Chapter 47
CASSIE
I woke up in my own bed, my eyes dry and swollen from crying. It had been light out when I’d run to my room, Anna’s face swimming in my mind, her final words echoing: I held you once.
Now the room was dark, the house silent.
I sat up and reached for a tissue to blow my nose, then stared at the room in shadows around me.
Anna Reed was dead and it was all my fault.
I couldn’t even blame the Hawks for this one, as much as I wanted to, as much as I had when we’d argued on the patio. I’d just been deflecting, blaming them for what I’d done by bringing the people behind Imperium Fratrum to Anna’s door.
But really, the blame was mine. I was the one who’d pushed to get answers both before and after my accident. I was the one who’d wanted to talk to Anna.
I was the problem.
I got up, turned on the bedside lamp, and used the bathroom.
Then went to the closet to pull out the suitcase I’d brought with some of my things after I’d gotten used to the idea of living with the Hawks after the Hunt.
I pulled dresses and blouses off the hangers in the closet and dumped them in my suitcase before loading up my two tote bags with clothes from my dresser and my toiletries.
I didn’t bother changing even though I was still in my pajamas from that morning when I’d gone out onto the patio to work with Vigo and Jagger. It didn’t matter. I was just going back to my apartment.
Where I couldn’t hurt anyone else.
I was barefoot when I headed for the hall. My sneakers were downstairs by the front door. I’d have to grab them on my way out.
I’d barely opened the door to my room when the door next to mine opened.
Hawk stepped into the hall so fast I wondered if he’d been listening for me, although it was more likely that he just couldn’t sleep.
And even now my breath caught in my chest at the sight of him, dark hair falling to his shoulders, chest bare over gray sweats, muscled arms at his sides.
“Everything okay?” His gaze dropped to my suitcase. When he spoke again, his voice had hardened. “Where the fuck are you going?”
“I’m leaving. I’m going back to my apartment.”
He stalked toward me. “The fuck you are.”
“You can’t keep me here.”
He pulled the suitcase out of my hand. “The fuck I can’t.”
Jagger’s door opened. “What’s going… on?” He stared at the suitcase now in Hawk’s hand. “You’re leaving?”
He sounded so wounded it was almost enough to make me change my mind.
But that would be a mistake, one with deadly consequences.
“Fine,” I said, “keep my suitcase.”
I tried to push past Hawk but it was like trying to push past a freight train.
He grabbed my arm and wrestled me back into my room.
“What the…? Ow! You’re hurting me.” It wasn’t really true, but I had to say something to make him stop.
“Bullshit,” he said. “If we can clamp your pussy you can manage a hand on your arm.”
He backed me into my bedroom and pushed the suitcase aside, then tried to wrestle the bags off my shoulder.
“Are you crazy?” I gasped, trying to keep ahold of the bags. “Let me go! Bram— ”
“I fucking dare Bram to try and take you from us!” Hawk roared, his beautiful face transformed by fury.
“Is this some kind of new game?” Vigo asked, his voice sleepy behind me. “Should I get toys?”
“It’s not a game,” Jagger said. “Cassie wants to leave.”
Hawk ripped the bags off my arms and tossed them to the ground. “I’m not letting you walk out of here like this, not when those psychos are out there picking people off.”
“You want to leave us?” Vigo asked, his green eyes wounded.
I was panting when I turned to face him and Jagger. Panting from the struggle over my bags and the pent-up emotion welling inside my body.
“Don’t you understand?” I sobbed. “I’m a fucking death sentence! Anna is dead because of me and you’ll be next if I stay!”’
I couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear to lose them. Couldn’t bear for them to be hurt — or worse — because of me. I’d already lost so much. I needed to know they were tearing through the world, that they were wreaking havoc, living on their own terms.
Even if they weren’t doing it with me.
“Cass…” Hawk stepped toward me and tried to pull me into his arms.
“Get away from me! Let me go!” My breath was coming in giant heaves, catching in my throat, making it hard to pull oxygen into my lungs. “Just… let me go!”
I fought against Hawk’s embrace but he wouldn’t have it, and he pulled me tight against him, his arms coming around me like an iron cage.
“I wish I fucking could, Cass.” He held me so long the fight slipped out of me little by little until I was sobbing in his arms. “I wish I fucking could.”
He kissed the top of my head and let me cry until my sobs slowly subsided, leaving me wrung out and whimpering against him, his chest wet with my tears.
