: Chapter 41

Briony sits pretty in the corner of the exhibition room by herself while Nox and I silently talk business across the way.

“They’re antsy. Up in their fucking asses upset that she ran,” Nox tells me. “Apparently, Callum sent some of his own guys to search for her after seeing the plane tickets purchased under her name. When they couldn’t find her at the airport, they expanded their search. Greyhounds, all that. They want her, and now that she’s gone, Callum is flipping his shit.”

I scoff. “Figures. They lost control of the situation by placing their needs in someone else’s hands.”

My hands.

“You got that right. I’d love to take on one of those greasy fucks, show him how we operate in the streets.”

“And Saint? Any word on him?”

“None. And I can’t figure that out. I’m assuming he’s just playing it cool to keep the heat off him for the time being. Such a controversy for him to be a part of this, considering…”

My tongue trails across my teeth as I shake my head, thinking of my little blackmailing situation.

“I mean, it seems they are really pushing for him to step in and take the bishop title, which is odd for someone of his age, but they need the family name permanently solidified in the church if they hope to conquer the townspeople, and they will pay anything to make that happen.”

“Everything that family has worked for.” I scoff, sarcasm in my tone.

“The Bishop’s term is nearing its end, and he seems more than eager to hurry the process since the suicide,” Nox explains.

The suicide. Fucking perfect.

“What suicide?” I ask, playing stupid.

“The deacon. Sorry, thought you knew. They initially thought it was murder because of the way the scene appeared. Confessional was all messed up. Multiple gunshots, yada, yada. But his Bible…” He pauses, leaning inward. “Inside his personal Bible, he’d confessed to some nasty shit. It spoke the truth, and all the pieces connected.”

I’m grinning like a fucking demon beneath my calm exterior. My plans worked flawlessly. Years of sitting in a cell with an imagination that ran wild, and talking to fellow convicts assisted in that. I learned the way the world really works behind those bars. Made friends that turned into family. Real fucking family. Not the trash floating through my veins, giving me my physical appearance.

“But yeah, Saint’s lying low, and Callum has had it with Alastor. That man is panicking. The election is coming soon, and if Alastor’s highest donor drops him over this shit, he’s risking re-election. He’s been in here asking for Bones.”

Fucker knows too much.

“Knew that was coming. It was only a matter of time. Those politicians lose their shit when things start to collapse around them.”

“Keep your eyes peeled. They’re wising up, Aero,” he says directly, before looking at Briony in the corner. “You can’t stay the masked man forever.”

I absorb that, my mind racing endlessly. He’s not wrong. I’ve stayed under the radar with the help of Alastor, committing his crimes while he protected my identity, my secrets. But crossing him by not following through with my commitments has that protection dwindling.

“Just…play it safe,” he says softly, placing a hand on my shoulder.

I pull away from his touch. “Fuck off.”

“I mean it, Aero. When men get desperate, they do crazy shit.”

“Do they really?” I ask sarcastically.

This man knows better than anyone how desperate a man can get. Especially when backed into a corner by an institution set to break them. He’s witnessed it firsthand, seeing his friend become a fucking hitman for the enemy just to get closer.

He tips his head, the look in his eyes an understanding, followed up by a warning for a friend he genuinely cares for.

“Don’t get soft on me now, Nox. I’ve seen you cut out a guy’s tongue.”

“I’m just saying…” He pauses, eyes peering over at Briony. “Love has a way of making us weak. Blinding us.” He runs his ring-covered hand over the top of his shaved, tatted head. “I don’t want to see you slip up, not even for a second because of it.”

“First of all, fuck off. Second, what the fuck does a pimp from Detroit know about love?”

He laughs, grabbing for his exposed abdomen beneath his button-up shirt that’s freely hanging open since his little rendezvous.

“Hey, we all have our vices. I’ve loved a few I shouldn’t have.”

“A few,” I repeat with a nod. “Precisely the problem.”

