Redemption Hills: The Complete Collection

21. Trent

TWENTY-ONE

TRENT

Greed crashed through my senses as I stalked through the bathroom door and drove my fingers into Eden’s wet hair. In an instant, my mouth descended, capturing the sweet plushness of hers.

Eden whimpered as she opened to the kiss.

Bliss streaked down my spine.

Intense.

Blinding.

While my mind began to spin with the impossibility.

Words on repeat.

What if I don’t want to let you go?

What if I don’t want to let you go?

Wanted to make it real. Hold her forever. To be the guy who could be right for her. Be good enough for this amazing woman who looked at me like I could be something better. Even after the evil that’d gone down tonight.

Fuck. I wanted to trust in this. For her to trust in me.

Guilt constricted at the thought. So tight. But I couldn’t do anything but shove it down when Eden whispered against my lips again, “Don’t let me go.”

She breathed the plea through the kiss. Tender fingertips ghosted over my shoulders and across my chest, like this girl was asking for permission. Begging for that invitation I wasn’t quite sure how to give. She broke away to peek up at me. Autumn eyes sucked me right down into the depths of who she was. “Don’t let me go.”

This feeling speared through the middle of me. Something bigger and brighter than I’d ever felt before.

My palm spread across the side of her head, fingers dipping into her hair, my thumb tipping back her chin.

Eden pinned me with the raw truth of who she was.

“Because I’m right here, and I’m going to hold onto you, too,” she promised.

Her gaze traced over me through the steam-hazed light in the bathroom.

My chest tightened in this war of need and loyalty. Who I was, the promise I had made, who I had to be, up against this goodness I wanted to get lost in.

But how did a sinner, a demon like me, stand in the light?

My thumb brushed against the delicate angle of her jaw. “Want to be right, Eden. Wish that I was.” The confession was gravel.

“And what if you’re exactly what I need?” Eden’s words were a breath of desire mixed up with this gush of adoration that I didn’t deserve. “What if you are what I’ve been waiting for?”

I spun her around. A gasp of surprise raked from her throat when I had her belly pressed to the counter, my body pinning her to the stone. I took a fistful of her hair and leaned over her shoulder so I could swipe the mirror. Our reflection came to life through the heated mist.

Eden’s face was flushed. Flesh kissed in pink. Those eyes so real and that face so pretty.

Goodness spilled out, shrouded by the darkness of who I was as I hovered behind her.

“Look at us, Eden. Look at you against me. Don’t you get it? I’m no good.”

My free hand splayed across her trembling stomach, pulling her back against the rigid planes of my body, my mouth pressed to her ear, “And still, I want it. I fuckin’ want you. Want in you. To be with you. To live and die for you.”

Blasphemy.

At the greatest expense, I was given a second chance.

And there I was, slipping into treason.

Eden’s expression deepened. Every line slashed like a sworn oath. “It doesn’t matter who you were or what you’ve done, Trent. It matters who you are now. And that man? He already has me.”

She took my hands, weaving our fingers together and stretching our arms out wide. A perfect picture of who we were. Darkness getting ready to swallow the light.

And she lifted her chin.

Succumbing.

And I was done. No reserves left. Nothing to do but spin her around and hike her up, her perfect weight in my arms. “Eden…baby…what have you done to me?”

A tiny jolt of a moan escaped her as she wrapped her legs around my waist. Her arms curled around me, way up high as I held her sweet body against my chest.

She gazed down at me, those eyes nothing but a soft caress. “I’m yours.”

And it was Eden who kissed me, girl slanting down to consume my mouth. To consume my soul. Calling me into a sanctuary. A minute’s reprieve.

Heaven.

Knew I was holding it in my arms.

I kissed her back, our tongues a tangle of need. Of desire. Of something bigger than the both of us.

Because I could feel it pressing against the walls as I carried her back out into my room.

The energy that lashed.

Shocks of intensity.

Sparks of life.

I carried her toward my bed while the girl writhed over me. Tiny whimpers of need slipped between our mouths and whispered from our tongues.

