Chapter 1 – Rook
ROOK
A va Jade stood there, a phantom in my room, dressed in light. Her lithe silhouette watched expectantly from the foot of my bed.
What was she doing in here? Grey had been changing the lock on the spare room door when I made my way past to my own bed.
She was asleep inside, face down on the pillow.
Out cold.
They were locking her in.
I didn’t doubt she’d have no trouble getting free, but I didn’t expect retribution so soon. No light leaked through the edges of my blackout curtains, which meant it’d barely been an hour or two since she passed out.
“Ava Jade?”
My voice sounded hollow. Dull, as though spoken through cloth.
Her lips tipped into a sharp, one-sided grin as she lifted a blade, the glint of the steel spearing into my eyes as it caught the light from the hallway behind her. She twirled it in her fingers.
My cock hardened.
“Come to exact your revenge?” I asked, slowly kicking off the thick blanket covering my naked body. I tucked my hands behind my head on the pillow to prop myself up. Getting a better view of her.
“Go ahead, Ghost,” I baited her, adjusting my hips on the mattress to afford her an unobstructed view of my cock.
Her haughty gaze lowered, taking it in. Taking me in as though she were consuming every inch.
She threw the blade.
I closed my eyes.
It thunked into the wood of my headboard, and the sting of air on a fresh cut brought me roaring back to life. I lifted two fingers to my cheek, and they came away wet.
I groaned, biting my lip ring, the movement making the sting deepen.
“Come on then,” I goaded her, happy to take the punishment for my brothers’ actions if she was to be my executioner. “I’m ready.”
Her eyes sparked as she vaulted over the footboard and was atop me in an instant, a new blade at my throat. I shivered, tipping my head back to afford her a better angle.
She leaned in, her warm breath brushing beneath my ear. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.”
“Then what do you want?”
Her fist closed around my cock, and I stiffened, my body reacting to her touch in a way it’d never reacted before.
My nerve endings blazed.
Hot.
So fucking hot. Burning.
But I’d burn to ash for her. She only had to light the match.
Ava Jade ran the blade at my throat down to my collarbone, skimming it over my chest and down my stomach, toward my rock-solid cock still clutched in her fist.
Her fingers, tight around my girth, slipped a little and the tiny amount of friction made me groan, my hips aching to thrust into her palm as the sharp edge of the blade skated around the base of my manhood.
Fucking hell.
“Tell me what you want…” she coaxed, her tone a wicked combination of desire and hatred.
My lips parted on a breathy sigh.
“Cut me. Burn me. Bleed me. I’m yours.”
She shifted her weight, and I bucked as her mouth closed over the head of my cock, warm and wet and…
“Rook!”
Corvus’ voice echoed down the hall, and I clenched my teeth, inhaling sharply as Ava Jade curled her tongue around the tip.
Not now, Corvus.
“Rook, get up.”
I moved, plunging my hands into her hair to hold her there, my fingers twisting into the silky locks as my hips thrusted upward, fucking her mouth as she held her blade to my femoral artery, pressing firm enough to let me know who was really in charge here.
Something knocked into my chest, and I woke with a curse on my lips, scrambling to sit up, my head spinning, still drunk on the feel of her.
“ The fuck, Corv? ”
“Get out of bed,” he ordered, ornery as ever with a sour sneer on his lips. Fuck, just because he couldn’t sleep didn’t mean he had to ruin it for the rest of us. I happened to have been having the best fucking dream I’d had in years.
The only dream I’d had in years. So rare and so real I thought…
“You have a test in Sociology today,” Corv grumbled, tugging my bedroom door shut behind him as he left.
“We’re leaving in ten,” he called from outside.
I fell back onto my pillow, letting my hand fall to my sweat slicked chest.
I didn’t dream.
Hadn’t since I was a kid.
When sleep claimed me, it was a dark thing. A numb thing.
And when I woke, it was as though no time at all passed between night and morning. The only evidence it had was the light of the new day, my sore muscles, and morning wood.
I lifted the blanket to glare down at the swollen head of my cock, aching for a release. The visual of Ava Jade in my head, so crisp only a few seconds ago, was already beginning to fade. I clutched at it, willing it to stay with eyes squeezed tightly shut.
But it was fleeting, vanishing before I could trap it in my memory.
“Damn,” I groaned, rolling to the side to snatch my phone from the nightstand. I winced as the screen flashed to life, blinding me for a second before my eyes could adjust.
I sent a text and forced myself out of bed.
ROOK
Chapel.
Her reply came as I finished tugging on my jeans and a pair of socks.
UNKNOWN NUMBER
Meet you there in fifteen.
I shook my head with a smirk, tucking my hard on into the waistband of my jeans with a grunt as I threw on a t-shirt and ran my hands through my hair to force it back into shape.
A shower might’ve been nice, but fuck it. Mrs. June wouldn’t mind.
I paused in the hallway as I left my room, my eyes still burning from the light.