“I get it, though. She’s got a hot little body on her,” he says, licking his lips as he eyes Briony, who’s playing with the ends of her hair in the chair by the corner.

He looks back at me, studying my face, eyeing the tension in my neck. Am I that obvious?

“And she’s young,” he continues, pushing. “Tight little pussy just begging to be destroyed.”

He runs his lips together while rubbing his chin as if imagining it.

“Enough,” I grumble beneath my breath.

A knowing smirk glazes his face. This fucker better not even think about it.

“Hey, sweetheart?” he calls over to her, still staring at me with that shit-eating grin.

Fuck. You.

Briony looks up, dropping her hair, and instantly her spine straightens in the chair. The move unintentionally pushes her breasts up, her chest rising and falling as she nervously exhales.

“Did you enjoy the show?” he asks, walking past me and towards her.

My teeth clench together, and I turn, watching him cautiously.

He takes a seat next to her on the couch, casually crossing his leg over his knee. His shirt hangs open, and she peers at his tatted abdomen, many of which he’d done himself while locked up. Briony bites her lower lip, looking every bit the innocent virgin he assumes she is.

“Go ahead. Speak up. I know Bones likes his women silenced and masked, but you’re free to speak here before me.”

Dick.

She swallows, taken aback at his comment as her eyes question mine.

“I did. Just…I don’t know…” She twirls her hair nervously between her fingers again.

He grabs her hand gently, pulling it to his lap, making my nostrils flare.

“Go on,” he says kindly, as if he knows what the word means. “It’s okay. Tell me.”

Briony sighs and I stare at her, hanging on her every word. “I mean, I enjoyed the…threesome? Isn’t that what it’s called?” she asks innocently.

A dark smile stretches across Nox’s lips, enjoying her purity. “Yes. Yes, that’s it.”

“That was new for me. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Are you curious enough to try? Maybe bring one of our girls in here and we have a go at it? Show you just how fun it can be. Or maybe…” he leans in closer and trails a finger down the side of her face, “I see what ideas you could come up with on your own?”

She chuckles as a blush fills her cheeks. Her chin cowers into her shoulder and her lashes flutter. Is she fucking with him?

“What is it that gets your panties wet, sweetheart?”

I crack my knuckles before using my chin to pop my neck.

“Um, I don’t know. Maybe…s-something more confining?” She shrugs her shoulders innocently.

“Confining?” His brow raises as excitement dances in his eyes.

“Yeah, like restraints? Ropes. Chains. Handcuffs? I feel like that could be fun. To not have control over what someone is doing to you. Letting their imagination run wild.”

He moans in satisfaction, nodding as his fingers trail from her shoulder down her arm. “Continue.”

Gutting him. Neck to balls.

“They should’ve had your wrists cuffed behind your back, taking you however they wished. Using you for their own benefit and making you beg for release. That’s what I would’ve done.”

His eyes widen slightly, and the thirstiest look I’ve ever seen floods his expression. The fucker can’t even close his mouth.

“I like where your head’s at,” he says, staring at her while nodding.

He hasn’t blinked. He better fucking blink.

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” she says bashfully, before biting her lip again.

I cross my arms, glaring at her with narrowed eyes as I bite down on my own lip, pretending it’s hers. I’m going to bite the fuck out of that lip. Tear into it and make her swallow her own blood.

“It’s as easy as putting your mouth on someone,” Nox says, pulling her hand to his knee. “You just start.”

Blood. Death. Pain.

He’s pushing me, she’s testing me, and I’m losing my shit trying to remain controlled. We are all playing a little game here, each our own.

“C’mon,” he says, pulling her to a standing position. His smirk finds me. “Bones, have a seat. Your girl here needs a lesson from a real man.”

My blood is boiling beneath the surface, but this man knows better than anyone that I have no control over my crazy. He’d be begging for death before fucking around with her in front of me.

