Grainger is on the front porch, smoking a cigarette and staring down the length of the hill toward the parking lot. It’s the very same parking lot, in fact, that I stole Crown’s bike from. Cade just barely glances my way when I step outside.

“Am I going to rot in here forever, or is someone going to fill me in on what’s going on?” I ask, and he snorts at me, stabbing his cigarette out in a nearby ashtray. It’s filled with cigarettes, like maybe he’s been chain-smoking for the last several hours.

“You were shot in the chest,” he quips back at me, glancing over and then reaching out with a single finger to tug down the neckline of my top. His knuckle grazes my collarbone, and I’m forced to bite my lower lip to hold back a gasp. That’s not why he’s looking, I don’t think. Cade studies me with a furrowed brow, examining my injury with feigned disinterest. The bandage is still in place; Nellie’s been changing it out for me every so often, inspecting the puckered pinkness of the wound. “You’re not a superhero, much as you’d like to think otherwise.”

He lets go of me and turns back to his guard duties, staring out at the horizon and the distant shape of the clubhouse. I’ve just finally—thanks to Nellie—found out whose blood was pumped into my veins.

“Thank you, by the way,” I tell him, and I swear, he startles so badly that you’d think I slapped the guy. Grainger turns his brown eyes toward me and scowls—his usual go-to expression—but with substantially less heat than normal. “For your blood.” I reach out and run a single fingernail over the mark in his right inner elbow. He lets me do it and then shudders, taking his arm away and stepping forward so that he can rest his elbows on the porch’s railing.

“Don’t thank me. It isn’t like I had much choice,” he snaps, but that’s a lie. I know it is because Nellie and I have the same blood type, too. She told me that Grainger stepped in because she’d used after I went missing, and she didn’t want to expose me to that.

Maybe part of that is true, but I think it was something else.

It’s because he hates me so damn much.

I mimic his pose, resting my own arms on the railing. Our elbows brush together, and he scowls at me yet again. It’s his signature go-to look. I recognize it now for what it is: a mask. Living with the mafia for three months has brought me a strange, quiet sort of clarity. For years, I let my emotions blind me. That anger that Nellie mentioned, it’s had its hold on me for so long that I can’t even begin to pinpoint its initial birth. Not when my sisters died, but long, long before that.

“What do you want, Gidget?” he asks finally, his tone cutting and acidic. He’s angry at me. Because of Grey, I’m sure. But also … for not picking him? I can no longer stand around and plead ignorance to the world around me. For some time, I think, I’ve been reveling in it. Ignorance is, after all, its own special sort of bliss. “Don’t you have another grand escape planned? Some master plan to steal Beast’s bike and take off?”

I smile at him, my own expression a stropped razor.

“If only. That’s what you like about me, isn’t it? I can’t imagine you falling for a girl who’s anything less than wild.”

That gives him pause. For a moment there, he just goes completely still, muscles stiffening, hands clenching around one another. His tattoos look like comic book art, ready to pop off his knuckles in violent animations. He cracks them and stands up straight, turning to look at me with the most serious expression I have ever seen on his face. More serious than that day at the lake when he warned me that the mafia was back in town.

“Falling for a girl?” he repeats, but even though he’s almost scarily still, even though his face is a horribly sad and dangerous thing, I reach up to put my hand along his stubbled jaw. He wastes no time in pushing me away and stepping back, like I’m dangerous. No, more like he’s always done: like I’m impossible. “Get lost, Gidge.”

This time, I know I’ve got him where I want him. He called me Gidget first. Now it’s Gidge. That’s better.

“You can’t keep a secret for me and then …” I trail off, closing my eyes briefly as I remember his hot hands pushing the folds of my wedding dress out of the way. Fucking me. Even though there was a huge risk to both of us. It was like, we couldn’t bear to resist. Death was preferable to spending another second apart. Three months was too long. The two years between the time we first fucked and now … an eternity.

They pushed me away, and I let them. Because I wasn’t ready then. But I’m ready now.

