Page 3

Three

prey

chapter-seperator

M y head smacked into the wood-paneled wall hard as I jumped back. Imagination and fear derailed my focus. I couldn’t let that nightmare fantasy happen. But as I stepped up to turn the doorknob, it rattled like bones in a grave.

I startled when the door slammed open, swinging free on creaky hinges, creating a gust of wind that blew my long dark hair back. The gesture felt like fate’s cold fingers running through my tresses.

The son of a bitch who instigated the maneuver was as big as a bear and almost as hairy. He was more beast than man and smelled, oddly enough, of cucumber and Aqua Velva. He was so surly, in fact, that he lacked the ability to offer a greeting that wouldn’t make the receiver piss themselves.

But I had been exposed long ago to much scarier men than him—psychos and deviants, the evil scum you don’t want to know actually exists in the real world and not just your nightmares. The kind that smile and wink while they discover knew ways to make you scream.

The prez he served blindly, for one.

A shudder racked my spine as I fought back the memories of what men like that could do to anyone helpless and weak, anyone who lacked the strength or ability to fight. Of course, it was easier to keep them drugged up and compliant. So stoned they didn’t know where they were most of the time. Allow them a few conscious hours to feel the withdrawals and listen to the screaming. It kept them in line—obedient little holes. The drugs make you forget everything except the pain—that stays branded on your soul.

“What the fuck you lookin’ at?” His eyes squinted his displeasure, but if he was trying to frighten me away, he would have to try much harder. I’d waited long enough, dammit. Fear was an old friend by now.

I managed to step away from the wall, and fucking hell, there he was in the doorway, pushing that huge fucker out of his way. My body remembered him before my mind could catch up.

I made the mistake of looking in the direction they both were. It’s always best to know what’s coming at you before it arrives. But just for a second, the distraction was enough to further derail my plans.

Jace’s hand wrapped around my throat, his body so close I could smell his breath, those sadistic honey-colored eyes, like diluted bourbon, fixed on me. “You’re not fucking real.”

Maybe he was right for once. Maybe this was some drug-filled hallucination—this and the past year, my year of sobriety, my year of penance, of having to feel everything for the first fucking time in years. Every violation, every scar, every memory I’d tried to drown.

It took its sweet time coming back, just like I did.

My gaze diverted to the scar on his formerly perfect and handsome cheek. I gave him that scar fifteen years ago before he threw me to the wolves. The things he did that night. He was always leaving me to score. I couldn’t stop the shudder that racked my body or the way it pushed me into his much harder physique. The familiar press of him made my skin crawl with want and revulsion.

He took that as an invitation, like he needed one. Men like him just take what they want; they don’t ask, and consequences be damned. How did I ever like it? Want it? He pressed me into the wall, nosing my cheek, nostrils flaring. I could feel how much the dynamics between us still made him hard—his darkness calling to the shadows he’d planted inside me.

Whatever was there, what had always been there, was wrong in a way that could never be right. We both deserved to go straight to hell. Maybe we were already there.

His grip tightened for a moment in time that felt like my very last. “I thought…” His gruff voice broke—more like shattered.

Then his lips slammed down hard on mine, and his cruel tongue swept away my reason, my purpose, the last fifteen years. But nothing, not his burning mouth or aggressive hips, not the desperation fueling the kiss—hello or goodbye—could erase the pain. It lived in my bones, deep in the marrow, so that it was forever a part of who I was now. His mark, permanent as a brand.

That part where I thought I had bid adieu to the reckless, greedy girl I once was? Complete bullshit, because I took what he so generously offered. My body betraying me like it had been trained to do.

Jace was a destroyer.

What did that make me? The willing sacrifice or just another victim?

Would he always turn me into a liar?

I needed to turn the tide before it was too late. I’d spent a year convincing myself I could finally do this, that I had to do this.

Where was the justice?

The ground shifted under my shaking feet as he spun us around, kicking open the church room doors. The table where these awful men made their bullshit decisions without caring who they hurt met my back. The wood was cold through my thin shirt, like a corpse’s embrace.

I needed time to think. I needed to run.

“GET THE FUCK OUT! Church is canceled, fuckers,” Jace growled with a grimace.

