Chapter 27
Scarlett
The car door on my side opens and there’s Widow, one hand on the roof as he leans down to look at me.
“That’s what I want to talk about tonight. Sex. I don’t care what we do, but I’m not going to sleep until I get an answer about something.” He steps back when I climb out, giving me just enough space to rise to my feet but nowhere to go since I’m trapped between his arms.
He’s the one that closed the warehouse doors, leaving Alexei and Bohnes outside. I wonder how they worked out their duty sharing. Nobody bothered me about it, which I like. They’re big boys. They can manage a few things on their own.
I pat Widow’s cheek with my hand, getting a little too close to his lips.
“Ash and I were just confessing our love to one another. Now we’re going to make love. Not just him though. I expect all four of you on call, whenever I want, wherever I want.” I sound so confident. I am confident. Widow seems to find this amusing.
“You fucking kidding me? Do you really believe you’ll be able to keep up with the sexual appetites of four men?
Please. All that and you’re going to be a movie star?
” He pushes up off the car and takes a step back, folding his arms. “We don’t have to be unrealistic, but we do need to talk about this. ”
“So you agree with me? That’s good to know since that’s what I already said we were doing.” I give him a saucy look and take off for the fridge, opening it and pulling out a beer. It’s cold against the fresh tattoo on my finger. The one on my ribs burns.
My sister’s heart is in my glove box.
It’s impossible to forget about that.
“Burn barrel is ready,” Bohnes calls from the front door. I hadn’t realized that’s one of the things he was doing or else I would’ve helped. Widow turns and takes off with a scowl (that conversation is nowhere near over), leading the way for me with my hand wrapped around Ash’s.
Alexei is still and silent beside the barrel, staring down at the box that’s already located inside of it.
“Kellin told me that he only brought you this because he couldn’t bring the whole corpse.” Alexei turns to me and heaves a weary sigh, brushing blond hair back from his forehead with the back of a fresh glove and then immediately changing it out for another. “That strikes me as the right answer.”
“I’ll scatter her ashes in the old family cemetery on the reservation,” I say softly, standing beside the barrel with Ash on one side and Widow on the other.
Bohnes returns with an odd bottle of accelerant, dousing the box and then stepping back.
He leaves me to use Alexis’ own lighter to set it all ablaze.
A quick flick of my thumb and whoosh. “Not me though. When I die, I want my ashes mixed with the four of you and entombed in the mausoleum Bohnes bought for me.”
Bohnes throws up his hood with a dark laugh, shadowing his face.
“I have to suffer these fools in the afterlife as well? I don’t believe we discussed this part of the arrangement.” He’s teasing.
He better be.
“I own all four of your ghosts, obviously. Next order of business.” I make myself smile over the crackling flames. “Sex.”
“Sex.” Bohnes is the one who repeats the word. I can’t see his white teeth in the shadows of his hood anymore. That means he isn’t smiling. His voice is like a threat.
“This is technically our wedding night.” Alexei’s mouth curves, his pale eyes reflecting the flames. He’s not looking at them though. He’s staring right at me. I’m not sure if he means our as in me and him, or our as in all of us. The other boys don’t comment on it.
“Not just that. Our whole deal.” Widow spins his finger in a circle, staring contemplatively into the barrel. “Expectations and all that for the future.”
“The future.” Ash says those words in such a way that they sound absolutely ridiculous, like there’s no such thing.
He reaches up and rubs his freshly tattooed hand over his own throat, looking at me like now is all that matters.
Ash is going to fuck me so good tonight with that attitude.
Like tonight is his dying fuck. I’ll make sure to savor it.
“Anytime, anywhere.” I’m glaring at Widow. Such a fuckboy, trying to make it seem like this was all his idea. “That’s how we’ll be fucking. You will never tell me no. The only exception is life-or-death situations. Figured I should say that part aloud since all four of you brutes would forget.”
Alexei keeps his blueblood expression fixed to mine. It reads bored rich boy, but the tense set of his shoulders and the flash in his eyes tells a different story. He’s turned into the Russian ice prince. I’ve married myself to the mob. Holy shit.
“Free use. Is that what it’s called? Fucking each other without asking. Pre-given consent.” Alexei’s cultured voice makes it sound so depraved. Bohnes rolls his head on his neck, like our banter is getting in his way. Ice-blue eyes say I am the hunter tonight.
My breath catches.
“I don’t want a safe word.” Ash speaks up, stepping a little closer to the barrel for warmth.
It’s macabre, but it’s also cold out here.
There’s a steady breeze, carrying away the smoke and the dark implications of the fire.
It shifts in my mind from funeral pyre to heat on a cold night.
Simpler that way. “None at all. I don’t have limits. Being alive is reward enough.”
He holds onto the sides of his black hood, curling his pale fingers against the black fabric.
He’s gone as still as a statue, staring down at the burning remains of his own victim.
Ash shudders and turns his head away in shame before forcing his attention back to it, self-flagellating.
It’s disturbing, to watch the flames play over the melancholy lines of his face.
“Free use.” Widow wets his lips and shakes his head with a laugh, giving me the darkest set of wolf eyes that I’ve ever seen on the man. “God forbid I don’t give my woman what she wants.” He smirks at me. “But I would like a safe word. You’re going to regret this one day and beg for us to stop.”
“I’d like to believe my wife has a stronger constitution than that,” Alexei argues, casually shrugging out of his hoodie and tossing it aside.
The t-shirt underneath is wrinkled, the fabric stuck to his skin and emphasizing all the lean muscles in his midsection and chest. “She knows what she wants when it comes to sex.”
“Sex,” Bohnes repeats, squirting the bottle of accelerant into the barrel and making it flame higher. “Doesn’t require talking.”