“Then?” he queries back in challenge, giving a harsh laugh and trying to storm past me. I grab his arm and he goes still again, turning his head slowly back to look at me. It occurs to me then that I really am playing with fire here. Since when did I ever get it into my head that any of these men were less dangerous than Gaz or Cat? That any of them gave a shit about me? Back then, I must’ve been working on instinct, recognizing that fragile red thread that connected our souls.

Now, I’m working on fact.

“You fucked me in the chapel, Grainge,” I tell him, my voice so much softer than normal. “Like you needed me.”

He grits his teeth, running his hand over his mouth in frustration. Whatever lies he wants to tell me—or himself—he can’t deny the facts.

“Maybe I just wanted one, last taste of the president’s daughter?” he queries, but not like he’s even trying to be cruel, more like he’s asking himself a question with an answer he knows but doesn’t care to admit to.

I frown at him.

“Don’t cheapen it,” I warn, feeling that old, familiar blanket of anger sweep over me. “You’re right about one thing: I am the president’s daughter. You forget sometimes that, despite your boys’ club bullshit, I know everything there is to know about club culture.” Our eyes meet, that sacrilegious heat burning between us. Hellfire, that’s what it is. Grainger is a demon, and I am the devil’s daughter. “You’re keeping a secret that could get me killed.”

“Something you’d best keep in mind before you go poking at bears.” He snatches my wrist and yanks me close, putting our faces near enough to kiss. It marvels me then, that he’d use the same animal in his metaphor that I’ve been using inside my own head. “My blood is one thing. A quick fuck is another. Don’t turn this into something that it isn’t.”

He releases me suddenly and takes off, pounding down the front steps and heading in the direction of the clubhouse. I chase after him, even though my bare feet bruise and bleed on the rocks and sticks and pine needles scattered across the lawn.

Abruptly, Grainger turns direction and disappears into the woods.

I pause briefly, one hand resting against the trunk of a tree. This is an invitation if I’ve ever seen one. And yet …

“Go.”

I didn’t hear anyone come up behind me and yet, there it is, that smooth, Southern drawl. I turn slowly, catching sight of Beast behind me. If he’d wanted to, he could’ve snapped my neck before I even realized he was there.

My future husband, the consummate killer.

“Go?” I repeat, trying to understand what it is, exactly, that he’s trying to tell me.

Beast looks past me, toward the shadows of the woods where Grainger just disappeared to.

“I’d prefer to have you to myself,” Beast tells me, and a chill goes down my spine. He’s so goddamn calm, almost disturbingly so. But, like I said, I’ve never been afraid of him. He doesn’t look at me the way he looks at everyone else, that is, like prey. He looks at me like one grizzly to another. Just two predators passing in the night. “I’m not a man that likes to share.”

I quirk a brow. It’s so weird, talking to him like this. We haven’t exactly had many scintillating conversations. Did he eat me out to the point that I thought I might die? Sure. Did he fuck me into the pavement? Yep. Did he see that pregnancy test I didn’t want to show him? You betcha. But talking? Nah, me and Beast don’t talk.

Except if we’re going to get married, we might need to start. Because—despite Grainger’s guesses to the contrary—that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Marry Beast. If this is the only way for me to join the club, by becoming a proper old lady, then I’ll do it, like venom inside the club’s veins.

Taking a backseat isn’t exactly in my blood; it isn’t what I want for my future, and it’s not what I’m taking. During my time with the mafia, I learned something. That is: I’m not afraid of anyone or anything.

Not Cat. Not Gaz. Not the Death by Daybreak Motorcycle Club. Not the Grey Wolfe Mafia.

I almost lie here. I almost let my anger dig her red, pointed claws into me and take hold. Tell Beast you picked him out of convenience, she hisses. But that isn’t true, not entirely.

“You were the most logical choice,” I tell him, ignoring his last words. “I’m not a man that likes to share.” Those words—and the matter-of-fact confidence contained in them—make me ache and burn and want in a way that I can’t quite explain.

Like my father, I’ve always wanted my own demons. My own horde to command. That rush of power, it’s always been in me. I’ve never actually hated the club: I hated my place in it. These four men, they’ve changed everything.

