It’s still dark outside when my goddamned cell starts ringing.
Groggy from sleep, I grope for it on the nightstand, resisting the urge to smash it with my fist and silence its incessant ringing. Rat’s name flashes on the screen. I put the phone to my ear.
“What?” I growl.
“Spidy?”
As if he thinks anyone else would be answering my fucking phone.
A soft, sleepy moan drifts from beside me. Emma burrows deeper into the mattress. Her thick, dark curls splay across my pillow like a waterfall of black silk. Bite marks and bruises left behind from when I sucked on her flesh stand on the smooth pale skin of her back and shoulders, a canvas turned silvery in the moonlight. The small protest she makes, as if against the unfolding of a dream, causes my dick to twitch as I imagine her making the same sound while I hammerfuck her ass the way I did last night.
Resisting the urge to wake her with another sound fucking, I settle for patting the slope of her ass. She gives a soft whimper and nuzzles into my pillow, as though seeking comfort from the monster that’s decided to share the bed with her instead of lurking under it. I smile.
“Spidy,” Rat repeats when I don’t respond.
I shake off the distraction my Wildcat has provided. “No, it’s Emma,” I deadpan. “What the fuck do you want, Rat?”
He snorts. “Shit, you’re so cranky in the morning. Dragon wants you at The Devil’s Den.”
I sit up, all tiredness gone. “What’s hell’s going on?”
“Better to explain when you get here.”
Shit. Not good.
I growl under my breath. It’s probably another fight with those motherfucking MMA guys who trashed the club the day we came back from White Springs.
“Jesus Christ. I’m on my way.”
Stabbing the “end call” button, I toss the phone aside and lean down to Emma, brushing my lips over her shoulder.
Her perfect skin needs marking. The collar I gave her last night gleams black steel, and it has my spider emblem on the front as a mark of my ownership, but it’s not enough. I want more. One of these fucking days I’m going to put a spider tat on her, just like mine. Then everyone who sees her will have no doubt she belongs to me even without the collar.
“Sleep well, Wildcat.”
“Again?” she murmurs. Even half asleep, there’s a hard-on inducing mix of arousal and dread in her voice.
She thinks I mean to give her a repeat of last night’s savaging.
I smile to myself and give her little ass a light swat as I get up.
If whatever happened at the strip club didn’t demand my attention, I’d have ripped the sheets right off of her and taken her right there.
She hates me, and she should, but that only makes me want her more. Besides, she needs to know that there is nothing in my heart for her worth saving. Nothing between us that will soften the demon in me the club relies on.
I dress quickly and grab my gun from the nightstand. Once the holster is clipped to my hip, I put my cell in the inside pocket of my cut. Then I brand her shoulder with one last kiss and leave her alone in the dark, in my bed.
Dragon thinks I’m becoming distracted by her, that my keeping her alive means I’m losing my edge, but he can go fuck himself. I may have let her in once, but I shut that shit down. She betrayed me, just as I should have known she would. I won’t make the same mistake again. Gary’s attacking her had shaken me, but I’d been careful not to let her see it, and that’s all she gets of me.
Twenty minutes later, I pull up at the front of The Devil’s Den, and without even going inside, I can see that whatever shit’s gone down is a big deal.
Dragon’s bike sits at the head of the line with Striker’s, Snake’s, and Rat’s. Snake is never up before noon if he can help it. He leaves Dee to tend to matters at The Den when he can, only showing up when shit happens that he wouldn’t leave his old lady to handle. And the last time Dragon showed up here was for his birthday last year, when the guys sent two of the top girls in to grind on him. For him to show up here means it’s official business, and that means trouble of the highest order.