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It was impossible to ride his Harley without getting hard ever since Emmy had let him bend him over it at that rest stop. All he had to do was look at the saddle and he was fighting for control. It was a problem.

Even more of a problem was the way his husband had been avoiding him since they got back to the city.

Okay, so maybe it had only been twelve hours, and he’d spent most of them sorting Emmy’s Christmas present.

But now he was free and he wasn’t interested in waiting a moment longer to see his husband, who’d slunk off to the Lunetti Pack’s land.

Aria grinned as she greeted him at the entrance to Marco’s house.

“He’s hiding down in the basement,” she said, before letting him through the locked door so he could hunt his mate down.

Apparently, the pack had accepted him as one of them, even if Emmy was still resisting.

“Please, no!” someone cried, their voice bouncing off the concrete walls of the hallway.

When he reached the source of the noise, Rocco leaned in the doorway and took in the scene.

Silas, Marco’s right-hand wolf, tipped his head in greeting from his position next to a table of torture implements.

The source of the begging was duct-taped to a chair next to him, but they seemed undamaged so far.

The reason for their distress became clear when he looked over at what his errant husband was doing. Emmy had noise-cancelling headphones in. Rocco had noticed the tension in his husband from the screams at the farmhouse. Seemed like Emmy wasn’t a fan of loud noises despite his darker inclinations.

Rocco’s affinity with air meant he could sense whether someone was breathing with very little effort.

The body his husband was working on was recently deceased.

He could tell the death was recent because Emmy had twisted the body into a pretzel with the rope work he was latticing it in, which wouldn’t have worked if rigor mortis had set in.

The unnatural angles of the limbs spoke of breaks and dislocations.

Rocco wasn’t sure whether they’d happened before or after he died.

It was creepy as fuck. The creation of a thoroughly unique mind.

The creation of an uncannily talented knot-worker wreaking composition that was devastating in its artistic lines.

It was beautiful. It was quintessential Emmy. Quintessential Cadmium . His mate at his rawest essence.

The onlooker tied to the chair didn’t seem to agree. Their face was twisted in horror and tears streaked down their cheeks.

“What’s their problem?” Rocco asked Silas, keeping his voice low as he tipped his head toward the person in the chair so as not to interrupt his husband’s genius.

“Someone spelled them not to feel pain, so we had to get creative. They’re surprisingly empathetic for someone using illegal shifter collars to supply the blood trade. ”

Rocco moved closer to the person tied to the chair, drawing his husband’s attention.

“Rocco? What are you doing here?” Emilio asked, voice wary as he removed his headphones.

Rocco paused, changing direction to stalk toward Emmy instead. Wrapping a hand in his shirt, he tugged his husband closer and crushed their lips together, licking into his mouth and groaning as Emmy melted into him.

“I came to track down my mate. You didn’t answer my texts.”

Emmy frowned over at where his jacket hung nearby. “Sai needed my help. I couldn’t hear my phone.”

“ Sai seems quite capable of torturing without you,” Rocco pointed out.

“Emmy goes about it different. It gets a reaction I never could with raw violence,” Silas chipped in.

When Rocco glanced over, the other shifter’s attention was moving back and forth between them like he was curious to see how this played out.

“Are you done?” Rocco asked his husband, not interested in revealing anything about their relationship to a random Lunetti, blood relative or not.

“Ah, yeah,” Emmy said, seeming a little out of it.

He’d noticed Emmy often got that way when he was deep in his art. That was part of why Rocco had continued to stalk him. There was a vulnerability in that state of mind that he was determined never to let anyone take advantage of.

“Good. You’re coming home with me, and then we’re going to talk about Christmas.”

Emmy’s brow furrowed and his eyes blinked several times as he seemed to become more aware of his surroundings.

“You want to discuss Christmas? After seeing this?” he asked, surprise in his voice as he looked between the dead body he’d strung from the ceiling, the person tied in the chair, and Rocco.

“Emmy, I told you I was a fan of your work long before I met you. You might fool the humans with camera angles and glamour, but you didn’t fool me. I’ve seen and admired every step along your journey to creating this kind of vision.”

Emmy’s eyes flicked to Silas and then back to him, a hint of concern on his face.

“Wait. What work are we talking about?” Silas asked.

