Chapter 20
TWENTY
ACE
I knew I would find her waiting for me. The faintest trace of a thunderstorm filled my lungs as I turned the knob on the door to my room.
Sure enough, there she was, and it was a sight I wasn’t prepared for.
She wore lace and knelt facing my bed as she waited on her knees, hands curled in her lap.
The golden collar and cuffs on her wrists drew my eyes. They weren’t attached, but I could see from the small hook on them that they could be.
Bunny was propped up against my pillows, which?—
No.
I wouldn’t waste my time reading into her actions—or pondering revenge over the attempted murder of stuffed animals.
I would not.
Instead, I sat on the bed beside her, trying to work out how to rid myself of her without it sending me into a spiral that would dog me all night. The answer was to keep control.
Knox was supposed to have banned her from seeing me.
He was arrogant, irritating, and more elusive in character than I’d expected. It would be foolish to write off what he’d navigated—what he was capable of. So why, when it came to Thistle, could he not enforce this one fucking rule?
The answer was as unsettling as it was clear. How could I expect an Alpha like Knox to do something even I hadn’t managed?
I was good at adapting; it’s why I’d become what I had in the Vegas underworld. But she was my blind spot. The itch at the edge of my vision I’d always tried to write off.
I had never allowed her to take up space. I’d never wanted to acknowledge what she was worthy of—even now, the idea of it made me want to throw myself off the balcony.
Which put me at risk of making the same mistake. I would never underestimate her again.
From the first time I’d met her, when she’d pulled the trigger on the gun I’d given her, I should have known. I’d tried to lock her away like a trophy, but she’d always found her way back to me. She was a force I couldn’t stop no matter what I did.
So, so reckless, and yet somehow still alive. I’d called it chance once, but that definition eroded more each time I brushed up against it.
She was shifting in the silence, the scent of a storm beginning to anger. I could see her eyes flick up to me until she finally spoke. “You said I was pretty but you won’t do anything about it?”
“No.”
I had said it to piss off Knox, not to give her fuel.
Her fists balled and un-balled as she waited. When I didn’t give her anything more, she stood. “Then I’m gonna send you back.”
Things had changed. She was bolder with me than she ever had been, even if it was, perhaps, earned. Yet still… “You have no such leverage.”
I was here for a reason.
I’d make sure there were a million more by the time she even considered returning me to madness, but for now, that hadn’t changed.
She paused, eyes narrowing as she worked through that. If she thought heat bonding me was the end, she was sorely mistaken. She would fight for every inch.
The flare of irritation that shot through the bond between us shook me. She was entitled and had been since I’d woken. Before, I’d seen only glimpses, but now it was a bonfire. Instead of irritating me, like it should, it was unsettling.
That slight curl to her lip, the way her indignance spilled between us like a toxin, it began to choke me, unravelling my edges, peeling back sanity for that abyss beneath, sending my pulse skyrocketing.
This, I realised, was disastrous.
I’d always known that she wasn’t regulated, but this bond she’d claimed left me at the mercy of an Omega’s volatility. It took every ounce of self-control to lock down our connection, to keep my expression steady as my own hatred threatened to release spools of my sanity.
Carefully, I tucked a hand behind my neck to dig my nails into my skin—enough to draw blood. Enough to ground me against a storm.
If she found out, I’d never have leverage again. She glared up at me, that tide rising, trying to submerge me entirely.
I held on and finally, she let go, folding her arms. “Okay,” was all she said.
Okay?
I didn’t believe it. In fact, I was almost irritated to see such calculation go to waste. I wanted to believe she was better than this.
As much as I was furious at the dynamic she was trying to inspire—that she was in charge—she had to be more competent.
I couldn’t have an idiot for a mate.
She took a step back. “If you prefer to be alone, fine. But you’re not getting nothin’ until you do it my way.”
“Why would I care now ?” I asked.
I never had before.
There was a curl of a bratty pout on her lips. “Because now you need sex and you need me .”
We stared at each other, and rage burned my veins. The fury I’d been carrying since I woke began to haze the edges of my vision.