This was not supposed to happen. It was never one of the endless scenarios I prepared for. Talk about a landslide of turmoil. My nightmares had never prepared me for the reality of his touch.

This was the exact opposite of my nightmare fantasy that had assaulted my brain only moments before. It was far scarier, too. Because part of me still wanted him.

As the bikers grumbled and cursed during their exit from the room, he locked the door after their retreat. Jace kicked a chair out of his way, then he was on me again.

All over me, like a sweater you never wanted to wear again, so uncomfortable in its perfect fit. I didn’t see my darkness reflected in him because he gave it to me—like a disease, a goddamn fatal one. Every touch was poison I couldn’t help but swallow.

Rough hands grabbed my face, pushing my hair away as he jerked me closer. I couldn’t escape the evil gravity of him as it pulled me down, sinking into the abyss. If I had known it was a possibility he could affect me this way, I’d have had the common sense to be terrified. At that moment, I was less frightened of what was about to happen but more so of what my reaction to it would be.

He was acting like the past fifteen years hadn’t happened, like that night never happened. Like he hadn’t sold my soul to the devil himself.

He was different, changed in some way I couldn’t pinpoint with our pelvises jamming into each other. The familiar rhythm of violence and need.

“Where have you been?” His anger was clear in his tone regardless of the words.

In hell. You sent me there.

Before I could offer any retort, his mouth stole mine again. There’s no way he didn’t remember… Was that even possible? Or was this just another game, another way to break me?

This presented a dilemma because I was here to kill him. But so far, he was the one killing me again—with his words and hungry, soft eyes, and his hard body. I’d forgotten all of this, how we ignited when with each other, like kerosene near an open flame. I’m not sure which of us burned hotter nor which would burn out first.

No, don’t do that, I protested, raising my hands. But by the time I could place them on his chest to push him away, it was bared to me. More ink decorated the skin I was once familiar with. He’d aged gracefully; he was beyond fit. His cut was gone, leaving only his shoulder holsters and pistols. He always carried two. A predator never goes unarmed.

His cut, with the president patch and all that outlaw biker bullshit, lay next to us on the table. But when my hands touched him, before I could stop myself, he grabbed them and forced both up and around his neck as he came at me again. His control was as absolute as it had always been.

It brought back memories of long ago. He couldn’t still want me the way he had back then. Not after everything that had happened in all the years in between. Not after what he’d done to me.

But he did. I saw it highlighted in his eyes, in those same mannerisms he employed. The same darkness that had drawn me in before it devoured me whole.

It was… No. I would not go there and fall into that trap. I wanted to purge the past. I couldn’t do that if I gave in to Jace. But my body remembered its training too well.

“Come here, kitten.” His fingers snaked inside my jeans as he jerked me closer, my zipper torn down in his haste to touch me, to get inside me. To claim what he’d once thrown away.

“I’m not yours,” I managed to choke out, betrayed by my own body. Through years of use and abuse, I was trained to automatically react certain ways to certain stimulation. Pain and pleasure had become the same thing long ago.

“Then why are you wetter than a slip-n-slide right now, Naomi?” His lips devoured the point I was confident I could make. He wouldn’t like to hear it, the truth—that it wasn’t really him that elicited this response. At least I hoped that was still true. It was my body’s programming: to be a good little slut for the nasty biker. Get wet, get open, take it all, and either sound like you love it or don’t make a fucking peep.

I didn’t want him. My pants weren’t down around my ankles, and Jace wasn’t freeing his lying cock from his pants at that moment.

Except he was.

And I was letting him.

Denial. That’s how I survived for so many years. I went someplace else in my head. It was the only means I had to escape.

But there was no escaping him now.

Jace stepped on my jeans and popped my feet free of them, then swung my legs up over his shoulders. I braced a hand against his rock-hard abs to slow him down. I knew I couldn’t stop him, really. Didn’t even know if I wanted to anymore.

“I missed you so damn much,” he hissed as he dragged the head of his thick cock through my wet slit. Like he had any right to miss me after what he’d done.

The sound of wood splitting and fracturing broke through the panting breaths in the room as the doors flew open. One of them slammed against the wall, leaving a doorknob-sized dent. A monster didn’t occupy the space, but a very pissed-off female with a Louisville Slugger baseball bat.