Page 23 of Diesel’s Desire

I grip her hips and drive back into her from behind, and the sound she makes is somewhere between a moan and a laugh, breathless and delighted, like she forgot how good this could be. I set a punishing rhythm, one hand fisting in her hair, the other splayed against the small of her back, and she meets every thrust, pushing back into me like she can’t get enough.

“Seventeen years,” I grind out, “and you still fit me exactly right.”

“Shut up and keep going.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I let a laugh slip out, breathless, and she echoes it, and for a second, even buried inside her, moving hard enough to shake the whole couch, it’s the easiest thing in the world between us. No badge. No cut. Just two people who never should’ve spent this long apart.

I feel her getting close again, feel it in the way her spine bows, the way her breathing turns ragged, and I slow just enough to draw it out, dragging every second of it until she’s begging, actually begging, my name and please tangled together in a way I’m going to remember for the rest of my life.

“Evan, please, I’m so close⁠—”

“I know.” I press deeper, slower now, deliberate. “Want to feel you go first.”

She does. Hard enough that her whole body locks up around me, and the sound she makes when it finally breaks is enough to break what little control I have left.

I follow her over a few strokes later, buried deep, her name breaking out of me rough and unguarded, nothing like the VP who expects a room to quiet when he speaks. Just Evan. Just the eighteen-year-old kid who never stopped wanting this exact woman, finally getting what he should’ve fought harder for the first time.

We collapse together onto the couch cushions after, tangled up, her back against my chest, both of us breathing hard enough that talking feels like too much effort. Thunder’s given up on watching us entirely, gone quiet in his corner, one ear still twitching every few seconds like he’s keeping tabs anyway.

I press my lips against her shoulder, feel her shiver under the touch, and something settles in my chest that hasn’t been quiet in seventeen years.

“Stay,” she says, quiet, almost like she’s testing whether the word’s allowed out loud.

“Wasn’t planning on going anywhere.”

She turns in my arms to face me. In the lamplight, her expression softens, and she reaches up to brush her fingers along my jaw. I turn my face into her hand. We still have a lot to say. For once, I’m not dreading it.

14

PENNY

Sunlight comes through the blinds in thin gold bars, cutting across the comforter, and for a few seconds I don’t remember why my body feels this loose, this warm, this thoroughly wrung out.

Then I turn my head, and there’s a man in my bed.

Not just any man. Evan Cole, flat on his back, one arm flung over his eyes like the light’s personally offended him, the sheet pooled low around his hips. Ink covers most of his chest and both arms, dark shapes I can’t fully make sense of yet, flames curling into something that might be a skull, a name I don’t recognize tucked along his ribs where an old scar cuts a pale line through the color. His chest rises and falls, slow, even, a man sleeping like he’s got nowhere else in the world to be.

We had sex on my couch. Then we had sex in this bed. Twice. Maybe three times, though somewhere around round two my brain stopped keeping accurate count and started operating purely on sensation, which is not a state I generally allow myself to be in, ever, for any reason.

I lie there another few seconds just looking at him, and something in my chest goes soft before I can stop it. He looks younger like this. Unguarded. All that intensity switched off for once, no calculation behind those eyes because they’re closed, no reputation to hold up, just a man asleep in my bed with his mouth slightly open and one bare foot hanging off the edge of the mattress.

Then he stirs, and I remember what morning means.

He blinks awake slowly, stretches one arm over his head until something in his shoulder pops, and when his eyes land on me, his whole face changes. Not dramatic. Just a shift, corner of his mouth curving up, and something settles into his expression that looks a lot like satisfaction.

“Morning,” he says, voice rough with sleep.

That single word does it. Last night is over. I have to go back to work knowing he was here.

I sit up so fast the room tilts, one hand already fisting the sheet against my chest like I could somehow hide what we did. Evan Cole is in my bed. Diesel, Vice President of Wicked Sinners Motorcycle Club, whose club keeps coming up in the files on my desk, is in my bed, and I let him stay the whole night, let him inside me, and I did it more than once, and none of that is going to look good written down anywhere, ever, by anyone.

“You need to go,” I say.

He props himself up on one elbow, studying me with an expression that’s entirely too calm for the situation. “Good morning to you too.”

“I’m serious, Evan. You need to leave. Now.”

“A little late for that,” he says, and there’s no bite to it, just something dry and amused, like he already knows exactly what’s happening in my head and finds it more entertaining than alarming. “Kind of hard to play coy about it after last night, sweetheart. You weren’t exactly subtle.”