27. Maddoc
Emotions donothing but make you stupid, and stupid gets you killed. I saw it over and over growing up, and I took those lessons to heart and made them the foundation of how I operate.
But fucking hell, the drive back to our place tests my control.
I turn onto our street, the inside of the Escalade as silent as a tomb other than the sound of Riley’s ragged, panicked breathing. I’ve got no doubt that my brothers will each have something to say about the clusterfuck we just walked away from, but they’re smart enough to hold it back until we’re alone.
Until after we deal with… her.
My jaw starts to ache, and I force myself to unclench it before I grind my fucking molars into powder. But it’s goddamn hard to relax when the sight of Riley getting into a fistfight in McKenna’s club keeps playing in my head on repeat.
His men were all armed and itching for a fight. If one of them had pulled a fucking gun on her...
My knuckles turn white, making the ink on my fingers stand out even more starkly, and the steering wheel creaks in my grip. This whole damn night has turned into a complete shit show, when it should have been nothing more than a simple meeting. Not that I actually thought McKenna would heed our warning—if he was that smart, West Point wouldn’t be the cesspit he’s turned it into—but as Logan pointed out earlier this week, there were strategic reasons for confronting him face to face.
Unfortunately, those reasons went to shit when it almost turned into a bloodbath, and all because this fucking girl we’ve brought into our home can’t obey a simple directive to behave.
All she had to do was keep her shit together and stay next to us. We would have been in and out, and that would’ve been it.
Goddammit.
The Escalade’s tires screech on the cement when I pull into the garage, and I’m out of the vehicle and have the rear door yanked open before the engine goes silent.
“Inside,” I growl, dragging Riley out of the back seat and toward the house as Logan and Dante follow.
We’ve had eyes on the club, people watching it to scope out McKenna’s business. So why the fuck didn’t anyone spot her sister before we showed up tonight?
“Maddoc,” she makes the mistake of saying once we’re inside.
“Don’t,” I bite out, rounding on her as Dante closes the door behind us. “Do you know how much fucking damage you caused?”
Her eyes turn glassy with unshed tears, but she lifts her chin and stares me down, her chin trembling. “I’m sorry.”
“Fuck sorry, you—”
“You saw Chloe there, and you did nothing!” she screams, her chin firming up as the spirit she’s shown every time it would’ve been smarter for her to back down comes roaring to the surface.
She’s got no fucking sense of self preservation. None.
Anger heats my blood to boiling, and I want to slam her back against the wall and fuck some sense into her before she gets herself killed. I do one of those things, and a framed piece of art falls to the floor with a crash when I shove her against the wall and hold her there.
“Tonight wasn’t the right time,” I bite out.
“They’re hurting her,” she hisses, glaring up at me.
I scoff at her weak-ass excuse. “You telling me your sister is too weak to handle some drunk clubber trying to cop a feel?”
Her breath hitches. “That’s not what I mean. It’s not… I don’t know if… I think they’re making her…”
She breaks off. We don’t fucking know what they’re making the girl do, but I can imagine, and clearly, so can she. Riley pushes me away and covers her mouth, tears glistening in her gorgeous brown eyes.
“Madd,” Dante starts, taking a half step forward.
I throw him a hard look, and he takes the hint and shuts the fuck up.
I’m handling this.
He nods, spreading his feet and settling in, arms crossed in front of his chest in a silent signal that he’s got my back. I flick my gaze toward Logan. He’s watching with the kind of chilling intensity that tells me he’s ready for whatever I need from him, just like he has been ever since we became brothers.
Neither one of them pulled a weapon in the club, thank fuck. That shit would have escalated things beyond my control. But goddammit, they were at risk too. She put them and herself at risk because she couldn’t keep her shit together.
It’s unforgivable.
I look back at Riley, my hands clenching into fists as I try to contain the seething anger that’s starting to boil over inside me. A million fucked up scenarios of the people who matter to me most being carried out of Club Prestige in body bags run through my mind, making my stomach clench.
I get why finding her sister like that blindsided her, but it’s no excuse. Excuses are just another thing that gets you dead. How can she not fucking understand that?
“You should be dead,” I grit out.
Fire flashes in her eyes, replacing the agony from the run-in with her sister. “Is that a threat?”
“No, it’s a fucking fact. You almost got killed. You almost got my brothers killed. You need to fucking listen when I tell you what to do!”
What started out as a low growl ends in a shout. I’m right up in her face, pressing her against the wall again, and it’s only when I catch the subtlest of movements in my peripheral vision—Logan, shifting his weight when he’s normally capable of an uncanny level of stillness—that I get it together and regain my control.
I drag in a breath and back off, reeling it in as I calm the fuck down and assess the situation.
I scrub a hand over my face, wiping away all expression. She’s still an asset, but shit like this can’t happen again.
I need to teach her a lesson.
“Strip,” I say gruffly.
She hesitates, defying me again.Always so fucking defiant. I thought butterflies were easy to break, but this one doesn’t even bend. She’s part of our world now, though, too deep to easily extricate herself, and she needs to learn that sometimes bending is the only way to survive.
“I told you to fucking strip,” I repeat.
“Fine,” she says tightly, her tongue darting out to wet her lips.
My cock twitches as I track the motion in my peripheral vision, but I keep my gaze locked on hers as she reaches for the zipper of her dress.
Her soft, pale skin comes into view as the dress slithers down her body, and my gaze drops immediately to the thin red line on her chest. It’s a healing cut, shallow and perfectly straight, and an unaccountable flare of jealousy rises in me as I realize that I recognize the handiwork.
Logan.
So her clothes weren’t the only thing he used his knife on last night.
I don’t quite know what to do with that information. It’s incredibly out of character for Logan, and it explains how fucking out of sorts he was this morning. But now isn’t the time to deal with that, so I refocus on Riley as she continues to strip.