Rocco’s eyebrows shot up as he realised the second-in-command of the pack, someone related to Emmy by blood, didn’t know he was a world-renowned artist.

“Wet work,” Emmy said, turning his back on his cousin and glaring at Rocco as he stalked over to a sink to wash his hands.

Resisting the urge to drool over his husband’s forearms, Rocco turned back to the person waiting in the chair.

“If I remove the pain blocker, can you finish this without my mate?” he asked Silas.

“Yeah,” Silas said, eyes still trained on Emmy.

The person in the chair did their best to rock backwards as he approached, but it was bolted to the floor.

Closing his eyes, Rocco held out his hand and felt for the power that had been used on them.

Smiling, he opened his eyes and reached down to touch a tattoo of a tiger on their shoulder.

The ink was a good way to anchor magic in someone.

Maybe Emmy would let him tattoo his tracing spell into his skin if he asked nicely.

This poor fool was out of luck. It took a matter of moments for Rocco to heat the air around the tattoo to a searing temperature.

As the tattoo bubbled and blackened, the magic that had been blocking their pain dissipated.

The sickly sweet smell of cooking human flesh filled the air, but no noise ensued.

He’d been careful to gag them with magic before he began, not wanting to give his husband another headache.

“Thanks, man,” Silas said, coming around to clasp his hand.

“Any time.”

“Except when you want to be getting down with my cousin,” Silas said, smirking.

“I’d never get anything done if that were the case. Pretty sure that’s my permanent state of being, now.”

Emmy huffed behind him and dragged him out of the room as Silas’ laughter followed after them.

“I told you I’m not riding bitch,” Emmy said when they got outside and he saw Rocco had ridden his Harley there.

“We’re staying at the clubhouse tonight. I can’t turn up on anything else. Aren’t we a little past all that, given what we’ve done on that saddle?”

Emmy just stared at him.

“You can torture me all the way there, puppy,” Rocco offered.

“Fine.”

Settling into the seat, Rocco slid forward a little to make space for his mate as Emmy swung his leg over and pressed in close behind him.

Instantly, he knew he’d made a mistake with the offer of torture.

Leaking pre-cum into leather riding pants was not comfortable.

And trying to concentrate on not crashing while his mate’s hands snuck under his shirt and worked his nipples until they were aching and raw was all but impossible.

He was lucky the ride didn’t take long, or he probably would have come on the way there.

“Fuck, you really took me at my word,” Rocco rasped, as he waved to the gate guard and pulled into the clubhouse parking area.

“Did you think I wouldn’t?” Emmy asked, rubbing his whole body across Rocco’s as he dismounted and letting him feel just how hard he was.

An involuntary hiss left him as his shirt rubbed on his abused nipples when he twisted to follow after him, and Emmy flashed him a satisfied smirk.

“Fuck, you’re trouble, puppy.”

“You love it,” Emmy teased, teasing lacing his voice as he echoed the phrase Rocco kept using back at him.

“Yeah, I do.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to show his mate how much, because they were here tonight for the club’s pre-Christmas party that was already well underway.

They were late enough that any kids had already left, heading out to a sleepover nearby so their parents could enjoy a child-free night.

Not that most of the parents stuck around for the wilder parts of the evening.

The barrage of noise coming from the bar lulled a little as they entered, everyone’s eyes turning to the shifter in their midst before carrying on.

“Emilio! Glad you could make it!” Storm called, coming over to give them both a hug as if attendance at this party hadn’t been mandatory.

“How’s married life treating you?” Blaze asked as he came to greet them.

Rocco looked over at his husband and couldn’t help but pull him in close. “Blissful.”

Emmy snorted. “We haven’t killed each other yet, anyway,” he added.

“Will you be joining us for Christmas?” Storm asked. “No one decorates like a witch.”

Rocco smiled as Emmy glanced at him with a ‘ what the fuck? ’ look. He’d been just as surprised his first Christmas with the MC when the criminal drug dealers had turned the clubhouse into a winter wonderland for the kids of their members.

“I haven’t been home for Christmas in years. I think Marco would murder me if I spent it somewhere else now that I’m back in the city,” Emmy said.

“Next year, then,” Blaze said.

Next year. Because they were married. For the rest of their lives. For forever, if he could talk his mate into bonding him.