“I was,” Beast agrees, circling me. The motion makes me shudder, but not out of fear. Not out of revulsion. Out of desperate, violent want. I want to fuck Beast and claim him, just like I did when I was sixteen. Some girls—probably most of them, to be honest—might’ve been the victim of an unbalanced power play, might’ve been taken advantage of by older, powerful men. I am not that sort of girl, and I don’t like being painted with the same brush.

When I locked Beast between my thighs and held him there, I was taking exactly what I wanted from him.

“But I can’t deny that there’s something here,” I admit, as he continues circling me. Again, not like I’m prey. Like I’m a mate. His mate. I wet my lips with my tongue just in time for him to pause in front of me, his blue eyes tracing the movement. I meet his gaze. “You really want me, huh? Not out of pity or obligation, but … you really want me? For the rest of my life? The only woman you’d be allowed to fuck.”

He smiles at that.

Allowed.

The only way I can control Beast is if he lets me. He’s three hundred pounds of muscle, thirty-three years of rough-and-tumble experience, a decade of professional MMA bouts. I’m a hundred and something pound eighteen-year-old with a hard past and a roughshod personality.

To give me his leash, to offer it up, he must like me. Not just my body either. He could have any number of gorgeous groupies from the clubhouse, women with curves and perky tits and pretty smiles, perfect hair and flawless makeup, and legs that aren’t covered in scars.

This is something else entirely; it always has been.

“Was I subtle about it?” he asks me, his voice dripping like honey. I’m a sucker for a good accent. Beast steps toward me, and I feel my body begin to tremble in response. I want him to touch me so bad that it hurts.

“You didn’t exactly vocalize it,” I retort, and he finally, blessedly, like a gift from God himself, lifts his big hands up and presses his palms to either side of my throat. His touch is gentle, but firm. Possessive. Here is a man who breaks necks for a living and yet he’s holding mine in just such a way that he can cup my face, brush his rough thumbpads over my parted lips.

“Was I subtle, Gidge?” he repeats, looking down at me.

It takes me a minute to swallow past the surge of emotion. Three months I was gone. Enough time and space to give me distance, to make the familiar seem foreign, enough absence for the heart to grow fonder.

“No.” Just that. It’s all I need to say. That must be what it is with me and Beast. We don’t need a lot of words to convey our feelings.

He nods again, like that was the answer he was hoping for. Unfortunately, he also decides to withdraw his hands, letting them hang loose by his sides. His eyes, though a light blue in color, are dark with emotion. There’s a feral look about him that promises his control isn’t just for show; there’s a lot going on inside of him that needs to be leashed.

The moon cuts sharp silver lines across Beast’s huge form, its light glinting off his septum piercing and making the red and black eclipse tattoo on his right arm burn like it’s caught fire. His dirty blond hair is styled the same way it always is, shaved down the left side, the right side long and arranged so that it falls over the shorter side. It shimmers gold as the trees shift in a light breeze, making silver sparkles of moonlight dance across it.

“Go,” he repeats, lifting his head up and gazing off in the direction that Grainger went.

“I don’t understand,” I murmur, glancing back to see if I can spot whatever it is that Beast sees in the shadows of the woods. Unlike him, however, I see nothing. I have no doubt that he can actually tell where Cade is right now. Beast reaches out and hooks a finger on my chin, turning my face back to him.

“Forbidden things have power, Gidge,” he tells me, the words like sweet, ripe fruit as they fall from his pretty tongue. It’s a double entendre, that phrase. I know what he’s trying to tell me. I was a forbidden thing. Not just to him, but to all four of them. Too young. Too reckless. Too … Cat’s. “Crown didn’t have to lie for ya,” he adds, exhaling sharply before releasing me once again. “Sin either. I owe them both for bringing me into the fold, for keeping my old lady safe.” He gives me an expression that I might call a cheeky smirk on anyone else. The thing is, Catcher Coffey is never cheeky. He’s too much of a badass for that.

