Page 25

I shrug, thumb poised on the spark wheel of my lighter. “Why?”

“I thought you would’ve given it up by now.”

I cock my head, waiting for her to explain.

“What? Hasn’t anyone told you it’s not attractive to kiss an ashtray? I won’t do it. And, okay, maybe it looked cool when I was seventeen so I got over it, but lung cancer’s a thing, Adrian. So is secondhand smoke.”

Well. She’s not wrong, is she?

Most people my age vape. I got hooked at sixteen by Maggie, my father’s former Used. Mom would be in the kitchen, directing our cook on what to make even though she refused to ever dirty her hands with household work. It was a convenient excuse toleave the bedroom to Dad and Maggie since my father didn’t even have the decency to fuck his whore at the Court like the rest of the higher-ranked members of the Order. Probably because Mom is Jack’s sister, and it would look bad on him if his own blood wasn’t enough to satisfy her husband’s lecherous gaze, wandering hands, and insatiable need to get off every couple of hours.

I couldn’t relate to my ice-cold mother. Even when I started sleeping with Loni, it was more about having a part of her that no one else could than the pleasure it gave me; though, not going to lie, her pussy was like Heaven to me. So Dad’s being a hound dog? Hell, I just went four years without sex. I was prepared to wait another two because, fuck it, I’ve had my taste and it’s all sour compared to the woman glaring at me in a bloody wedding dress.

But Maggie…

Some Used are chosen to be a companion. A second wife, as it were, without any of the perks. The social status. The power. The protection. However, since theyarechosen, they have their own benefits which is why, two hundred years later, this glorified prostitution continues in Harmony Heights.

But others? Others are basically that. They’re whores who get summonsed, get fucked, then shown the door.

My father’s and Maggie’s arrangement lasted until I was nineteen, getting ready to move, and I found her waiting for me in my bed, naked as the day she was born. Telling me she wanted to see if I could fuck her as thoroughly as my dad, she offered herself to me—and I looked down my nose and told her I don’t do Dad’s sloppy seconds. She had the nerve to be scandalized while I was fuming that she wanted me to stick my dick somewhere that my father’s had been foryears.

He found out because that’s what we Hellers do. He made a phone call to Jamie, the woman who runs the Court, and Cecilia was being dropped off at our house within an hour.

But Maggie… if I remember anything other than those perky tits and the come-hither look on her face, it was how she left every rendezvous with my father with a cigarette on her lip.

She gave me my first smoke. I choked, and she patted my back, and I remember shaking her off. But the first time I took a puff in front of Loni and she bit down on her bottom lip like it did something to her… I’ve never stopped. I’ve never had a reason to.

Until now.

I glance down at the one in my hand. Without a word, I slip my lighter back into my jacket pocket. The unlit cigarette gets tucked behind my ear.

Her expression turns puzzled, but I don’t acknowledge it. Instead, I say, “One question for you, Loni, then I’ll show you your room.” I’d already offered her dinner in the car ride over, not too surprised when she shook her head, refusing it. I’ll get some food into her tomorrow, but for now, she needs to unwind—and get the fuck out of that dress. “What do you say, princess? Deal?”

It’s obvious that she thinks I’m leading her right into a trap. The tacked-onprincessdoesn’t help. And, fuck, of course I am, but why not?

She nods.

“When it comes down to it, who would you rather have met at the altar this evening? Desmond? Or me?” I want nothing more than to stroke that slight furrow in her brow, but I behave myself, keeping some distance between us even as I add, “And don’t say neither because that’s not what I asked. Given the choice between only the two of us, who would treat you better? Be a better husband to you?”

I can see the sudden anger she can’t quite hide as she mulls over my question.

Because I’m not being fair, and we both know it.

Desmond rejected her in front of the entire school. By doing so, he rejected her in front of the entire Order. So he decided a decade later to attempt to Claim her. He hurt her, and I’m well aware of it.

But the way I betrayed her was even crueler. When I could have been honest and open about my love for her—about myaddiction—I sided with the Order with the belief that, come the Claiming ceremony, I could make her mine and then she’d understand that everything I did, everything Iwilldo, is because I’ve considered Avalon Dougherty mine from the time a freckle-faced kindergartner shared her cookie with me during snack.

At five, it was a crush.

At ten, it was an annoyance.

At fifteen, my feelings for her got me through the worst of my hormones.

At eighteen, she was mine until she wasn’t.

I’m twenty-eight now. A quarter of a century that I’ve longed for her,neededher, and she’s mine again.

My ring is on her finger. She’s in my home, and even if she’s sleeping in another room tonight, on Monday, I’ll have her right where I want her.