Page 41 of Perdition (Unchained Hearts #4)

TWENTY-FIVE

The ride from Cool Hands to their house was silent of voices but loud with unspoken words and pounding heart beats. The distant rumble of an incoming storm sounded, and the scent of the impending rain filled the air.

Her heart, owned by Mads, was beating a mile a minute, desperate to feed a body long starved of his touch.

Starved. Aching. So freaking desperate.

Her bare legs under the short skirt were hot, and the material of the seat beneath her and the skirt brushing against it, teased her.

As if sensing her body was going haywire, Mads placed his hand on her knee. She tensed for a fraction of a second before muscle memory kicked in.

She missed that hand, that touch, the man who was the only one who ever made her feel an ounce of arousal.

And she was turned on as hell, her pussy had been weeping since she’d caught sight of him across the bar, standing there in all his delicious biker president glory, with a presence that just oozed masculine power.

At six-foot-three, stacked with lean muscle, inked on his muscular arms, and dressed in a tight black Henley that hugged each defined inch of his chest and abs, jeans that wrapped around his thick thighs and were worn a little at the knees and on his back pocket, and scuffed black shit kickers completed the biker badass look that she could admit she’d taken for granted over the years.

Her man was a beautiful beast…and he was sitting next to her, driving her home, and she was seriously considering burying her head in the sand for the night so he would bury his face between her legs.

Em hadn’t been inside Frost’s truck in over a year, not since they’d made love inside it after the Fourth of July party last year. They’d both been drinking, the twins had driven themselves home, and Em and Frost were feeling all sorts of naughty patriotic.

They’d barely made it back to his ‘57 Chevy before he’d taken her mouth in a devouring kiss, opened the passenger door, threw her across the bench seat, then spent the next twenty minutes eating her out.

Once she’d come in his mouth, he’d fucked her so hard, she had an imprint of a belt buckle in her back for two days.

Not that she’d minded, but when he took her from behind the morning after, he’d been so proud at those marks, he’d determined to give her five orgasms, wringing her out until she was a blob of sexual satisfaction.

Right now, in that same truck, those memories struck hard.

Mads was her only lover, but they’d dedicated years to learning each other, pleasuring each other, worshipping each other.

He knew how to touch her to make her moan.

He knew just where to kiss her to make her ache.

He knew how to look at her to make her vibrate with need for him.

He knew what each noise meant, the whimpers, the groans, the gasps.

He knew how to make her say his name like that , and he worked to make her say it, just like that , over and over and over again, until they were both exhausted.

As Mads turned onto their street, his hand slipped up her leg to brush against the bottom of the skirt, just close enough to her aching pussy to feel the heat of his fingers.

She sucked in a breath and held it.

Her nipples were hard as hell, and her core was pulsing with need left unsatiated for months.

His voice thick and deep, heavy with desire, was a growl as he said, “I can feel how hot you are through those panties, baby.” He squeezed her upper thigh, and she couldn’t stop the moan that exploded from her chest.

“Fuck,” he spat. “I know we need to talk, my Bloom, but I don’t know if I can focus with my balls this tight and my cock this hard.”

Before he even finished speaking, she was nodding.

He chuckled wickedly, and her body shuddered in response to the sound.

“I know I shouldn’t be that romance heroine with BBS, but I can honestly say I know how they’re feeling right now, and I don’t know if I care,” Emily rasped, nearly delirious with arousal.

He arched an eyebrow, his lip curling. “BBS?”

Her cheeks grew hot as she answered, “Er…body betrayal syndrome.” At his sideways glance at her, she knew he was waiting for her to explain.

She huffed, suddenly embarrassed. “It’s when you’re mad at your man so your brain says ‘no way,’ but your body betrays you by making you all horny, and says ‘let’s jump on his dick. ’”

He laughed that sexy as hell laugh again, then drawled, low and rumbly, “I think I like BBS.”

Seconds later, he turned into their drive way. As soon as the truck was in park and the keys were in hand, he was out the driver’s door and around to the passenger side. She barely got herself unbuckled before he pulled her door open, grabbed her, and swung her up over his shoulder.

She squeaked, breathless, and forced herself not to move for fear of falling right off.

It had been a long time since he’d last carried her, and she’d gained a few pounds since then.

He slapped her ass, and she shrieked, “What are you doing ?”

“I can hear you thinking, and I want you to stop. You are perfect, just the right size, and I can’t wait to toss you down on the bed and remind you just how well we fit together.”

She swallowed, speechless, and waited for him to input the key code—which she hadn’t changed since he’d last been there—and swing the front door open.

For a second she wondered if they’d walk in on the kids home for the weekend, and things would get super awkward, but the house was dark and silent.

As soon as he was inside, he slammed the door shut with his foot, and took the same path he’d taken thousands of times before. Right to their bedroom.

