by Lana Grayson
Martini exploded. I held on to survive her heat, the tightness, the enveloping serenity of a woman abandoning her thoughts, fears, and memories to a moment of pure, uncompromising pleasure. In that point of her sweet surrender, I lost myself in the same gift. Nothing existed but her. No danger. No exile. No secrets.
Just her.
Just the tension shredding her in bliss. Just the entire uncompromising length of my cock imbedding her with guaranteed security. She cried out.
Her body peaked, but I grabbed her before she crashed to reality. Martini clutched me, offering everything I wanted in exchange for the ultimate protection from her own confusion. That I couldn’t give. She deserved every rise, every tightening, every torn orgasm that only melded her deeper within my hold. And I’d be the bastard she’d curse and love—the one who earned her surrender and rewarded her for such bravery.
She was mine.
Body and soul.
Heart and mind.
Once, my lust existed only to take what women willed and enjoy the fever of their flesh like a drug.
Now? I didn’t take. Martini gave. Willingly. Unabashedly. Completely.
No drug compared to the squeeze of her heat or the secret cry of my name.
I held her close, rocked my strength over the petite curves of a woman built for just this pleasure. Her fingers dug into the thick muscle of my arms. She couldn’t get a hold, but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t going anywhere. Not now. Not when my skin burned, my vision blurred, and every raging thought in my head roared with a primitive, mounting urge to take her as my own and mark her as mine.
Martini tensed as I did, her eyes widened as she realized her time for begging and cooing, arching and demanding was done. She welcomed me, submitted under me, and brought her hips up.
I buried myself completely within her and came so fast and hard she cried out against the thickening of my cock. A shared pleasure consumed our bodies in an endless, remorseless, destructive bliss.
I emptied inside her—revealing myself in a split second of utter abandonment. My guilt, my fear, my shame, my love.
I stole from her the nightmares that marked her skin, and she accepted my truth.
The shame of exile faded. The guilt shadowing Rose’s past slipped away. My father’s life and death didn’t bloody my hands—not now that I held something more precious than vengeance within my grasp. Martini gave into me, and I fell so fucking hard for her I didn’t know if I saved her or if her devotion was the one shred of hope that pulled me from the abyssal sorrow.
I didn’t part from her. She wouldn’t have let me. Tears stained her cheeks, but her kiss promised nothing had been hurt or damaged, only renewed with our promise.
She held onto me. Tight. Nothing was going to separate us again.
My second chance became my third. This time, I wasn’t letting go.
I woke naked and safe and in the arms of a man who encompassed every danger, pain, and element of the 1% that threatened me.
And I never felt more protected.
Brew’s strong arm wrapped over my waist, cradling the whipped and bruised parts of me against his strength. He hadn’t said anything about the injuries. He stopped apologizing.
One night spent under him, offering my body, granting him the peace and forgiveness he tortured himself to earn, and he was a new man. The heavy weight of his guilt cracked away, and the shell of remorse that hid him from the world fell with it.
The Brew who took me had no trace of Noir within him. The shielded rage, unbridled passion, and absolved soul forged a man of confidence who claimed me for his own.
The first mounting was for me.
The second—when he pinned my arms over my head, bit at my neck, and pistoned in and out of me with reckless lust—was for him.
And the third?
I stirred against the blankets, tied within the twisted covers and tossed pillows. His arm snaked over me, gripping my waist, cupping my breasts, and, finally resting the full weight of his palm over the base of my throat.
His hand covered the tattoo of a monster’s name.
A monster that had no more right to my body than a regretted tattoo and fading ink.
Brew didn’t say a word, but his hardness prepared for me everything he expected.
And, God, did I want to give it.
The pressure tensed at my throat. I purred into his grip and arched to offer my hips. He growled a compliment as his cock slipped within me, hard and thick. I wetted for him, and the slickness of our passion still lingered deep inside me. With Goliath, I couldn’t wait for a shower, to cleanse the filth so I’d recover the parts of me not bruised by his cruelty.
