3. Daphne Eight Out Of Ten
three
Daphne: Eight Out Of Ten
“Daphne.” Wolfe’s hand brushed the edge of my thigh under the covers. It was strong, bruised, and the way his fingertips pressed into me made my head spin.
I rolled back, dropping the book I had fallen asleep to onto the floor.
“What’s wrong? Is Thay okay?” I asked, searching instinctively for the window.
Wolfe’s eyes darkened, but he only smiled.
“I am sure he is fine. It’s hard not to be when your dick is in someone’s mouth.”
I swallowed the image, feeling it cut me from within.
I lived in the club dorms alongside Threx, Wolfe, Rinley, Nathem, and Blade for years before I earned my get-out-of-crime-free card from Taylor University of Natural Medicine.
In fact, the smell of mold and dust still sends me wheeling back into that tiny space, where Thay and I shared a full-size bed, a shower, and a dresser with two broken drawers.
On the nights he needed alone time, or just needed to fuck something, I found myself in Wolfe’s room.
Well, most nights. There was a closet in the back of the hall with a cot that I sometimes escaped to when there were decidedly too many penises in my life.
Wolfe wasn’t the first man I ever slept with, but he was the first to make me come.
“There is something you need to feel,” he whispered hot against my ear, his fingertips pressing even harder.
We had gotten into some heavy conversation earlier, his natural curiosity poking at what Threx and I were to each other.
Wondering if there were any parts of our messed-up dynamic he had missed whenever the lights went out.
Somewhere in the middle of our conversation, between confessing that Threx and I were not romantic or even dabbling in benefits, I had somehow admitted I’d never had an orgasm.
I paused when a shiver dripped down my spine, searing the muscles in my legs until they ached.
“Daphne?” Wolfe’s voice was whiskey-smooth and born for leadership.
Unlike the others on our floor, Wolfe was Black Wing royalty, sitting next to his father’s throne and groomed for the life he would one day inherit.
“Is this okay?” he asked, dipping his fingers under the elastic waistband of Thay’s oversized sweats, breaching the thin line of my panties.
I nodded clumsily, my chest flashing hot when the hardness of his cock pressed against my ass.
“I need you to say yes or no.”
His fingers crawled lower in a slow drip, hovering over the spot where all my tension gathered. Outside of Thay’s metronome, Wolfe was the safest place I knew.
“Yes,” the words tumbled out of me, breathless, desperate, barely a shape but catching fire.
Two fingers spread me open, stealing my breath when he came down hard in needy, intentional circles. I moaned.
“Holy shit, Daph.” His hands played, rubbing and touching. “You are so fucking ready for me.”
And I was… slick and hungry for something he was not yet giving me.
I bucked when his thumb traveled north, working my nipple under my t-shirt, thumbing and pinching until it throbbed between his fingers.
“I’ve been staring at your tits for ten goddamn months,” he confessed, grazing his teeth along my shoulder. “Wondering what you taste like. What your body would feel like in my mouth.” I swallowed. “On my cock.”
My throat ached as the air swirled, dry like sand and bleeding oxygen. Wolfe’s hand rolled when it dropped low, punishing and perfect. It was a tide that devoured, and I let it take me.
“Wolfe,” I sang, loving the onset of tingles when he moaned at the sound of his name. His hands split, moving over my chest before crawling up the slope of my neck.
Oh fuck.
My mind raced, and my body opened, allowing all the darkness to bleed through.
Flashes of him holding my head down, binding me, tying me, breaking me flooded my mind. But then… Thayor’s eyes stared back at me, his tongue folding down the center of his lips.
Oh fuck.
I was through when Wolfe’s freehand began to move. Slowly at first, until they pressed along my windpipe and squeezed.
I did not mean to whimper, but stars had burned behind my eyelids, and I’d forgotten how to breathe.
“Goddammit.” A masculine, heady growl hit the shell of my ear, and then his hand tightened.
So fucking beautiful.
Like a ribbon. Like a noose.
Like something I wanted to die from.
“Wolfe.” My vision burst, falling and flying, my head and heart slamming into each other without warning. Everything was hot. A fever. A chasm. Nothing made sense, only that my body trembled and the space between my legs and ribs started to claw.
“Fucking hell, Daphne.” Wolfe peeled off his shirt and tossed it to the floor before pulling me to my knees, my orgasm taking me in slow, deadly pulses.
It wanted more.
I needed more.
Uncomfortable pressure threatened to consume me when Wolfe bent low.
“Why didn’t you tell me you liked it rough, babe?”
The words fucked through me, because I did not know that I did. All I knew was that until this moment, sex only happened on the surface. Never in my core. Never like this!
