Page 7 of Hellbent (Snakes & Daggers #1)

I BURY MY face into Jake’s pillow, inhaling his scent, lingering in the warmth he left behind.

A familiar ache tugs at my chest—the bittersweet memory of waking up beside Billy, those rare mornings when he wasn’t cruel, when I could pretend we were just normal.

I wanted to see that side of Jake too. The sleepy, slow, morning-sex side of him. But I’m alone.

Jake’s gone. So is Damian. The room’s empty except for me.

Damian’s bed is already made. Tight corners, not so much as a wrinkle in the pillowcases, like he was never here at all.

I blink at the light filtering in through the window. What time is it? How did I not hear them leave?

I stretch my arms overhead, feeling loose and warm. I’ve had the best sleep I can remember in forever—a combination of the bed, the whiskey, the sex.

God, the sex.

My whole body still hums with it.

I sit up, muscles lazy and pliant. I find my clothes on a chair at the foot of the bed and pull on my jeans, leaving Jake’s t-shirt on so I can pretend he’s still wrapped around me, and make my way down the hall toward the kitchen—hair a mess, rubbing sleep from my eyes.

There’s a pot of coffee still on the warmer, but the house is quiet. No sign of anyone.

I pour a mug and sit at the kitchen table, tucking my feet up on the chair as I watch the snow float past the window, winding and delicate. Ryder’s truck is in the driveway. Jake’s car and Damian’s truck are gone.

Beyond that, a line of snow-capped pines mark the edge of the woods.

It’s extraordinarily peaceful…until a sound pulls me out of the silence.

At first I can’t tell what it is. Just a faint, repetitive creak. Then a low grunt. A pause.

And then a moan—soft, feminine, and unmistakable.

I freeze, breath catching in my throat.

The sound comes through the floorboards from upstairs. Ryder’s bedroom.

The realization hits me with a blast force of heat. Ryder. Upstairs.

With a woman.

My body, still buzzing from last night, responds instinctively. A flush crawls up my neck. My skin prickles with heat.

Flashbacks to Jake. The way he felt inside of me, the way he moved. But blending into the memory is something more forbidden—an image of Ryder.

How does he look when he loses control?

The thought grips me. Ryder is always so controlled, so fucking restrained. But up there, right now, he’s stripped of all that. No brooding walls. No quiet disdain. Just raw, physical need.

The woman moans again, louder this time, and a deeper groan answers her, low and guttural. I squeeze my thighs together, trying to breathe through the sudden rush of heat. But my body is burning up.

Where is Jake?

If he were here, maybe I wouldn’t be so wound up. Maybe I’d pull him into bed again, let him fuck the ache out of me.

But was last night a one-time thing? Or are we something now? Are we supposed to talk about it, or just let it happen again?

And Damian—does anything change between us now? Do I pretend he didn’t watch? Do we ignore what happened?

I try to put names to all of this. Jake—maybe something like a boyfriend? Damian—a coworker, but something messier? And Wyatt…

I want to call him a father figure—he’s overprotective, older, and always watching over me like he’s responsible for me—but there’s something about the way he looks at me that doesn’t feel fatherly at all.

My body is so restless that my mind drifts to places it shouldn’t. I picture Wyatt, face raw with lust, shoving me up against a wall and pinning me there with all that strength…and a fresh pulse of heat shoots through me.

Fuck.

I set the mug down too quickly. It thuds against the table.

The house settles into silence again. I exhale slowly, trying to shake it off.

After a beat, I stand, wash and dry my mug, and head to the first-floor bathroom, where the toothbrush Jake left out for me is balanced on the sink.

I brush my teeth, splash cold water on my face, but the heat still lingers under my skin.

I should take a shower. But there’s no towel on the rack. None folded on the shelf above the toilet.

I hesitate, and listen carefully. There’s no sound in the house. Maybe Ryder and his…guest have drifted into a post-fuck nap. If I tiptoe upstairs to the linen closet, I can grab a towel and be back down in seconds without being seen.

I creep up the stairs like a thief, my heartbeat picking up like I’m committing a real crime, and quietly open the linen closet. It’s empty.

Shit.

I turn, my mind still half on Jake, still half-dazed with lingering desire, and push open the bathroom door.

And freeze.

Ryder is standing at the sink.

Completely. Fucking. Naked.

A toothbrush dangles from his mouth. He turns his head toward me, calm as ever, arching a single, unimpressed eyebrow.

Holy. Shit.

My brain short-circuits. It’s the sheer size of him that strikes me first—broad shoulders, sculpted arms, thick muscles lined with tattoos. Even his legs are all power, his stance solid. And then my eyes drop lower.