With Brew?
My silken heat blended with the excitement of his passion. He left me warm and slick and promised much more than the two eruptions which claimed my core.
I welcomed his entire length with a groan. His hand tightened on my throat, his other seizing my hips. I swallowed, reflectively gripping as he controlled everything about me—my pleasure, my pain, even my breath.
But I trusted him, and he didn’t betray that gift. He held me in comfort and authority as his thickness explored me, waking my body with shivers and earning my obedience with a steady hand at my throat.
“Morning, Darling,” he whispered in my ear.
I whimpered as his other hand tickled down over my hip and gripped the softness filling with him. His fingers circled over my slit, flicking tiny attentions over the most sensitive part of me.
“Brew—”
His motions weren’t gentle. He thrust with every claim to my body and rewarded me with the gifted pleasure of loving devotion. His instinct to grab and oppress and rut might have terrified me. The power of his grasp around my throat was familiar—too many nightmares of Goliath’s crushing grip blacking me out while he stole his release from my limp body.
But memories faded in the sanctuary of Brew’s arms. I’d banish them forever. He’d destroy my fears, and I’d rebuild my life in his embrace.
The grip on my throat flexed as my pleasure peaked in a sudden, sharp, and taken bliss.
“What are you thinking?” Brew’s wicked chuckle wanted me to beg and plead, to offer my gratitude and demand more of his touch. “Tell me, Martini.”
He expected me to say I loved him.
I did, but it wasn’t what he needed to hear. He grew, his hardness reaching deeper in me as his breath turned ragged. His fingers wove over my clit, forcing me to rise with him, seizing a pleasure he so easily created. I stiffened as he did, bucked, and crashed into the pleasured oblivion that heralded the first jet of his warmth within me.
I whispered, but he felt the words. His hands tightened as the declaration nestled us in the delicious need and contented heat.
“I trust you, Brew.”
He shuddered again, delivering more of his searing promise. I wrapped my hand over the strength clutching at my throat. It threatened and worshiped and took and loved all in the same motion. I leaned against his chest as we crested. His kisses massaged my neck and shoulders until I fell asleep.
I hadn’t drifted for long. His cock still hardened when the shouting from downstairs carried from the bar to the suites. Brew rolled from me, buckling his pants and seizing a weapon before I blinked away the confusion and mourned the loss of his cock.
I pushed the hair from my eyes as he slammed a new clip into his gun.
“Brew?” I squinted at the clock on the wall. “What—”
The monster bellowed from downstairs.
“Martini!”
Goose bumps prickled over me, each a jagged spike that punished for the swell of fear invading my mind. He terrified me, and his presence was a scar that would take more than Brew’s promises to fade.
“Goliath.” I lurched from the bed. “How the hell did he find us?”
“One fucking guess.” Brew swore. “My father waved fifty grand under his nose. Stay here.”
“You aren’t going down there.”
“Martini, get your ass down here before I blow this junkie’s head off!”
Goliath’s roar curdled everything inside me. Brew gritted his teeth.
“Get dressed. I’ll take care of this.”
“Brew—”
“He’s got my brother.” The gun tensed in his hand. “Stay quiet. Hide.”
Like hell.
Brew slunk into the hall. I donned one of his shirts and tugged on my jeans.
I wasn’t letting him go alone. And I wasn’t letting him face that bastard without me.
The brief taste of freedom and my complete and utter devotion to Brew fueled my courage. Goliath stole and hurt and threw his bulk around to pummel me into behaving the way he wanted. He got off on my injuries, and he branded me as an object to own and destroy.
Brew wasn’t the only one with a score to settle.
I ripped through his bag. A bowie knife buried beneath jeans and box of ammo. I shoved the blade into my pocket and tucked my shirt over it. The only way this was ending was when one of us bled.
And this time, it wouldn’t be me.
The scarf tied over my neck. Not fashionable. Not pretty. Just functional, hiding the ugliest part of my past with a silken tie. I wore it like a gang bandana, flashing a color that would enrage Goliath when he saw how I denied his presence upon my flesh.
