Chapter 23: The Devil’s Bargain: Epilogue

So relieved to be back with Link, I thought he might take pity on my ordeal and let me go to sleep before he starts to interrogate me about what happened.

Yeah… I was wrong.

He doesn’t instruct his driver to head right home. As though desperate to just keep me in the sanctuary of the back seat of his blacked-out ride, he has me straddled over him, my arms wrapped around his neck.

It just felt natural to assume this position. Once he gave his driver the order to keep on driving until he’s ready to stop, Link lifted me on his lap. For the first few blocks, I was curled up against him, just enjoying the feel of his hard body beneath me, his heart beating against my boobs, but then I realized just how hard he was.

Reaching down, I stroked Link through his pants. Next thing I know, I’m lifting my ass off of him, helping him ease my jeans down past my ass. He groans when he sees that I didn’t wear panties today—that I’m ready for him, just the way he likes—and as he throws his head back, I work his zipper down.

There’s no need to undress him entirely. While I’m naked from the waist done, I only need his cock to be free. The second it is, I sink down on top of him, keeping him warm. Then, flicking the first few buttons on his shirt open, I lay my cheek against his chest for a moment, enjoying the feel of his skin against mine.

With his dick inside of me, keeping that connection and sending shivers of pleasure through me whenever the driver “accidentally” hits a pothole, Link strokes my neck possessively as he listens to me tell him everything that happened today.

I make a mistake. I start at my arrival at Louise’s Florals, take him through meeting Angela and Officer Burns, and how I ran into Bobby when I was planning on calling an Uber, before he drugged me, then ushered me in the car.

After I get a quick lecture that I should always, always call Link’s driver if I need a ride, no matter what—that he echoes from the front seat because, yeah, he’s totally listening in our conversation—he spurs me to continue.

I can’t. Not yet.

“Are you mad at him?” I ask as Link switches to running his knuckle over the curve of my shoulder. The rest of him is still, as though he wants to keep from any movement that might make him come before we make it back to the house. “Bobby, I mean.”

Because he obviously knows the part that my old babysitter played in putting me right in Damien’s hands. True, I really was only leverage to get Link to agree to this truce of theirs and I never was in any real danger—especially since he removed all the rounds in his gun before he grabbed me, something that I’m not sure I’ll ever admit to Link—but the leader of the Libellula Family gave me a few more details on our ride over from the East End to the alley.

To get Link to agree to come, he told him that he had me, and that the reason he did was because of Bobby. At the time, I wasn’t so sure how Link would react, and… yeah. That’s a total lie.

I watched him shoot Twig. I heard the story of how he got his name.

That’s why I’m not even a little surprised by his answer.

“Bobby’s dead,” Link says flatly. “I spared the girl. I didn’t kill Damien. But Bobby’s dead.”

I leave it at that, continuing with my story because it’s exactly what I expected to hear. When I get to the point when I woke up to Heidi hovering over me, he mutters that he should’ve shot her, too, while he had the chance.

I’m kind of glad he didn’t. I mean, if I see her again, I’ll claw her fucking eyes out for her part in leading Link to think his only move was to put a gun beneath his chin, but she didn’t deserve to die for listening to the man she loved.

After that, I explain in more detail how Damien convinced me that a truce with the Sinners would help out my husband, and then spend the next five minutes chewing Link out for the stunt he pulled with his gun.

In between pressing kisses to my throat, my big brawler of a husband apologizes for the first time in our married life. He apologizes for scaring me, and for me being put into the position I was, all because I was his wife.

Of course, I cut him off right there. I told him in the alley how I was meant for him, and that wasn’t just a plea to get him to stop with the foolishness with his gun. Seeing him ready to end it at the idea that I might not be his wife any longer made me stop hiding behind the idea that it didn’t matter who he was married to.

But it did, and my jealousy turned into a possessiveness of my own. He’s mine, and if getting abducted by suave mobsters comes with the territory, fine. Next time, I’ll just make sure not to sneak out without a bodyguard…

Only one problem. Link’s not concerned about next time.

He wants to know about this time.

And when I don’t immediately admit to the reason why I left the penthouse in the first place, he lays his hands on my hips, ready to lift me off of his dick.

I don’t want to go anywhere, and to stop him in his tracks, I blurt out, “I was jealous, okay?”

He slams me back down on top of him. “Jealous? Of fucking what? I told you, Ava… you’re the only one I’ve ever wanted. Everything I’ve done… everything I do… it’s for you. I’m the one who’s jealous of any man who gets to look at your smile for the first time. Who gets to experience your laugh for the first time. Who gets to see the vision that is your ass from behind before I threaten to gouge out his eyes for looking at you… but what can you possibly be jealous of?”

When he puts it like that, it sounds so ridiculous. Link told me he would never lie to me, and I never doubted him. Why would I think that he’d suddenly want a mistress?

But I did, and burying my face in his thick throat again so he doesn’t see how embarrassed I am, I own it.

I thought he’d chuckle. If not that, maybe scoff.

Instead, he slips his hand between our bodies, lifting me up by the chin so that I’m forced to look into his dark eyes.

