Or fuck.

Most importantly, that.

Aaron slides into me with the hot, hard length of his shaft, completing this macabre and carnal ritual, officially anointing this den of sin with the seal of Havoc Girl. It’s a point of pride for me to ride the last man in my harem, working my body against his as our moans mingle together, and I become acutely aware of four other sets of eyes watching us both.

It’s a familiar sensation, being watched like that. They all used to watch us, back in freshman year, when it was just me and Aaron alone in the world, just two lovers blinded to everything but each other. It was a nice experience, and I’m glad I got to share it with him … but this is better.

All of us together, blood in and blood out for Havoc.

With everyone else in the room satisfied and quiet, we don’t feel the need to hurry. Instead, we take it slow, our movements languid and familiar, the clanking of the cuffs a quiet accompaniment to our natural rhythm.

Aaron reaches around for my clit, not an easy feat for him considering he’s got a cast on his other hand. He touches that cast to my hip, giving himself just enough stability to work my body until I’m forced into another orgasm, one that tears through me like a storm, leaving everything wet and electrified in its wake. He lets himself finish in me, and then he collapses, pulling me against his body and wrapping me up in his rose and sandalwood scent.

Underneath it all, the smell of sex and sweat permeates the room.

It’s so quiet in there, so peaceful and warm, that you wouldn’t know five masked boys had just run a train on yours truly.

“You can all stay where you are tonight,” Vic says finally, his eyes meeting mine as I crack them open. I think I was in the process of falling asleep just now. “I’ll figure out some sort of sleeping schedule when I have a moment to catch my fucking breath.”

“You mean, I’ll figure out a sleeping schedule,” I tell him, and he throws a warning look my way.

“Don’t test me, princess,” he says, his voice darkening in admonishment. I’m too lazy and sated and high to move or argue, so I don’t bother. “Get some rest, my friends. You have no fucking clue what Ophelia Mars is really like.”

Victor takes his usual pillow, folds it in half, and then lays down next to me. He does not take off his mask. Aaron stays right where he is, curled around me, his arm carefully draped to avoid the knife wound in my side. I stare at his cast as the leather chair where Oscar is sitting squeaks in protest.

I catch my breath, expecting him to leave the room now that it’s over … but he doesn’t. The TV shuts off, plunging us all into darkness, and I hear some more rustling before he finally settles down.

I expect at least a few of the boys to leave at some point, seeing as the bed isn’t exactly meant for five people, but when I wake up to a pounding fist on our front door the next morning, they’re all still in the room with me.

I could get used to that.

Seems appropriate that I’d drag the white trash of my upbringing into the ‘burbs to poison Aaron’s lawn.

“You little bitch!” Pamela screams as I stand on the porch in a pair of black silk panties and a long, white tee that just barely covers them. When I put my cigarette to my purple-painted lips, the shirt lifts up just enough to flash pale, creamy thigh at Mr. Peters (no relation to Oscar’s foster family), the nosy neighbor across the street.

As soon as Callum sees him looking at me, he fixes a blue stare on the man that should, by all rights, have him shitting his pants.

“For years, I’ve considered killing every man that looks at you wrong,” he says mildly, which is a super creepy fucking thing to say. I smile anyway. Seeing Pamela rage at the edge of the lawn because Cal won’t let her get any closer … that’s gold. I wish I could have this with my coffee and morning cigarette every day.

“Where is he?!” Pam screeches, clearly drunk off her ass and nursing a grudge that burns so bright it could probably be seen from space. She thinks I’ve stolen her man. Because I’m her daughter and that makes total sense for her to think that way. “You’ve been fucking him,” she slurs, pointing at me, so assured of her own convictions that she’s already decided that the first chance she gets, she’s going to slap me. I can just feel it. “You have been. And now he’s gone. What did you say to him?”

“Who are you talking about?” I ask mildly, as if her rant could be about anyone other than my illustrious stepdad, the man who raped her daughter into an early grave. A shiver passes over my skin, like Penelope’s hand from beyond the grave. Was her death truly suicide? Because it might not have been. It might not … but will I ever really know?

“You whore!” Pam screams again, breaking down into sobs and falling to her knees in the grass. As I look at her, dressed in an outfit worth several thousand dollars, I hate her all over again. Like, if she’d looked me in the face today and apologized, I might have been able to forgive her somehow. Not after this. “Where is Neil? What have you done with him?”

“Go home, Pamela,” I tell her, feeling superior, even though I’ve got no fucking right to. I couldn’t kill Kali. I couldn’t fucking do it. Even with Aaron and Callum telling me I should be proud of that, that it takes more courage to be kind than wield a knife … it doesn’t matter. We all know that in the last possible second, the culmination of all my revenge, I couldn’t do it.

So is it Pamela then? Is she the final roadblock on my journey to something new? Is she that strange feeling perched in my chest like a wayward gravestone?

I smoke my cigarette with one hand and sip my coffee with the other.

Fucking all my boys last night was this perfect mixture of heaven and hell. The threat of a punishment fulfilled, the promise of a reward. And then to wake up after all that to Pam pounding on the door? Jesus, it’s been a week.

“I’m not leaving until you tell me where he is,” she demands, sniffling and lifting her head up to stare at me. I wonder what demons she’s nursing? How many times has a man hit her? Or raped her? How much has she suffered? I know her own mother was the wife of an alcoholic who beat the fuck out of them both on a near weekly basis. They went to Prescott High, my grandfather and grandmother on my mother’s side. Southside trash, just like their daughter. The daughter who married rich and, for a time, escaped this hell.

Now, that woman’s daughter … she’s come back to rule it.

I just … have to prove it. To Havoc. To myself.

“What is there to take from her?” I wonder, staring at the pathetic creature on the grass before me. “She has nothing left. She is nothing.”

Cal watches Pam for a moment before turning back to me, his blue eyes the same color as the clear winter sky above us. It might snow, and it doesn’t snow often in Oregon. Fucking Christ. Wildfires and snow. Goddamn motherfucking climate change.

I smoke my cigarette harder and hope it kills me just a little bit faster than the poison in my blood that says that fucking all five Havoc boys last night was a good idea. My pussy is so sore that I winced when I sat down on the toilet. I also found myself wet and desperate for another round.

Shit, what was I thinking, deciding that I wanted five red-blooded men all to myself?