Knight (118 page)

She begged me. So many women had before, but only she whispered my name so sweetly. Only Martini
asked
with more than just their words. Her body quivered and shook, wetted and clenched. She didn’t fight against the hold of my hands. She moved with mine, accepting my embrace, begging for nothing more than to feel the entirety of my weight against her.

“Brew—” She couldn’t breathe. The pleasure stole her voice and wrapped her tighter than any bindings. I knew how to loosen them. Pity I wouldn’t. “Please.”

“Please, what?” The interruption to my feast was unwelcomed. “Want me, Darling?”

“God damn, more than anything.”

“You sure?”

“You really are cruel.”

My turn to smirk. “I think I’m being pretty damn generous.”

Her silver eyes dilated, staring, but unable to focus against the twisting of my fingers deep inside her tight core, a softness she offered but I had yet to fully take.

I would claim it tonight. The way a man was meant to claim a woman.

“So good it hurts,” she whispered.

She didn’t apologize for wanting that pain. She hadn’t felt my hand slap her ass or the grip of my hands in her hair. I could do it. I could punish her and ravish her and bring her to the brink only to kick her over the edge and laugh as she clawed from her own besotted anguish.

But I didn’t need to.

Submission wasn’t forged with the swipe of a hand.

And authority wasn’t an urge born in blood and polluted by a last name.

Dominance was a man tasting his woman, drowning in her pleasure, and growling for air as her legs pushed back and his need overwhelmed them both.

Martini stiffened as I climbed over her. Not out of fear. Not because of any pain from her injuries. Her gaze asked to touch me. Her fingers gripped over my biceps, tracing the thick lines of warning ink that should have told her to run before I devoured everything she was and conquered her for my own.

“Christ, Brew,” she whispered. “I think I’m in love with you.”

I positioned over her, my cock poised within a part of her begging for capture.

“I don’t just think it.” I thrust in her waiting, aching, burning slit with a single stroke, taking what she offered and earning the rest with her gasped surprise. “I know I love you.”

Martini exploded. I held on to survive her heat, the tightness, the enveloping serenity of a woman abandoning her thoughts, fears, and memories to a moment of pure, uncompromising pleasure. In that point of her sweet surrender, I lost myself in the same gift. Nothing existed but her. No danger. No exile. No secrets.

Just her.

Just the tension shredding her in bliss. Just the entire uncompromising length of my cock imbedding her with guaranteed security. She cried out.

Her body peaked, but I grabbed her before she crashed to reality. Martini clutched me, offering everything I wanted in exchange for the ultimate protection from her own confusion. That I couldn’t give. She deserved every rise, every tightening, every torn orgasm that only melded her deeper within my hold. And I’d be the bastard she’d curse and love—the one who earned her surrender and rewarded her for such bravery.

She was mine.

Body and soul.

Heart and mind.

Once, my lust existed only to take what women willed and enjoy the fever of their flesh like a drug.

Now? I didn’t take. Martini gave. Willingly. Unabashedly. Completely.

No drug compared to the squeeze of her heat or the secret cry of my name.

I held her close, rocked my strength over the petite curves of a woman built for just this pleasure. Her fingers dug into the thick muscle of my arms. She couldn’t get a hold, but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t going anywhere. Not now. Not when my skin burned, my vision blurred, and every raging thought in my head roared with a primitive, mounting urge to take her as my own and mark her as mine.

Martini tensed as I did, her eyes widened as she realized her time for begging and cooing, arching and demanding was done. She welcomed me, submitted under me, and brought her hips up.

I buried myself completely within her and came so fast and hard she cried out against the thickening of my cock. A shared pleasure consumed our bodies in an endless, remorseless, destructive bliss.

I emptied inside her—revealing myself in a split second of utter abandonment. My guilt, my fear, my shame, my love.

I stole from her the nightmares that marked her skin, and she accepted my truth.

The shame of exile faded. The guilt shadowing Rose’s past slipped away. My father’s life and death didn’t bloody my hands—not now that I held something more precious than vengeance within my grasp. Martini gave into me, and I fell so fucking hard for her I didn’t know if I saved her or if her devotion was the one shred of hope that pulled me from the abyssal sorrow.

I didn’t part from her. She wouldn’t have let me. Tears stained her cheeks, but her kiss promised nothing had been hurt or damaged, only renewed with our promise.

She held onto me. Tight. Nothing was going to separate us again.

My second chance became my third. This time, I wasn’t letting go.

I woke naked and safe and in the arms of a man who encompassed every danger, pain, and element of the 1% that threatened me.

And I never felt more protected.

Brew’s strong arm wrapped over my waist, cradling the whipped and bruised parts of me against his strength. He hadn’t said anything about the injuries. He stopped apologizing.

One night spent under him, offering my body, granting him the peace and forgiveness he tortured himself to earn, and he was a new man. The heavy weight of his guilt cracked away, and the shell of remorse that hid him from the world fell with it.

The Brew who took me had no trace of Noir within him. The shielded rage, unbridled passion, and absolved soul forged a man of confidence who claimed me for his own.

The first mounting was for me.

The second—when he pinned my arms over my head, bit at my neck, and pistoned in and out of me with reckless lust—was for him.

And the third?

I stirred against the blankets, tied within the twisted covers and tossed pillows. His arm snaked over me, gripping my waist, cupping my breasts, and, finally resting the full weight of his palm over the base of my throat.

His hand covered the tattoo of a monster’s name.

A monster that had no more right to my body than a regretted tattoo and fading ink.

Brew didn’t say a word, but his hardness prepared for me everything he expected.

And, God, did I want to give it.