With two fingers, I tried the handle to the room where Grey laid Ava Jade to rest last night. It was locked tight. Listening, I could hear the faint sound of her even breathing inside.
Grey bounded up the stairs at the end of the hall, pausing when he saw me outside of her door.
I pointed toward the locked door, lifting a brow to ask the question without speaking.
He sighed, coming to snatch me from the hallway and drag me down the stairs with him.
I glanced back, my throat suddenly dry, before the door was out of view and we emerged into the kitchen.
“Let her sleep,” Grey said. “I checked on her half an hour ago, and she didn’t even stir. She’s exhausted.”
“We’re leaving her here?”
“The door’s locked,” Corvus said, entering through the other side of the kitchen and prying the fridge door open to grab a Gatorade. “Grey’ll come back and get her at lunch.”
I laughed, shaking my head at him as I ran my thumb over my lower lip, smudging out a smirk.
“And if she wakes before then?” I asked.
Corvus whirled, pulling the bottle from his lips to swipe the back of his hand over the shine there. “Then she’ll know her place.”
I shook my head, biting my lip ring to keep from smiling. That would only make him even more grouchy than he already was, and I wasn’t in the mood to poke the beast today. Maybe later.
“She won’t wake up,” Grey assured me. “She was dead to the world when I checked in. Twenty bucks says when I come back to get her at lunch she’s still a corpse.”
My lips pressed into a tight line.
“Your funeral,” I muttered, brushing past Grey to grab myself a bottle of water from the still ajar fridge. “Are we leaving or what? I have someplace to be.”
She rushed through the chapel doors like a thief in the night, spinning rapidly to ease the large wooden pane closed behind her, wincing as the lock caught with an audible click.
“Caroline,” I greeted her, leaning against the back pew with a grin.
Her brows lowered as she turned and took me in, confused by the state of my clothes and something on my neck. Dirt, I assumed from the gritty feel of it. From digging the Ace’s grave last night.
“Problem?” I asked her.
She hurriedly shook her head, wetting her lips as she walked over to me. Hips swaying, cheeks flaring pink beneath her makeup.
Mrs. June reached for me, going for a kiss, but my stomach twisted, and I stopped her, my fingers rough around her throat. I shook my head.
“No,” I said on a breathy growl. “Kneel.”
Her eyes lit with her smile as she dropped to her knees, thin fingers unbuttoning my jeans as she wetted her lips again.
I moved my hand to her head, messing up her prim little blonde bun as she freed my cock from my jeans. I tipped my head back as she took me into her mouth, waiting for the need to take me.
Her tongue lapped at my flaccid cock and she added a hand to pump its base when that didn’t return it to the rock-hard state it’d been in earlier.
She did that thing I liked with my balls, and redoubled her efforts with her tongue, pumping double time with her fist now.
My patience waned, and I snatched up a fistful of her hair and thrust my cock deep into her mouth, making her choke on it.
She gagged and moaned, happy to open wide and let me do as I wanted.
Except...this wasn’t it.
The image of Ava Jade passed through the fog of my thoughts like a ghost and I grimaced, sneering as Mrs. June struggled to breathe. Then a more vivid image. The image of her beneath me, pressed between my thighs and the pavement on fight night when I held her down. The look in her eyes.
The panic.
“ Fuck, ” I hissed, grinding my teeth as I pulled out of Caroline’s popping lips.
She stared up at me, her eyes wet with tears from choking, her mascara smudged and running down her left cheek.
A week ago, I’d have fucked her throat raw.
A week ago, I’d have gotten hard at the mere sight of her teary eyes and smudged mascara.
A week ago, I wasn’t being haunted by Ava Jade Mason.
“Wh-what is it?” Caroline asked, breathless. “Do you want my ass? You can?—”
“Get out.”
Her face broke. “What?”
“Get the fuck out.”
She didn’t move so I bent, batting her hand away from my still limp dick, snatching her by the throat in the process to force her to stand.
She made a shrill little sound and pulled back, clawing at my hand and wrist as she tried to step away.
“But—” she croaked, her words cutting off as I squeezed.
My monster reared its ugly head, solidifying my body, widening my stance. The thump thump of it echoed in the empty chasm of my chest.
“ Caroline, ” I warned, throwing her away, making her choke and cough from the pressure on her windpipe. She gasped, catching her breath as she spun unsteadily on her heels to leave. She didn’t look back.
I wiped a palm over my jaw as the chapel door fell closed behind her.
I tugged my jeans up and forced the monster back into its cage with a nip of whiskey from the flask in my back pocket.
This was a fucking problem.
Whiskey might do the bare minimum to tame my beast.
I lit up a cigarette and inhaled deeply, blowing smoke toward the altar.
Cigarettes might help take the edge off.
But sex…
It was an equally important remedy to the growing dark within.
Damn.
I smirked at the ridiculousness of it. At the ridiculousness of her and what she was doing to us all.
Score one for the ghost.
Zero for the Crows.