Page 14 of Rebel
He moved past her to check the locks on the windows, and she found herself watching the easy stretch of muscle under his shirt, the way his shoulders filled the small space. Every reminder of him made that ache inside her pulse harder.
“You can take the bedroom,” he said, jerking his chin toward a door down the hall. “I’ll crash out here.”
Something about the distance in his voice stung. Rebel wanted to snap back at him, to remind him she wasn’t some fragile little thing he had to babysit. Instead, she forced a shrug. “Fine.”
She grabbed her bag from the sofa and started for the bedroom, not bothering to look back at Bolt. She could feel his eyes on her, burring into her back, reminding her that they were all alone out in the middle of nowhere together. When she slipped into the bedroom and closed the door, her heart didn’t settle. She leaned back against the wood, staring at the shadows stretching across the floorboards. Bolt’s disappointment still clung to her like smoke, and for reasons she couldn’t explain, she wanted more than anything to make it go away. She wanted him to see her as more than her past. And more than Jace’s sister. That thought was dangerous because in this cabin, miles from anyone else, there’d be no one to stop them if those lines blurred again. And she wanted to blur the lines with Bolt more than she wanted her next breath.
Rebel lay on top of the quilted bedspread, eyes wide open, staring at the low ceiling beams. Sleep wasn’t going to happen, no matter how exhausted she felt. Every time she closed her eyes, the night replayed in jagged flashes through her mind—the look in Bolt’s eyes when she couldn’t confess to Jace, the heavy weight of his disappointment, the memory of his body pinning hers against the truck door. Her chest tightened. She couldn’t keep lying there, not with her thoughts clawing her heart apart.
She slipped out of bed, the old floorboards groaning beneath her bare feet, and eased the bedroom door open. The cabin was dim; just one lamp was left on in the living room. Bolt sat on thecouch, leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees. He hadn’t bothered pulling off his boots. A half-empty beer bottle rested on the table, untouched.
Rebel hesitated in the doorway. He must’ve heard her, because his head turned, eyes catching hers in the soft light. “Can’t sleep?” His voice was low and rough.
She shook her head. “No, it’s too quiet. She lied. It was anything but quiet in her head but telling him that she couldn’t stop thinking about him wasn’t about to happen.”
A flicker of a smirk tugged at his mouth. “It is pretty quiet around here,” he agreed.
Rebel crossed the room and sat down on the opposite end of the couch. The cushions dipped beneath her, the space between them charged. “It’s not the quiet that rattles me,” she admitted. Bolt’s gaze stayed fixed on her, unreadable but heavy. His presence filled the little cabin and made the walls feel smaller—almost as though they were closing in around the two of them.
“You meant what you said, didn’t you?” she asked before she could stop herself. “When you said in the truck that some truths don’t come with forgiveness.”
He exhaled slowly, leaning back against the couch, his arm stretching across the backrest until it almost brushed her shoulders. “Yeah. I meant it.”
Her throat tightened. “And you think that my secret is one of those truths that can’t be forgiven.” She wasn’t asking him, more stating a fact. He was clear in what he was telling her—she didn’t deserve his or anyone else’s forgiveness for the dirty secrets that she had kept. For a long moment, he didn’t answer. Just watched her, the silence stretching between them. Then his hand moved—slow and deliberate, closing over hers where it rested on the cushion between them.
“I think you’re carrying a weight that isn’t yours alone to carry,” he said finally. “And I think it’s killing you to keep itlocked up.” She wondered how they had only known each other for a little over a day now, but Bolt seemed to see her better than anyone else ever had.
His touch was warm, solid, and grounding. Rebel should have pulled away, but instead, she turned her hand, lacing their fingers together. The disappointment she’d imagined in his eyes earlier still gnawed at her, but the fact that he was holding her now, offering her something close to comfort—it cut deeper. Maybe it was because she wanted more than his comfort. She wanted his acceptance. She wanted his heat. She wanted him. The thought scared her worse than the Dead Rabbits or Kirk coming after her ever could.
Bolt’s thumb brushed over her knuckles, slow, rough, and achingly intimate. His eyes dropped to her mouth, then back up to meet her gaze. Rebel’s pulse thundered in her ears, and she couldn’t help the small gasp that had escaped her parted lips. If he leaned in now, if he kissed her in this quiet cabin with no one around to stop them, she knew she wouldn’t ask him to stop. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to, even if that was a possibility.
“Are you going to kiss me?” she breathed. He was so close that she could feel his warm breath on her skin. She knew that she was holding her breath waiting for him to give her some sign that she was going to get what she wanted from him.
His growl was the only warning that he gave as he dipped his head and took her mouth in a passionate kiss. It was everything she never knew she needed and so much more. That’s also how she’d describe Bolt, too. He broke the kiss, leaving them both breathless. Rebel felt needy and ached for him to touch her but knew that patience might be a better way to go with the sexy biker. She could be patient—somehow, she’d figure out how to ask him for more without asking him point-blank.
Bolt
Bolt knew that he was playing with fire, but he just couldn’t seem to keep his hands to himself when it came to Rebel. He wanted her more and more with each passing minute. Taking her in the truck, back in the parking lot at Savage Hell, wasn’t enough for him. He thought for sure that he’d take what he wanted from her, have his fill, and be done, but that wasn’t the case—not even by a long shot.
Bolt didn’t mean to touch her hand, not really. It was instinct—a way to ground her when she looked like she might come apart right there on the couch. But when she laced her fingers with his, something inside him shifted.
And then she asked him if he was going to kiss her, and telling her no wasn’t an option. Her hand cupped his jaw, and her mouth pressed to his, hot and fierce. Bolt froze for half a second, every warning siren in his head blaring Jace’s name. But the taste of her, the heat of her pressed so close, burned through all of it. He groaned into her kiss, his hand fisting in her hair as the fight drained out of him.
“Rebel—” he rasped against her lips, as he pulled her onto his lap, her thighs straddling his hips. The way she moved against him nearly stole his breath.
She broke away long enough to whisper, “Jace wouldn’t want me miserable. He wouldn’t want me denying this—denying us.” Her eyes burned into his wild and unflinching. “You think he’d want us to walk around pretending we don’t feel this?”
Bolt clenched his jaw, every muscle in his body straining with the urge to shove her off his lap and the equal urge to drag her closer. “Us being together will blow everything apart,” he ground out.
“Then let it.” Her kiss was a dare, sharp and sure, and it cut through his last thread of control.
Bolt gave in as his mouth claimed hers with a hunger that bordered on savage, his hands gripped her hips like he’d drown if he let go. The sofa shifted under their weight, the sound of leather and fabric tearing through the quiet cabin as they clawed at each other. She gasped his name, nails biting into his shoulders, and it only drove him harder, deeper.
Every groan, every kiss, every desperate touch told him what he couldn’t say out loud—he not only wanted her, needed her. He’d needed her from the second she’d walked into his world at that police station, and he was lying to himself every minute since then that he had been trying to deny it.
By the time they broke the kiss, he knew that fighting his feelings anymore wasn’t an option. Bolt leaned forward, forehead pressed to her shoulder, his chest heaving. His hands still locked around her hips like he was afraid she’d vanish if he loosened his grip.
Then she slid her fingers into his hair, tugging his gaze to meet hers. “Stay with me,” she whispered. “Not out here on the sofa, but in the bedroom, with me. And not just for tonight, Bolt. I’m done fighting this thing between the two of us.”
