Page 9

I don’t have an answer.

“I don’t know yet,” I admit, and the honesty costs me something. “But you’re not going back to that apartment tonight, or your shift at that diner tomorrow. Not until we figure out what this is.”

“There’s no we,” she says, with a tired recognition of a truth she doesn’t want to acknowledge.

“There is now.”

Noah grunts in disapproval, but he doesn’t argue. Ryker’s hand finds her other hip, and she doesn’t flinch from him either. She’s surrounded…claimed by us. Ruined for anyone else by the simple fact that we cannot make ourselves let her go.

I lie there in the dark, in the wolf mask that suddenly feels like a prison instead of a disguise, and I feel it all crumbling. The slow destruction of something I built my whole identity on, dissolved by the heat of a server who didn’t tell us she was a virgin because she thought it wouldn’t matter.

The thought keeps circling, landing with fresh impact every time. She thought we were the kind of men who wouldn’t care. Who would take what we wanted regardless of the cost to her. And the worst part…we are exactly those kinds of men.

We just didn’t know it until tonight.

I watch her breathing even out, and the tension seep from her body as exhaustion takes over. Her eyes flutter closed, and this time they stay closed, her face smoothing into something almost peaceful.

She shouldn’t be peaceful.

She should be running, screaming, doing anything except lying between three men who cornered her in a parking lot and took turns making her come apart.

But she’s here. And some part of her wants to stay.

That wanting is the most dangerous thing in this room. Because wanting means hope. And hope means vulnerability. And vulnerability means death in our world. She murmurs something in her sleep, shifting toward me, her face pressing into my shoulder. The movement is unconscious, trusting, and it hits me like a physical blow.

She trusts me, and she shouldn’t.

But in the aftermath, with my scent on her skin and my release still inside her, some part of her has decided that I am safe.

I am the furthest thing from safe. I am the heir to a criminal empire, the wolf in the mask, the man who just took her virginity.

Yet I am lying here, holding her, feeling the beat of her heart against my chest, and I cannot make myself let her go.

Ryker shifts on her other side, his hand still on her hip, and I know he’s awake too. Noah stays at the foot of the bed, still watching. We’re all awake, all holding our breath, feeling the foundation crack beneath us.

This was supposed to be one night.

I close my eyes behind the mask, feeling her warmth seep into me. The slow erosion of everything I thought I knew about myself.

One night.

One girl.

One crack in the foundation that I already know will bring the whole structure down.

And I can’t make myself care.

4

NOAH

Ican’t stop thinking about Kipton buried inside her.

The zombie mask is still on my face, hot and damp from my own breath, but I barely feel it. All I feel is the blood pounding in my cock and the tightness in my chest that started the second I watched her face go blank when she realized what was happening. The thing none of us saw coming.

When Kipton pulled out, and I saw the evidence smeared on him, on the white sheets…

God, she must think we’re monsters.