“Maybe we can all play?” she offers. “I mean, if that’s okay? Maybe we can all learn something new.” She smiles a cutesy little smile at me, and I can’t wait to smack her upside the head with my cock and wipe that smirk right off.

I run my tongue along the front of my teeth, letting her take the reins. She wants to play King of the Kingdom? Fine. Let’s see how she rules.

Taking a seat on the couch again, I lean back and get comfortable as Nox leans back next to me. His hands are already folded on top of his tattooed head, a satisfied grin filled with nothing but anticipation of what’s coming.

It’s not like we haven’t been down this road before. Nox and I have had sex with the same girl at the same time. After I got out of prison, I’d been on a rampage, fucking everything this club brought in because I couldn’t fuck her. But it all stopped when I saw her again for the first time, sleeping in her room. No one could compare and no one ever would. Other women disgusted me and the only way I could get off was to mask these employees and imagine her tear-stained face beneath me.

This man has a taste for everything and everyone, however. It’s like he gets off on screwing anything that could be considered taboo or outrageous. I watched him seduce and fuck a girl’s husband in the ass right in front of her because she was stealing money from the club. Regular sex isn’t for the likes of him. The man is a fucking train wreck of poor decisions and uninhibited desires. We know how to play together. How to share. How to please. But this…this is different.

This is my Briony.

Briony settles herself on her knees on the floor beneath us, her tight dress riding high on her thighs. Her hands each find one of our legs and she slides them up, touching our knees, then sliding them up our thighs. Nox tips his head, looking down the front of her dress, and then up beneath her skirt, between her thighs. Thirsty fuck.

“You know, this just feels a bit backwards.” She giggles to herself before pushing up off our legs and standing above us. “C-can I sit?”

Nox rolls his head to mine on the couch before looking back at her and slapping his thighs.

“Of course.”

She disregards him, sitting between us on the leather, a hand on each of our thighs. I keep glaring at the one on Nox’s leg, imagining breaking each of her fingers, one by fucking one, maybe even peeling her nails off, until all she lives and breathes is me. His tattoo-covered hand finds her thigh, and he slowly starts massaging the white flesh beneath it.

“Mmm.” Briony closes her eyes, rolling her head to the side. “Yeah, that feels good.”

My dick strains against my jeans at her soft, subtle moans, growing harder by the second. My little cock-hungry whore loves this, and it’s driving me mad.

“Yeah? What if I went a little higher?” he asks, slowly trailing fingers up the inside of her thigh. “I bet that would feel good, too.”

She giggles, then closes her knees together. “I’m ticklish.”

He runs his hand higher under her dress, his fingers disappearing.

“I think she enjoys being tickled, don’t you, Bones?”

His hand meets her panties as he brushes his fingers against her clit, and she tosses her head back against the couch, her breasts pushing out of the top. My other hand molds to her breast, lifting it slightly before allowing it to drop before me. Her lips part, and a soft moan leaves her.

God, her lips are so fucking perfect.

Nox is staring at her mouth too, as his hand moves between her thighs, attempting to pull her panties to the side.

She swats at the hand, and he retreats. “I should tie you up for that.”

“You should,” he retorts with a smirk, leaning forward and pulling a pair of cuffs out from behind his back pocket.

Fucker has cuffs on him. Of course he does.

“Do what you want with me. Take me. Use me,” he says, reiterating her earlier words as he places his wrists in front of her, taunting her. “Fuck me in front of your little boyfriend over here. Show him what you’ve been missin’. What that masked fuck is denying you.”

I go to stand, to shut his face with my fist, but Briony grips the back of my shirt, pulling me back down onto the couch.

He laughs, noticing. “Your girl here has a tasty little appetite. One that needs fillin’, and I don’t think you’re the man for the job, Bones.”

“Nox,” I warn.

Breathing is hard. Smoke is leaving my nostrils, and I’m pretty sure my eyeballs are bleeding from how hard I’m holding myself back. But Briony runs her hand up my thigh, higher and higher, until she’s palming my cock over my jeans. She gives me a little side-eyed look, one that practically screams, ‘trust me.’

