Like I told Stacey’s second, that girl Vera, I handle all this dick with a wet pussy and a smile.

A wicked curve takes over my lips, and I let out a deep, throaty chuckle that has Oscar digging his fingers into my hips. He slams into me hard, the sound of flesh on flesh echoing in the quiet room. It isn’t difficult to tell by the sound of it that I’m fucking soaked between the thighs. Thankfully, the bleeding has stopped. It’s all desire keeping my monster’s cock slick as he thrusts into me.

“Something funny?” he purrs as he leans over me, bracing one hand over the top of mine. With his other, he keeps hold of my hip.

“Nothing at all,” I promise as he works his hips against me. For somebody who’s still relatively inexperienced in the world of sex, he seems to know what he’s doing. Maybe he’s just a master of all the cardinal sins, working darkness into me with the sharp friction of his body inside of mine. “Keep going.”

“Yes, your majesty,” he growls out, grabbing a handful of my hair again and powering into me over and over and over. Pleasure courses through me in unstoppable waves, my thighs trapped together by my jeans, making him feel even bigger, making me seem even tighter.

Using my left hand for leverage, I start to push back against him, meeting each one of his thrusts with a movement of my own. Shit, I don’t even try to hide the throaty moans escaping my painted lips. Today’s color: Broke-ass Bitch. It’s the shade of obsessive love and irrational desire, caught somewhere between gray and purple. I swipe my tongue over it as Oscar fucks me in a pink-lined casket in some broke-ass funeral home in the worst neighborhood in town.

I come so hard that I actually bite my lip and make it bleed, my body shuddering and spasming as I struggle to stay upright. My inner muscles clench around Oscar’s inked cock, his piercings stroking me and making me purr like a kitty cat.

The orgasm rips through me and I collapse, my cheek pressed against the soft interior of the coffin as Oscar uses my body however he pleases. He fucks me until his hands clench so hard around my hips that I bite down on the pink cushion beneath my head. Oscar spills himself inside of me with a long, satisfying groan and then collapses on top of me.

We stay like that for several minutes, panting, catching our breath, readjusting to reality. Because when you get fucked like that, it’s as if nothing else in the entire world matters but for the joining of your souls.

Eventually, Oscar stands up, fixes his slacks, and then offers out a hand. This time, I take it, letting him pull me out of the world of the dead and right back into the nightmare of the living. He yanks me close, much closer than I expected, and actually holds me there for a moment, looking down and into my face.

“I don’t understand it all,” he says with a slight shake of his head, reaching up a hand to rub at the side of his face. There’s a smudge on his glasses right now, an actual smudge. And if you know Oscar Montauk, you know that he doesn’t allow simple human error like smudges on his fucking glasses. It’s monumental, that smudge. Life-changing, really. “Why you like me, that is. Or any of us.” He cups the side of my face with his pretty inked fingers and my eyes close of their own accord. I lean into his touch with a small sigh, feeling the proof of his obsession trickle out of me. “You could’ve been a model … or something.”

I smile and open my eyes.

“Or something. I’d much rather be a Havoc Girl.” I press up to my tiptoes, plant a lipstick smudged kiss against his cheek, and then drop back to my heels just in time for a tentative knock to sound at a door marked Employees Only. “Come in,” I say as the funeral director hesitantly cracks it open and slinks into the room like a kicked dog. I point back at the pink-lined casket behind me. “We’ll take that one.”

“Yes, miss,” the man murmurs, refusing to make eye contact. If he knows we fucked in his funeral parlor, he doesn’t have the balls to say a thing about it.

I take Oscar’s hand in mine, the way Callum has no problem doing with me. “It makes me feel human.” He was so damn right about that. There’s like nothing like a coffin-fuck followed by some chaste handholding to put the human experience into perspective.

“Hey,” I start as I lead Oscar to the exterior door. The way he looks at me, it’s a pinch of wariness mixed with overwhelming confusion—and tainted by love. He really does love me, doesn’t he? This knave known as Oscar motherfucking Montauk. “Do you think you could show me a little of your knot mastery?”

The look he throws me is full of innuendo, but that’s not the only thing I have in mind.

Murder is right up there alongside it.

The feds know exactly where our safe house is. There was no way to hide our move across town from Sara Young. It’s always a possibility that they’ll leak our location to the GMP, but that’s exactly why we’re here. If Maxwell sends his goons into the heart of Prescott, they’ll see exactly how influential our crew can be.

“Bernadette,” Sara says after I open the door wearing pajamas and a yawn. Today is Stacey’s funeral. There’s always the possibility of trouble there, too, but we have to attend. We owe that much to her girls, at the very least. “I’m sorry, did I wake you?”

She offers me up a Styrofoam coffee cup with a plastic lid. Since it has no logo and looks jank as shit, it’s likely from my favorite coffee shop two blocks over. The place doesn’t even have a name, just a neon sign that says Coffee. It used to be a bakery, but everything else they served was crap, so they scrapped that part of the business and now just sell cups of coffee for a dollar out an old drive-thru window.

I take it, eyeing Sara warily as she stands there with her blond hair in a bun, her face cool and composed as it usually is. I’m aware that I’m balancing on the fine edge of a knife, caught somewhere between victim and perpetrator in the black-and-white depths of her mind.

“Your nails look amazing,” she offers as I lift the cup to my lips, the little ring on the end of my pointer finger catching a stray shaft of early morning sunlight. It’s Friday now, February seventh. It should be a normal school day, but there’s nothing normal after a school shooting, is there? Just a shaken and altered reality that makes you question everything you know about the world at large.

“Can’t take credit,” I say with a shrug of one shoulder. “One of Stacey’s girl’s aunts did it for me. Also, we draw heavily on black culture here in Prescott, so I kind of need to acknowledge that, too.”

Sara just stares back at me and blinks her doe-like eyes. Constantine stands about ten steps behind her, scowling and flicking his eyes around like he’s preparing to be mugged or shot at any moment. To be fair, he’d probably deserve it. I’m not certain that anyone in this neighborhood has had a positive experience with a cop.

Victor appears behind me, a six-foot-five monster of a man that I’m happy to take on as a personal shadow. He frowns down at police girl, shirtless and clearly annoyed at her intrusion. We all slept in, gathered together in one room for protection. Or so the boys say. Personally, I’d keep them with me every night, all the time, if I were to have my way.

“QUEEN OF THE FREAKS” by AViVA is playing on my new phone, left on the coffee table and turned up as loud as it can go. It makes me smile at Police Girl as she looks between Vic and me. This is my motherfucking personal anthem.