There was no rational thought left. No restraint. No good sense.

The only thing that was going to happen right then was a claiming.

This girl was mine.

A frenzy made its way into our kiss.

Eden kissing me like it was what she’d been born to do. Like this moment was destined. Like she wouldn’t go back if she could. Like she wouldn’t change the mistake of ever walking into my club.

Or maybe it was all me. This feeling like I couldn’t be anywhere else. That this betrayal was inevitable.

This girl fate.

In my arms because she, too, didn’t belong anywhere else.

“Eden,” I mumbled between the collision. Nothing but tongues and teeth and screaming souls. “Eden.”

Couldn’t deny her. Not any longer. It didn’t matter how wrong it was.

“I won’t let anyone touch you. I promise you,” I growled.

Eden swept her fingertips down my face, so soft compared to the madness of our mouths. My chest squeezed at the action, overcome with who she was. “I trust you.”

God. She shouldn’t. She shouldn’t. But I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard sweeter words than those right then.

This girl ruining me.

Breath by breath.

Whisper by whisper.

Touch by touch.

“I’m yours,” she said again.

Decimated.

Done.

No longer knew who I was. What I wanted. What I stood for.

One reason.

One reason.

Was it possible that this girl crashing into my life could change what that meant? That I could be better?

The demons thrashed at that. All the vileness of what I’d done clawing to be exposed. Like she could hold those, too. Believe in me even through all the atrocities I’d committed.

Our frantic movements slowed as I eased her onto the bed, laid her out in the middle, the girl the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen.

All that blonde, lush hair spilled out on my black comforter like a halo of light around her head.

She watched me like she could see all the way to the depravity of who I was.

Jud’s paintings covered my walls while this beauty was laid out in the center of my bed.

Felt like I was standing in the middle of a juxtaposition of evil and light.

I knew taking her was exactly that. A devil descending on an angel. Feeding from her beauty. Glutting on her grace. And I didn’t know how to be anything but the monster who was aware of it and did it anyway.

Emotion crested those lips that were swollen from my kiss. “I can’t believe I’m here…with you.”

“Feeling is mutual, Kitten.” It was a harsh exhale.

Shame.

I tried to put up a wall. Some boundaries. Mute this connection that was so loud I could hear it screaming in my ears.

She shook her head against my mattress, refusing it, like she saw that, too. “I never thought I’d feel this way again. Feel this way at all. Alive. Alive in your touch. Alive in your eyes.”

“Shouldn’t be the one.”

“But you are,” she breathed. “No one else, Trent…no one else has ever made me feel this way.”

There was sorrow in her admission. Meaning that shouldn’t exist. Felt the proclamation bounding around my room. Banging through the dense, dense air.

Lust and need and something more.

“You’re so fuckin’ beautiful, Eden. You have any idea? Any idea of the way I feel when I look at you?” It was a grunt as I took in the treasure lying on my bed.

She writhed, her breaths heaving and hips jutting. My insides twisted, watching over that sweet body that was nothing but a needy plea. “You make me feel that way.” Her words filled the space. “I feel like I found the one person who can see me after all this time.”

My chest tightened. Greed and a bit of that jealousy, thinking of her with another man.

So fucked up that I wanted her as my own.

And still understanding what she was giving me. What she was saying. There was something between us that neither of us had felt before.

My hands fisted as I cast out the confession. “I’ve been hiding in the darkness for all this time, Eden. Until you came and shed your light on me. Lit up something that’s never existed. Not ever.”

Her chest pitched, like she’d been impaled by the words. “And I don’t believe that’s by chance. Not for either of us. That’s what this is, Trent…this is our chance.”

God. She believed that because she was goodness. Because she couldn’t see anything else. No clue of the danger that might be waiting for her by tying herself to me.

“Terrified of it, Eden, what you could do to me. The way you make me feel.”

Fact this girl had a hold on me in a way no one else ever had.

The things she had me contemplating.

Autumn eyes danced in the shadows.

My brow curled. “Don’t wanna hurt you, Eden. My life?—”

“Is scary,” she supplied, cutting me off. “It’s scary, Trent. I know it, and I’m still falling for you.”

