Page 14 of Viper's Desire
“Mama—”
She shakes her head once and steps into the dark of the hall.
I sit in the parking lot of a store for hours, contemplating whether leaving was the right choice.
And finally, when the sun goes down, I decide it was. I drive to the only place where I feel safe.
The roads past the county line run dark, no streetlights and nobody on them, and my hands sit easy on the wheel the whole drive. They ought to be shaking. I keep waiting for the part where the fear catches up and tells me to turn the car around.
It doesn’t come.
Trapper has the gate hauled open before I pull in.
“Does he know you’re coming this time?” he asks, already grinning.
“No.”
His grin turns into a laugh. “Of course not. Come on in.”
I park my car and climb the porch steps with my suitcase.
I don’t get the chance to knock. The door swings open, and there he is, standing in the doorway. His eyes drop to the bag, then climb back up to my face.
He doesn’t ask what happened. He doesn’t ask if I’m okay.
He grabs my suitcase and steps aside.
And he lets me in.
CHAPTER 6
EDEN
When we reachViper’s room, he sets my suitcase against the dresser and stands there with his arms loose at his sides. He doesn’t know what to do with a girl and her whole life packed into one bag in the middle of his floor.
That makes two of us.
“You can have the bed,” he says. “I’ll take the couch downstairs.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t leave my father’s house to sleep alone.”
It comes out surer than I am. My hands want to twist together, so I press them flat against my thighs to keep them still.
He doesn’t come toward me, and instead, he waits for a moment.
“Eden,” his voice is low with restraint. “What do you want?”
Nobody’s ever asked me that, and the question catches me off guard.
“I...” I take a step toward him, take a breath. “All you need to know is that I chose you. That’s the whole answer. I want you.”
Then he crosses the floor.
His hand comes up to my jaw, and his palm is huge, and the calluses are rough against my face. He tips my chin up as he bends down, and the press of his mouth on mine is so soft I almost don’t trust it’s real.
A man this big shouldn’t be able to touch a person this lightly.
But he does.
