by Lana Grayson
But I forced him deeper. I dropped my body against him.
Harder. Faster. Torturing myself in a way I never thought possible.
Brew’s heavy groan touched me when he didn’t dare move his hands. The rough promise bound me to him, whipped over me with the heavy implication of his pleasure, of his final claiming.
“Darling—come with me.”
He came inside me.
I lost my mind to the shattered submission I tried so hard to contain.
My mind blanked, and my body fell limp. I drove down on top of him as his orgasm set me on fire. There was no denying this part of him. His heat filled me. I’d never escape. He marked me with his seed and owned me completely.
I groaned into his neck, kissing and biting and shielding myself within the safety of his strength. His cock pulsed inside me, and I finally cried out. His pleasure became mine, and I held onto him as the only force in the world protecting me from my own undoing. The shivers sliced down to my bones, and my chest ached for air. Nothing stopped the never-ending agony of his conquering. He exposed every darkness and truth within me.
Brew finally touched me. Finally took ahold of me and did what I had subconsciously begged of him. His fingers dug into my hips, and he stood, pinning me against him in mid-air as the last jets of his seed surged inside me. I gripped his neck, but Brew was strong enough to drive me down upon his standing body.
Our passion slashed through me. His surging, possessive kiss bound me against him, fiercer than the cock imbedded within me.
He crashed me onto the bed, never once withdrawing as he hardened even more. He laid over me, his fists pressing into the blankets at my sides.
I was trapped under him, around him, and with him inside me.
I never wanted it to end.
My lips parted, and he seized my kiss, forcing himself deep enough to earn my squeal. His eyes burned with a reviving excitement, a brightness that I hadn’t seen before. He stared at me, revitalized. A past version of Brew took hold and banished the shell of the man cloaked in misery.
I gripped his arms. He didn’t like that. His frown scolded me. My hands pushed over my head instead, pushing my chest toward him. He feasted upon my breast, possessing my body within his size and strength and claiming me with hardened thrusts. My release shuddered through me, raking me with continuous pleasure. Brew tormented me in passion, and I let myself drown in the scalding heat of his victory.
His phone vibrated against the nightstand.
I cursed the interruption and whimpered as he pulled away. He forced me against the bed, pointing a finger and commanding I remain where he put me. He grabbed the phone without checking the screen.
The call ended after only a few seconds—a mere moment before everything we had done and everything we had uncovered was ruined, crushed, and destroyed by the darkness of his past.
Brew pulled away from me. It wouldn’t be the only time. It wouldn’t be the last time.
The pain in his voice devastated me.
“Dad’s out.”
It was all she needed to say. The call ended as soon as she whispered. So did my life.
Rose’s voice cracked into a hollow shell—the same timid hush I heard so many goddamned times when she was growing up. She stayed quiet even when he wasn’t around, like he’d hear what she was saying and the secrets she kept and the lies he forced her to spread.
He got out.
The goddamned bastard who ruined me. Ruined her. Ruined the entire family.
And I had no idea he caused any of the pain.
Every sin I bled, I committed because of him. When he said Temple planned to bribe his way out of jail, I immediately counted the money strapped beneath my dresser drawer. I didn’t question it. He was my father, and, despite the oaths and mottos, blood was more important than even the Anathema MC.
I betrayed my club for him. I sold myself to The Coup because they were the only way to get Temple to trust me to complete the deals and get the money for his bribes.
The drugs rolled in, the money passed around, and I acted as the surrogate Blade. The eldest son—splitting time between family, duty, and foolish fucking hope. I knew my crimes. I only hoped my betrayal would free my father and heal Anathema.
Except Blade didn’t care about Anathema’s split. Knight and I did. We played our games, made our plans, and fucked ourselves in the blood it spilled. Our goal was to reunite Anathema and The Coup, and a free Blade would have done it. But lies and betrayal only bred rats.
Rose almost died. I almost died. Temple lost their guaranteed deal and demanded blood. And it was all to protect a monster.
The phone clenched in my hand. It had been coming. I counted the days, tallied the hours. But now? I didn’t think it’d be now.
I lurked across the country, trapped in the middle of an undeclared gang war.
I just had the greatest fuck of my life, and I was fighting my every goddamned urge to not carve out my heart and hand it to Martini.
My worst nightmare protected her.
Rose’s fear stopped me before I twisted Martini and me into more darkness. She thought she dominated me. Thought we denied our natures. She rode me with the confidence of a dominatrix flexing a whip, but she never struck. She only tangled us in the leather. She bound us and lured me close and trapped herself in temptation.
She believed she was safe. Dangerous fucking girl.
We both would’ve been damned, ensnared within her desires and lost within my remorseless sin that desecrated what might have been beautiful.
The phone call spared Martini by sacrificing Rose—the one I swore to protect. The one I never did.
Rose didn’t ask me for anything. She wouldn’t. Not now, not ever, but even a girl with stolen innocence couldn’t imagine what I planned. She leaned on Thorne for protection, comfort, and love, but even the most ruthless and devoted president of Anathema had no power to touch Blade Darnell.
