18. Riley
Dante’s wordsland between us like lead, the weight of them affecting each of the men as much as they do me.
Seeing that shatters my guilt. None of them blame me for this, and as dangerous as today proved to be, I can’t regret going with Austin that day in the alley when it meant saving their lives. I can’t regret signing over that money, because it means that we’re all here to deal with whatever Austin throws at us, no matter how bad it looks right now.
“The Reapers are strong, Maddoc,” I remind him, resting my hand on his arm. “You’ve made them strong.”
That muscle in his jaw jumps, and I swear it’s like I can hear his thoughts. No matter how fierce of a street gang they are, the Reapers aren’t some kind of elite mercenary unit. Strength is different than training, skill, and superior firepower.
I swallow hard, ugly images filling my mind as I imagine all the ways this could be bad for the Reapers. With Austin bringing in the kind of people who can outfight them, it will only be a matter of time before West Point starts pushing the Reapers out of their territory, picking apart the entire organization, and taking out the members, the people, who are so loyal to Maddoc.
And if it feels that daunting to me, it’s no wonder Maddoc looks stressed.
But he’s a natural born leader, and after a moment, he shakes his head, then straightens his shoulders, looking each of his seconds in the eye. “Riley’s right. We’re strong. It doesn’t matter what that piece of shit throws at us. All the money in the world can’t buy McKenna true loyalty from his people. That’s something a pathetic little fuck like him will never realize, and it’s exactly why we’re going to beat him.”
He says it with conviction and both Dante and Logan murmur their agreement, but even as he speaks, I can tell Maddoc is still worried. Logan is clearly stressed too. He’s holding himself stiffly, his body tense and motionless the way I’ve noticed he gets when he’s full of big emotions.
After a moment, the impromptu meeting breaks up, and Logan leaves, heading upstairs quickly.
“Is he okay?”
Dante pulls me close and kisses my temple. “None of this shit is okay, princess, but don’t worry about Logan. He’s taking it hard ’cause we didn’t see it coming. He has trouble with things he feels like he can’t control or fix, but he’ll do what he needs to do to deal with it.”
I nod my understanding, but as Maddoc and Dante put their heads together, going over some tactical planning that I can’t be much help with, I decide it’s not good enough to just understand how Logan gets. He shouldn’t have to deal with his feelings all on his own. I want to help him the way he’s helped me in the past.
I want to love him—not just the feeling that’s already in my heart for him, but actively. Proactively. I want to fucking be there for him, because I know how insidious the darkness is. How those kinds of thoughts can spiral if you let them, turning into something that feels impossible to break free from on your own.
My steps slow a little as I near his room, but I can’t second guess myself. I’m starting to understand him more, and I know it’s not just my imagination that the walls between us have been coming down.
Even if he turns me away, I need him to know that I’m here for him.
But just as I raise my hand to knock on his door, I hear him.
He’s moaning my name.
Heat races over my skin like wildfire. There’s no way that sound can be anything but Logan pleasuring himself, and my heart stutters in my chest. I’m no stranger to using orgasms to relieve the pressure of fucked-up situations, but it kills me a little to realize he’s still choosing to do it alone.
I want him to come to me when he needs that kind of relief.
I want him to know he never has to be alone again.
Another low groan sounds through the door, and it’s hot as fuck. It also gives me all the courage I need to push it open and step into the room.
Logan may have his demons, but I’ll never shy away from them. I fucking love him, even if I haven’t been able to bring myself to say so to his face. His demons are my demons. His darkness is my darkness. And when he needs relief, there’s nowhere I want him to go for it other than to wherever I am.
He’s standing next to his desk, one hand braced on the wall as he jerks off, and the slick sound of his hand moving over his cock has me squeezing my legs together, a gasp escaping me.
His head snaps up, those ice-colored eyes of his widening in shock and his urgent strokes stopping as if a switch has been thrown. His pants are hanging open, his fly down just far enough to free his shaft, and even though I know I caught him off guard in a vulnerable moment and there’s every chance he’ll reflexively shut down or push me away, maybe even violently, I don’t retreat.
If anything, the hint of danger turns me on even more, making me even more determined to show him just how much I want to be here for him.