This time, she’s wearing less than she was the first time I made her do this. Just the dress and her tiny thong, both off in seconds, and a pair of nude heels so tall that we’re almost eye to eye. They’re strappy and sexy as fuck, with little cords or some shit that wrap around her ankles, and when she bends over to undo them…
“Leave them,” I growl, yanking her upright with one hand and sliding my tie off with the other. I loop it around her wrists and use it like a leash to lead her over to the stairs.
For a single moment of pure insanity, I’m tempted to keep going. To take her up to my room, throw her down on my bed, and do what I almost did in my office the other day after she showed me pictures of her life with her sister.
I wanted her in that moment, drawn to the openness and warmth in her eyes. I wanted her so fucking much that I had to shut that shit down. I had to remind us both that nothing exists between us, so I brought home some random woman and fucked her in the very place where I almost fucked Riley.
I was hoping to get the beautiful, frustratingly fierce butterfly out of my goddamn system. Out of my head. I left the door open knowing there was a chance she would hear us… but I didn’t expect her to walk in. I didn’t expect her to stay and watch, and just seeing the expression on her face, the heat in her eyes… it made me come harder than I have in a long fucking time.
That’s not what this is about right now, though, and the last fucking thing I need to do is indulge in my craving for Riley any more than I already have. Seeing my ex-girlfriend hanging all over Austin fucking McKenna tonight was a stark reminder of why it would be a bad fucking idea to get involved with anyone.
I attach the other end of the tie to the banister, knotting it tight in case Riley is tempted to fight what she’s got coming.
She doesn’t. She hasn’t said a word since she started to strip. Hasn’t asked what I’ve got in store for her or whined to try to get out of it.
The proof of how fucking strong she is just pisses me off even more.
This didn’t need to happen. She should have held it fucking together.
I slip my belt off and finally get a reaction. The smallest flinch.
“Stay still,” I warn her, putting my hand between her shoulder blades when they tense up. I push her forward. “Brace yourself.”
I don’t give her any more warning than that, because that’s how life works. A bullet doesn’t come with a warning, and pain is fucking inevitable.
I can feel Dante and Logan behind me, silent sentinels bearing witness as I crack the belt against her heart-shaped ass, the sound like a gunshot.
She lurches forward, a pained cry escaping before she cuts it off with a snap.
“One,” I growl, dragging in a breath.
“Two.” I belt her again. “Three.” Fuck, she takes it well. “Four… five.”
The red stripes are a beautiful contrast to her pale, silky skin, but even though she pants with ragged, choppy breaths under each strike, she doesn’t cry out again.
Until I get to six.
I belt her again, my blood hot from the exertion as anger and protective fear churn inside me, and I finally get another sound. She swallows it down on a gasping moan, her head dropping low as she lets her bound arms take more of her weight.
My hand freezes for a moment, shock rippling through me.
Is she…?
Yes. She is. With her legs spread and that perfect little ass thrust out for me, I can see it. Hell, I can smell it. She’s wet. Her pussy is exposed and swollen, soft and inviting between her trembling thighs.
This is fucking hurting her, as it should, but it’s doing a hell of a lot more than just that.
“Seven,” I grit out, letting the belt crack against her again as my cock hardens, the line between doling out pleasure and pain blurring as my need to punish her merges with something else. “Eight.”
This time, she groans, so quietly I can barely hear it.
Then she pushes her ass back for another.
“Nine,” I grunt, giving it to her.
The atmosphere in the room becomes charged, and I’m not just hard. When I swing my arm for the last one, I almost fucking come.
“Ten.”
She sags against her restraints, gasping and exhausted, and I drop the belt. It hits the floor with a clatter, but I barely hear it, my gaze still locked on the woman in front of me. It’s taking all of my restraint not to gather her into my arms right now, to soothe the sting of the belt with my tongue and to give her the orgasm I know she’s so fucking close to right now.
I crave her like a goddamn drug, more strongly and undeniably than ever before—not just because of how beautiful she looks right now, but because I’ve never met anyone like her. Never met someone who could take everything I can dish out and still want more.
But I’m the leader of the Reapers. I put the no-fucking-her rule in place for a reason, and it applies to me as well as to my brothers. I can’t give in to what I want any more tonight than I could yesterday.
So I untie her, resisting the impulse to pull her close and murmur words of praise and encouragement at how well she did. To soothe her and kiss every inch of her flushed face as I breathe her in.
“Go upstairs,” I say instead, pocketing the tie I used to restrain her.
She glares at me, waves of vibrantly colored hair tumbling over her breasts and her beautiful brown eyes filled with a wild mix of emotions that rivals my own.
“Now,” I bark, trying to ignore how much that look in her eyes calls to me. In truth, it’s just another sign that I need to stay the fuck away. Get this shit with her sister done, move ahead with our plans against West Point, and then remove her from our fucking lives.
Riley lifts her chin, holding my gaze just long enough to give me a silent “fuck you,” then turns and walks up the stairs, head held high and naked ass bearing my marks.
Something hot and possessive stirs inside me at the sight.
It’s unacceptable. It’s fucking dangerous.
I wrap the tie taut around one of my hands as Logan and Dante step forward to flank me. The three of us watch her leave in silence, and after a long moment, Dante is the one to break it.
“Madd?” he prods quietly.
“It’s fine,” I say, my tone short.
Logan snorts.
None of us take our eyes off her.
All of us know I’m lying.
It’s not fine. The girl was supposed to be nothing to us, a means to an end, but now she’s becoming something more. Affecting all of us. Bearing marks from each of us.Getting under our skin.
She’s become a shared obsession.
And tonight, that almost got us all killed.