man vulnerable. But when you keep your heart encased in steel, how does it have any meaning? Day to day. Guns. Violence. Death. What’s it all for.

“I’m going to take Sadie to my place.” I drape my arm over her shoulders and pull her in close. “Check in if there’s any news, yeah?”

JJ nods then smiles down at Sadie. “Okay.”

Sadie looks between JJ and me, then breaks from my hold, wrapping her arms tightly around JJ’s waist and hugging him close.

He rests his chin on her head and sighs contently. “It’s a new start, Princess.”

Lia comes to his side and joins in the hug, too. “You getting in here, Ramsey?” she asks, laughing.

“I’m good.” I roll my eyes. This is getting a little too weird. I mean, I like it. It feels…like family. But I don’t know what to do with a family like this. A mom, a dad. Even though JJ has always been like a father figure to me, is my relationship with Sadie going to change things?

“Okay, we had better go.” Sadie gives Lia a girlie hug and tiptoes up to kiss JJ on the cheek. It almost melts the big man, and stabs me right in the heart, too.

“Okay,” he booms, clearing his throat. “You kids be careful. Ram, drive safe.” He glares hard at me.

I look at him in warning. If he’s gonna start this shit, we’re gonna fucking fall out. “Same as usual,” I tell him. “You taking Ruck’s wires out today, Lia?”

“Yes, he’s doing much better. Will you stop in and see him later?”

“No.” I shake my head. “When I saw him this morning he was grumpy as fuck. I ain’t bothering until he drops the fucking attitude.”

“Ramsey,” Lia scolds, frowning. “He’s been through a lot the last couple of days.”

“Yeah? We all have. You don’t see me bitchin’ at him, do you?” As the words leave my mouth, I feel like a total cunt. I know he’s had a fucking rough time, and in some ways, it’s been worse for him than it has for Dev. Dev’s still drugged up to his eyeballs and unaware of all the shit going down around him. Ruck is aware of everything now that the crank has left his system, and that’s gonna be enough to twist him up inside. But the lack of sleep and the extra worry has made me fucking irritable, and I just want some quiet time with my girl, in my own fucking house without someone mentioning Wolves, guns, deals, or whores. “Just…” I sigh. “Look, if he wants to come to the house, tell Tex to bring him out. But he didn’t want me there this morning, Lia, and he won’t want me there later, either.”

“He’ll come around.” JJ puts his arm around Lia, which is his way of backing her up, but telling her to drop it.

“Yeah, well, I’m only going home overnight. Tomorrow, we’re back to business, and back to normal.”

As we ride slowly up the dirt track, I feel Sadie lift her head from between my shoulders. She’s held on to me so tightly along the way, unable to relax for the first half of the ride, but settling into it eventually and resting against me. My place was only a half-hour away. I didn’t want something that took me hours to drive to, but I wanted somewhere out of the city. Somewhere that was mine, away from everything and everyone. Something normal.

I park the bike outside the garage and step off. Sadie removes her helmet, places it on the seat, and shakes her hair out. “I still don’t get why I have to wear one when you don’t,” she grumbles, and I pull her into my arms.

“Because I said so.” With her head already thrown back, I kiss her neck, swirling my tongue against her creamy, soft skin.

“Are you trying to distract me?” She laughs, pushing at my shoulders.

“Is it working?”

“Yes.” She giggles.

I graze my teeth against the curve of her neck and she groans. “This place is all yours?” she asks breathlessly.

“You wanna talk about my house?” I pull back to look at her but keep her firmly in my arms. “You want me to tell you that there’s a wrap-around porch, a country kitchen, an old piano in the lounge, and a four poster bed?” I laugh.

She looks up at me with a soft expression as I hold her in my arms. “No, I don’t need to know any of those things, I just wanted you to tell me that there’s no one else here, but now I know…” She smirks, and her eyes blaze as she comes closer, her lips almost against mine. “I like the idea of being fucked on the porch, in the kitchen, on top of the piano, and then maybe we can end up in your four poster bed.”

I just died and went to heaven.