“Ava…”

I huff. He’s not going to stop until he gets me to admit everything, is he? “You can’t blame me. I find this card that made it seem like you were buying flowers for two women—”

“Because of the floral arrangements for the wedding. Yeah. I know. Burns told me.”

Right. “That’s why I went down to the flower shop. ‘Cause I was irrational and I was jealous and I thought they might give me an address for your mistress or something…”

His lips curve. “And what would you have done if they did?”

Honestly? If I got my hands on a gun, I might have shot her. And why not? I already killed someone once. Maybe it gets easier the second time, right?

I don’t tell Link that, though. I don’t have to. As if he can see the answer written on my face, he tugs my chin toward him, kissing me.

I’m breathless when he’s done, and delusional if I thought he was going to drop the subject.

“Was that it?” he asks.

I want to say yes. But, in the back of his car, driving circles around Springfield, I realize that I might as well get everything out in the open.

“You have two phones,” I tell Link. “I know you’re not into drugs since that’s Damient’s things, and the only people I can think of who have two phones are drug dealers and cheaters.”

I don’t know Link’s going to react to me calling him a cheater in a roundabout way, but it’s definitely not with a low chuckle as he shifts his hips.

I gasp, enjoying the sensations as he dick goes just a little deeper, falling forward, bracing my hands on his hips as he reaches into one pocket of his pants, then the next. Like always, he’s carrying both of them, and he tosses the phones on the seat next to us.

“Go on. Call it.”

What? Even if I had my pants within reach… “I don’t have a phone.”

Reaching into his pocket again, this time he pulls out mine.

“Where did you get this?” When I checked my pockets earlier, I didn’t have it. Damien didn’t, either, and I thought I must have dropped it if Bobby didn’t do something to it.

“Burns found it on the side of the street,” he tells me. “It’s how we got a head start knowing something was off.” Nodding at the phone, he adds, “Don’t distract me, Ava. Call my number.”

I do.

As soon as I finish dialing Link’s number, his personal phone rings.

“Okay. So it works.”

He nods, then passes over his business phone. “Call it with this one.”

I still don’t see where he’s going with this. But, he seems insistent that I do this, and it’s the least I can do after what I put him through just now because of my jealousy.

I dial his number and… nothing happens.

Weird.

I do it again, but after I press the last digit, I hear a tiny click. Like it’s being disconnected.

I glance up at him. “You block your own number?”

Link shakes his head. “I block every number. Every number, that is, except yours.”

“What?”

“Tanner… he’s our tech guy… he made it so that no other numbers can get through. I keep it charged every day. I always have.”

I still don’t understand. “Why would you do that?”

“I’ve held onto this phone everyday for fifteen fucking years, Ava. Willing it to ring. Hoping it would. Then, when it finally did, I took it as a sign that my penance was done. You would finally be mine, and if I had to sin again to keep you, I would. Because I’m a Sinner—”

Dropping my phone somewhere behind me, I nip at his lip, swallowing the moan that replaces what he was going to say next when I kiss him. Pulling away, smiling down at him, I say, “You’re not just a Sinner, baby. You’re my husband.”

“And you’re mine,” he rumbles, rolling his hips up, making me ride him like he’s my favorite roller coaster.

As I come down from it, my eyes land on the tattoo on his chest that I revealed when I opened the top part of his shirt.

“You know… now that we’re being all honest and open with each other—”

He drops his hand, flicking my clit with a devilish smirk. “I definitely have you open right now, my wife.”

I shudder out a breath. He’s the one who told me not to distract him before, and what is Link doing now? The same thing to me.

Point. I had a point.

What was it?

Ah.

“It’s something else I’ve been thinking about lately. About how I have your mark on me,” I remind him. “Two actually. So, tell me, husband: when are you going to have Cross put me on you? Or is that going to be after our second wedding?”

I thought he’d take my tease as light-hearted as I mean it. If anything, he has an excuse to tell me about the wedding he’s kept secret from me for all these weeks.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he blinks, almost stunned. “Don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

Link taps his chest, using his pointer finger to underline the scripted the life drawn over the center of the cross on his left side.

“Ava, love, you were the reason for the first tat I ever got.”

“Huh?” I was.

“I couldn’t risk writing your name on my heart. Heading the syndicate… I built it up so that, one day, I could use it to protect you. But until I could, I never wanted anyone else to come after my heart. Writing ‘Ava’ over my heart might’ve put you at risk. So, instead, I wrote this.”

He pats the scripted part of his tattoo again.

“I looked up what your name meant on the internet,” he admits, almost shyly. Thirty-five, a hardened killer, and he’s almost blushing in the interior light of his fancy car “Had to go to the library to do it, but the website I found said Ava meant ‘the life’. And that’s what you are: my life. You always have been, even when I wasn’t a part of yours.”

But he is now, all because I called his personal line and he came to rescue me. Then, when he did, he took the opportunity to blackmail me into becoming his wife.

Which I did. It was a deal with the Devil, but I definitely came out on top.

And, as I wrap my arms around his neck again, pressing my lips to the tattoo over his heart as his stiff cock stays buried to the hilt inside of me, I mean that literally.

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