“I don’t know where this will lead,” he stated. “You and me and your boy. I know what we got. I know I like what we got. I know I wanna keep that strong and make it stronger. Shit happens. I hope like fuck it happens to us, we’ll fight through to the other side. But I know this and you gotta know it too. No matter what happens, I will never, not ever, not fuckin’ ever, Carissa, regret ridin’ down that shoulder to help you and your boy. It’s the best decision I ever made in my life, and I know that in a way I know I’ll feel that until the day I fuckin’ die.”

His thumb was still on my cheek so he felt the silent tear that fell from my eye and collided with it.

“You scared a’ that?” he asked harshly.

“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard,” I whispered huskily.

And it was. Excepting the first time I heard Travis cry, it absolutely was.

“Then you get me.” His voice was no longer harsh, but it was rough.

“I get you, sweetie.”

He pulled me down to kiss me.

That too was an assertion. Like his hand on me, his words to me, that moment in the dark in my bed, even with all we’d shared before, was the beginning and it was also an ending.

I was his, for certain, for sure, no matter what had gone before, it started right then.

I was Carson “Joker” Steele’s.

End of story.

He was mine too, but with a manly man biker, that was secondary. It went with the territory, hand in hand with him staking his claim.

This did not bother me. It didn’t trouble me. It didn’t annoy me.

It utterly thrilled me.

That might be wrong, but in that instant, for the first time in my life, I didn’t care if it was wrong. If it was wrong, I didn’t want to be right.

Joker shared all this with his mouth. He then broke the kiss, leaving me breathless, and tucked my face back into his neck.

“Now, baby, sleep,” he ordered thickly. “Even if you got the day off tomorrow, Travis’ll be up early and we got a day together with your boy in your new house. I don’t want you draggin’.”

I wanted to cry again. Cry with relief that life had brought this man to me. Cry with happiness that I’d made it through the thorny path that led away from him in high school but then led me right back.

I didn’t.