I grab her thighs and lift her, parting her legs to wrap around my waist as she holds on tightly with her arms around my neck. “You wanna be fucked on the porch?” I growl, walking us backward while kissing her lips.

“You fucked anyone else on the porch?” she asks, and I still.

“No.” I frown. I don’t bring anyone here. No women, no parties, no club business. This is my place. My sanctuary—where I come when I need to breathe.

“Then, yes, I want you to fuck me on the porch, and anywhere else no one has ever been.”

Well, fuck me dead…This woman is really gonna kill me.

“Raven.” I stop to look into her eyes, seeing desire and pure honesty. “From the beginning, you went where no one has ever been, and I don’t just mean in my house.”

“We’re real,” she whispers, her gaze dropping to my lips.

“I don’t know how, or why, but yeah.” I smirk. “We’re real.”

She sees me. She sees the man underneath the cut: no guns, no bravado, no status. I’m stripped bare under her burning gaze, and I could easily say to hell with the rest of the world when I look into her eyes, and I’m sucked into her unspoken promises and unwavering trust.

“For the next twelve hours,” I whisper into her ear. “I’m going to fuck you every which way, on every surface. You won’t know whether to plead with me to stop, or beg me to fuck you some more.”

Sadie’s pupils dilate, and her breath shudders through her chest as she tries to control her reaction to me. She’s not a girl that likes to lose control, and that’s one thing I really love about her. She’s not like any other woman I’ve ever met. She’s fierce but vulnerable. Kind, but oh so bad.

She tugs at my t-shirt as I walk us up the front steps to the house, stopping one from the top and setting her on her feet so she’s at eye level with me. As soon as she touches down on the top step, she yanks my t-shirt off and tosses it aside, before ripping open the fly on my jeans and sliding her hand in between the suffocating denim and my hot, hard cock.  I thrust into her hand and work the buttons loose on her jeans, too, pushing them down over her hips as she wiggles to speed up the process.

I walk her backward until she bumps against the doorframe and I know I’m not going to be able to wait until we get through the door. We tear at each other’s clothes like wild animals, while we take each other’s mouths with moans and gasps that silence everything else around us.

“I could listen to you moan for me all day long, Raven.”

“Then make me moan, Ramsey.” She narrows her eyes seductively, her gaze boring into me in silent expectation. “Make me scream. All. Night. Long.” She punctuates her words and licks her pouting lips, pushing every ounce of my carnal desire for this woman to breaking point.

I push my jeans over my hips, lifting her up to wrap her legs around my waist and slam her back against the wooden frame, making her breath rush from her chest in a whoosh. For the first time ever, I take just a split second to check that she’s okay. For any indication that I’m being too rough with her or that she might not be able to take it. I don’t want to treat her like a fragile bird, but nothing about me is gentle, and I won’t pretend to be something I’m not. I want her to want my kind of passion—to desire me the way I desire her. But I won’t hurt her. Luckily, there’s not a hint of regret or unease in her face. In fact, my desire for her brings out a wild woman that I hadn’t seen before now, nor had I expected.

She kisses my neck, biting at my skin, sending pleasure and pain—almost to overload—to every one of my senses. Her hips grind against me, and I push up, needing to be as deep inside her as I can get. As the tip of my cock makes contact with her wet pussy, I thrust up into her, pushing a cry of pleasure from her body. She arches her back as I move inside her, and with her hands clasped around my neck, she watches me intently, her eyes never leaving mine as I drive up into her over and over.

The cool breeze outside blows across the sweat collecting between my shoulder blades, and sweeps her hair from her face, revealing flushed cheeks and a blush that spreads across her chest. Her nipples harden, and she gasps as I reach a sweet spot, pushing her head back against the wooden frame and closing her eyes as her breaths start to heave unevenly in her chest.

The familiar tingle starts to move through the hollow of my spine, and I know I’m not going to last. So I slow my movements, wanting to stay like this forever, but knowing that this is just the beginning. As I slow down, I circle my hips, stroking every part of her inside, and she loses any composure she might have had before. She plunges her hands into her hair, tugging at the raven tresses and squeezing her eyes shut as the intensity of our connection becomes too much for her to resist.