His breath is ragged, his cockhead almost purple from the grip he has on his shaft, but other than that, the only thing that moves is his eyes, following me with laser-like intensity as I step farther into the room and close the door behind me.
I go to him and drop to my knees, the musky scent of his sex sending another rush of heat through my body.
This isn’t about me, though.
Logan’s nostrils flare, but he still hasn’t told me to leave… or released the grip he has on his cock.
I reach up and run my fingers lightly over the back of the hand he has wrapped around his thick shaft. “You have me now.”
A shudder goes through his body, and his hand loosens.
I lift it away and place it on the back of my head, keeping my eyes locked with his. “May I?”
His hand tightens on my scalp, fingers tunneling through my hair as he stares down at me. “It’s always better with you,” he finally rasps. “But this is—”
“What I’m here for,” I cut in, instinctively knowing that what he’d been about to say would have been something along the lines of “too much” or “too intense,” both of which would have been wrong.
Logan will never be too much for me. I crave his intensity, his darkness, his pain and desire to inflict it on me.
I trust him to give me all of it without ever taking it further than I can handle.
Now I just need him to trust me enough to unleash it on me.
He twists some of my hair around his fingers, making my scalp sting, but he still doesn’t push me toward his cock, even though it jumps, precum beading at the slit, every time my breath gusts over it. I lean forward, making the sting from the way he’s pulling my hair even sharper, and lick away the slick moisture coating his cockhead.
“Fuck,” he grits out, grabbing my chin with his free hand and pulling my mouth open farther.
Then he slams his cock into the back of my throat.
I gag, tears springing to my eyes and my pussy suddenly so wet that I can’t hold still. I squirm, grabbing onto his legs and pulling myself forward, needing more. Needing him to use me just as hard as he wants to.
“Hands behind your back,” he says sharply, making me moan around the cock he’s still got stuffed in my mouth.
I do it, loving his rough domination just as much as I love the fact that he’s accepted my offer to use me, that he’s letting me in, letting me do this for him when he so clearly needs it.
And god, I need it too.
I need the way he stares down at me, intense and heated, as he adjusts his grip on my chin and my head, then starts fucking my mouth in a brutal, relentless rhythm that pushes me right to the edge. And I need the way he slows down, fisting my hair even harder, before either of us reach our peaks, like no matter how badly we both need this, he wants to savor it too.
“Open your eyes,” he rasps, pulling back until just the tip rests on my extended tongue.
I do it, saliva pooling in my mouth and running down my chin as I stare up at him.
“I like it when you look at me. I like seeing you break down like this.” He runs a finger from just under my eye down to my jaw, no doubt tracing the path of the tears his rough use has brought to my eyes. “I like knowing you’re doing this for me, pushing yourself for me. So don’t blink, wildcat. Don’t blink until I come. Don’t blink unless you need me to stop. Blinking is your safe word right now, do you understand?”
I moan, nodding as much as his tight grip on my hair will allow.
“Good,” Logan says, his icy blue eyes bright with lust. “Now suck me.”
He slides back into my mouth, the expression on his face so heated that I feel like I’m going to combust. My jaw aches and my scalp burns and the combination makes my pussy wet enough that it almost feels like I could probably take all three of my men at once if Dante and Maddoc were here right now.
I don’t mind that they’re not, though.
Only Logan can give me this perfect combination of carefully ruthless domination exercised with iron control, so just like he told me to, I keep my eyes open wide, until tears pour down my cheek and they start to burn.
“Fuck,” Logan grits out, thrusting down my throat and grinding against my face. “You look even better in tears. I want all of them. They’re mine, wildcat.”
My eyelids start to flutter. Not because I want this to end, but because my whole body is trembling for him, my need to come getting to be as desperate as my need for air.
But I don’t want this to stop. Not until I get Logan’s cum. So I force them open wider again, staring up at him with my heart in my eyes.
He shudders, then jerks his hips back, pulling his cock all the way out of my mouth. “Breathe.”
I gasp for air, refusing to move other than the heaving of my chest, as he strokes himself in front of my face and stares down at me like I’m some kind of miracle.
“You make me so fucking hard,” he whispers, his voice getting choppy. “You make me want to ruin you.”