Wanted to tell her not to do it. To stop right there. To give us tonight. That we could hold each other through all the bullshit that’d gone down at the club and then let this foolishness go.

But I was the dumb fuck who couldn’t seem to make those words form on my tongue, the ones I let go wholly reckless and faulty. “You’re mine, Eden.”

The tip of my index finger found the inside of her knee at that, and I dragged it down her slender leg, all the way to the delicate curve at her ankle. I found myself kneeling, pressing my mouth to that spot, rumbling, “You’re mine.”

I let my mouth follow that path back up, kissing along the silky soft flesh of her leg. Inhaling as I went because fuck the girl smelled like me.

Mine.

Wanted to mark her with it.

A brand.

Tattoo myself on her flesh.

Sink right in until we were nothing but one.

Where we existed in a place that only belonged to us.

She whimpered, bowing off the mattress as I kissed along the inside of her knee and rode up the top of her thigh. Her fingers dove into my hair and yanked like she wanted to mark herself on me, too. “God. Trent.”

I pressed my face into the fabric of the boxer briefs she wore, girl swimming in them, looking sexy as fuck and destroying another bit of my mind.

“Little Temptress,” I whispered.

Eden sighed, clutched at my hair, and I moved to straddle her at the waist, my knees on either side.

That time, it was a gasp, passion seeping from her pores and spilling into me.

Taking in the delicious sight, I gathered the hem of the shirt she wore and dragged it up that lush body, never slowing until I was peeling it over her head.

Chills lifted across her skin as she sank back down to the mattress.

All that hair spilling out.

Had to bite the inside of my cheek with how fuckin’ stunning she was.

Her tits were these tiny, perfectly perky things that made my mouth water. Nipples pebbled up and begging like the rest of her body.

“Beautiful.” I murmured my praise as I brushed the pad of my thumb over the left bud.

A whisper fell from Eden’s lips as she arched into my touch. “Please.”

I guessed it was the faith coming off her that did me in.

Way a shockwave of energy burst from her body.

The way that unfound connection blistered through the air and bounded against the walls.

Ricocheting.

Amplifying with each pass.

Intensity building and building.

My heart beat a riot, a fuckin’ battering ram at my chest.

This boom, boom, boom that promised the two of us were about to combust. No care to what might be left in the aftermath.

I edged back so I could slip off the bed. I dipped my fingers into the waistband of the boxers as I went, not slowing as I dragged the fabric down and twisted it off her ankles, unable to look away as the girl shivered and shook where she gazed up at me.

Completely bare.

Just heart-stoppingly gorgeous.

Truth.

Because my goddamn heart skipped an erratic beat.

Tried to catch my breath. To stop the avalanche of need that plowed right through the middle of me. Maybe regain a little control.

Impossible.

One glimpse and I was done. Gone.

Reaching up, I tugged my shirt over my head and dropped it to the floor. My teeth clenched in a bid to keep from losing my cool while every muscle in my body flexed.

Bowed in restraint.

Ticked in want.

Eden whimpered her desire, taking me in, doing a little of that devouring, too.

Every angle.

Every inch.

She sat up, that gaze rushing across the nightmare written across my body. It went sliding to the one that judged and condemned. She traced her fingers over the script.

“Ghost.”

She said it like she understood what it meant. Like she was accepting it. Accepting me. And fuck, there was nothing I could do to stop the feeling that rushed through my veins, filling me to overflowing.

“Who I used to be,” I grunted out.

One to be feared.

A reaper sent to slay.

Someone I didn’t want to be any longer.

“The only thing that matters is who you are now.” She repeated it. Her voice nothing but belief.

Didn’t want to tell her she was wrong. That I would never outrun it. Could never rewrite the sins on my soul.

Not when she was looking up at me when she said it. Not with the way she meant it.

She had her body angled just to the side, a single shoulder curled in. The tiniest bit of shyness pinked her flesh, and all those blonde locks fell down around the temptation of her body.

