5. Angel
The metallic scent of Mason’s blood is still hanging in the back of my throat, sharp and copper-heavy, but it’s nothing compared to the ozone-thick rage radiating off the man currently crushing my wrist in his grip.
Ghost doesn’t look back. He doesn’t look at Mason, who is slumped against the brick wall with a shattered jaw.
He doesn’t look at Bear, who is standing guard like a wall of meat to keep the club security from descending on us.
He doesn’t even look at Grace, whose pale, terrified face vanishes into the crowd as he hauls me through the pulsing red veins of Onyx.
He isn’t walking; he’s a force of nature.
He carves a path through the sea of leather and lace, his fingers clamped around my arm so tightly I know there will be a ring of bruised fingerprints by morning.
I have to stumble to keep up, my heels skidding on the floor, the silk of my dress fluttering like a distress signal.
We hit a heavy, soundproofed door at the back of the lounge. He kicks it open, shoves me inside, and slams it shut with a violence that rattles the very frames on the walls. The click of the lock is the final nail in the coffin of the night.
The silence is sudden and deafening. The industrial bass of the club is reduced to a faint, distant heartbeat, leaving only the sound of Ghost’s ragged, animalistic breathing.
He doesn’t turn around. He marches toward a heavy mahogany dresser against the far wall and slams his palms down onto the wood.
His head hangs low between his shoulders, his back a broad, trembling expanse of tense muscle and dark ink.
He looks like he’s trying to keep his soul from leaking out of his skin.
My heart is thundering against my ribs, but the shock is already starting to curdle into something sharper. I take a jagged breath and finally look around the room.
It’s a private play space. I’ve seen pictures, but the reality is overwhelming.
The walls are a deep, bruised purple, lined with racks of equipment I don’t even have names for—flogs of every length, soft leather cuffs, and intricate silk ropes coiled like sleeping snakes.
In the center of the room sits a massive, low-profile bed draped in charcoal linens.
It looks like an altar. There’s a door to an attached bathroom on the right, the porcelain gleaming coldly under the dim, recessed lighting.
I look down at the Submissive tag still pinned to my chest. It feels like a brand.
I cross my arms over my chest, squeezing my ribs to keep from shaking. I wait. I wait for the mountain to move. I wait for the man who promised to wait for me to finally say something.
“What the fuck were you doing out there, Angel?”
His voice isn’t a roar anymore. It’s a low, lethal vibration that makes the hair on my arms stand up. He finally lifts his head, but he doesn’t turn. He’s staring at his own reflection in the mirror above the dresser, his knuckles white against the wood.
“I was having a drink, Ghost,” I say, my voice tilting into a jagged, snarky edge. “It’s a public club. Last I checked, my ID says I’m allowed to be wherever I want. Or did you forget I’m not the little girl in pigtails anymore?”
He spins around so fast I flinch. His eyes are bloodshot, frantic, and fixed on the tag pinned to my silk dress.
“You put that shit on,” he rasps, stepping toward me.
The air around him feels like it’s vibrating.
“You walked into a place like this, wearing that dress, with a tag that tells every predator in this city that you’re open for business. Do you have any idea what would have happened if I wasn’t here? Do you have any idea what that man was about to do to you?”
“He was going to kiss me, Ghost!” I yell back, the frustration of the last two weeks exploding out of me. “He was going to touch me because he actually wanted to, unlike you, who acts like I’m a disease you’re trying to recover from!”
“Because you’re Doc’s daughter!” he bellows, his chest heaving. “Because you’re eighteen! You don’t belong in a room like this. You don’t belong under the hands of a man like that.”
“I belong wherever I choose to be!” I march toward him, closing the distance he’s spent years trying to maintain.
I’m vibrating with a mix of fury and a desperate, starving need.
“You’re so obsessed with who my father is and how many years are between us that you’ve gone blind. You’re the one who made the promise, Ghost. You’re the one who told me you’d wait. And then I find you here?
