Page 28 of My Veteran Biker

"Come with me," he says. "Want to feel you come while I'm filling you up."

His thumb presses hard on my clit and that's all it takes. I come undone again, clenching around him, and he drives in deep one last time and holds there.

I feel him pulse inside me, feel the warmth of his release flooding me, and something about the raw intimacy of it makes my throat tight.

We stay locked together for a long moment, both of us gasping for air. When he finally pulls out I feel empty, incomplete, like part of me is missing.

He rolls onto his side and pulls me against him. I can feel his heart pounding against my back, feel the sweat cooling on both our bodies.

"That wound definitely needs new gauze," I say.

He laughs. It's rough and surprised, like he forgot that was an option.

"Probably," he says.

We lie there in comfortable silence. Outside I can hear someone mowing their lawn, a dog barking, normal Saturday morning sounds. Inside this room everything has changed.

"I love you," Knox says.

The words land quiet but certain. I turn in his arms so I can see his face. He's not looking at me, staring at the ceiling instead like he's said something embarrassing.

"I loved you at thirty," he continues. "And I love you now at forty-seven. I don't know how to do this. Don't know how to balance the club and you and all the ways those things might conflict. But I want to try."

"I love you too," I say.

His eyes cut to mine. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I loved you then and I never stopped. I just learned how to live with it. But I don't want to live with it anymore. I want to live in it."

"That's the same thing."

"No it's not. Living with something means tolerating its presence. Living in it means letting it be the thing everything else is built around."

He kisses me softly, like I'm something precious.

"Come to the clubhouse tonight," he says. "Let me claim you. Make it official."

My stomach clenches. "What does that mean?"

"Means you're mine and everyone knows it. Means if anyone comes for you, they're coming for all of us. Means you're family."

"That's a lot."

"I know. But I'm all in, Francis. If you want me, you're getting all of it. The club, the danger, the family. I can't separate those things. They're what I am."

I think about that. About choosing him means choosing all of it. About how that's exactly what I ran from at twenty-three and exactly what I'm running toward now at forty.

"Okay," I say.

"Okay?"

"I'll come tonight. But if anyone gives me shit about being too old or too fat or anything else, I'm leaving."

"No one's going to give you shit."

"You don't know that."

"I do. Because if they did, they'd answer to me."