If my father was out, it meant a hell of a lot of changes for an already unrecognizable club. The vice-president patch belonged to him. It sewed on his cut years before Anathema fractured, earned through his allegiance with Temple, and maintained by all the wealth that poured into the club. He’d bring in money. Power.
He’d start another war.
I pulled on my jeans as Martini wrapped herself in a sheet. She rubbed her flushed face, but it took a perk of her eyebrow and my name soft on her lips before I remembered she was there.
Before I remembered what we’ve done.
Before I realized what I’d lose when I finished what my father started twenty-one years ago.
“What’s wrong?” Martini tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. She tugged the sheet higher across her chest, as if I hadn’t explored what she hid, as if I hadn’t just emptied myself inside her.
“That was Rose.”
It wasn’t like Martini to let anything go. She had to push and question and dig. Curiosity was kinder to the cat than it would be to her. No wonder she was in trouble. Rose had no choice. Martini made the wrong ones.
“What’d she say?” She asked.
“My father got out of prison.”
“Oh.”
She shimmied down the bed. She looked tiny all tangled in the sheets. Young. Vulnerable.
I knew better than to fuck her, especially with the thoughts raging my head and hardening my cock. I flinched when she reached for my hand. She flinched too. Not an apologetic wince, but a recoil. She hadn’t shrunk from me since the first time I met her.
My searing blood froze, and she didn’t even realize how badly it hurt. Martini was a shit nickname for her. She was a second Blade. She spoke and slashed through my defenses. Exposed everything raw and wicked inside me.
“What does she want you to do?” Martini’s voice was too gentle for the implications.
“She doesn’t want anything.”
“Nothing?”
The words tasted foul. “She asked for my help when she was a kid, but I n
ever helped her then. So she stopped asking a long time ago.”
“She must be scared.”
“She has Thorne.”
A psychopath to protect her from a psychopath, but at least he was good to her. Never hit her, took care of her, loved her more than he loved the club. It was the only reason I let her stay with him, and the one reason I ever slept at night.
Martini twisted her fingers in the sheet. “Are you…going to go after your father?”
“I have to.”
“And you’re going to kill him?”
“Yes.”
She fiddled with her hair again, twisting the ends before swiping it behind her ear. The silver in her eyes glistened—hard. She didn’t want to ask, but she did anyway. Damned the consequences and surged forward, without looking where she was going.
“Can you kill your father?”
“He’s not my father. Not anymore.”
She chose her words carefully. Not delicately enough. “He’s the man who raised you.”
“He’s the man who poisoned me with his lies. What I learned from him I should forget, and everything I got from his blood is a curse.”
I reached for my shirt, but what the hell would I do with it? It was one in the morning. We had ridden all day, and the sex that normally refueled me left me exhausted, mentally and physically drained. My strength once allowed me to conquer a woman. Tonight, it punished me. My arms hurt from gripping the bed, my shoulder punished me for tensing as Martini arched and whimpered and fought her own needs while she rode me into oblivion.
“Are you able to kill a man?” She whispered.
“I’ve done it before,” I said. Her expression shifted, caught between a false bravery and the vulnerability of being trapped, naked and fucked within a killer’s bed. “Does that scare you?”
“Does it scare you?”
“Christ.”
“I’m sure it scares him.”
I swore. “This man destroyed my family. He broke Rose, and we’re only now putting her together. She won’t ever be right.”
“But—”
“There is no but. This is what I have to do. It’s the only reason I’m still alive.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Okay. I understand.”
She didn’t, but I didn’t expect her to understand the bottomless, bile-ridden depths of my hatred. She was no stranger to ugly violence, but revenge wasn’t ugly. It was pure, raw, and honest. An eye for an eye regulated Anathema MC even if we were blind to my father’s crimes. The vile, disturbing things he did to Rose transcended the accepted punishments for a band of anarchist outlaws, living beyond the shadow of justice.
My revenge wouldn’t be emotional. It’d be exacted for one reason and one reason only.
Rose.
“What are you doing?” Martini sat up. The sweet swell of her breasts peeked from the sheet. My cock screamed, but I ignored the thoughts pooling my blood. The things I wanted to do to her, the ways I had to restrain my urges—I’d cut the goddamned cock from my body if it meant never subjecting her to the monstrous desires blackening my soul.
I shoved a shirt into my bag. “Packing.”
“You’re leaving now?” She reached for her phone. “It’s the middle of the night. We need to sleep.”
“I won’t be able to sleep.”
My shoulder burned as I hauled the traveling bag onto the table. A bottle of painkillers rolled on the inside. I popped a few and chewed. Bitter. The pills and I had a lot in common.
“Okay, then we should think about this,” she said.
“What’s to think about?”
“…Me?”
I dropped the bag.
Fuck.
She folded her arms over the sheet, but it didn’t hide her. Any of her. The creamy pale skin, the mused blonde wisped edges of her hair, the distance in her silver eyes. Her body heated, exploded on me, revealed her deepest thoughts and fears and joy…
…Then got tossed away as soon as the phone rang.