Surrounded by women who mean nothing to you while you run from the only person who actually loves you?”
“It’s not love, Angel! It’s a fixation! You’re a child clinging to a memory!”
“I am not a child!”
The word snaps something in me. I don’t think. I don’t hesitate. I reach out and shove him agressively. I put my palms against his chest—the heat of him searing through his black shirt—and I push with every ounce of strength I have.
He’s caught off guard, his heels hitting the edge of the massive bed. He loses his balance and falls back, landing hard on the charcoal duvet. Before he can scramble up, before he can retreat into his shadows again, I’m on him.
I straddle his lap, my knees sinking into the soft mattress on either side of his hips. The slit of my dress falls away, leaving nothing but my bare skin against his dark trousers.
Ghost freezes. His hands are hovering near my waist, shaking, his eyes wide and blown out with pure, unadulterated terror.
“Angel, don’t,” he chokes out.
“Fuck that,” I whisper.
I lean down and capture his lips with mine.
It’s not the soft, tentative kiss of a first-timer.
It’s a collision. It’s ten years of longing, two weeks of agony, and a lifetime of being told ‘no’ all channeled into one singular, forceful act of reclamation.
I taste the salt of the sweat on his skin and the faint, lingering burn of the bourbon he was drinking.
My heart is screaming. This is it. My first kiss. The only man I’ve ever wanted. The only man I’ve ever seen. I pour everything into it—my anger, my hope. I want to melt into him until there’s no space left for the gap he’s so afraid of.
But as I deepen the kiss, the reality of his body sinks in.
He isn’t moving.
His lips are pressed tight, unyielding. His hands, which should be clutching my waist or tangling in my hair, are splayed flat on the bed, his fingers digging into the fabric. He’s as stiff as a corpse.
I pull back, my breath coming in short, jagged gasps. My lips are tingling, but my soul is turning to ash.
Ghost is staring up at me, his face pale—not just white, but a sickly, greyish hue. His eyes are wide, glassy, and filled with something that isn’t desire. It isn’t even rage anymore. It’s genuine, physical revulsion.
He looks at me like I’ve just committed an atrocity.
“Ghost?” I whisper, my voice trembling.
He doesn’t answer. A sharp, guttural sound hitches in his throat. He suddenly lunges forward, his hands coming up not to hold me, but to shove me off his lap with a desperate, frantic strength.
I’m tossed onto the mattress, my silk dress tangling around my legs as I scramble to sit up.
Ghost doesn’t look at me. He scrambles off the bed, stumbling over his own feet. He looks like a man fleeing a burning building. He lunges for the bathroom door, his hand fumbling with the handle before he practically falls inside.
The sound follows a second later.
The violent, rhythmic sound of him retching. He’s in there, hands on the porcelain, throwing up with a force that sounds like it’s tearing him apart.
I sit in the middle of the large, dark bed, the silence of the room returning to mock me. The equipment on the walls seems to leer at me. The Submissive tag on my chest feels like a joke.
He didn’t push me away because he was noble. He didn’t push me away because of my father.
He pushed me away because the very touch of me made him sick.
The humiliation is unlike anything I’ve ever felt. It’s a cold, drowning weight that fills my lungs and turns my skin to ice. I thought I was showing him I was a woman. I thought I was claiming my future.
Instead, I’ve just forced myself on a man who finds the very idea of me so disgusting that his body is literally rejecting the memory of our contact.
I don’t wait for him to come out. I don’t wait to see the pity or the horror in his eyes.
I scramble off the bed, my fingers shaking so badly I can barely move. I bolt for the door, tearing the lock open and spilling out into the hallway. I run. I run past the rooms, past the music, past the sea of people who think they know what desire looks like.
I burst out into the cool night air, the rain finally beginning to fall, washing over my face. But no amount of water can wash away the feeling of his unyielding lips or the sound of him being sick because of me.