Page 5

Don’t think, Loni. Enjoy the moment. Enjoy the feel of his hands on you, the way he’s guiding you to the wall, knowing that he will pin you against it and fuck you fast. Furiously. As if he can’t get enough…

Desmond tasted like beer. Adrian has his own vices. There’s always a hint of smoke about him, the suggestion of fire and ash. Devilish side for this angel, I guess, especially when he’s too smart to let the booze make his decisions for him.

Oh, no. We both own this insanity.

I’m gasping into his mouth now. My hands scrabble for his belt. I can’t change the future, but let me enjoy the present as long as I can.

“Please, Adrian. I need you.”

“God, I fucking love it when you beg,” he smirks, throwing his head back as I cup him through his jeans, his belt dangling open.

It’s okay. In these stolen moments, Avalon Dougherty can have the kingmaker on his knees before long, too.

I’m not his Offering. I can never be.

But right now? I’m his, and if that’s all I can have of this capricious, beautiful, riddle of a boy? Who treats me tenderly, telling me everything I’ve always wanted to hear, then pretends I don’t exist other than to knock me down?

I hate him, but I love him, and I only hope that this time…thistime, I might actually fuck him out of my system.

ONE

INVITATION

NOW

LONI

Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I was meant to be an Offering to one of the Owed. I just never expected they’d go so far as to send me an invitation to my own wedding.

But that’s what I’m looking at. Stuffed in an envelope bearing the full name that I have’t used in a decade, the card stock thick, the foil design both elegant and ostentatious, is an invitation that requests my presence at the wedding of Avalon Dougherty to Desmond St. James two weeks from today.

The wedding is supposed to take place at the Church of St. Catherine in Harmony Heights. The same church where I was baptized, had my first Communion, got confirmed, and now I’m slated to be wed to… to…

Desmond fucking St. James.

Hell, no.

With one decisive motion, I tear the invitation in two. Both halves of the card stock flutter to the floor, but I’m alreadyreaching for the envelope again as if this can’t be real. As if this has to be a mistake, or a sick joke, or a goddamn nightmare.

Nope. Despite going by middle name—Marie—and my mother’s maiden name—Howard—ever since I fled Harmony Heights as a scared, angry, heartbroken eighteen-year-old kid, the front of the envelope hasAvalon Doughertyscrawled in a golden ink. Beneath it, the address to the apartment in Bridgewater where I’ve lived for the last seven months after my job moved me again.

I’m an auditor. Numbers make sense to me in a way that people never have, and as I stare at the envelope, I’m thinking of one in particular:thirty. I only have two years until I hit the big three-oh, and to me? That means freedom. No one in the Order’s two hundred-year-plus history has ever Claimed an Offering who was older than that. Probably because the men all have to have locked down their trophy brides before then, and why would any of the budding leaders of our town—my hometown—choose a woman older than him?

Misogyny and ageism have alway been as much a part of the Order’s charter as the bylaws that have ruled my family’s life for, well,ever. When I was still an Offering, I looked past them like I was supposed to, but then I escaped Harmony Heights and I finally started to see through the bullshit.

The men are all born into wealth and legacy. Trained from the cradle in control, tradition, and utmost dominance, the Owed have been passing down the power and influence necessary to rule Harmony Heights through the generations with blood pacts, oaths, and strict rules to follow.

Then there are the women. Most aspire to be an Offering. After being chosen from prestigious families with ties to the Order, they’re destined to become wives for a new generation of the Owed. We’re groomed for beauty, obedience, and virginity, and if we fail in any way, we end up as one of the Used.

Mistresses. Whores. Side pieces… the discarded women who are only accepted when they’re pleasuring a member of the Order, I would’ve done anything to avoid that fate.

And I did. At least, IthoughtI did. I got out. I went to college. I had a couple of boyfriends who wanted me forme, not because of my pedigree and the last name I shed. I almost adopted a cat. I got two promotions in four years, and have moved three times since then.

I cut contact with my old life. My mom passed when I was sixteen, but with Dad being a member of the Order, he knew that I could never break free of the Owed if we had a relationship. And maybe I do blame him in a way for my leaving in the first place, but he did arrange for me to get out. He paid for my college.

He’s the only Owed that I honestly feel like I stillowe.

I haven’t spoken to Desmond St. James since he publicly ended things between us, sneering that I would never be worthy of becoming his Offering. But even though the invitation is torn in two, facedown on my living room floor, I know what name I read next to my old one.