“Guess what?” He fisted my hair, pulling my neck taut while he shuffled my panties down to my knees.
The shove. The pressure. The control in his wrist. Oh, God.
“I do too.”
He. Did. Too.
“How hard do you want it?” Wolfe asked.
My body screamed at me to answer, but I did not know. I had never played here before, only in my head, only with my fingers.
“I’ve never?” I stalled. A jagged pant formed the words when my hips rolled against him, causing the tips of his fingers to dig deep.
“Okay, Pretty Girl. One being normal sex and ten being total obliteration, where do you want to land?”
Oh fuck. Oh fuck.
My eyes spun, slumping into the hand I wanted to absolve me.
What if I said the wrong number, and suddenly I became dirty and strange?
What if I settled for less and left here hating myself for not taking what I want?
What if I could finally satiate this ache that had been pounding its fist against my insides? Could this man really take me there?
“Eight,” I confessed, bright and true, only to freeze when an image of Thay burned into me like a horror show of lightning.
I was about to do something I had never done before. Give pieces of myself to someone other than him.
“Hey?” The older version of Wolfe snapped into focus, cutting clean through the haze. I was back at the party, with the sound of the Violent Femmes pulsing through the speakers. “Are you okay?”
I blinked. My eyes were hungry under the memories that went swirling; the heat of the club tightened around my stomach.
Must have been all the damn pot. Or that Threx was getting circle-fucked by grimy crime groupies.
“Daphne?” Wolfe said again, reading me word for word while I tugged at my neck, trying to ground myself.
“Sorry, Wolfe.” I gave a broken smirk. “I was looking for Jace,” I admitted, pulling at my dress that suddenly felt too short and too tight.
Wolfe clocked the maneuver, biting hard down on his perfect lips before letting a smile win them over.
“Why? Are you hurt? Did something happen?”
“No,” I sighed, shaking my head. “But Molly is downstairs, pregnant, naked, and about ten seconds away from renal failure.”
Wolfe arched a brow, loving how I threw medical terms around as if they meant something.
“Where the hell is Rinley?” he asked.
“Where do you think?” Our eyes met in a heated kiss, the way they always did, messy and wild. “Wolfe,” I stepped in front of him before he could move. “She hasn’t been attending any prenatal appointments, and we both know why. You have to protect the wives, too.”
Wolfe made a sound and shook his head. “There is only so much I can do, Daphne.”
“I think she was planning on having this baby on the goddamn toilet,” I growled, ignoring the sweat forming along my palms. “And she’s at a sex party, seven months pregnant, while her man is upstairs humping some faceless girl because he what?” I scoffed. “Earned it?”
“Daphne. Molly knew the life before she married into it, and whether it morally aligns with all your pretty virtues,” he thumbed my chest. “Isn’t going to change a goddamn thing. And you know it.”
These words always came out the same… like a fucking excuse wrapped in a leather mask.
I narrowed my eyes, swallowing all sorts of thoughts that were too big to choke down.
“Because she had so many other choices,” I snarled, breaking for her over and over again. Rinley was an asshole, but he was better than the alternative: no family, the streets, poverty, nothingness.
“I don’t know, Daphne. You did. And you seem to have made them just fine.”
The words cut deep.
None of them would ever say it, but there was a heavy silence the day I walked out of the Clubhouse that sounded a hell of a lot like abandonment.
My eyes fell to the black stairs and the red stains on his Converse shoes. Unlike the rest of the combat-wearing dark knights, an old pair of Chucks was always on his feet. They reminded me that bits of him were not for sale.
“One sec.” He leaned close, his hot lips kissing the side of my neck. I would decide later if I’d accept his apology, but for now, I needed his help.
Wolfe stormed onto the platform, scanning the bodies before grabbing Rinley and literally pulling him out of whatever he was thrusting into.
“What the fuck, man?” he whined, his dick hanging free.
“What do you mean, what the fuck?” Wolfe growled, yanking the monster as if he weighed nothing, and dragging him toward the ledge. “Who is down there?”
“What?” Rinley blinked, trying to find his bearings in a sea of bodies.
“Right there. Who is that? Because I think, correct me if I’m wrong. It’s your naked, fucking, pregnant wife.”
Wolfe shoved his head down, half his body dangling over the edge.
“Do you need a closer look?”
“What about her, man?” Rinley twisted uselessly in Wolfe’s grasp.
“I am not your man,” Wolfe ground out. “Is there a reason your dick is not inside her?”
I smiled, making Threx’s head turn.
He did not like it when I smiled at Wolfe.
Good.
“What?” Rinley scoffed, still not understanding the question. “She knows how it goes!”