I exhale, and then draw in a huge inhale. My chest inflates, my sweatshirt-covered breasts brushing up against Oscar’s bare skin. But just barely. Just barely. He registers it though, and shudders.

“Why are you always so pissed at me? Seriously, I want an answer, and I want it right now.” Oscar turns his head, watching the darkness behind me. A ripple passes through me, one that speaks of creeping predators and shadows. It’s Vic, I know it is. He watches us for a moment before heading upstairs to the bathroom.

“Jesus, Bernadette, there’s blood everywhere,” he calls down, but I ignore him. I was going to clean it up, but eh, it’s his problem now. If he wants to be my husband, he can deal.

“Why am I pissed at you?” Oscar asks with a sharp laugh. I notice he doesn’t put any space between us. My eyes find his pierced nipples, drifting lower and wishing I could see his pierced cock, too. “Because of that.” He points toward the staircase and frowns, nice and violent. “Victor doesn’t treat you well. None of them do. Why do you reward them with your affection? It disturbs me, Bernadette.”

I refocus on his face, carved of shadows and sin, and blink in surprise.

Seeing Havoc murder number six on my list and cart his corpse off to the woods certainly didn’t. This though, it’s a shocker.

“You’re mad because I hang out with the people I’m supposed to be family with?” I clarify and Oscar grits his teeth. He waits as Vic comes down the stairs, as quiet as a cat. He watches us both again for several seconds before finally disappearing into his room. I hear him murmur something under his breath, but it isn’t worth the time or effort to figure out what it was.

“I’m mad because you kiss and fuck and fawn over them, after everything they’ve done to you.” Oscar pauses and rattles his long fingers against the countertop, like the inked legs of a venomous spider. He looks back at me. “After everything I’ve done to you.”

He pauses then, and the room gets real quiet as the song ends once again. It starts up soon after, but I can feel that pregnant pause like a punch to the gut.

“Are you upset because I fuck them …” I start, taking a gamble and lifting my palms to Oscar’s bare chest. Joining Havoc has made me brave. It’s only been a few months, but I’m surprised at how much I’ve changed. What will I look like after a year? A decade? “Or upset because I don’t fuck you?” I press my fingers to Oscar’s skin, and he hisses at me.

His hands snap up to grab my wrists, but he doesn’t push me away. Instead, he traps my palms against his skin. He’s burning up beneath my touch, and I’m finding it really hard to breathe.

“You wouldn’t want me to fuck you, Bernadette. I’m not sure I could behave myself.”

I snort at that, breaking a bit of that strange magic in the air. Oscar releases me, stepping back to put some space between us. His face tells me nothing, but his body is tense, his cock hard beneath his pj pants.

“You? The master of control?” I quip, watching him as he moves over to grab his mug again. “I highly doubt you’d have much trouble behaving. Is it just that you hate me more than you love me? Is that it?”

“Hate you …” he murmurs, sipping his tea and giving a low, cultured laugh. He’s extravagantly uncivilized, now isn’t he?

“You’ve said it before,” I challenge, giving Oscar a dark look. “You hate me. I get it. But why? Because I’m over your shit.”

He smiles at me, but the expression is sharp, cutting.

Without his shirt on, he’s a colorful mess of tattoos. His ink owns every inch of his lean, muscular form, a story made of blood and needles. Unsurprising, considering his soul is clearly crafted of darkness and pain.

“You’re bold, Bernadette,” Oscar says, stepping close to me once again and wrapping me up in his dark scent. He smells of danger and uncertainty, of wild, moonlit nights, and orgasms made of hot embers and poisonous kisses. I close my eyes as he cups the side of my face in long, elegant fingers, the fingers of a master pianist or a Renaissance painter. They’re warm, too, from the tea.

When I open my eyes, I find Oscar far too close to me again. We could kiss, if we were so inclined. But how could we be? When he hates me so goddamn much. He sets the tea down, adding his right hand to the other side of my face, touching me. Willingly.

“You, in Havoc,” he starts, letting a low chuckle curl past his lips like smoke from a slow-burning fire. “I’ve never wanted anything less.”

I reach up to slap his fingers away, but he catches my wrist with his other hand, holding me prisoner. Captivating me with gray eyes the color of a tumultuous sea, slow-moving but capable of unfathomable destruction.

“Should I be surprised by that?” I quip, my tongue as caustic and acidic as his own. We can have a verbal sprawl, me and Oscar. But I hope he knows I’ll kick his ass in repartee the same way I did with my hands around his throat.

“Maybe,” he bites back, smiling in just such a way that I feel my knees go weak. “Because I don’t think you understand my motivations, Bernadette Blackbird. You’re incandescent; I’m just trying to keep your flame from being snuffed out.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I snarl, quickly losing my patience with him. His hands tighten against the sides of my face and I reach up, placing my own hands atop his.

“You glow from the inside out,” Oscar whispers, and then he does something I never expected: he drops his mouth to mine.

I’ve been hit before, many times. In many fights. By many people, much, much bigger than I am.

None of those incidents knocked me back in quite the same way as Oscar Montauk’s kiss.

His kiss is one of shadows and spiders, of darkness and strands of old moonlight woven into webs. When I kiss him, I can taste both his violence and his desperate need for love. There’s a void inside of him, one that’s even bigger than the one inside of me.

Nobody has ever taken care of him.

Nobody has ever loved him—except for Havoc.

Except for … me.

“Since elementary school,” I murmur against his ice-cold slash of mouth. Oscar doesn’t let me finish, kissing me harder, pushing me back. I stumble a bit, but he keeps me upright, guiding me where he wants me to go.

The backs of my calves hit the side of the couch, and then I’m going down.

With Oscar on top of me.

Shit, shit, shit, Bernie, you’re on your period; you’re bleeding. I tell myself all of that, but it doesn’t matter. This is happening. It has to happen. It needs to happen, and it’s happening now.

Oscar cups the back of my head in his sinful fingers, his tongue taking over my mouth, his long, lean body between my thighs. I’m so surprised and excited by the fact that he’s actually letting me touch him that my hands begin to wander all over his body, finding his strong shoulders, sliding down his arms.

When I find the little metal swords pierced through his nipples, I give them a tug with both hands.

The sound that escapes that man’s throat undoes me completely. I moan in response, thrusting my hips up against his pelvis, feeling his right hand slide up my waist toward my breast. As soon as he grabs ahold of it, he growls.

“Thought you liked bigger boobs than mine,” I snap back at him, flushed from head to toe and shaking all over. Oscar pauses briefly, lifting his gray eyes to mine. I lift my hands up and grab his glasses, pulling them aside so that I can look into his eyes without interruption. I need to see them without a protective cover, bare and endless and deadly.