“Did you enjoy the family reunion?”
Jessica’s voice met me as soon as I stepped into my room. The taunt was there in her words, but it was faint.
Despite what happened in the bar, I hadn’t expected her to be here.
She’d already disappeared into the night by the time I started back home, but there she was. Sitting on my bed, in one of my shirts.
I gave her a hard look. “Who’s the other guy?”
“Declan. Jentry’s best friend. Adopted brother. Annoying person. Take your pick.”
Wanting nothing more than to get the smell of the bar off me, I stripped out of my shirt and went to the dresser to grab a new one. Without looking back at Jessica, I asked, “To you?”
“What?”
“Declan,” I murmured, curling my hands into fists when I remembered his words about her. “Who is he to you?”
“He was a way to get information.”
I gnashed my teeth in anger. “Information. I actually fucking believed you when you told me why you’d been following Beck. Why you’d been watching us. And then I find out your brother’s a cop.”
I looked in time to see her face fall in horror. “That’s not my fault.”
“It’s convenient.”
“It’s also recent. And how the hell is that convenient? Do you know how many times he’s been the one to roll up on me or arrest me lately? Do you know how humiliating that is even though he’s known about my profession for years?”
I turned and leaned against the dresser. “All I know is you’ve been studying us and Mickey has a spy. Your brother is law enforcement, and he wants to help you.”
“Kieran, no.”
I loosened my fist, letting the blade in it fall to my fingertips so it was in view. “You have ten seconds to leave.”
Her eyebrows pinched and hurt flashed through those midnight eyes, but for a couple seconds, she didn’t move. And when she did, she did it slowly.
“He wants to help me not be crazy. He wants me to not be this because I embarrass him. Disappoint him.” She lifted her shoulder subtly. “But he left me to survive for years without him. And I survived the only way I knew how out there. Just like you’ve survived by being what everyone needed you to be.”
My breaths were rough and exaggerated by the time she came to a stop in front of me, her neck fully exposed to me.
To the blade in my hand.
And yet, the only need I had was for her.
“Your destructive mind didn’t change anything. My family shouldn’t.”
I grabbed her and twisted, forcing her against the dresser.
Her shocked gasp died into a pleading moan when she tilted her head to rest against me. Her hands slid along the top of the dresser so she could push back against me.
My lips glided along her neck, my teeth grazing her pulse point. My dick strained against my pants when she shivered and breathed, “Oh God.”
I ran my hands up her waist and over her breasts. The blade in my hand slid through the middle of the shirt she was wearing on the way back down, but stayed just off her skin even as her breathing became rougher.
As soon as the shirt and my blade were on the floor, leaving her bare and ready, she turned to reach for me, but I stilled her with my hands on her hips. “Don’t move.”
She placed her hands on the dresser but looked at me from over her shoulder. The question in her eyes clear: Would I continue or put an end to this?
“Chaos.” My eyes fell to her full lips, and I hesitantly lifted my hand to brush the tips of my fingers across the bottom one. “Everything you make me feel. Everything you are. Chaos.”
A shuddering breath left her and her tongue darted out to wet her lips. “Kieran . . .”
“I hate that I want you.”
Her mouth twitched beneath my fingers. “The feeling’s mutual.”
Leaning forward, I whispered, “Bend over, Jessica.”
I grabbed a condom out of my wallet and stripped the rest of my clothes, my eyes raking over her body as I did. And with every passing second I reveled in the flush taking over her cheeks.
I rolled on the condom then ran my hands down her spine and over her ass, biting back a smirk when she whimpered as my fingers spread her lips and teased her clit.
“I’m not gentle.”
A shiver rolled through her. “Okay.”
“Tell me if it’s too much.”
“Okay,” she breathed, her head nodding against the wood of the dresser.
Her eyes never once left mine as I slid inside her, inch by inch, a groan building in my chest when I was fully seated.
“Please,” she moaned. “Please move.”