I open my mouth and extend my tongue, begging him with my eyes. If he wants to ruin me, he can. He can do anything he wants to me. The way he touches me pushes buttons I never knew I had before I met him; he takes me places I wouldn’t have felt safe going with anyone else.
Logan groans, his face contorting as if he’s in pain.
He’s not.
He’s about to come.
I strain toward him, my hands twisted together behind my back and still held firmly in place by the hand he has fisted in my hair, and his cock starts to spurt. He paints a single hot stripe of cum on my face before he shoves it back down my throat, harsh, guttural curses falling from his mouth as he finishes.
My pussy throbs so hard I almost can’t stand it. And even though he told me not to move, I need to. Maybe I even want to, just to see what he’ll do about it.
His cum dribbles down my chin, filling my mouth faster than I can swallow all of it, and with his cock still in my mouth, I scoop some off my face with my finger and shove my pants down, my vision entirely blurred now as my eyes burn from the effort of obeying his order not to blink.
I rub my cum-slicked fingers together, then slide them over my clit.
I moan. I can’t help it. And without my permission, my eyes drift shut.
“Riley,” Logan snaps, slowly pulling away from me as I force my eyes open again.
I wasn’t safe-wording, and I see the moment he trusts that. Then I suck hard on the end of his shaft, not willing to let it go. He hisses, no doubt overstimulated, as I start rubbing myself hard and fast.
“Don’t come,” he grits out, and I moan from the combination of sexual frustration and intense arousal that his demand wakes up in me.
I have to come.
I’m so close that there’s no way to stop it.
Not unless I stop touching myself, but I can’t.
Logan suddenly tightens his grip on my hair, making me cry out when he uses it to haul me to my feet.
“I said. Don’t. Come,” he repeats, and the exquisite pain that shoots down my body from my scalp freezes my impending orgasm in its tracks.
I teeter on the edge. The tiniest whisper of any touch at all—his breath, my own hair drifting against my skin, the slow slide of his cum as it meanders down my cheek—could send me over the edge.
“Please,” I beg, my voice shattered.
This is what I need. He’s what I need. I thought I was here to help him, be here for him, and I am.
But Logan will never let me forget that there’s a deep, dark well of depravity in me that only he can ever satisfy.
“That’s it. Cry for me,” he says, his eyes searching my face with a hunger and passion that have me shaking. “Get me hard again so I can fuck an orgasm out of you. I need to take it, wildcat. I’m a killer. A monster. I need to know you want that.”
“I do. I want all of you. I’m yours, Logan.”
It’s nothing but the truth, and it rips a broken, almost feral sound from his throat. Then he hauls me over to his bed and pushes me down, face first.
I catch myself with my hands, arching my back to present myself to him. I’m his to use. His to fuck in whatever way he chooses to.
“You took my cum,” he says, shoving his hand between my legs from behind and rubbing at my pussy with a rough, demanding touch that has heat flooding my core and my thighs shaking. “You took it, used it, without my permission. You need to ask. You need to let me decide where it goes and whether or not you’ve earned it.”
The raw, dark heat in his voice is just short of a threat, and it turns me on almost as much as the rough, possessive way he handles me. I know he won’t hurt me. Not in any way I don’t want him to. I know it, down to my soul. And it’s thrilling beyond words to flirt with the monster he always claims to be, the killer I was terrified of when I first arrived at the Reapers’ house.
Logan curls his fingers, pushing them inside me as he leans over my back and whispers in my ear. “Ask.”
“Please,” I say instantly, my voice wrecked from his cock. “Please show me how to earn your cum.”
I can feel his cock, still wet from my mouth and already growing hard again, pressing against my ass. I can also feel the soot and grit in the rough material of his shirt, scraping against my back, reminding me of where we just were. Of the danger we faced together and the shit show that’s coming for us.
He straightens up, taking his weight off my back, and pulls his fingers out of my pussy.
“I’m going to fuck you.”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t a question,” he says as I feel his knuckles brushing against my most intimate place. He’s gripping himself, lining up his cock. Then he slides it between my legs, thrusting between them without entering me until I’m shaking and desperate.