“And Grainger?” I ask dryly, still trying to puzzle out what this conversation is meant to convey. “How and why did Crown and Sin ever think to include him in the first place?”

“If you touch her,” Grainger said that fateful day, just after I gave my first time to him, “I will end you.”

He said those words like I belonged to him. Like he really and truly meant them. He’d bleed his brother just to keep me close. Is it horrible that I almost wish that he had? That he’d thrown Sin out and pinned me to the bed, fucked me until I admitted the terrible truth?

I wanted to be his. I still do. And I hate that I feel that way.

“He’s the sergeant-at-arms,” Beast says which isn’t exactly an answer to my question. “He’s supposed to keep club members in line, not lie to them. There are only four people besides yourself you can trust, suge.” Suge. Short for sugar. And just as addictive, the sound of this man’s voice. Beast looks past me again, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “When you choose me, I want you to choose me for a reason other than logic.” He scoffs that last word before returning those blue eyes to mine. “Fact is, I’d rather you were entirely illogical when you chose me.”

I cock a brow. He said ‘when’, not if.

“Overconfident much?” I query back, and Beast chuckles. It’s a rare sound, a diamond dug from the mud that glitters even when it’s covered in dirt.

“Four people you can trust; three people you can fuck.” He gives me a look as I crinkle my face in confusion. “I’m not touchin’ you until our wedding night.”

I stare at him.

“You’re kidding me, right?” The words pop out before I can gather together one of my usual quips. Something the old me would’ve said, something like, “you really think I want you, old man?” Only, that would be me lying again. And I can’t do that anymore. Not to these men at least. “Why?”

He flattens his mouth and reaches up a hand to touch his beard. I don’t usually like beards on men, but Beast wears it well. He keeps his clean and well-trimmed, unlike some of the other Daybreakers. Gaz, in particular, comes to mind.

“Did you wrong more than once,” Beast admits, shaking his head. “I won’t make that mistake again.” He gives me a long, hard look. “This is the last time I’mma say this: three people. Nobody else. After our wedding, I can’t promise I’ll be inclined to share.”

Beast turns and takes off before I can sputter a single response.

“Fuck,” I murmur finally, rubbing my hand over my face. I’m off my game. Too much time has passed since I’ve seen these men, and I’m losing my edge. Eventually, I turn and take Beast’s advice, heading into the shadows of the woods to find Grainger leaning against a tree. His back is to the trunk, eyes closed, arms crossed over his chest.

“What’d your old man want?” he growls, his words clipped with jealousy. He wanted, I think, more than anything for me to pick him. That’s what they all want, isn’t it? All four of them. I can almost believe it, too, with the exception of Crown. That’s … that’s a lot to take in. Then again, he’s the one that I Tased, the one whose bike I stole, the one who held my fate in his hands and made a choice I never even dared to allow myself to imagine.

“First off, he isn’t my old man yet. Second …” Words fail me yet again. But I can’t stand there and look at Cade Grainger and not appreciate how damn beautiful he is. The moonlight bathes his rust-colored hair, turning it red. His lashes are long and dark, his features classically handsome. His leather cut and the short-sleeved shirt beneath it reveal two arms corded with muscle and covered in ink made up of celestial wonders. Speaking of, I catch sight of that moon and sun tattoo near his hairline, the one that looks like night and day are fucking.

Grainger opens his eyes, probably wondering if I’m sick or still suffering from the effects of blood loss. Rarely can I keep my mouth shut for such an extended period of time.

“You wanted me to pick you.”

He listens to me, blinking through the words, and then shaking his head like I’m a crazy person.

“Not a chance in hell. I wouldn’t marry you if you got on your knees and begged me.” He flicks a glance my way. “If you weren’t engaged to my brother, I might tell you to get on your knees and try right now. Even if you sucked me nice and good though, the answer would still be the same: no. ”

Anger surges up hot and fiery, that same brimstone inferno bullshit. I really and truly am of the devil, aren’t I?