She planned to use sex as leverage?
Usually that would be laughable, but with how unstable I was now, this was a dangerous position.
I would not be led by the collar to grovel on my knees. I got to my feet, having never felt the primal need that boiled over within me. Her lips were parted, something unsure in her beautiful violet eyes as she tracked each of my movements.
She was the only thing that remained in this world at that moment: a mesmerising creature, with messy raven hair in two lopsided buns she favoured, eyes wide, her lean form of moonlight skin clad in black lace.
She took another step back, gaze darting to the exit before she turned and tried to run.
It set off every last Alpha instinct.
Prey.
Mine.
When my fist closed around her throat, she fought me, her shriek cutting off as I clamped my hand over her mouth.
The pain of her elbow careening into my side only heightened the thrill burning my veins, and it swallowed me completely as I shoved her back on the bed.
Time was blurring, and decisions were made in a void I couldn’t track. The cuffs around her wrists came in handy as I locked her arms behind her back. My palm smothered her mouth as I dragged her back up against my chest.
I released a fraction of the feral beast within. There was a part of me that needed her, and if I denied it, it would consume me. I had to let it loose so it didn’t steal my freedom again.
My free hand slid down her body, finding goosebumps rippling her skin.
The scent of a fresh lightning storm was dizzying as I crushed her body against mine, palm finding the lace keeping me from her flesh.
She’d always been small, even for an Omega, and it was another shot of adrenaline, focusing on how easily her breast fit in my hand as I pushed lace aside.
I squeezed it, feeling the way she went still but for heavy panting.
For a moment, reality tried to run away from me, the world rearranging, telling me this was a mistake. But I dragged it all back in place.
No.
She was mine. The torrent of static and lightning filling my lungs with each breath was testament to that. The only thing wrong was her assertion that my claim be on her terms.
Crushing her against me with one hand, I undid my zipper. I ignored the little whine she let out, teeth angling for my flesh but failing as I dragged her harder against me.
I didn’t want to hear a word from her mouth as I showed her this would never be a leverage point between us.
I’d been lost before, but I could claim, could enjoy, what was mine— should , even.
The night I’d bitten her, it had been beyond my control and I’d hated it. But this was different.
I was choosing this.
My mistake had been denying this part of myself, and it had left me vulnerable.
Never again.
Without waiting a moment longer, I pressed her forward, lowering us both to the bed so her face was pressed to the mattress, wrists trapped behind her back. She let out a breathy sound, and her scent spiked.
I stayed close behind, propping myself up with one elbow as I adjusted her hips, then tugged my length free. Using my shins to keep her legs pinned, I pushed lace aside.
I drove into her from behind, and she let out the sweetest whine of shock. I almost groaned as she squeezed around me, her tight little cunt stretched to take me in.
The bond was still locked down from my end; I couldn’t risk any feeling she had undoing me, but I thought about it for a moment.
I wanted to feel her break in submission, but I might risk losing control.
I withdrew, re-grounding myself, focusing on the way she was shivering in my grip, arms bound, crushed against me as I used her.
I drove back in, ecstasy soaring through my veins as I found a rhythm, my free hand drifting back to her breasts, teasing her body as I claimed it.
Her struggles became fiercer, another muffled whine sounding.
“I don’t want to hear a word from you, Omega,” I breathed in her ear, taking my time, pumping into her for a few more strokes, before I let her go and drew out.
I flipped her on her back, pleased to be met by a shocked expression as she caught her breath.
I took the blade I’d found in the kitchen from the bedside drawer and tossed it beside her.
Her eyes darted to it nervously. I was resentful that I was forced to resort to weapons.
I despised them, but the knife wasn’t really for me.
It was to keep her on edge, or to cow either of the others if they chose to show their faces.
They would, if her side of the bond opened—so weak Rogue was at the faintest hint of her fear. As if she couldn’t handle me.
If they came in, and I was her, I would be insulted.
I stared down at her for longer than I planned to, fist gripping my rigid cock as I drank in the sight of her bound body.
