Page 41 of A Witchy Spell Ride (31 Days of Trick or Treat, Bikers and Mobsters #15)

Selene

He didn’t undress me gently.

He didn’t ask permission.

He knew.

Knew what I needed.

What I wanted.

What I was.

My dress hit the floor in a torn heap. Velvet sighed against wood like a curtain closing on a play we’d both survived. My gloves snapped off and were flung aside; one landed on the nightstand like a black flag; the other draped the lamp and turned the room the color of sin.

He backed me to the mirror in his room, our room and turned me to face it.

“Look.”

I did.

And I saw a woman reborn. Hair wild. Lips red and swollen.

Eyes fierce enough to set a city on fire.

Glitter dusted across collarbones like a constellation I could finally name.

And behind her, a man who looked at her like he’d never stop wanting her.

A man who had learned the difference between possession and devotion and chose the latter like it was oxygen.

“Mine,” he rasped, lining his body behind mine, cock hard against the curve of my ass.

“Yes.”

His hand slid between my thighs.

No teasing this time.

No games.

Just heat.

Claiming.

Power I’d given, not ceded.

My hands braced on the mirror as he thrust into me, hard enough to knock the air from my lungs, sure enough to give it back.

And I watched. Watched myself fall apart and rebuild.

Watched the pleasure break across my face like a storm over warm water.

Watched the place where we joined become the center of my whole damn world.

“You feel that?” he growled against my neck, teeth ghosting the place that always makes me answer with a sound.

“Yes.”

“That’s what love looks like.”

It wasn’t poetry. It was truth.

When I came, shaking and gasping, he didn’t stop. He turned me to face him, lifted me like I weighed nothing, and fucked me into the mattress like the devil had finally come to collect.

But when it was over, when the room smelled like sweat and leather and sugar-bourbon and me, he kissed my forehead.

Held me close.

And whispered, “No more fear, Red. Not ever again.”

The words settled where old nightmares used to curl, filling the corners like light.

We dozed for a while in a tangle of legs and promise.

I woke to the city’s late-night hum, river talking to barges, a horn three streets over trying to be important, Bones’ laugh ricocheting down the hall at something Vex said.

The club had quieted but not died; this place never really sleeps. It purrs.

“Water,” I murmured, voice gone gravely-sweet from overuse, from claiming my own throat.

He kissed the crown of my head. “Kitchen.”

“I can walk,” I said, grinning when he didn’t let go right away.

“I know,” he said, and that sentence might’ve been my favorite.

I slid into one of his shirts, ours now, dog tags cool against my sternum, the chain pooling between my breasts like a promise.

The floorboards were warm under my feet.

The hallway smelled like sage and gun oil and the last of the party, and my mouth tipped at the memory of hanging my crown over a cheap tarot card like punctuation.

No more altars in my name unless I build them myself.

I stepped into the kitchen and stopped.

Reaper stood at the counter. Bare chest. Tattoos like a story you only get to read if you’ve earned it. Whiskey in one hand. He looked like a statue someone forgot to put in a museum. And Briar? She stood close.

Too close.

Her palm flat on the counter beside his; his wrist not moving an inch to make her shift away. The air between them was a tightrope.

“Night,” I said softly, because sometimes the most dangerous thing is a gentle voice.

Reaper didn’t blink. He never startles. His gaze flicked from me to the hallway behind me, cataloged my borrowed shirt and the glitter I hadn’t washed off my mouth and the afterglow like he was making sure I was whole. Then he tipped his glass in a nod.

Briar just smirked. That particular smirk, sparks and trouble and an apology she has no intention of giving.

“Hydration,” she said solemnly, picking up a bottle and tossing it underhand. I snatched it one-handed, cold biting my palm.

“Do I need to worry about you two redecorating at two a.m.?” I asked, twisting the cap.

“Only your expectations,” Briar said sweetly.

Reaper’s mouth didn’t move. His eyes did.

I took a long drink and let the water settle the last leftover tremors. Adrenaline leaves a glitter hangover too. I’d learned that the hard way. Tonight, the crash tasted different. Cleaner. Not empty.

“Tomorrow I’m opening the shop,” I said, because the future is a muscle and I was ready to use it. “Sage at the door. Roses in the window. Not as warnings.”

“As trophies,” Briar agreed, eyes hot. “Want me to hex the petty out of the tourists while I’m there?”

“Leave them a little petty,” I said. “It’s good for the economy.”

Reaper’s glass clicked softly against the counter. Approval. Or amusement. With him, the same thing. “Security?”

“Upgraded,” I replied, taking perverse joy in the fact that I could use Cross’s favorite word in a sentence that was about my life, not a file. “Cameras on the back hall. Wards under the sill. And a very large man who can glower for hours if properly caffeinated.”

“Ghost,” Reaper said flatly.

“Obviously,” I said. “You’ll get him back. Sometimes.”

Reaper made a sound like a laugh swallowed by a church. Briar bumped his shoulder with hers, careless, casual, intentional. “Relax, big brother,” she said. “We’ll share.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The danger there wasn’t an explosion. It was a slow burn. And I was okay with matches in the house. We’re responsible arsonists here.