I tip-toed down the hall and perched at the top of Pixie’s steps. The scene was familiar—a pub drenched in the testosterone and violence of the MC. Goliath’s bulk filled the bar, the shadow of his rage spilling into every corner. He waved a gun like a second cock and expected Anathema to shrink in the same respect he earned from Sacrilege.
Only this time he wasn’t home. The men here wouldn’t cower to a beast like him. And I wasn’t about to let him push them around.
Goliath’s gun aimed at Keep, but Brew’s brother either hadn’t fully woken yet, or the drugs from the night before hadn’t let him sleep. He sunk into a barstool as he faced the angry end of a gun held by a stranger. The yawn pissed off Goliath. Keep couldn’t have cared less.
How often did shit like this happen to him?
“Where the hell is Noir?” Goliath spat on Pixie’s floor. That insulted Keep more than the gun pointed in his face.
“Who?”
“Noir.”
Keep’s eyes might have rimmed red with drugs, and his body faded too lean in the grip of the addiction, but his smile might have charmed the gun from Goliath’s hand.
That was, if he hadn’t spoken first.
“The fuck are you talking about?” Keep said. “Get your limp dick out of my goddamned bar before I shove that piece so far up your ass I’ll have to flick your fucking ears to take the safety off.”
“You know what I’m here for.” Goliath didn’t take his eyes from Keep. He screamed my name again, raising the gun as Keep leaned against the bar.
“You want a goddamned Martini?” Keep jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Nine dollars. Gin or vodka, hotshot?”
“I’ll fucking shoot that smart ass mouth if don’t tell me where the hell Noir is.”
“Ain’t no one named Noir here.” Keep didn’t blink. “You better jerk that gun off somewhere else.”
“Brew-fucking-Darnell. Where is he?”
“Dead.”
“Bullshit. I saw him with my own eyes.”
Keep crossed himself—backward, but close enough. “Then it’s a goddamned miracle. Risen from the grave just to give it to your girl all night while the rest of us are trying to sleep. Someone call the fucking Vatican.”
The gun pressed into Keep’s forehead.
Brew stepped from the shadows, his weapon raised and jammed into the base of Goliath’s skull.
“Lay off of him.”
“Oh!” Keep nodded. “That Brew-fucking-Darnell. Yeah, that Brew was behind you the whole time.”
Goliath gritted his teeth. I gripped the stair banister. A bullet to his head wasn’t enough to drop the raging beast. A man like Goliath never used his brain before. All that mattered was the violence surging in his veins.
A mix of rage and brutality curled his lips. He wasn’t on any drugs tonight. His addiction to me fed his insanity.
He’d claw his bloodied carcass across the country if it meant wrapping a gnarled hand over my ankle and dragging me to hell.
“Gotta say, bro, you got a bad habit of mixing Anathema with your shit anymore,” Keep said. “We’re still recovering from your last shootout.”
“Yeah. I know.”
Keep nodded. “We all have our vices.”
“This one will end quick.”
“Where the fuck is Martini?” Goliath sneered. “I’ll crack your fucking skull, you son of a bitch.”
“You don’t get to say her name anymore.”
The monster snorted. “I’ll say her name all I goddamned please. I’ll scream it as I’m fucking the shit out of her over your motherfucking corpse.”
“Charming.” Keep clapped his hands on his thighs and stood. Goliath’s gun raised, but Brew’s warning grunt stalled his finger. “Need any help with this?”
“Nah.” Brew said. “Goliath and I got a lot to discuss, man to man.”
“The warehouse is empty.”
“Perfect.”
My heart pounded as Brew drove the gun against Goliath’s skull. No way he’d let Brew march him to his death. Goliath spun to attack, but Keep got him first, driving his fist into his gut. The monster howled, but the layers of muscle and fat protected him from collapsing. Keep sneered.