The pressure tensed at my throat. I purred into his grip and arched to offer my hips. He growled a compliment as his cock slipped within me, hard and thick. I wetted for him, and the slickness of our passion still lingered deep inside me. With Goliath, I couldn’t wait for a shower, to cleanse the filth so I’d recover the parts of me not bruised by his cruelty.

With Brew?

My silken heat blended with the excitement of his passion. He left me warm and slick and promised much more than the two eruptions which claimed my core.

I welcomed his entire length with a groan. His hand tightened on my throat, his other seizing my hips. I swallowed, reflectively gripping as he controlled everything about me—my pleasure, my pain, even my breath.

But I trusted him, and he didn’t betray that gift. He held me in comfort and authority as his thickness explored me, waking my body with shivers and earning my obedience with a steady hand at my throat.

“Morning, Darling,” he whispered in my ear.

I whimpered as his other hand tickled down over my hip and gripped the softness filling with him. His fingers circled over my slit, flicking tiny attentions over the most sensitive part of me.

“Brew—”

His motions weren’t gentle. He thrust with every claim to my body and rewarded me with the gifted pleasure of loving devotion. His instinct to grab and oppress and rut might have terrified me. The power of his grasp around my throat was familiar—too many nightmares of Goliath’s crushing grip blacking me out while he stole his release from my limp body.

But memories faded in the sanctuary of Brew’s arms. I’d banish them forever. He’d destroy my fears, and I’d rebuild my life in his embrace.

The grip on my throat flexed as my pleasure peaked in a sudden, sharp, and
taken
bliss.

“What are you thinking?” Brew’s wicked chuckle wanted me to beg and plead, to offer my gratitude and demand more of his touch. “Tell me, Martini.”

He expected me to say I loved him.

I did, but it wasn’t what he needed to hear. He grew, his hardness reaching deeper in me as his breath turned ragged. His fingers wove over my clit, forcing me to rise with him, seizing a pleasure he so easily created. I stiffened as he did, bucked, and crashed into the pleasured oblivion that heralded the first jet of his warmth within me.

I whispered, but he felt the words. His hands tightened as the declaration nestled us in the delicious need and contented heat.

“I trust you, Brew.”

He shuddered again, delivering more of his searing promise. I wrapped my hand over the strength clutching at my throat. It threatened and worshiped and took and loved all in the same motion. I leaned against his chest as we crested. His kisses massaged my neck and shoulders until I fell asleep.

I hadn’t drifted for long. His cock still hardened when the shouting from downstairs carried from the bar to the suites. Brew rolled from me, buckling his pants and seizing a weapon before I blinked away the confusion and mourned the loss of his cock.

I pushed the hair from my eyes as he slammed a new clip into his gun.

“Brew?” I squinted at the clock on the wall. “What—”

The monster bellowed from downstairs.

“
Martini
!”

Goose bumps prickled over me, each a jagged spike that punished for the swell of fear invading my mind. He terrified me, and his presence was a scar that would take more than Brew’s promises to fade.

“Goliath.” I lurched from the bed. “How the hell did he find us?”

“One fucking guess.” Brew swore. “My father waved fifty grand under his nose. Stay here.”

“You aren’t going down there.”

“
Martini, get your ass down here before I blow this junkie’s head off!
”

Goliath’s roar curdled everything inside me. Brew gritted his teeth.

“Get dressed. I’ll take care of this.”

“Brew—”

“He’s got my brother.” The gun tensed in his hand. “Stay quiet. Hide.”

Like hell.

Brew slunk into the hall. I donned one of his shirts and tugged on my jeans.

I wasn’t letting him go alone. And I wasn’t letting him face that bastard without me.

The brief taste of freedom and my complete and utter devotion to Brew fueled my courage. Goliath stole and hurt and threw his bulk around to pummel me into behaving the way he wanted. He got off on my injuries, and he branded me as an object to own and destroy.

Brew wasn’t the only one with a score to settle.

I ripped through his bag. A bowie knife buried beneath jeans and box of ammo. I shoved the blade into my pocket and tucked my shirt over it. The only way this was ending was when one of us bled.

And this time, it wouldn’t be me.

The scarf tied over my neck. Not fashionable. Not pretty. Just functional, hiding the ugliest part of my past with a silken tie. I wore it like a gang bandana, flashing a color that would enrage Goliath when he saw how I denied his presence upon my flesh.

I tip-toed down the hall and perched at the top of Pixie’s steps. The scene was familiar—a pub drenched in the testosterone and violence of the MC. Goliath’s bulk filled the bar, the shadow of his rage spilling into every corner. He waved a gun like a second cock and expected Anathema to shrink in the same respect he earned from Sacrilege.

Only this time he wasn’t home. The men here wouldn’t cower to a beast like him. And I wasn’t about to let him push them around.

Goliath’s gun aimed at Keep, but Brew’s brother either hadn’t fully woken yet, or the drugs from the night before hadn’t let him sleep. He sunk into a barstool as he faced the angry end of a gun held by a stranger. The yawn pissed off Goliath. Keep couldn’t have cared less.

How often did shit like this happen to him?

“Where the hell is Noir?” Goliath spat on Pixie’s floor. That insulted Keep more than the gun pointed in his face.

“Who?”

“Noir.”

Keep’s eyes might have rimmed red with drugs, and his body faded too lean in the grip of the addiction, but his smile might have charmed the gun from Goliath’s hand.

That was, if he hadn’t spoken first.

“The fuck are you talking about?” Keep said. “Get your limp dick out of my goddamned bar before I shove that piece so far up your ass I’ll have to flick your fucking ears to take the safety off.”

“You know what I’m here for.” Goliath didn’t take his eyes from Keep. He screamed my name again, raising the gun as Keep leaned against the bar.