Once Mads crossed the threshold, he stopped, his large body seeming to thrum with unspent energy, with kinetic potential, with unspoken need for her.

Slowly, achingly slowly, he slid her down his body, all of her rubbing against all of him—every soft inch of her against every rock hard inch of him—until her feet touched the floor.

They stared at one another, breathing heavy, skin flushed, mouths slightly open.

And then…they undressed one another, taking their time to uncover each other, unwrapping the gift of bare bodies and interwoven hearts.

Trembling, Emily stood naked before the man who broke her heart, but instead of the pain and betrayal she should have been feeling, she felt…adored.

His gaze on her was like reverence, praise without words, a carnal benediction. He was devotion and desire, awe and exaltation. He was the rite and the ritual—eager to fall to his knees and sacrifice his very body on the altar of her.

How had she ever thought she could live without him?

“Mads,” she whispered, and lifted his eyes to her, tearing his gaze from his wicked admiration of her breasts. “I need you to touch me.”

It was a beautiful echo of all the nights he’d come home after a long deployment, and they came together, husband and wife, long without the other.

Under the hush of the night, the moon’s glow stitched silver seams across the windows, and the city beyond the four walls breathed slow and indifferent.

Inside, the bedroom felt like a secret kept between two conspirators—warm lamplight pooling on hardwood, and the hush that falls when the world outside is finally allowed to wait.

Mads watched Emily for a long, quiet moment before he crossed the room.

He moved as though reluctant to hurry, savoring the seconds like a favorite sentence you read twice.

His hand landed at the nape of her neck with the practiced gentleness of someone who has learned the exact pressure that calmed her.

She leaned into him as if returning a long-owed kindness.

For both of them, the touch was a greeting and an answer, a language they'd learned and refined over years: small gestures accumulating into something profound.

“As my goddess demands,” he rasped.

And then he was kissing her, touching her….

Their kisses began as whispers, soft, asking rather than claiming.

Mads tasted the faint sweetness of the Moscow Mule she had been sipping at Cool Hands earlier—every flavor a memory.

Emily's fingers threaded through his hair, tentative at first and then with the steady certainty of trust. The slow unbuttoning of restraint—literal and otherwise—felt reverent.

Inhibitions slipped away like pages of stories read aloud; what remained were the margins of their lives where every scar, every crease, every familiar contour had a history.

Mads was careful, as if discovering a long-hidden map.

He explored with the attentive curiosity of a lover who remembered what mattered: the lift of a shoulder, the soft intake of breath at the base of the throat, the way her pulse fluttered under his fingertips.

Emily answered with small sounds—a whimper, a moan, a sigh—each one a bright thread tying them closer.

There was no rush, only the slow ritual of two bodies reacquainting themselves with wordless devotion.

They found rhythms that belonged only to them.

Kisses deepened like chapters turning; hands learned new translations of old promises.

Mads pressed gentle questions against Emily’s skin, and she answered with the plain, bold truth of touch—anchoring him with a palm at his chest, guiding him with hips that remembered the same easy closeness.

When a stray pain in his shoulder surfaced, she paused to press a thumb there, smoothing it away with a softness that was more medicine than mere comfort.

The room became smaller and more intimate—a world of shared breath and whispered names.

Light pooled in the hollow of their entwined limbs; shadow kept watch at the edges.

Outside, thunder rolled distant and forgiving, a low chorus that matched the slow rise and fall of their chests.

Between Mads and Emily there was a steady give and take: he offered strength, she offered surrender; he held steady, she trusted; both offered an unwavering presence that felt like home.

Words were spare but reverent.

Tenderness threaded through everything. When one of them faltered—a sudden impulse or a moment of fatigue—the other became anchor without question.

Emily traced constellations across Mads’s collarbone with her fingers, and then her lips and tongue, her touch mapping reassurance.

He cupped her face and let silence do the heavy lifting, a quiet presence that spoke louder than any vow.

Their intimacy was never performance; it was practice—years of learning how to hold each other through laughter, panic, boredom, and ardor.

After, when motions slowed and the need for action itself ebbed, they remained wrapped in a small, warm island.

Mads wrapped an arm around Emily’s shoulders; she tucked her head against his chest, listening to the familiar staccato of his heartbeat like a favorite song.

The lamp glowed, the outside world softened to a whisper, the city outside resuming its patient hum.

When sleep finally edged its way toward them, it did so without urgency.

They drifted together, not collapsing but folding into each other with deliberation.

In the dim hours, Emily’s breath slowed to match Mads’s, and he kissed the crown of her head as if sealing their shared history with a final, gentle benediction.

There was no thunder now—only the steady murmur of night and the intimacy of two people who had come home to each other, again and again.

He woke her again in the night, and the worship began once more.