Knight (106 page)

But the heat from his legs burned me as I crossed his lap.

The brush of my nipples against his chest struck harder than any lash of a crop or cane.

And the first rub of his monstrous cock against my slit threatened me with the memory of my stolen virginity and every time I had been taken since.

I shivered.

So did he.

“You’re killing me, Darling,” Brew groaned. “Just shoot the gun and be done with it.”

I smirked, but I think my lips only trembled. “And miss all this fun?”

“This isn’t fun. This is…” His hips flexed, but he didn’t rise from the bed.

“Agony?”

“Wonderful.”

I raised my hips over his. His lips traced a silent profanity, a word used to punish himself for daring to touch the soft skin of my leg so near his fingers.

He didn’t beg me to lower myself onto him, but I couldn’t imagine a time he’d ever beg. Brew wasn’t a man who’d lose his dignity to anyone but himself. His willpower shocked me, especially as my fingers danced over the defined muscles in his chest, his shoulders, and traced the tribal markings that claimed almost every inch of his skin on his arms.

He was mine.

The revelation came so suddenly, so absolutely, I nearly wept in the frustration I forced between us.

Total control. Total trust. Total desire.

And we both held back.

I sucked in a breath and lowered myself, sealing his entire length within me in a single, forceful claiming that punished me more than him.

The sudden, shocking fullness sliced through me. He swore. I panted his name and gripped his shoulders. My body raged, each shiver destroying the defenses I put in place.

One thrust conquered me.

It wasn’t only pleasure that splintered my guard. It wasn’t the vulgar stretching of my body or the hot entrapment that pierced me upon him.

I thought I controlled our moment.

I thought I was the one making the rules and setting the time and taking what each of us offered.

God, was I wrong.

I controlled
nothing
.

Brew didn’t touch me, didn’t help me, and said nothing as I ground against his cock and shuddered in every mind-rending sensation his thickness commanded. I did everything and gave everything and took everything, and yet the authority of our embrace belonged to him.

He didn’t throw me on the bed or beat the submission into me. He had it.

I was lost.

I wrapped myself against him, tucking my arms over his back and lowering my head into the safety of his shoulder and neck. My movements weren’t fast. I couldn’t handle so much of him so quickly, not when it was my choice. If it was my choice. My body arched and shuddered and rolled with a dark sweetness—a pained pleasure that ripped through me as both gifted bliss and a harsh lesson.

I didn’t dare cry out his name even if it was the only word screaming in my mind. Admitting it, calling for him, would ruin the fragile illusion we created. I might have taken my pleasure on top, but I had no control over anything I did or felt.

My entire life, I submitted to a cock.

This time, I fell for the man. And I fell way too hard and way too fast. If I crashed, there’d be no piecing me back together.

His uncompromising strength bound me. His need enraptured me. His heat brought me to a peak so fast I’d break before I even understood what was happening.

I held on because I didn’t know what else to do. I promised myself I wouldn’t surrender. I wouldn’t give in to those thoughts. And now? None of it mattered. He exposed me. His cock felt like an interrogation. Letting myself orgasm would betray every truth I denied and every secret I ever hid. But the crushing pressure built low in my belly. It captured me, shredding my pride and mocking my reactions.

I sweated. He did too. I fought the pleasure, but my body moved faster even as I tried to fight my urges. Brew swore, each frustrated profanity a shameless compliment.

If I asked, he would have taken me. Thrown me onto the floor with my head down and hips up. I’d have lost everything and gained everything and let myself collapse in pleasure as I flaked away in desperate surrender.

I couldn’t let it happen.

Torn between bliss and denial, I teetered on the edge of insanity. My body ached. My insides clenched, trying to hold him deeper and expel him from the tempted tightness. Every breath I took pained me, as if he had struck me, as if the rocking heat of his cock slamming inside me was the lick of a belt.

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 never 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.