“During the last three months, I’ve grown a lot,” I tell Grainger, trying and failing to keep the emotion from my voice. There’s some anger in it, sure, but there’s so much more than that. I’m tired. I never expected to live beyond the walls of the mafia’s stronghold. Then, when I’d accepted that I could marry Grey and fight another day, I had a whole life imagined that was nothing like this one. “I’ve learned to stop lying to myself. That, and I won’t let my pain control me anymore.”

It seems for a minute there that Grainger might just take off the way he usually does.

Instead, I find myself surprised when he comes for me, grabbing my face in much less gentle hands than Beast used. He kisses me then, his mouth a punishing heat that forces me back several steps, until my arching back is pressed to the trunk of a tree.

The kiss doesn’t feel like a promise, however. Or an apology. Not an admission or even a goodbye.

It feels like a punishment.

Because I know Cade Grainger so well, because we’re cut from the same cloth, I see this for what it is.

He’s going to punish me for not choosing him. For stealing Grey. Maybe he’s even punishing me for that night, the one where I chose him first, and then proceeded to fuck three other men in quick succession. Had he thought he’d won then? Did I do something to push him away?

Regardless, that’s what’s coming. That’s what’s happening right now.

We’ve been in purgatory, Cade and I. This, this is his castigation of me.

“No,” he growls against my lips, barely allowing either of us room to breathe. Still, I can see him, limned in moonlight and raging. Wanting. Needing me. “You don’t get to come back here and act all grown-up, like some wiseass seer who’s learned her lesson.” He rises up, putting space between us with the sole purpose of looking down at me—literally as well as metaphorically. Ironic that, considering we both dwell in the depths of the underworld. “What I did for you was a favor, Gidge. That’s it. A favor to Crown, a favor to Beast, to Sin. Shit, a favor to Cat.” He points at me, his tone cutting. “If he knew about this, and he had to put you down, he’d never be the same man.” Cade grits his teeth as he pulls back from me. He looks like a man who’s lost a war. Devastated, that’s the only way I can think to describe him right now.

He’s voicing the worry I had before, about this whole scenario being about Cat.

I’m too smart to accept that lie for what it is: complete and total bullshit.

“You’re angry because I’m marrying Beast and not you. If I’d asked for you, you’d be treating me a hell of a lot better right now.” I stand my ground, even when he looks at me like he wants to kill me. To the uninitiated, to the ignorant, to the inexperienced, anger and passion look quite similar from afar. To someone who’s seen their fair share of both, I know what it is that I’m looking at.

Unbridled passion.

Without reins, it’s the most dangerous thing there is.

It makes us reckless, volatile; it makes us seethe.

“Better?” Cade snorts, looking me up and down and running a hand over his hair. “I don’t know about that. I’d have you on your back on the forest floor.” He stalks toward me, but I remain where I am, my back pressed to the trunk of a tree. “I’d have you on your knees in one of the dorm rooms. Shit, I’d take you on the back of my bike the way Crown did.” I cringe a little at that; I wasn’t aware he knew every detail of what I’d done with the other men. “Consider yourself lucky that you didn’t pick me.”

He looks me over with lascivious eyes, with wicked intent simmering like hot coals. His tongue slides out to tease one of his lip rings.

“Oh, if you only knew the fucked-up shit I’d like to do to you. You’d run, Gidge. You wouldn’t chase me into the woods with your teenage bullshit. You think I have a crush on you? That I want to take you to prom?” He laughs then, and the sound carries. If I’d heard that sound out of context, it would likely give me the chills.

It’s a warning, that laugh. One that I refuse to heed. Because I’m not scared of Cade Grainger. Never was. Never will be. No matter what he says or does.

“Then do it,” I challenge him, knowing that this is how we function best together. Odds and ends. Push and pull. We fight and claw and bite because it’s all that we know. “All of those fucked-up things. Do them.” I push away from the tree and come to stand in front of him, just to prove a point. “It didn’t stop you when I was sixteen, so why should it stop you now?”

The look he gives me then is thick with disgust, harsh and biting.

“Cat’s made a decision; that’s law.” He snorts then and runs his hand over his face. “Unless, of course, you decide to steal another hostage and take off. Fuck my fucking life.”