Then all four of them are looking at me.
I’m alone in the woods outside of town. In the dark. Next to a bonfire with a dead girl’s heart burning inside of it. Each of the four men around me has enough deaths under his belt to qualify as a serial killer.
This is absolutely the riskiest moment of my entire life, the one where my choices matter.
I look from one to the other of them, and I can see the second it hits them, too.
The wind catches on the heavy boughs of the trees, frigid cold. An aggressive reminder that no matter what nefarious shit we’re up to, it’s still winter. She’s one bitch that can’t be fucked with. My eyes flick briefly in the direction of the McKenzie River and all four of them notice that, too.
Me remembering my death for a brief few seconds does nothing to change the charge between us.
If I were worried for my life, what would I do right now? I back up slowly, and they all track the movement.
Everyone has stopped talking.
I definitely wouldn’t just take off into the woods and try to run. That would never work.
I’d get caught.
My tongue wets my lips. My hands are trembling. Playing games in the dark is risky business.
There’s something very dangerous about antagonizing four men who only agree on one thing: you.
I turn suddenly, kicking gravel, and then flee into the shadows of the forest. For all I know, Bohnes has traps or fences out here that I know nothing about.
Doesn’t matter because I don’t get very far.
“Almost stepped onto a bear trap,” Bohnes growls, fingers curling around the front of my neck.
With his other hand, he wraps my waist and yanks me back.
At the same time, he kicks his foot out, sending a stick into the metal teeth of a violent trap.
I’d have broken my leg if I’d stepped on that. “What a bad girl you are, for running.”
“Cute.” I’m not unamused as he shoves me up against the side of a tree, like we’re at the Prescott track having our first time together all over again. “Are you trying to make this unenjoyable for me?”
“If I were doing my job as your Nightmare, I would lock you up in this house and leave you here until I’d taken care of everything. You’d never be able to escape.” Bohnes licks the side of my neck, as debauched as he’s always been. “It appears that I, too, am also too nice.”
He locks his hand on the back of my head, pressing my cheek against the rough bark of the tree.
We’re both panting, caught up in the moment.
“You’re so beautifully fucking insane, you know that, right?” Bohnes muses, unzipping my pinstriped trousers, dragging that metal zipper over my ass. His hand dives in, cupping me from behind. Fog drifts past in silver and gray wisps and there’s absolutely no sign of the other three boys.
They’re close though. Maybe watching us.
I exhale. It’s one thing to do this with Bohnes; it’s another to perform for a captive audience.
“You picked the one girl who would stalk you back. Nice work, Kellin.” I’m laughing, but it doesn’t last because Bohnes edges aside my panties and shoves an entire finger in me without warning.
I tense up with a gasp, my fingers scraping down the bark of the tree.
The bear trap glints in loose moonlight, tumbling in silver beams through the trees.
I bite my lip as Bohnes presses in close behind me, slipping that single finger in and out of the bright hot wet inside that tight little hole of mine. She’s such a tease, all hidden down there like a demure sweet thing. In reality, she’s a fucking whore and proud of it.
“Maybe I should walk away as a courtesy to my client, let him have the first go? Oh, Alexei.” Bohnes jams a second finger inside of me and my toes curl in my shoes. I’m not going to last very long. He might make me come with just his hand tonight.
“Don’t.” The word is a warning for him to stay as he is, doing exactly this.
That drives Bohnes nuts, me ordering him to keep fucking me when that’s exactly what he wants to do. In order for him to win this, he has to give me to another man. Bet both of those things feel like hellish surrender to him.
He was wrong about Ash though. That’s what matters. I’ve won the right to make decisions in our mental chess game. And I’ll keep winning. Bohnes may never give up, but I don’t need him to.
My suspenders are ripped off and I’m dragged down to the forest floor, put on my hands and knees.
“Hurry,” I growl, digging my fingers into the dirt once he withdraws his own from my pussy. “If you don’t put your dick in me—”
The words are knocked clean out of me by the heat of him.
Bohnes climbs over me, one palm beside my own on the ground.
His body is pressed strong and firm against mine, mostly clothed but with his dick out.
He rubs it against me on the outside, acting like a fucking tease.
With his left hand, he puts his fingers around the front of my neck. Resting there. No pressure.
“Safe word?” he whispers, teasing my throat with one of his fingers. “I’m obligated to reconfirm.”
“You’re obligated to fuck me. Now.” I push against him and he laughs, releasing my neck to grab my hip in an effort to keep me still.
“If that’s how it’s going to be then Widow is right: you are going to get exactly what you ask for.” Bohnes puts a hand on my upper back, pushing me into the dirt. He mounts me with another laugh, seating himself balls-deep in one thrust. I’m both rewarded and punished for the lack of foreplay.
It’s delicious and tight.
“Such a good boy,” I pant out, groaning as he grabs hold of both my hips and pounds into me, big cock driving my aching muscles apart and stealing all the space inside of me. A thief. Kellin Bohnes is a goddamn thief.
Widow steps out between a pair of trees, staring down at me prone on the forest floor under somebody else.
His mouth twists into something crafted of jealousy, possession, and desire.
It’s horrifically beautiful. He squats down, but Bohnes doesn’t stop.
If anything, his hand on the back of my head is firmer, his hips harder.
He punches his dick into me, a bruising assault against my ass that steals my words away a second time.
See? Thief.
“Good boy? Don’t you ever talk like that to me,” Widow warns, lifting his eyes from mine to Bohnes. “Care to enter a gentleman’s agreement with me, Kellin?”
Uh-oh.w
I learned this lesson at the track already. I’m a match for any one of these guys.
But all four together?
Aw, shit.