I padded back down the hall and paused in the doorway to our room.

Ghost was sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows on knees, my torn dress folded in his hands like something sacred he was deciding whether to keep or turn into rags.

He lifted his head and that look hit me, hunger softened by awe, want tempered by respect. It never gets old. It never will.

“Kitchen gossip?” he asked.

“Briar and your boss playing chicken with gravity,” I said.

He huffed. “Saw that coming the day she called him sir and didn’t mean it.”

I crawled into his lap because that’s where the world fits right and pressed the cold-water bottle to the back of his neck. He swore and tried not to smile. I kissed the swear off his mouth.

“You, okay?” he asked, thumb tracing the groove the nylon had left at my wrist.

“I’m perfect,” I said. Honesty tastes better than anything. “I saw myself.”

“In the mirror,” he said, and that wasn’t a question.

“In the mirror,” I said. “And in your face.”

He exhaled like he’d been holding something heavy and finally got to set it down. He tucked the dress into a drawer, not as a relic. As a material thing that can be re-sewn or thrown away when I decide.

“Tomorrow,” he said, voice low, “we go to the shop. We open the door. We don’t flinch.”

“And we buy donuts for Church,” I added, because humor keeps me from floating out of my own skin. “Apparently Enforcers provide carbs.”

He looked at me like he’d eat the world if I asked. “I’ll buy out the case.”

“Glazed,” I said. “And those little powdered ones that make Cross sneeze.”

“Copy,” he murmured, and the soldier in him softened the way I like best.

I unscrewed the water again and took another swallow, then set it down and reached for the chain at my throat.

The tags lay against my skin, warm now, mine and his and ours.

I pressed them to his lips. He kissed them.

Kissed me. Pulled me under the covers and under that steady weight that means safe in every language.

We didn’t sleep right away. We made new memories to lay over the old ones and met in the middle until both sets hummed the same key.

When I did drift, it was to the rhythm of his heart and the distant rumble of bikes and the laugh of a woman who finally remembered herself. No footsteps in the hall that weren’t supposed to be there. No notes under my door. No roses I didn’t pick.

Morning would bring coffee and Church and Daisy crying into a skull mug about how romance is alive (it is) and Bones trying to pretend glitter hadn’t colonized his beard (it had) and Cross producing a folder so thick it could stop a bullet (it might).

Vex would call me Queen and ask if he could bedazzle the Enforcer rocker (he could not).

Reaper would hand Briar a look that meant don’t and she’d translate it as try me, and I’d buy popcorn.

I’d sweep my shop. I’d light sage. I’d hang the little bell so it chimed when the door opened and every sound it made would be a yes, not an alarm.

Maybe I’d wear red.

Not for sadness.

For war paint.

For joy.

The witch’s charm with the red thread would go back in my pocket, not as a ward against a man who’s already caged, but as a reminder: magic works best when you choose it. I’d put a single rose in the window. One I picked. One I watered. One that grew thorns exactly where I wanted them.

And tonight? Tonight, I slept in a bed that smelled like my life.

Before I went under, I rolled and tucked my face against the curve of Ghost’s throat. He wrapped around me like a promise he didn’t have to say out loud, but he did anyway, because that’s who he is now when he’s with me.

“No more fear, Red,” he whispered into my hair. “Not ever again.”

“Not ever again,” I echoed, and it wasn’t bravado. It was a vow.

Down the hall, a low murmur rose and fell, Reaper and Briar negotiating gravity. I smiled in the dark.

The future felt a little more dangerous.

A little more twisted.

And a whole lot more fun.

Bring it on.

Bonus Scene – Reaper & Briar

One Week After the Halloween Party

The clubhouse was quiet.

Not silent, it was never silent but close.

Midnight had settled in. Most of the guys were passed out. A few were still drinking around the firepit. Ghost and Selene were nowhere to be seen, which meant they were busy proving mirrors were good for more than just lipstick.

I stepped into the war room and froze.

Reaper was there.

Alone.

Leaning over the table, arms braced, tattoos flexing as he read something in that battered black folder he always kept locked up like it held nuclear codes.

He didn’t look at me.

Not at first.

But he felt me.

The shift in air.

The energy.

The tension we never talked about.

“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked, voice too casual.

He didn’t answer.

Didn’t need to.

His jaw flexed.

Eyes still on the paper.

He knew I was baiting him.

And I loved it.

“You know, most men would thank a girl for helping save their sister,” I said, stepping closer. “Maybe a nice bottle of bourbon. Some flowers. A throatier kind of gratitude.”

Still nothing.

I smirked.

“You afraid, Reaper?”

That did it.

His head snapped up.

Dark eyes.

Darker than night. Than grief. Than the secrets he kept buried like bones beneath his patch.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” he said.

I stepped close enough to feel the heat between us spark.

“You’re afraid of me.”

He moved fast.

Too fast.

Faster than he should’ve.

His hand was on my throat, not squeezing, just there. Possessive. Dangerous. Controlled.

“Don’t start what you’re not ready to finish, little witch.”

I arched a brow.

“Oh, sweetheart…” I smiled wickedly. “You have no idea what I’m ready for.”