He pulled back far enough to take my face in his hands.
“Nobody’s fucking leaving.” His eyes burned like molten amber, his hands almost rough on my cheeks. “Not you. Not us.”
“They’ll kill you too,” I said.
“I dare them to fucking try. If they do, we’ll be ready, but we’re not letting them win by tearing us apart.”
Hawk’s hands dropped to my shoulders and Jagger entered the room to take my hand. “We belong together, Cass. I thought you knew that.”
Vigo joined us. “Yeah, you’re one of us now, mouse.”
I shook my head. “It’s not safe.”
Hawk rested his hand against my face. “Who said we wanted safe?”
“Exactly,” Jagger said. “Fuck safe.”
Hawk leaned in to kiss me, his lips lingering on mine before he pulled away just far enough to speak against my lips. “You belong to us now. I guess we need to make that clear.”
His mouth closed over mine, his tongue pushing through the seam of my lips so hard and fast I gasped with the surprise of it.
He held my face tight in his hands, as if his grasp could keep me with him — with them — and I sank against his body, let him take my weight as heat blossomed between my thighs.
His tongue was a sword, piercing the armor I’d mustered when I’d tried to leave.
Before I knew it was too late.
He was right: I was already theirs.
Leaving wouldn’t change that, and I heard Anna’s voice in my head.
It’s already too late.
I wrapped my arms around his neck felt Vigo move in behind me, his dick hard against my ass through the fabric of his boxer briefs.
He pushed my shorts down far enough to bare my ass and pushed the crown of his dick push between my thighs, separating my swollen folds on their way through my cunt before nudging against my clit.
The heat of his stomach was pressed against my ass and my pussy pulsed with need. He was so close to being inside me and right then there was nothing I wanted more than Vigo’s dick filling me while Hawks took ownership of my mouth with angry possessive strokes of his tongue.
“Fucking soaked as always,” Vigo murmured against my neck.
He moved his hips and the head of his dick bumped against my clit, stoking the heat at my center as he slid his hands under my T-shirt. His palms were hot against the flesh of my stomach before he closed them around my tits.
I sighed into Hawks’ mouth as Vigo pinched my nipples, then slid my hands into Hawk’s sweats.
He growled, a low rumble that traveled all the way to my toes, when I closed my hand around his shaft. He was so hard, his skin taut and silky, and I stroked as our tongues did a desperate dance.
“Let’s get you naked,” Hawk said, reaching for the hem of my shirt.
“A-fucking-men to that,” Vigo said behind me.
Hawk pulled off my T-shirt and tossed it aside, crouched at my feet to pull my shorts off the rest of the way.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” he said when I was naked. He stroked the hair covering my mound. “We haven’t shown you yet that this little cunt belongs to us.”
“That’s okay,” Vigo said, pinching my nipples. “We’ll show her tonight.”
“Fuck yes, we will,” Hawks said. “Now move your dick so I can bury my face in this sweet pussy.”
Vigo reached between us and shifted so that his dick was against my ass, his shaft sliding easily between my ass cheeks after pushing through the wet folds of my cunt.
Hawks got on his knees and ran his thumb through my cunt.
He was true to his word, and I moaned when he pushed his face into my pussy, lapping and licking and sucking at my clit, covering every inch of me with his hot mouth.
I dropped my head back and closed my eyes, my breath coming fast and shallow as an orgasm flared to life at my center while Hawk worked my cunt with his mouth and Vigo pinched my tits from behind.
My eyes flickered open when Jagger returned, naked and carrying a piece of black plastic that looked like an open claw.
I didn’t bother asking what it was. They were right: I was theirs now.
They could do what they wanted to me.
“My fucking turn,” he said, setting the piece of plastic on the nightstand next tot he bed.
Hawk pulled back and got to his feet. “You belong to all of us, mouse. Let us show you.”
He moved aside and Jagger lifted me into his arms.
I locked my legs around his hips, my arms around his neck, and he kissed me long and slow, his tongue marking territory in my mouth with languid sweeps, his rock-hard dick pressing against the cleft between my thighs as he carried me to the bed.
He tossed me onto the mattress, then reached for my ankles to drag me to the end of the bed.
He looked down at my pussy, wet and exposed between my open thighs, and reached for the black plastic claw.
“We’re going to open you wide, Cass.” His eyes shone like polished sapphires. “Show you how we own you.”