“Cat said I could marry Beast, that’s it,” I clarify, shaking my head. “He doesn’t say who I can or cannot sleep with.” I purse my lips and narrow my eyes, gaze sliding to one side. I’m honestly flabbergasted by this whole situation. It feels like a dream. A dark dream. Maybe even a nightmare. Anyway, it doesn’t feel real.

I’m back. After three months, after rescuing Grey, crashing Crown’s bike, I’m back.

These men—the ones I craved so badly I was willing to bleed for a single taste—have lied for me. They’ve cleared the way. They have, knowingly or not, switched their true allegiance from Cat and the club to me.

Too good to be true. Which means something bad is going to happen. What I need to do now is keep these men close. Trust is not something I easily give, but they’ve all earned it, each and every one of them. I just have to crack their shells a bit, dig beneath their armor, and find my place inside their black, brutal hearts.

Because at this point, I’ll only allow them to be gifted to me.

Amber—and whatever other groupies might be interested in the officers—best take a note.

“What?” Grainger bites out, canting his head to stare at me like I deserve that spanking he long-ago promised and never delivered on. “Have you lost your mind?”

I meet his gaze dead-on, refusing to back down or be intimidated. He thinks he’s tough? Then what the hell am I? At this point, my skin is like Kevlar and my heart is forged of iron.

“Nellie is the president’s wife,” I begin, and I can tell Grainger knows where this is going. “She fucks who she wants, when she wants.”

Now that gives him pause. Cade Grainger is not someone who’s easily shocked into silence.

“With your father’s permission,” he corrects, and I swear, I see red. I throw my arms around his neck, crushing my mouth to his. He remains stiff, immovable. Annoying. Told ya I hated the guy.

“Since when have I ever cared to get permission from anyone for anything?” I retort, and then I’m biting his lower lip so hard that it bleeds. That salty taste in my mouth wakes up every single one of my senses. Grainger’s saffron and cumin, black pepper and vanilla smell assaults me. It’s mixed with a heady dose of sweat and testosterone. I can taste his rage along with his blood, the same blood that even now is feeding my racing heart, that’s filling his cock and making it hard for me.

“Every time I wonder if you’re worth it …” he growls, and then he’s throwing me to the forest floor. I hit the ground just hard enough to take my breath away, but not hard enough to hurt. Cade is good at that, walking the tightrope of my tolerance. He descends on me like one of those demons I so like to compare him to, like some hulking thing with black leathery wings and horns.

His body hovers above mine, but he keeps his weight off of me. The only parts of us that are touching are our lips. And oh, those lips … Cade kisses me with such desperate brutality, I can feel every moment of waiting and wanting. All those times he looked at me and wished he could have me.

Forbidden things have power, Gidge.

Beast was so right. There’s so much energy stored up between me and Grainger, like two thunderclouds clashing in a stormy sky. Yes, he’s still punishing me. Yes, he still sees me as forbidden.

Yet, he can’t stop himself.

He can’t control himself.

None of them can: not when it comes to me.

Each sweep of Grainger’s tongue is like the swing of a blade, sharp and violent. I have no choice but to meet him tit for tat, kissing him with a fervency that I didn’t realize I had until now. He’s mine, always has been. The thought comes to me unbidden, a dirty little secret that isn’t so secret anymore.

“You little shit,” he growls at me, nipping at my lower lip and making me writhe. “How dare you? How fucking dare you do this to me?”

When I try to hook my arms around Cade’s neck, he pushes them aside, looking down at me with a seriousness that I’ve never seen in him before. He uses his bitchiness and his anger as a shield, but that possessiveness I’ve always simultaneously loved and hated? It’s still there, shield be damned. That was always real.

“I thought I got so lucky that night,” he tells me with a bit of a laugh. We’re both breathing so hard, stirring one another’s hair with each exhale. I’m so tempted to touch him, whether he likes it or not, that my fingertips tingle as I dig them into the forest floor beneath me. “This hot piece of ass waltzes into the bathroom, and I forget for a moment that I’m a useless, angry bastard.”

