He doesn't just grab my neck; his hand wraps around my throat—not to choke, but to possess, his thumb forcing my chin up so I have no choice but to drown in those dark, nearly black eyes. The soldier is gone. The man who follows orders is dead. There is only the monster who spent three months lurking in the dark just to hear me breathe.
"I told Logan what he needed to hear so he wouldn't put you on a transport truck and send you to a safe house three states away," he says, voice low and fierce, his face inches from mine, his breath smelling of winter and rage. "I told them you were bait because it’s the only lie that keeps my brothers from dragging you out of my bed. I’m not using you to catch a man, Tiffany—I’m using the club to keep the world away while I finish branding you."
He doesn't wait for me to argue. He grabs my hand, his fingers interlocking with mine in a crushing grip, and hauls me back inside. He doesn't care about the brothers watching. He doesn't care about the whispers. He marches me up those stairs like he’s dragging me to his lair. He kicks his bedroom door open and slams it shut, the lock clicking with finality. The room is small, smelling of cedar, gun oil, and him.
"This is my space," he growls, stripping off his leather cut and letting it hit the floor like discarded armor. He yanks his shirt over his head, revealing the brutal landscape of his chest—muscle and scars that look like they were carved from stone. "No one comes in here. No one touches the things that are mine."
He stalks forward until my back hits the door. He slams his palms against the wood on either side of my head, caging me.
"You want to know the difference between you and a mission?" His voice is a low, dangerous vibration. He unbuckles his belt,the leather creaking in the silence. "I don't lose sleep over a mission. I don't get a permanent, aching hard-on just thinking about the way a mission's pussy tastes. You aren't a job, Tiffany. You're my fucking air, and I’m suffocating."
He drops to his knees. It’s not an act of worship—it’s a tactical strike. He rips the button from my jeans and shoves the denim down my legs, pinning me to the door with the weight of his massive shoulders. He hooks his fingers into my lace panties and tears them down the middle, the fabric shredding with a sound that makes my toes curl.
"Look at me," he commands.
I look down, trembling, as he stares at my bared, dripping pussy. His tongue licks out, slow and deliberate, tasting the air near my thighs. "You're soaking for me. Even when you're mad, your body knows you're mine."
He lunges, his mouth devouring my swollen clit with a punishing, wet suction. I scream, my hands flying to his hair, my nails digging into his scalp as he drinks me in. He isn't being gentle; he’s claiming the territory. His tongue is thick and relentless, swirling around my clit while he slides two fingers deep inside me, stretching my walls until I’m full of him.
"Tell me," he growls against my wet skin, his voice muffled by my soaking labia. "Tell me whose pussy I’m marking."
"Yours," I cry out, my hips bucking against his face. "Only yours, Blake."
"Damright," he rasps. He sucks my clit hard into his mouth, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin until I shatter. I scream his name into the empty room as my fluid spills over his tongue, my bodyconvulsing against the door while he swallows every drop of my surrender.
My body goes limp against the wood, my breath coming in ragged, broken hitches as the last of the tremors leave me. Blake doesn’t move. He keeps his face buried against my pussy for a long beat, his heavy, hot breath soothing the skin he’d just devastated with his tongue.
When he finally looks up, his black eyes are dark, almost bottomless, and my cream glistens on his bottom lip. He doesn't wipe it away. He looks at it like a trophy.
"Mine," he whispers, the word more a vow than a statement.
Before I can find my feet, his hands are back on me. He doesn't let me dress. He scoops me up, my legs instinctively wrapping around his thick waist, and carries me the three steps to the bed. He dumps me onto the mattress, my pussy still dripping from his tongue, the springs groaning under my suddenweight.
He doesn't climb in with me. Not yet. He reaches for the gray comforter at the foot of the bed and hauls it over me, tucking the heavy fabric around my shoulders until I am cocooned in his scent—sandalwood, steel, and the musky tang of our shared arousal.
"Stay there," he commands, his voice returning to that low, tactical rumble. "Don't move. Don't think. Just breathe."
I watch him through heavy lids as he walks over to the small wooden desk in the corner. He doesn't put his shirt back on. The scars on his back flex as he reaches for a heavy black case. He sits down, the chair creaking under his bulk, and begins the ritual—cleaning his weapon, the only thing that can settle the restless, violent energy still rolling off him in waves.
The misunderstanding hasn't vanished—the words he said to Logan still sting—but the context has shifted. He’s fighting a war on two fronts: the one against Ramon, and the one against his own nature.
8
BLAKE
The metallic snap of the magazine locking into my Glock 19 is the only sound in the room, sharp enough to cut through the heavy, sex-thick air.
I stand at the foot of the bed, my chest bare and still damp with the sweat of our encounter. My skin hums, my balls still aching from where she’d milked me dry. Every movement is mechanical—strip, clean, oil, load. It’s the only way to keep the primal urge to crawl back into that bed and bury my cock inside her until she forgets her own name at bay.
Tiffany is exactly where I left her: dead center of my mattress, cocooned in my gray comforter. She smells like my sandalwood and the raw, musky scent of her own pussy after I’d spent twenty minutes devouring it. Her eyes are red-rimmed and swollen, but the "bait" comment hasn't broken her. It has hardened her.
She isn't a victim anymore; she is a woman who has been claimed by a monster, and she is starting to realize that the monster is the only thing standing between her and a grave.
Her gaze follows me as I slide the weapon into the holster at my hip. She tracks my hand as I pick up the Ka-Bar knife, testing the edge against the pad of my thumb until a thin line of crimson wells up.
"Does it have to be like this?" she whispers. Her voice sounds rough, like velvet dragged over gravel.
I don't look up from the blade. If I look at her, really look at her, the monster inside my chest would claw through my ribs and tear the world apart just to keep her from seeing the violence I carry.
