The orgasm crashes through me, making me cry out his name as my body convulses around him. He holds me through it, praising me, his fingers never stopping their skilled movements.
Before I can fully recover, he stands, still inside me, and turns to lay me on my back on the couch. Looming over me, he begins to thrust in earnest, chasing his own release.
"Going to fill you up," he growls, pace becoming erratic. "Going to put my baby in you. Make you mine forever."
The breeding talk—which should terrify me given our brief acquaintance—sends another wave of pleasure through me instead. I wrap my legs around him, urging him deeper.
"Yes," I whisper, caught in the moment, all reservations gone. "Make me yours."
With a roar, he buries himself to the hilt and comes, pulsing hot inside me. His face in that moment of release is beautiful in its vulnerability—the feared president completely undone.
Afterward, he gathers me against his chest, stroking my hair with surprising tenderness. We stay like that for long minutes,the sound of our breathing gradually slowing, returning to normal.
"You still scared of me?" he asks eventually, voice rumbling under my ear.
I consider the question seriously. "Not for me," I answer truthfully. "For anyone who looks at me…absolutely."
He chuckles, the sound vibrating through his chest. "Smart girl."
We lapse back into silence, his hand making soothing circles on my back. I should be horrified at myself, at how easily I've fallen into this life, this relationship with a man who embodies everything I should fear. Instead, I feel something dangerously close to belonging.
"I don't understand what's happening to me," I confess quietly.
His arms tighten around me protectively. "You're becoming who you were always meant to be. My wife. My baby doll."
And God help me, part of me is starting to believe him.
eight
. . .
Vance
The message comesduring a regular club meeting. A fucking severed crow's head in a box, delivered to our front gate. Subtle, the Nighthawks are not. But the meaning is clear enough. They've heard about my new wife, and they're letting me know they see my weakness. Ten years I've been the Devil's president. Ten years of being untouchable because I had nothing to lose. Now I've got everything to lose, and our enemies know it. I stare at the bloody warning and feel something I haven't felt in years—cold, primitive fear. Not for myself. For Wynter.
"Nighthawks don't have the balls to come at us directly," Diesel says, leaning back in his chair at the table. The club officers are all present—President, VP, Treasurer, Sergeant at Arms, and me, the president.
"They might if they think they've found our Achilles' heel," Snake counters, nodding toward me.
All eyes turn my way. They're thinking what I'm thinking. I've made myself a target by bringing Wynter here. By claiming her so publicly. By making it clear she matters.
"Let them come," I say, voice deadly calm despite the storm raging inside me. "I'll stack their bodies at the gate as a warning to anyone else who thinks they can touch what's mine."
Our enforcer, a grizzled veteran named Blade who's led the Devil's Claim for fifteen years, studies me carefully. "Your wife changes things, brother. We need to talk strategy."
For the next hour, we discuss security measures, patrol schedules, reinforcements to call in from allied clubs. I absorb it all with cold precision, compartmentalizing my rage to fuel later action. But beneath the tactical planning, a more primitive part of me is howling to grab Wynter and run, to hide her away where no one could ever find her.
The irony doesn't escape me. A week ago, I was a free man with nothing to tie me down. Now I'm chained by something stronger than any steel—love for a woman who fell into my life by what she thinks is chance but I know was fate.
"Double the guards at all entrances," I instruct as the meeting winds down. "No one gets within a mile of this compound without us knowing."
"And your wife?" Blade asks. "She stays inside at all times now."
It's not a question. I nod anyway. "I'll explain the situation to her."
"Make sure she understands the danger," he says, not unkindly. "Civilian women aren't used to our kind of problems."
That's putting it mildly. Wynter is from a world where the biggest threats are parking tickets and rude customers. My world deals in blood and territory and power. I've dragged her from safety into danger because I couldn't resist claiming her. The guilt of that sits heavy in my gut, but not heavy enough to make me regret making her mine.