“You hurt that girl.” His growl matched Brew’s aggression bite for bite. “You’re fucking with the wrong brothers if you think we’re gonna let you get away with that shit. Not after what we’ve been through.”
Brew jerked him forward. Keep cracked his knuckles.
Maybe this would be it? They’d haul Goliath away. Do the dirty work. Bloody their fists and take out their guilt on a bastard more like their father than either of them.
I wouldn’t have to worry. I wouldn’t have to figure out a way to fight him off myself.
It’d be over.
And I’d be free.
Pixie’s door swung open.
The ache in my chest blistered into such panicked pain I thought the gun took me out.
Rose stormed into the bar, shouting for Brew and demanding answers as she entered the clubhouse. She froze as Goliath grinned.
“Christ, Sweetheart, wait a goddamned second—” Thorne stalked after her and came to a dead stop as Goliath’s aim switched from Keep and settled the threat into the center of Rose’s forehead.
A still second passed—a shared heartbeat before the absolute chaos exploded in the bar.
“Brew?” Rose’s voice cracked as Goliath’s monster form towered over her.
Brew’s gun might as well have been a plastic toy. Keep dropped the bat he seized from behind the counter. Thorne was quick on the draw, but his weapon aimed over Rose’s head delayed firing.
Too late. He lost his shot, and everyone snapped with the recoil.
It wasn’t a stalemate.
It was an unwinnable war.
Brew’s expression twisted into a pained, contorted rage, like the bullet already slammed within Rose. The scarred wound in his shoulder made sense now. He had already taken a bullet for her, and he’d scar the rest of his body to spare her any more pain.
Thorne’s dark hair fell over his face like an armored helm, shielding the sinister grimace that wasn’t a normal human reaction. His gun never wavered.
“You better start praying.” His words iced the bar. “Point that fucking gun under your chin unless you want to die in a world of pain.”
Thorne curled an arm over Rose and drew her back. Goliath fired, deliberately aiming to the ceiling. Rose screamed, but Thorne got the warning. He released his hold, Keep swore, and Brew stepped away.
“She doesn’t move.” Goliath grinned at Brew. “Who is this little bitch?”
&nbs
p; “I’m not a bitch,” Rose said. Keep hissed for her to shut up. She didn’t listen. “And you’re a dead man if you don’t back off.”
“She’s pretty.” Goliath licked his lips. “Can you suck cock, little bitch?”
It was the wrong fucking thing to say. Rose flinched and borrowed some of Thorne’s aggression.
“Do you even have one?”
“Cute.” Goliath surged forward and tapped the barrel against her head. “Cute, but fucking dumb.”
“You think this is the first gun I’ve had pointed at me?” Rose trembled, but she forced the hardness in her voice. None of the men defending her bought it, but it kept her calm. “They’re going to kill you if you don’t let me go.”
“And if I kill you?” Goliath stole her to the center of the room. I ducked against the stairs. The sheathed knife dug into my side, rubbing against one of the worst welts he had caused.
No way in hell I was letting those vile hands touch Rose.
“Who is she, Brew?” Goliath asked.
Brew didn’t hesitate. “She’s my daughter.”
It was the second time he said it aloud, and it still didn’t sound right. Rose clenched her eyes shut as Goliath laughed. The weapon tangled in the curls of her hair.
“Your fucking daughter?” He glanced her over. “Christ. This shit just gets better and better. She looks just like you Daddy!”
A second gun joined Thorne’s first. Brew had more control over his single weapon, but I had a feeling Thorne could shoot and take out both of Goliath’s eyes in a single burst of fire. Question was if he’d be fast enough before Rose got hurt.
“You’re running out of time,” Thorne warned. “She’s got nothing to do with this.”
“Brew’s been fucking my old lady.” Goliath groped at Rose and snickered. “Martini’s the same age as your kid. What the hell is wrong with you, man?”
“Martini ain’t complaining,” Brew said.
“You broke her in for me. That’s fine, hope you enjoyed my whore. I’ll take her now, show her what a real man does to a cunt who thinks she has a right to leave.”