Which is a mistake.

Even soft, he’s thick. Heavy. Indecent . A flush climbs hot up my throat, and I snap my eyes back to his face.

I just stared at Ryder’s dick.

“Sorry,” I manage, my voice embarrassingly thin. And then I say the only word I can muster: “Towel.”

He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even move to cover himself.

“Towels are in the hall closet,” he says.

I nod, too mute to explain that the closet is empty, and my feet still don’t move.

He looks like he might speak, say something else, but then his expression shutters. He turns back to the mirror, toothbrush moving again, like I never walked in.

I snap out of it, and bolt.

I don’t hear another noise from upstairs for a long while.

Eventually—after I’ve tried to cool down by washing my face, and paced Jake and Damian’s bedroom like a caged animal—I climb into Jake’s bed with a book from his bedside table.

Something about hacking into computer systems. It surprises me at first, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

Jake’s got that tech-guy sharpness, that hidden depth.

The book is a little over my head, but I keep flipping through the pages, having nothing else to do.

No one’s home. No ride back to the garage.

And I sure as hell don’t want to risk watching TV in the living room, only for Ryder and his lady friend to walk in on me.

But I put the book down when I hear footsteps on the stairs—one set.

Soft. Definitely not Ryder.

I freeze, listening as the front door opens and clicks shut.

A ridiculous rush of furtive curiosity pushes me off the bed before I can second-guess it. I tiptoe down the hall to the kitchen window, pressing my fingertips to the edge of the glass as I peer outside.

I need to know if it’s Ryder who just left the house. Maybe there never was anyone up there with him. Maybe he was just watching porn.

Vigorously.

But no.

In the driveway, a tall blonde in an expensive-looking black coat steps into a waiting car. I see the Uber sticker as it turns, reverses, and then heads down to the road.

So that’s Ryder’s type.

Tall. Polished. Glamorous in a way I’ll never be.

“She look the way you expected?”

The low, rough drawl comes out of fucking nowhere, landing with a startling clatter like a dropped knife.

“Jesus Christ !” I jump so hard I nearly smack my head against the window. My heart is a jackhammer in my chest.

How the fuck did a man that huge sneak up on me like that?

I whirl around to find Ryder standing there—half-dressed, with jeans slung low on his hips, and his chest bare. There’s a faint smirk at the edge of his mouth like he’s amused by how easily he startled me.

Asshole.

He crosses to the fridge, pulls out the orange juice, and pours himself a glass. Completely unbothered.

I should leave. I should go back to Jake’s room and pretend I wasn’t just spying on his sex life like some nosy housewife.

Instead, my gaze betrays me.

His long blond hair is loose, falling over his shoulders, and when he turns slightly, I catch a glimpse of the valley of his spine, the ridges of muscle running all the way down.

Jesus.

Of the myriad tattoos on his back, one stands out. Four snakes coiled around a knife on his right shoulder blade. Jake has the same tattoo in the same spot. I saw it last night.

I force myself to look away. Annoyed at myself, and at him. At the fact that I even noticed.

God, stop staring.

“I just—” I clear my throat. “This is the first time I’ve seen any of you have a visitor.”

Ryder doesn’t even glance at me. “Uh-huh.”

He leans back against the counter and downs the entire glass of juice in one go. His throat works with each slow swallow, the movement oddly mesmerizing.

Fucking stop it.

I shift my weight, crossing my arms. “I mean, I don’t care who you sleep with.”

He sets the empty glass in the sink and finally looks at me.

Smirks.

“Neither do I.”

His gaze drags over my body, like he’s assessing me and then dismissing me.

And then, just like that, he pushes off the counter and walks out, leaving me standing there—flushed, frustrated, and hating him a little more than I did five minutes ago.

I hate that he caught me off-guard. Hate that my body reacted to everything about him.

Hated that he didn’t have any reaction to me at all.

A few hours, one nap, and five chapters of The Art of Invisibility later, I hear Ryder in the kitchen.

I steel myself. Time to stop hiding.

Intimidating though he may be, I’ve been thinking.

I want a place here. I need one. And that means I need to win over Ryder.

The other guys were easy. Jake and Wyatt showed their soft-hearted sweet sides right from the start. Even Damian, who seemed a little intimidating at first, wasn’t hard to warm up, his cool-as-ice exterior hiding a cocky flirt.

But Ryder…Ryder is different.

He’s the alpha in a room full of wolves. His house. His land. His men. If he doesn’t want me here, it won’t matter what the others think.