“Don’t hide from me. Not now,” I told her. Not when she was seeing right through me.

Eden lifted that chin. No defiance left in it. It was surrender. Welcome. An invitation. “I couldn’t if I tried,” she admitted.

I trailed my fingertips down the trembling of her throat, words grit. “Gonna own this body, Kitten. Gonna score myself in you so deep you aren’t ever going to forget me. Tell me you’re good with that.”

She gulped, and then she scooted back and leaned back on her elbows, her knees bent and rocking in anticipation.

Fuck.

She was a vision.

This trembling vision where nerves and anticipation had her pressing her heels into my bed.

“I’m more than good, Trent. What I’m feeling right now cannot be defined.”

I’d already taken off my boots while she’d been in the shower, and I jerked through the buttons on my jeans and shrugged out of them, kicked them aside, watched as those wide eyes rounded farther.

A mesmerizing swirl of greens and golds and browns sucking me down. My dick was stone, bobbing at my stomach, begging to get lost in her.

In that moment, every single cell in my body existed for her.

She flicked her attention up to my face and whispered, “You are the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen.”

I crawled over her, pressed her down onto the mattress, and dove for her mouth. My tongue sought possession. I kept my weight on my right hand, and with my left, I reached down to take a handful of her lush ass.

I squeezed, lifting her against my aching cock.

Eden whimpered, dug her nails into my shoulders. “Trent. Oh god. I need this. I need you.”

That sweet mouth dripped with honey. Those words. Those lips.

In a blip, two of us were nothing but passion.

Fire.

Flames.

Combustion.

And I was rubbing my cock through her bare lips, her pussy soaked as she rocked against me. Begging for friction. Her thighs squeezed the outside of mine.

We were a blur of darkness and light.

Opposition trying to mesh and meet.

Clashing and yielding.

My teeth nipped at her bottom lip, her jaw, tongue stroking down her neck. “Eden,” I murmured against her pulse point, this girl’s heart thrumming like a song.

Eden’s hands slipped down my back. Her palms were perfect chaos. Her touch sweet tragedy. “You are everything I didn’t know I needed.”

Her words were panted into the thick air. That connection a glimmer in the room. Throbbing. Consuming. Binding us whole.

I burrowed my face under her chin. My confession was pressed to her skin. “And you are everything I will never deserve.”

Something I was taking anyway.

A man on his way to Hell, but I was gonna live in this sanctuary while I had it. Before my life—who I was—inevitably cast me out. A sinner who was going to pretend for a minute he could be right. Protect her. Keep her.

I knelt back between her quivering thighs.

The girl was an ocean on my bed.

Writhing and undulating.

A tide that’d swept me up in her undertow and knocked me from my feet.

I gripped her right knee in my hand like I could hold her steady, keep her from floating away, and I leaned over to grab a condom from the nightstand on the left, never looking away from the girl as I edged back and was quick to cover my dick.

Lust billowed in the space. Our breaths short, the crashing of our hearts jagged.

I slipped my arms under her knees. “Yeah?”

Last ditch plea for this girl to come to her senses and run like she should have done from the beginning…before she got herself permanently tangled with me.

Her hips bucked, her cunt urgent against my cock. “I’m yours.”

I took her in one swift thrust, clutching her by the outside of the thighs as I did, burying myself so deep her body bowed off the bed.

My entire being pitched.

Canted to the side.

“Trent,” she cried on a ragged breath.

“Say it again,” I demanded hard, nearly passing out from how goddamn amazing she felt.

Way her throbbing pussy hugged my cock in a perfect vise.

“Trent.”

Wanted to hear her shouting it forever.

She squirmed, struggled to adjust to me. To the feel of me owning that sweet, tight body.

“Heaven.” The praise rumbled up my raw throat, and I clutched her legs tighter as I pulled out to the tip and gave her another deep, deep dive of my dick.

She arched, only her shoulders touching the bed, though one of her hands was reaching for me. “I need you.”

A fissure.

A crack.

A cavern running right down the middle of who I had been.

A crumbling of all restraint.

Of all loyalty.