“Hands behind your back,” she sing-songs to Nox, taking the cuffs with her other hand. He smiles, doing as she asks, and she clips them onto his wrists.

“Ah, fuck.” He laughs.

“Too tight?” she asks softly, looking over his shoulder at him.

“Yeah.”

“Good,” she says, before clicking them even tighter.

He hisses. “Shit, girl!”

My cock bricks up as a lust-filled fever begins to burn me from the inside out.

“Now get on the floor beneath me. On your knees,” she demands from the seat beside me, her tone entirely different from the cutesy innocent girl she pretended to be a minute ago.

This little demon, here.

He does as she asks, play biting the air in front of him, making her smile.

“That’s right. Face to the floor. Now look at me.”

I watch humorously as my hand possessively holds the inside of her thigh, rubbing her porcelain flesh softly with my thumb. She spews her demands until he’s bent over, face down on the floor beneath her with his hands on his back before us. She stands, checking his pants pockets until she finds the key to the cuffs, before placing a heel on the side of his cheek. His eyes grow wide with caution.

“I’m not missing anything, Nox,” she says to him, her heel indenting the side of his face. “And no one, especially not a strung-out pimp from Detroit, disrespects Aero in front of me.”

Oh, fuck.

Nox’s eyes glance over at me as I sit back with a satisfied grin on my face, cocking my brow. She was listening the whole time. I didn’t think she could hear us.

“Aw man, y’all are so fucked up.” He laughs against the rug beneath him. “I love it.”

I knew he would.

“Remove my heel with your teeth,” she commands.

He does, eagerly.

“Kiss my foot,” she says with an angelic smile.

He smiles back at her before kissing the edge of her toes.

“Now open your mouth,” she commands, pushing her pretty pink toenail against his lips. “And show me how good you can suck.”

“Marry me?” he asks abruptly against her foot. “I think I’m in love with you.”

She turns her head back, and her devilish little smile finds mine, looking sexy as all fuck. She tosses the key at me and I catch it with two hands against my abdomen.

“Bones? Show him how you fill my appetite.” She squats down near Nox’s face, talking in his ear while staring only at me. “Show him how you’re the only man for the job.”

I’m rock hard, tense as fuck, and ready to do just that. My cock aches against the friction of my jeans, the need to punish her devious little cunt with my drooling, jealous friend cuffed on the floor watching us, my only mission.

Briony steps back into the other heel before coming closer to the couch, leaving Nox cuffed and lying on the floor watching us. She leans over me, her breasts swaying before my face beneath the cheap dress, surely giving him a view of her ass, as her delicious scent floods my nostrils, seducing my demons again.

“You hold the key, Aero. You hold all the power. Even without it, you own every room you walk into, even the ones you don’t.”

Her words and the seriousness with which she speaks shows me the student is giving the teacher his lesson. She’s giving herself over to me, ensuring I know that anything and everything she does is for me and me alone. In this situation, and more importantly, the ones to come.

She wanted to tell me she loved me. But the word love is useless. It’s nothing but four stupid letters set together and used by everyone. Actions are everything, and this exhibition and exchange of power and control means more than any fucking made-up word muttered behind closed doors.

She straddles my lap, her hands wrapping around the sides of my neck.

“We’re not like them,” she whispers into my ear.

She leans back onto my lap, sitting her now damp panties directly over my cock. Taking my hand, she brings it to her lips, wrapping her mouth around two of my fingers while staring only at me. She sucks the lengths slowly, then bites down on my fingertips hard, causing me to hiss and lift my hips up into her, before allowing the hand to fall from her lips.

“We’re like us,” she states proudly.

She has no clue what she’s doing to me; how dangerously toxic we’ve become together.

My bloomed rose, exploring that darkness between her petals while pushing me to explore mine. She’s proving to be the definition of trust, putting my firm belief in her character, her strength, her truth.

My fucking existence.