“Call me a hot piece of ass again,” I warn, but I’m arching up enough that my breasts tease the front of his chest, and he snarls in response.

“I knew as soon as I saw you that night that you had to be mine. Period. Nothing else was acceptable.” He pauses and glances to the side, clearly lost in memories of that fateful night. Did these men know what they were doing then? Committing to me in a way that was soul-deep, that was so much more than bodies and cunts and cocks. It was everything. “Then I figured out who you were …”

He trails off then, and I start to understand that this speech is as much for him as it is for me. He’s explaining why he needs to punish me. Why I deserve it. Why he’s in the right, and I am oh so wrong.

You’re going to pay for this later, I think, but for now, I want him to fuck me, so I let him talk.

“Too young,” Grainger murmurs, shaking his head and brushing some of that rust-red stubble against my chin. I rub against it, and he curses hot enough to make a sailor blush. “You’re still too young, although nobody would know it, considering that mouth you’ve got on you.”

I slap him and then grab a handful of his hair. Grainger returns the favor, snatching my hair in his fingers and wrapping it around his fist. We continue to stare at one another.

“Tell me I’m a helpless victim who doesn’t know what she’s doing. I survived the mafia, Cade. And I did it without your help. Without any of your help. I could’ve been married to the future Don of the Grey Wolfe Mafia.”

“Would’ve been the heir to a crumbling throne,” he mocks, but not like he’s unimpressed with me. More like he knows something about this long-trodden warpath that I don’t. What’s new? “Being your enemy was never an option for me, Gidget. Even if it means destroying the only real connection to this world that I have left.”

That’s it, all I’m going to get from him.

Thank fuck because I’m done talking.

Grainge kisses me, pulling my hair just hard enough to hurt, walking that tightrope yet again. Our mouths slide together, tongues dancing, but he’s still not touching me anywhere else. It’s hard to believe that my first time was with this man, this stupid, broken, bitchy asshole.

He jerks back suddenly, releasing my hair. I gasp at the break in contact, like two live wires being separated, destroying the electrical current passing through them.

Much to my surprise, he retreats between my legs, grabbing hold of my sweatpants and yanking them down my hips. My breath releases in a rush as my ass hits the leaf-strewn ground, and Grainge tears the fabric over my feet, panties included. He tosses the bundle of cloth aside and then puts his hands on my knees.

“I’ve fantasized about how you’d taste,” he breathes, his voice this vicious hiss that makes my lower stomach muscles tighten in anticipation. “Fucked my fist in the shower thinking about it God only knows how many times. I was worried that since you’re such a snarky brat, your cunt would drip poison. But this …” I throw my head back and close my eyes as he shoves my legs apart, his violent tongue sweeping over my folds and making me gasp. “It smells and tastes like honey.”

Grainger takes me with such vigor then, you’d think I was doing him a favor. He consumes me with his mouth, claiming me with a sharp tongue and a bruising grip on my hips. Cade isn’t shy as he dives in, savoring me, grazing my folds with his teeth with a voracity that’s startling.

“Jesus,” I curse, and he laughs at me. The sound is amplified by his position between my legs, his stubble grazing my inner thighs as he moves his tongue to my opening. He fucks me with hot, slow licks, pushing into me as I writhe against his face, fingers digging into the dirt beneath us.

“That’s right, Gidge. Pray for me. I’mma need it.”

We sin together in the shadows of the woods, my head thrown back in demonic bliss, my bare heels digging into the dirt. The term eating out seems to fit this scenario: I’m being consumed. Grainger possesses me with his mouth, and then he drags my soul out, kicking and screaming onto that sinful tongue of his.

My legs wrap his head tight, squeezing him between my thighs as he works me up to the edge of an orgasm and then, abruptly, jerks back. My legs hit the ground hard as he sits up, leaving me panting before him.

He watches me with a dark sort of expression, a frown twisted across that annoying mouth of his.

I leverage myself up on my elbows, my pulse racing, my skin damp with sweat. If he leaves, so help me God, I will murder him. Instead of disappearing this time, he tears his shirt over his head and undoes the button on his jeans.