Fuck.
The bag weighed heavy in my hands. The weapons inside were only part of the weight, their intentions another. I dropped it to the table.
The open road didn’t ask for much, and my solitude the past three months hadn’t demanded any responsibilities aside from finding a gas station to refuel and a bar to drown in my exile.
I never expected a companion. Not that I deserved one. My life was too dangerous for any more complications. Taking her on was a mistake. Keeping her with me would be fatal. For both of us.
Goliath. Temple. Kingdom. I didn’t want to imagine what would happen to her if she were taken. I had the self-control and conscience to deny any sadistic urges. But war had no rules, and men no morals. Martini acted tough. She learned to take a punch and come out smiling. But her world darkened with such shadow she’d never find her way home without getting lost in the mire.
If she made it home at all.
Fuck.
Leaving her was no better than the years I spent ignoring Rose.
Rose needed me, but splitting from Martini meant tossing her to the wolves. They’d maul her, destroy her, and break her, and I wouldn’t be there to rescue her. Rose had survived, but Martini’s mouth would satisfy an enemy only until it opened and no one else lined up to shove a cock in it before she got herself in trouble.
I tensed, swallowing my profanity. Every second that passed trapped Rose with my father. But every second I stayed with Martini protected her from the dangers stalking us both.
So who had more time?
Neither of them.
And I knew it.
“Brew,” Martini said. “Please. Talk to me.”
“Why?” I tossed the bag to the floor. “I got nothing good to say.”
“Take me with you.”
The sheets dropped. She flushed as she wiggled to the edge of the bed, reaching for my hand. The softness of her body offered me everything. Comfort. Forgiveness. She might have asked me for my still-beating heart, and, like a fool, I would have dug the breaking fragments from my chest.
“Take you where?”
“Home.”
“To Goliath?”
She frowned. “No. To Anathema.”
I suspected she was wild—a miniature deviant who got off on danger. That confirmed it.
“Ain’t no way I’m letting you near Anathema.”
“Are they any more dangerous than Temple?”
“Temple is an army armed with smuggled weapons and trained soldiers. Anathema is a dented grenade that lost its pin. You get me?”
“So what do you suggest?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“Are you leaving me?”
A naked woman, beautiful and spirited and slick with my desire, wavered on the edge of utter devotion and absolute heartbreak.
What the hell was I supposed to do?
Who was I supposed to save?
“I don’t know,” I said.
Martini gnawed on her lip. She urged me to come closer with the twitch of her eyebrows and the glistening shade of her eyes.
I always thought myself the sadist, but I put myself through enough shit to shame a masochist. I obeyed her, resting on the side of the bed as she curled her arms over my neck and rested her head on my shoulder. She laid over the tattoo I etched into my skin to remind me of this decision. Of this moment. I meant for the ink to tell me what I had to do—whether it was right, wrong, hard, or the last fucking decision I’d ever make.
It stayed silent and waited for me to fuck everything up.
“You have to go,” she whispered. “It’s for Rose. She needs her brother.”
I tensed. Didn’t answer. She edged closer, pressing her body against mine. I never felt a heat so perfect.
“Take me with you.”
“I’m not going to put you in that kind of danger.”
“And leaving me here is a walk in the sunshine?”
“Christ, Martini. Anathema is a club on the
brink of war, with itself and Temple. I’m won’t lead you into that clusterfuck.”
“You won’t. You’ll protect me.”
“Are you that sure?”
She sighed, tightening her hold over me. Her eyes fluttered closed, and the gentle brush of her breath tingled over my skin.
“I am. Because of Rose.”
I swore. She hugged me tighter. I didn’t push her away.
She was right.
“I’ll be there with you,” she whispered. “I’ll help you. I promise.”
“And when I kill him?”
She hesitated. “Then you can forgive yourself. Let this guilt go. We can’t survive both your past and the war with Temple and Kingdom. If we leave, they won’t be able to find us. We’ll be safe.”
“No place is going to be safe.”
“We’ll find a place where we can handle it. It won’t feel like running if we’re together.”
I took a deep breath. “It’s been a while since I did a run up the coast. There’s…these vineyards in the Central Valley. They do these wine tastings. High class shit. You’d like it.”
“Why, Brew.” Martini’s finger traced over my tattoos. “That sounds like a date. Usually men woo a girl with the romantic escape before getting her involved in a gang war.”
“Can’t say I’ve ever been conventional.”
“So you’ll let me tag along?”
I wrapped an arm around her, letting her snuggle in deeper against my chest. “Don’t think I have a choice.”
“No other way to keep me out of trouble?”
“No, I don’t think I’ll be able to get you off my bike.”
He almost left me.
I saw it in his eyes. His posture. He shifted from impassioned lover to caged, rabid animal within a moment of darkness. The torment exhausted him.
I curled in his arms as he held me tight. His phone lay silent on the nightstand. He stared at it like it would ring again, like he expected to hear the worst all over again.