I look back over at him and words come tumbling through me, pausing to perch on my lips like crows, like the ones in the pioneer cemetery that took off when Aaron pulled the trigger on Kali.

“Whatever you’re going to say to me,” Aaron growls out, surprising me with the ferocity in his voice. He’s staring up at me like he can read my mind. I almost wonder if he can, the way he’s looking at me right now. “Don’t. Not tonight.”

He leans back into the pillows, and I start to move my hips again, taking the beauty of his hard body in, eating it up like dirty candy, sipping it slow as fine whiskey. The bruises, the cuts, the cast, it could make Aaron look like a bitch for sure. What can a man in a cast do to defend himself or his girl?

But I’ve seen it.

I can sense it.

The predator in me smells the predator in him. Our gazes lock, and I understand exactly where he’s coming from. Don’t tell me anything important tonight. Don’t tell me all the beautiful things that will remind us both why we breathe. Not tonight, when we’re both too busy punishing ourselves.

“No, not tonight,” I agree, tossing my hair back and curving my neck like a swan’s. You know what I was going to say, right? I was going to tell you that you’re a part of me, and I can’t live without you. You knew that. But not tonight. Not tonight.

I close my eyes, my pelvis moving in the most basic rhythm there is. It’s like, the human race was built on this movement, so I’m going to be fucking good at it. That, and I’m not dating five guys to be a vestal virgin. We’re not just a group of high school friends. This is blood in, blood out, fucked-up family and fucking. As much as I truly believe these five men are in love with me, they’re not going to be happy with kisses on the cheek and quiet nights in the missionary position.

The bed dips behind me and long fingers slide across the front of my exposed throat, squeezing just tight enough that I freeze. Shit, I almost forgot about Oscar.

Not many people make that mistake and live to take another breath.

My body stops moving altogether, muscles tense as warm breath teases the side of my throat.

Oscar could kill me right now if he wanted to. Even if Aaron tried to stop him. Or Vic or Hael or Callum. No, if Oscar ever wants me dead, I won’t make it to the next sunrise.

“Does disobeying orders get you off?” he asks, and Aaron makes a sound that says he’d clearly like to mark his territory here. My eyes open and I find myself staring at the ceiling, at the flashing green and white and blue lights from the show that’s still playing and nobody’s paying any attention to. “Victor told you to rest. This,” and the sound he makes here is caught somewhere between a scoff and a mocking laugh, “is hardly rest. You’re going to pull your stitches and then you’re going to be completely useless to the rest of us.”

I can’t decide if he’s talking about me being a part of Havoc or … being a part of Havoc, if you know what I mean. Fighting or fucking. One of the two, and I’m not sure I care to analyze which it is. He surprises me by adding another line of Shakespeare to his admonishment.

“That god forbid, that made me first your slave,” he whispers, tightening his fingers enough on my neck that a gasp of surprise escapes unbidden past my naked lips. It seems inappropriate, that I should be fucking a man handcuffed to a bed without lipstick slashed across my mouth like blood. “I should in thought control your times of pleasure.”

“Leave me alone, Oscar,” I murmur, turning my attention back to Aaron. He’s panting beneath me, seemingly helpless. Trapped. Is this what Kali did to him? Or tried to do to him anyway? I lift my hips until our bodies are barely touching, and then I drop my pelvis hard and fast, causing Aaron to buck and writhe beneath me.

“You’re disobeying again, Bernadette. That’s what got you into this mess in the first place.” Oscar releases my neck abruptly and stands up, that cinnamon smell of his lingering in the air long after he’s moved away from the bed. “Don’t forget: I’m the son of a serial killer. Might be best not to piss me off.”

He closes the bedroom door behind him as I slow the movement of my hips. What. the. fuck. did he just say?

“Don’t stop,” Aaron growls out, and I dig my fingernails into his chest, marring the tattoos there, scraping his skin and making him moan. The sounds are deep and male and so satisfying to hear. I let them sweep over my heated skin, sweat dripping from my body and onto Aaron’s as I start to move again.

I can worry about whatever the fuck Oscar just said later.

Right now, I have my man between my thighs, and I missed him so much that each second he was gone a mark was burned on my soul, a scar that I won’t soon forget.

“Don’t leave me again,” I warn him, thrusting hard as he curses and yanks on the cuffs in what we both know is a futile effort. For him to get out of this, he’d have to break his hand again. Aaron Atlas Fadler isn’t going anywhere. “I mean it. If you do, I’ll summon your spirit with a Ouija board and kick your ass.”

“Trust me, Bernadette,” he promises me, his words little more than a growl. He’s frustrated and pissed off, but not at me. He wants me to exorcise his demons with my cunt. I move up and down, slicking along the length of him as our gazes stay locked. His eyes are more gold than green right now, like moonlight reflecting off the eyes of a beast.

He has no control over what’s happening as I make him come inside of me, his body shuddering beneath me, hands clenching against the cuffs. The bed creaks and groans from the strength of his pulling, but in the end, he finishes with a few thrusts of his hips and then collapses into the pillows.

I stay where I am, my own body pulsing and aching for release. Instead, I lift up off of him, push the boxers aside, and wait for his cum to drip down my inner thigh so he can see it. Aaron’s eyes lift from my pussy to my face.

He doesn’t ask me to untie him, so I don’t. Instead, I lean over and grab the pack of cigarettes from the nightstand, sitting on Aaron’s stomach as I light up. His abs are so hard that I could probably rock against them and get myself to come.

Instead, I toss the pack back onto the table and smoke the cigarette pinched between two of my inked fingers. Glancing down, I can see that the white bandage on my side has a single dark spot of blood. Shit.

I keep smoking, staring at the headboard and wishing that Kali’s ghost weren’t still crouching beside the bed, her fingers stroking Aaron’s chestnut hair back from his sweaty forehead.

“Thank you,” Aaron finally says, his voice like broken glass. “I needed that.”

“Is this what she did to you?” I ask, feeling my jaw clench against my own stupidity. Sure, I pulled the trigger on her in the cemetery, made the commitment to kill her, but she was a step ahead of me. I won’t soon forget that. It’s why I feel like such a coward, like I don’t belong in Havoc at all.

Not a single man in this house would’ve hesitated.

“Thankfully it never got that far,” he tells me as I use the little key that’s attached to the cuffs to undo them. I leave them on his wrists though; the metal is warm from his skin as he touches both hands to my hips. “I just don’t like feeling helpless. Mostly, I was worried about you.”