I hold on to her hips and draw back, pounding into her with a slap of skin and a gasp of pleasure. “You gonna come for me, Raven?” I rasp.

Her eyes snap open, and she crushes her mouth to mine, seeking out my tongue and taking my breath as her own. “Don’t stop,” she pants against my lips. She presses her cheek against mine—her hot breathy moans drain my ability to hold back, and she moves her hips in time with mine, pushing us both past the point of return.

I close my eyes, drowning in the sensation of her pulsing around my cock, absorbed in the addictive sound of her moans of pleasure, and realize that I might have just done something I didn’t know I was capable of…

Fuck.

I’ve fallen in love with her.

From the second I set eyes on her, I wanted to unlock her heart. I wanted everything about her to be mine. But in doing this, she’s unbound my soul and made me belong to her.

“Are you okay?” she asks, stroking my hair as I rest my head in the curve of her shoulder, only just holding us up on shaky legs. I nod gently, reluctant to lift my gaze to hers and show her just how vulnerable I am. Just how vulnerable she makes me.

But then I realize, that although we’re up a half-mile dirt track and there’s no one overlooking us, I have her out here, virtually naked and well-fucked on my porch. You don’t get more vulnerable than that.

“You’re too good for a man like me,” I say, raising my head and looking her in the eyes.

She unlocks her legs from around my waist and lowers herself carefully until her feet are on the wooden deck. Taking my face in her hands, she demands my attention. “I will slap you so fucking hard if I ever hear you say that again, do you hear me?”

I settle my hands on her hips and lower my lips to hers.

The words are right there. Three little words. Scary as fuck words.

Looking into her eyes, I’ve never been more sure of anything. It’s been a crazy whirlwind couple of weeks, full of the biggest highs and the lowest of lows. But the one constant in all of it has been Sadie and my feelings for her. “Get your ass in the house,” I growl. “I haven’t finished with you yet.”

 “How did you meet JJ?” Sadie asks. She lies in the crook of my arm, brushing her thumb gently back and forth over my chest. We made it through the door, into the shower, and as promised we’re now resting in my four-poster bed.

“You really want to talk about how I met your dad when we’re lying naked in bed, just gearing up for round four?” I wince as soon as the words come from my mouth. Maybe it’s too early to be calling him her dad, I mean, she only just found out.

“Round four?” she shrieks, jerking up on her elbow and spinning to look at me with wide eyes and an even wider smile.

“I told you. All night long, baby.” I laugh. “All night long.”

She kisses me hard, then raises her brows. “Well…”

“Well what?”

“How did you meet JJ?” she asks.

I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, and stroke her cheek with my thumb before lying back with my hands behind my head. “We’d lived on the streets for a while. It was cold, dangerous, and not safe for two young boys to be sleeping in doorways and on park benches.” I stare up at the ceiling, avoiding the pity in Sadie’s eyes and recalling it all: the anxiety I would start to feel as nightfall closed in, and the fear that we wouldn’t get through the night alive. “It was pretty fucking horrible.”

“How long did you live on the streets? How did you survive?”

“I think it was about five months. Felt like the longest five months of our lives. You think it would get easier each night, but it didn’t. I was grateful to come through each night unscathed, lucky that we were still alive. But each night that passed, I wondered if the next night our luck would run out. I learned to be hyperaware of our surroundings and tuned in to any little noise around me. It was survival because we had to.”

“Why? Where were your parents? Did they…die?”

I huff out a bitter laugh. “Probably. And if they’re dead, I couldn’t give a fuck. They were shitty parents, and we were better off on the street.”

“Ramsey, that’s awful.” She cradles my cheek gently in her hand and turns my face toward her. “I’m sorry.”

I shrug. “It’s all in the past, Raven. Made me stronger and more determined.”

“And what about Ruck?”

“Ruck,” I say under my breath. “He was only fourteen when we left. It was hard on him.”

