Sliding her hand over my cheek, she brushes her lips gently against mine, her brown gems capering all over my face. “Thanks for this. And”—she glances around before returning to me—“just remember, I’m yours, and you’re mine, and this is all in fun.”
With that, she sashays up to the microphone, like a queen in charge. “Good evening, ladies. I am Ryker Noire’s fiancée, Mercy. We thought it was fitting for me to kick off your festivities. I know a little something about supporting a man who has an eclectic career. It can be a lot.” She pauses for some nods and murmurs. “So, let’s start this night with something we probably all have in common—what we werereallythinking when they first took us out.” With her fist to her mouth, she dramatically clears her throat. “Or rather, when they firsttookus.”
That garners her hoots and hollers and applause from the ladies, who have drinks in hand and appear to have started a little while ago. It takes a good two minutes for them to settle, during which time Cash leans into us.
“I told you they were wild.”
“No fuck,” Maddox spits, his eyes peeled on the crowd.
Mercy raises her champagne flute. “Now he lays me down to screw. I hope this clown knows what to do. If he should come before I end, I swear to God I’ll bang his friend.”
And the ladies go crazy.
Maddox pats his chest, his face as disturbingly cheery as Johnny Depp’s interpretation of The Mad Hatter. “I bet I’m the friend.”
That earns him a swift smack to the back of his head from me and a clap of appreciation from Cash.
To his point, I’m not entirely in favor of the content of Mercy’s toast, but she nailed it.
Axel side-eyes me with a similar conclusion. “I think she just secured us a banquet hall full of happy WAGs and possibly interested members.”
Mercy’s voice is nearly drowned out by the ongoing reception, but still, she finishes. “Welcome to La Lune Noire. Drink and conspire.”
It’s like she woke up and decided she belonged with us, the glimmer of true royalty we need. I’m so unbelievably in love with this woman that it nearly knocks me over.
But I push through that and dash for the stage. I’ve also never been this turned on in my entire life. Time to fuck my queen.
RYKER
“That wasinspiring.” My lips brush the shell of Mercy’s ear, and a shiver rips down her spine. “I should bend you over right here to show them how well I can make you scream.”
She tangles her arms around my neck. The sassy confidence that was my undoing long before I was strong enough to vocalize it encircles her like a halo of seduction. “You could take me down to Magie Noire. I’m sure you’ve got some ways to make a girl lose her voice down there. If you do your job well, they might even hear me up here.”
That is unexpected, but not unwelcome. A thrill shoots through my veins.
Our sex club isn’t an area of the resort I’ve ever spent much time in. It was my father’s pride and joy, and I despised that man. Plus, I hate people being in my fucking business. And entering Magie Noire puts a sex life on display. But it’s a feature our clientele loves for good reason.
And one I knew Mercy would eventually be curious about, so I prepared.
I palm the back of her head, gauging where her mind is with my words first. “You want to be my queen, but have me fuck you like my slut?”
Her breath hitches, and her pupils blow wide. “Now you’re getting it, Noire.”
That sexy rasp coils around me, sinking into my flesh and bone and soul like barbed wire, shredding the ache that I lived with in her absence. The worry that we’d never find our way through the haze of pain. The fear that I’d never be the man she chose.
And the thin veneer of restraint I’ve been clinging to.
Like I have numerous times now, I whisk her into my arms and dart for the door with her giggling into my neck, my brothers and the rowdy sports wives roaring a celebratory hoopla at our heels.
“People are going to start talking about how we leave a room,” she muses.
“Let them. It means they know you’re mine.” I seize her mouth, not bothering to worry about people in the halls or the route to get there. They’ll move, and I could travel this path in my sleep. I’ve trudged every step there is to claiming her a thousand times in my dreams.
Her hunger seeps into me, much like her bite did all those years ago. She marked me as hers with that vicious chomp at preschool. And, years later, she tethered me to her over beignets on a merry-go-round. I’ve belonged to her ever since.
There’s a back route into Magie Noire for us to enter privately, so we duck into one of the covert tunnels and scurry toward it. There’s also a room that requires my iris scan.
When we finally make it there, I set her down before the door to my hideaway, but we can’t seem to break the kiss for me to gain us admission into the room. Her tongue commands mine with a fervor, and I clutch the small of her back, meldingher soft curves to my hard form, my cock spearing into her with unyielding intent. She tugs on my lapels and purrs into my mouth, which is so reminiscent of our first kiss at the Blind Tiger, but so vastly different.
