I thought back to how it’d been. Aaron, Harmony, and I growing up together. Running through the woods and playing in our backyard. Defending each other and fighting with each other. I guessed until I’d received the second letter from Harmony, I’d blocked out the rest. Her jealousy. The way she’d hated it when I’d played with him instead of her.
I realized my gaze had drifted, lost in thought, and my attention slowly shifted back to Trent. “We grew up next door. His parents went to the same church as ours. In third grade, Aaron started at the school, and he’d sat in the desk right next to mine. He and I climbed trees together, went to the movies together, to prom together, and we just…fell into that pattern. It also became…kind of expected of us.”
Nervously, my fingers traced across the words stamped on Trent’s chest.
Live to Ride, Ride to Die.
“My parents were comfortable with him, trusted him, so we slipped into the mold our parents imagined.”
Trent huffed.
My head shook. “We weren’t forced into anything, Trent. It was just…easy.”
I glanced at him, chewing at my bottom lip, the admission a breath of old affection. “I always thought he actually had a thing for my older sister.”
That time it was a grunt from his delicious mouth, his fingers gliding through my hair, like he couldn’t stop touching me. Holding me. “Pretty sure you could never be considered the consolation prize, Kitten.”
My shoulders hiked a little, brushing our bare chests together. A tiny flicker of flames lit in the middle. “Harmony was the wild one. The one who was always laughing. Always getting into trouble, too. I think Aaron got stars in his eyes every time she came into the room, but she never wanted him around. She thought he stole my attention from her.”
Could feel his muscles bunch in his arms. “She the one who got you and your father into financial trouble?”
My nod was desolate. “Yeah.” I swallowed it down and forced a smile. “My momma got sick and passed when I was fourteen and Harmony was sixteen. My sister left soon after.”
Grief filled his face. I knew he felt that kind of loss on a personal level. “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head as I was hit with a swell of emotion. “I was so broken after that, so alone, that I think I leaned even more on Aaron. After that, he and I fell into what we were.”
“And what was that?”
“Happy. Content.” A wistful hum rolled up my throat. “We both liked the quiet life. Staying home and watching movies on a Friday night. Working in the yard. We both wanted a big family. We’d just bought our first house a month before he died.”
“And you were going to fill the rooms.” Trent barely hid the spite in his tone.
I nodded again.
His thumb brushed my cheek. “I’m not that guy, Eden.”
No. Trent was Aaron’s opposite.
“I loved him, Trent, but I didn’t burn for him.”
A growl rumbled in his chest, and his fingers fisted in my hair, lifting me higher so I was straddling him and my face was hovering an inch from his. “You burn for me, Kitten?”
“Yes.” It left me on a pant. “I never knew I could want a man the way I want you.”
“That’s a good thing because I’ve never wanted anyone to have me the way I want you to.”
My heart took off at a sprint. “What do you want me to have?”
“All of me, Kitten. Fuckin’ all of me.”
He angled up to capture my mouth. His kiss rough. Possessive. Mind-bending.
I swore, every single kiss altered who I was.
I kissed him back, crawling over the rigid lines of his body as Trent owned me from below. That hand in my hair cinched down tighter and his other gripped hard onto my hip. He sat up, our kiss turning frantic as he pulled me against his cock that was hard and huge and stealing my breath.
I gasped at the contact. Sensation rushed over my skin as he guided me to rub our bare flesh together.
Sparks that stoked that raging fire between us into an inferno.
I pressed up onto my knees as he licked from my mouth and down my throat, my head dropping back and my entire being arching into his touch.
Desperate for more.
My fingers dug into his shoulders, and needy sounds were slipping up my throat as he kissed along the slope of my neck, his voice a low reverberation, “You, Eden. So fuckin’ beautiful. So good. So right. Want it. Heaven.”
“You have me,” I mumbled back, writhing over him.
So different.
With Trent, it was so much more than I’d ever experienced.
The feeling of being consumed alive.
Owned.
Possessed.
And I wanted it.
“I want it all,” I whispered.
He kept trailing down, kissing a path down my throat and to my chest. Every nerve ending came alive as he licked over the top of my right breast and sucked my nipple into his mouth. His teeth raked the sensitive flesh before he bit down.