“It was hard on both of you.” She runs her fingers through my hair slowly.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You don’t have to pretend with me, Ram. I see you.” Her hand stills as she holds my gaze.

“I know you do. I don’t know how it happened, but somehow, in a weird, warped way, Donny Carden brought you home.”

She nods solemnly but doesn’t linger on that thought for long. “So, my da—” she stops herself with a frown. “JJ. How did you meet him?”

“I tried to steal his bike.” I laugh.

“You what?”

“I know. Lucky he didn’t chop my fucking hands off, right?” I chuckle, recalling the look on his face.

“I’d say.” She laughs.

 “I didn’t know much about bikes, but I knew that I had to find some way to eat that night. Maybe even to get some cash to put us up in a motel for a few nights. It was October, and it was starting to get fucking cold. But he came back before I could even get the wiring out to try and start the fucking thing.”

“What did he do?”

“He grabbed me by the ears and threatened to pull them off. I thought he was fucking serious—maybe he was. But while he was yelling at me, I could see him looking me up and down, taking in my appearance. My worn out dirty clothes, my hair that was far too long, and my shoes that were full of holes and barely covering my feet. I remember him letting me go and asking where I lived. I refused to answer him, but Ruck came out from behind the trash can he was trying to hide behind and showed him exactly where we had been living. A park bench.”

“Oh, Ram.” Her whole body sags as she looks at me the same way he did that day.

“He told us to get in the back of his friend’s truck. Said we could stay in the trailer that he had parked in the yard for a few days. We jumped in the back of that truck so fast, without even a second thought. Stupid really, he could have done anything to us, but we were so desperate.”

“So he took you to HQ?”

“Nope. He took me to his home. Didn’t know what to make of it all, we were so overwhelmed by the apparent kindness of a stranger, and it was far more than we were ever shown at home. I remember walking through his front door. Ruck stood behind me in the doorway, and JJ pushed the door wide open and called for Lia. As she came out to him, he scooped her low in his arms and kissed her before she could ask who we were and what we were doing there. We’d never seen love like that before, and I remember turning away, feeling like it was something we shouldn’t be watching. But he pulled her upright, whispered in her ear, and she set about making us feel at home. I remember that first shower. Sweet baby Jesus, that warm, clean water was like a million drops from heaven.”

“He saw something in you,” Sadie says softly.

“I don’t know what he saw, Raven. But after that day, we never left. JJ and Lia provided everything we would ever need. Clean clothes, food in our bellies, and a family. A fucking family, Raven. I’d never had that before.” I find myself slipping into memories, recalling the feeling of finding somewhere not only where I felt I belonged, but somewhere that I was truly a part of. Where people actually cared for Ruck and me, and wanted us around.

“I’m glad he saved you.” She nestles her head into my chest, and I wrap my arms around her.

“He’s a good man, Sadie. None of us are saints. We’ve all done some bad shit. But deep down, he’s a good man.”

“He is. If only I were a good girl.” She sighs.

“What do you mean?”

“All the stuff I’ve done. Donny Carden…”

“Hey, you listen to me. You were surviving the best way you knew how. You acted on passion and drive and—”

“Revenge,” she states, turning her head to look up at me.

“Revenge is an act of passion, Raven. But you know what?”

“What?”

“Sometimes the best revenge is to smile and move on.”

I pull her in tighter as she mulls over my words. If I lived by my own advice, I would surely be less troubled, less consumed by hatred and the need for retribution every time someone acted against me. But I hate to see revenge taint her heart. She’s capable of being so much more than that.

“Anyway,” I say, feeling the need to lighten the mood. “If you were a good girl, I’d make it my mission to make you bad. But you’re already there of your own accord and fuck if that doesn’t make me rock hard.” I flip her onto her back, pinning her to the mattress.

Women have come and gone from my life. Women like Kimmie. They think they’re bad. They think they have what it takes to survive as an old lady. But they haven’t got a fucking clue. Sadie has it all, and she doesn’t even know it. “Now, open your legs, Raven. You’ve made me hard for you.” I push my cock against her entrance. “I hope you’re ready for round four.”