“I should take you here instead,” he says, abruptly dragging the head of his cock upward and pressing it against my asshole. “Wreck you in a way no one else ever has.”
A shiver rolls through me as my body instinctively clenches from the unfamiliar sensation, pulling away from him.
He drags me right back, not letting me escape.
“But you’re not wet enough in that hole,” he says, circling it with his cockhead and waking up a ripple of pleasure I’m not prepared for. “I need to fuck you hard and fast, wildcat. I need to give you what you’ve earned. I need to come in that tight pussy of yours. Make sure I’ve filled you up at both ends. Give you what you came in here for. Is your pussy wet enough for that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I… you… please, Logan.”
I can’t think.
He yanks me up so my back is pressed against his chest and wraps his hand around my throat, giving me another taste of that heady rush I got when his dick cut off my air earlier as he whispers in my ear. “Because sucking my cock turns you on. Hurting for me gets you wet. Letting me use you almost made you come.”
I nod, feeling lightheaded. I’ve got no idea if it’s because he’s restricting my air or because the way he’s using me is such a turn on. I only know I don’t want him to stop. Not until he makes me come.
Not until he gives me his cum.
“I’m going to fuck you now,” he promises, as if he can read my mind.
He doesn’t waste any time, guiding his cock to my pussy and slamming straight into me, fucking me with an intensity that sends me flying, anchored only by the hand he keeps wrapped around my throat.
I’ve never felt like this before. I’m full of so many sensations that I feel like I’m floating outside my body. And at the same time, the need to come is so intense that I’m whimpering incoherently as he croons filthy encouragement in my ear.
“That’s it, wildcat. You’re so fucking sexy when you’re full of fear, high on adrenaline, fighting the monster in me, begging me to end this.”
Then he reaches around and pinches my clit, releasing his grip on my throat at the same time, and pain and oxygen flood my system in equal measures, making me come so hard that I nearly black out in his arms.
He fucks me through it, and I finally come back to myself—boneless and loose—just as he pulls out and coats my back with his release, coming with a string of low curses that sound like they’ve been ripped out of his soul.
It drips down the crack of my ass, and he pushes me down onto my chest, using his softening cock to rub the cum into my skin.
“Thank you,” I murmur, wanting to sink right down into the mattress. I feel turned inside out, fully exposed to him in ways that I didn’t even know were possible, and so close to him that it’s all I can do to keep my feelings from tumbling out too.
But “close” and “open” are two things I know push Logan’s boundaries to the limit, so it really doesn’t surprise me at all when I feel him stiffen and start to pull back.
It doesn’t surprise me, but I’m also not going to put up with it.
I’m the one who opened the door and walked in. And I’ll pull down every one of the walls he puts up between us, take everything the “monster” in him can throw at me, until he realizes the truth.
I’m not going anywhere.
He’ll never drive me away.
I love this maddening, damaged man, and if I can’t quite say that to him yet, I can at least show him that he’ll never scare me off.
I roll over and get to my feet, advancing on him as he retreats. “Look at me, Logan.”
“I am,” he says in that clipped, closed-off and utterly factual way he has.
I smile, letting my expression lay bare all the emotions he’s not ready to hear.
“Look at what you did to me,” I whisper as I reach him, bunching up the material of his smoke-and-gunpowder stained shirt and pulling him toward me. “I’m a mess. Your mess. And if you can give me all of that, you can at least kiss me too.”
His brow furrows. “I’m—”
“Mine,” I interrupt softly, not so subtly stroking the scar he left between my breasts. “So kiss me and show me that I’m yours too.”
Something shifts in his eyes, then he slides his fingers through my hair and palms the back of my head, bringing his mouth to mine. Carefully. Intentionally. Deliberately. Completely in control.
I give in to him, opening for him without any hesitation, releasing his shirt so I can slide both hands up his chest and wrap them around his neck as I press myself against him.
I’m his, just like I’m his brothers’, and I feel it the moment he lets himself believe it, turning the kiss into a possessive claim that has none of the desperation of the sex we just had, but every bit of the dark hunger that fueled it.
It feels good. It feels perfect. And whatever comes next, whatever that bastard McKenna throws at us as this war escalates, it’s something that no one can ever take away.
Not from either of us.