His cock is hard and ready, springing free as he grips it with a rough palm.

“Lay the fuck back down, Gidge,” he warns me, and then he’s descending on me again, kissing the side of my neck like he’s the vampire he once accused me of looking like. He licks my throat, forcing me to lift my chin, to expose my neck to him. This bastard.

It feels too good to stop though. Too sharp and brilliant to resist.

Grainger guides himself to the aching wet heat between my thighs, touching me with his tip and then letting out a colorful curse. He thrusts hard and deep, taking my cunt the same way he did at the chapel. This time, though, we have more time to play with each other.

My hands find the firm muscles in his back, kneading and scratching at his skin as he shoves the sweatshirt up my body to reveal my bare breasts. His lip curls as he pauses, studying my pebbled nipples with interest.

“Did he suck these tits?” he asks me, and it takes a long hot second for me to realize that he’s thinking about Grey.

“He was planning to, on our wedding night,” I taunt, and that’s it, enough to trigger Cade. He drops his mouth to my right breast, biting my nipple and tugging on it as I cry out and gather him against me. His pistoning hips pin me to the forest floor as I quiver and thrash beneath his brutality. He isn’t being nice, not at all. And I love it. That’s not why I like Cade, because he’s nice. I like him because he’s an antagonistic asshole.

Just like me.

We’re the same, me and Grainger.

 “Tell me he never fucked this cunt,” Grainge snarls, biting my ear and making my hips buck. Our pelvises crash together as pleasure courses through me, hotter and headier than I’ve ever experienced before. Everything about being back feels new somehow.

I yank him to me, thrusting up to meet each one of his movements.

I started my birth control pills this morning, but eh, I might be in trouble. That’s later Gidget’s problem.

“He never fucked it,” I whisper, putting my mouth beside his ear and enjoying the way his back muscles tense at the feel of my breath. “Since I last left this compound, it’s only been you. Just you.”

If I thought Cade was being wild before, that’s nothing to how he becomes. He slams my wrists into the ground, and rocks into me so hard that I can feel the tip of his cock reaching uncomfortable depths just seconds before the pleasure coiling in me is unleashed. It lashes out like a whip, making me scream, making me drag my nails down his back.

As deep as he wants to go right now, I can handle it. I can take it. I want it.

He drops his mouth to my right breast and bites me hard, just before coming with a ragged groan, working inside of me for several hard thrusts and spilling himself into me. My pussy is still clenching, squeezing and milking him; I can feel every movement of my own body, every pulse. I can only imagine what it feels like for him.

Eventually, Cade drops down to his elbows. With my body crushed under his weight, he catches his breath.

“Very few people expected to find you alive” he tells me, holding himself there, our bodies still locked together. “I was one of them.”

We both pause at the sound of footsteps—very deliberate footsteps. Whoever’s coming wants us to hear them or else we wouldn’t know a damn thing. I know who it is before I see a face emerging from the shadows, bathed briefly in silver moonlight.

“Your daddy wants to see you at the clubhouse,” Beast says, surprising me and Grainger both. It makes me wonder then if he wasn’t watching the whole damn time.

His presence, at the very least, gives that unspoken ‘permission’ that Cade was so worried about.

Grainger sits up slowly, warily, like he wonders if he might have to get into it with Beast. But no, Beast waits patiently, arms crossed over his chest.

“You watch us?” Cade growls out, and I remember yet again how damn possessive he is. Me marrying Beast is a huge blow to his ego, his pride … and his heart? If he even has one. Beast just shrugs which could really mean anything, but that seems to be enough to assuage Grainger. “You are one, twisted motherfucker. If I were marrying Gidget …” He trails off with another harsh laugh, sitting up and then chucking my sweatpants at me. Put them on NOW, is what his gaze says.

I go deliberately slow, taking my time as I drag the material up my legs.

“If I were marrying Gidget, no other man would dare touch her.” Grainger looks right at me as he says the words, and I realize how true that is, one of the unspoken reasons why I didn’t pick him that night. Beast is practical when he needs to be; Cade is not.