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CHAPTER 9

BENJI- SIX MONTHS LATER

We both noticed the man parked in the empty lot we’d pulled into for the night, and we both heard the woman he had by the arm when she told him to let her go.

It was only Warren stepping out of his truck that made him startle, and that gave her a chance to jerk from his grip and dart away. Tears streaked down her face, making her heavy makeup run. She didn’t bother stopping to look at who had saved her, didn’t even look up to catch a glimpse of our faces.

Good. That was good.

Warren’s eyes cut to me as the man narrowed his.

“What the fuck do you two think you’re doing?” He sounded half drunk, and definitely annoyed that we’d interrupted what he obviously thought was going to be a good time.

That was good enough for me. I loved it when people made it clear that they were more than worth my attention.

“Shopping,” I murmured softly, and when I flicked my eyes up to Warren, I could see it in his gaze. He knew what I wanted, and he was excited about it. The realization made me smile, made heat pulse through my body and curl all the way to my toes.

Warren liked me vicious—the worse I was, the more he wanted to hold me down and fuck me until I could barely breathe. Whatever part of me that was missing, whatever part of me it was that needed to kill, it matched along the broken edges of him that wanted to watch , wanted to hold me down while I pretended I was helpless, while I let myself drift away under his strength, under his presence and warmth.

“What the fuck are you smiling like that for, you freak?” I snapped my gaze from Warren back to the man in front of us.

Foreplay . Killing him would be foreplay.

And fuck, having Warren watch me made it feel even better , filled me up in a way I couldn’t describe.

“Warren?”

He glanced around and smiled. “Go play, baby.”

Fuck , I loved it when he said that. My fingers twitched for my knife, and I started toward the man in front of us who was still glaring with a half-bleary expression that was going to make this almost too easy. We were in the back of the empty lot, and the man’s truck blocked us from view—I’d be finished before anyone had a chance to even think about looking back here.

I’d found a home in Warren—a home in the long road and the mattress in the back of his truck. I’d found a home in the eyes of a man who saw me— really saw me—and wanted all the fucked-up pieces that made me the monster I was.

We were both broken in different ways… and somehow, those shattered pieces came together to make a whole.