He loses it. Both hands grip my thighs, shoving them up and damn near folding me in half, opening me wider. The angle’s brutal. He’s so deep, I feel him in my throat. The headboard slams the wall in time with his thrusts, wood creaking like it might splinter, while my nails rake down his back, leaving red trails through the ink. And he snarls, pounding harder until I'm seeing stars.
"So… I’m close, so close." My voice is nothing but a tremor of soprano as the pressure coils viciously in my core.
Dane's hand wedges between us again, thumb grinding my clit without finesse, just raw pressure. One, two strokes, and I’m gone, shattering around him with a scream that rips my throat raw, pussy clamping down so hard he curses and stutters inside me.
"Shit… Sloane," he grunts, and I hear it, but I'm lost, convulsing and bucking upward wildly. "So fucking beautiful when you come apart."
He doesn’t stop, fucks me through it, dragging it out until I’m shaking, oversensitive and gasping. Then his rhythm falters, hips jerking erratically. "Where—" he starts, voice strangled.
"Inside," I gasp, locking my ankles behind his back. "Do it. Fill me up."
That’s all it takes. He slams deep one last time and comes with a guttural groan, pulsing hot inside me, hips grinding like he’s trying to push it deeper. I feel every spurt, the warmth flooding me and oozing out around him to drain down my ass onto his sheets.
He collapses over me, breath ragged against my neck, cock still twitching inside. My legs are jelly, thighs trembling as I unlock my ankles and let them fall open. He doesn’t pull out yet. He lies there buried, lips brushing the bite marks he left like he’s memorizing them.
After a minute, he lifts his head, eyes still dark but softer now, almost stunned. His thumb traces my swollen bottom lip. "You okay?"
I smirk, breathless and wrecked, clenching around him just to watch him shudder. "Ask me again when I can feel my legs."
9
DANE
The cabin's chill hits me the second I slide out of bed. October in the Adirondacks doesn't forgive bare skin, and I'm completely naked, reaching for my jeans in the dark. Behind me, Sloane shifts beneath the sheets, and in a small, slurred voice, she says, "Come back to bed."
"I have to get the package." I pull on my jeans, not bothering with the button or my boxers. "Miles left it in the truck bed. If it freezes, whatever's inside might be compromised."
"It can wait 'til morning." Her hand reaches for me, fingers brushing my thigh. "Stay."
I want to. Every instinct I've been burying for five years is screaming at me to crawl back into that bed, pull her against me, and forget about threats and packages and the past that refuses to stay buried. But I can't. A third package is sitting in my truck bed, and ignoring it won't make it disappear.
"I'll be right back." I grab my shirt from the floor and pull it on, not bothering to button it. My boots are by the door. I shove my feet into them and head outside.
The night is brutal. The temperature must've dropped another ten degrees while we were inside. My breath fogs in front of my face, and the first snowflakes are starting to fall, tiny, crystalline flakes that promise accumulation before dawn and maybe shoveling in the morning.
I lock my eyes on the truck as I walk that direction, guided by the bright light of the waning moon, and still feel my heart pounding. Sloane pushed me so hard I fucking broke and lost control. It makes me chuckle to myself at how unhinged she acted, and a pinch of pride makes me smile to myself.
She wanted me.
The package lies in the truck bed where I left it. I grab it and head back inside, locking the door behind me. Compared to outside, it feels warm in here, so I don't even bother with the fire right now. I walk straight to the table and set the package down and glance toward the bedroom door. It's cracked open, darkness beyond. Sloane's probably already asleep, exhausted from the alcohol and already passed out.
Maybe I should leave this until morning, but it gnaws at me so much that I have to know what's inside. I tear open the same brown paper that has no return address, only my name, and inside is a cardboard box, smaller than the last two. Seems like overkill to send a larger box with a smaller one inside, but this guy is toying with me. I half expect one of these to be a bomb at some point.
On top of the smaller box, a card is taped there in simple handwriting I don’t recognize. It says,
You cut his finger off before you killed him. I'm going to cut you to pieces before I kill you.
Beneath the note, wrapped in plastic and packed with dry ice that leaves a vapor in the air around it, is a human finger.
It's fresh too, still tinged with blood. The nail is intact with no polish or markings, and it looks like it was severed cleanly at the knuckle, preserved well enough that it could've come off a living hand hours ago.
My stomach turns. I've seen worse, done worse—but the memory it triggers, the kill they're referencing. I remember it distinctly. It was one of my jobs before Domingo Maddox, before everything went to hell. I was ordered to torture a man for information, and that man was deeply connected to the Maddox family too—one of their lieutenants, related to Domingo.
I stare at the finger now, bile rising in my throat. This isn't that dead man's, but whoever sent this knows the specifics of that job, the details that only a handful of people should remember.
Cal Maddox—Domingo's son—he would've been thirteen, maybe fourteen when I took his uncle's finger. Old enough to remember. Old enough to hold a grudge.
I wrap the finger back in plastic and shove it in the box, sealing it closed. Then I move to the computer, powering it up while my mind races through connections. Cal Maddox, now twenty-six, must be attempting to claim his father's position. The surveillance photos of Sloane, the bullet engraved withQueens, 2011—it all points back to him. He was just a kid who watched his family get destroyed, and maybe now he's decided revenge is the only answer.