Destiny or not, I wondered if, should I have wound up here a different way, it would have been possible not to be mesmerised by the sight of Thistle Maverick.
She was a siren. A perfect collision of nerves and god-given beauty.
Her violet eyes were wide, darting between the knife and me. Her chest heaved, goosebumps rippling her skin, one small breast peeking from the bralette I’d all but destroyed.
She’d freed me, in a way. I wasn’t chained to the pretense that she meant nothing. This connection, as despised as it was, was natural.
I took a breath, caught in the tempest of a raging storm as I curled my fists around her thighs, dragging her to the edge of the bed and lowering myself back over her, palm splayed beside her hair. I pressed my tip to her entrance and watched as her back arched slightly, her body going still.
I wanted her watching me as I claimed her. I wanted her to see this muzzle had no stake in her leverage.
But instead, those bright violet eyes ripped me into an unwelcome memory.
I should be dead, but a fresh lightning storm choked me instead.
Agony shook me from flesh to marrow. It rippled from behind—from a rut in chains. Now my life was in her hands.
Teeth dug in.
The mark of my mate.
Her knife at my flesh.
I should be dead, but instead of a reaper, I was offered a claim.
A claim amidst agony.
She let out a whine as I drove my length into her brutally.
“You think you won, Omega?” I asked. “That you get to decide on a pack without my say? That what’s mine is yours to choose?”
I slammed into her core again, and she let out another whimper.
Her whispers haunted me, singing in my ear in that dim room as the iron tang of my own blood rose in the air.
For the first time in my life, I had nothing.
Not material, nor power, nor choice.
I didn’t even have my own body.
Everything belonged to her.
I was losing it, insanity creeping into the edges of my vision as I began to fuck her more viciously than I ever had.
“You’re mine,” I hissed, driving in again, still unable to take my eyes from her wide orbs of violet. “ You bound yourself to this.”
She knew it, too.
The truth unfolded with every second that passed—every second that my own sanity remained and she kept me here as I used her. Every second was another moment in which I claimed back the power that had been between us.
I wouldn’t give her anything, or she’d steal the world.
Sex was never something she would hold over me.
I gritted my teeth, but as I neared my finish I didn’t manage to hold back my groan. I seized her by the back of the neck, dragging her against me so she wouldn’t see my face as I finished.
I wanted to knot her, but I held back, needing to prove some self-control. And I didn’t want her looking further into this than she should.
Afterward, I released her wrists and she scrambled up to her feet, a look of utter shock on her face, her buns now so chaotic they looked more like loose ponytails.
Would she cry?
I steeled myself, determined not to get sucked in if she did. Fucking her should have rebalanced me enough that I wouldn’t be so vulnerable to her emotions.
Adjusting the strap of her bralette, she took a wobbly step back, then another. She looked almost dizzy as she hurried across the room.
To the bathroom, though, not the exit.
I frowned, finally realising something was wrong.
I sat down, noticing her bunny was still on the pillow beside me, and I froze, mind racing.
When she’d turned to flee, it had still been here. To reach the door, she would have had to leave it.
Finally, I opened the bond.
There was a strange silence from her, though. An odd static that felt almost like… anticipation.
I shut it again, eyes darting to the bedside table, trying to find a way to ground myself.
But then the bathroom door creaked and Thistle was hurrying out, a bundle of hand towels in her arms.
I narrowed my eyes as she all but tripped over herself clambering onto the bed, and then she had me mounted, dropping the sopping fabric at our side.
“What are—?” But I cut off as the bond opened fully at last.
Fuck.
I blinked, catching up to the flood of joy that spilled out as she let it open. She’d kept it closed, deliberately hiding it from me.
My blood turned icy with shock, something tightening my throat.
I’d done it again.
Denied her space.
Denied her agency.
And she’d slipped beneath every defense.
Thistle was already wrapping a hand in a cloth and dragging the hot, damp thing up my chest, readjusting so she was straddling me better. She leaned close and pressed her lips to my collarbone, her voice wobbly with joy, she whispered, “You did so good, Bunny.”