Of what I knew.

A pile of rubble laid at her feet.

Because I shifted, angled forward, and planted both hands on either side of her head.

And I stared down on the girl. Her hair was all around and that look was on her face. I leaned down enough that I could brush my lips across hers. “You have me.”

It was the goddamn truth.

Moisture filled her eyes, emotion cresting, riding high. I kept one hand pressed to the bed, the other cupping her precious face.

I began to rock.

Slow at first. Measured thrusts as the girl’s mouth parted and her honeyed gasps filled the air.

Mesmerizing.

Intoxicating.

We moved together.

Our bodies in sync.

A treacherous dance.

Faster. Deeper. More.

Nothing but heaved breaths and desperate hearts that were just learning to beat. And I wondered…wondered if this girl could really beat for me.

She watched me with those eyes the color of fallen leaves. The color of the earth. The color of redemption. She lifted her hand and touched my face. I kissed across her fingertips. “Eden.”

“Trent. Sweet, sweet warrior.”

I felt like I’d been impaled by her words. Fact she’d call me that. While she looked at me like she recognized me.

She cut right through me. The girl splayed me open until there wasn’t a single place I could hide.

She met me thrust for thrust. Our bodies slick. Arching and begging.

And I felt myself getting caught up.

Lifted.

Elevated from the depths and dragged into the light.

Where it was bliss.

Where it was beauty.

Where only me and this girl could exist.

Twining. Knitting.

My spirit getting loose and weaving with hers in an intricate web.

A piece of myself I no longer possessed.

Euphoric.

Terrifying.

I panted and she gasped, and her nails dragged and scraped against my chest, clawing for a way to get closer. “Do you feel that?” she whispered.

But it was her.

Feeling me in a way no one else ever had. In a way no one else could. “It’s you, Eden. It’s you.”

She whimpered, her legs dropping wide, taking me deeper. I hooked her leg over my shoulder.

Fuck. So good.

A hard exhale burst from her lungs. “More.”

“I know, baby. I know.”

My hand drifted, squeezing her thigh, her ass, fingers dragging through her cleft before I angled so I could brush my fingertips over her swollen clit.

Eden was already right there.

On the brink.

Her body bowed.

Her nerves alive.

Could see them in the room.

A glow of colors and shapes.

And I stared down at this girl as I drove her to ecstasy.

Stared at her through the haze of this faltering reality. As the promise I’d made to my brother echoed in my ear.

One reason.

One reason.

I took her.

Found her.

Eden whispered, moaned, dragged me deeper into the well of that sweet, sweet soul. “Trent…I’m…”

She scratched her fingers into the stubble on my jaw.

Awe.

Adoration.

And I felt it, too.

The crumbling.

The crashing.

The fall.

But I doubted there was much I could do to keep either of us from tumbling over the side. Girl going over.

Falling.

Falling.

So, I jumped with her like I could be her safety net, pressed my forehead to hers and whispered, “I won’t let you go.”

A faulty, foolish promise.

One that slipped like finality from between my lips.

My lips that took hers as I felt her body hit that highest point. When she broke apart, that energy whipping and lashing, kissing every inch.

It set me off. Every stroke bliss.

Pleasure raced my spine.

Tingles and fire.

One thrust later, I split. Coming apart.

Lost in her body. Her eyes. That heart.

I clutched her as I came, shouting my praise. “Eden.”

Felt so good I nearly blacked out. Pleasure rushed out through every nerve. An explosion in every cell.

I could no longer see. Could no longer make sense of the mess I had made.

Instead, I heaved for air in a bid to come back down, to remember who I was, but at the end of that fall was her arms.

Her sweet arms that she wrapped around my body like that was where they belonged.

Couldn’t do much else except wrap her in mine, and I shifted us so I could tuck her to my side. I pressed a kiss to her sweat-drenched temple and brushed back the blonde hair that clung to her stunning face. I gazed at her through the shadows of the ghosts that haunted my room. “Won’t let anyone get to you. Not ever.”

And I prayed it wasn’t the greatest lie I’d ever told.