I did.
I moved with slow rolls of my hips at first, then faster and harder. Gripping her hips, I forced her against me, making her cry out and claw at the dresser. Her head dropped between her shoulders when I released my hold on her and ran my fingers along her sensitive clit. Her whimpers and pleas blurred together, ending with a cry of protest when I moved my fingers away. But I just trailed them back to her ass and over her tight hole.
“Fuck, Jessica,” I growled when she gripped my cock in response.
I did it again and then again. Each time she had to stifle a scream. Each time her reaction had me nearly coming undone.
I grabbed a fistful of her hair and made her arch back as I drove into her at a relentless pace. When I pressed my thumb inside her, her body trembled around me.
Each thrust was harder than the one before. Each thrust was rougher as I fucked her until she fell over the edge, taking me with her.
I gently released her hair and laid her on the dresser, and watched as her body trembled on the wood. I pumped inside her in time with my thumb. Again. And then again before finally pulling out when she let out a long, exhausted whimper.
I grabbed her ass teasingly before letting her go and walking to my bathroom to get rid of the condom and clean up.
When I came out, she was exactly where I’d left her. Only now she was standing and had a new shirt in her grasp, but she wasn’t moving.
“Jessica,” I said warily as I moved toward her. Ice shot through my veins when I rounded on her and saw her stricken face. “Are you okay?”
She blinked quickly, like my question had brought her out of a daze. “What?”
“Did I hurt you?”
“Hurt me?” A crazed laugh slipped past her lips and her vacant stare trailed to me.
“Don’t do that,” I said before she could continue. “Don’t turn back into that girl. Not now.”
Her eyes widened then drifted to somewhere that was very clearly not this room.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No.” The word was so soft it was almost as if she didn’t say it at all.
“Then what the hell is going on?”
I never thought I would touch a girl who wasn’t Lily O’Sullivan, and I’d just fucked the one standing in front of me.
It had ended too soon because she’d been driving me crazy for days even though I’d tried to push every thought of her from my mind. But the second it ended, I wanted her again.
And now she was shutting down when I usually couldn’t get her to shut up.
“Jessica,” I snapped when her only response was to slowly, mechanically, put my shirt over her body.
When there was nothing, I grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the bed.
She didn’t blink or open her mouth as I pushed her down and climbed on top of her. Face to face.
I gripped the comforter in my fists when I felt my heart rate slow.
Come on, you fuck, I mentally snapped.
I locked my jaw when the monster stretched and prodded and grinned like the evil bastard he was.
Not a sound. Not a trace.
I forced myself to not think about where any knives were in my room as that darkness begged for something wet and thick and red.
Feed the blade. Watch the light—
When I felt the trembling begin deep within my soul, I pushed with everything in me against the need and the dark and forced myself off the bed.
Jessica flew up to a sitting position, her chest heaving as hard as mine as I struggled to take in air. “What the hell?”
I dragged in another breath and nodded. “Knew that would make you talk.”
Her eyes raked over me, disgust and hatred written over every part of her face. “What were you going to do to me?”
I looked down at my naked body and locked my jaw. When I was sure I wouldn’t lash out at her, I said, “If you think I would ever force myself on you—or anyone—then you should go.”
I walked over and pulled out a pair of shorts from one of my drawers, dressing in rough jerks as I told myself to calm down.
Calm. Furious.
Fuck.
When she didn’t move from her spot on the bed, I told her, “You were standing between the dresser and the bed. I would’ve had easier access to the blades in the dresser. You know how fast I can grab them without realizing. Didn’t want to take that chance.”
“Oh.”
“I couldn’t think of what else to do to get you to talk. That side of me seems to bring something out in you.”
Though I didn’t know why.
Wasn’t even sure I wanted to.
Her brow furrowed. “I was talking to you.”
I wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t find it in me to force it out after what I’d just purposefully put both of us through. I always crashed if I was able to force the darkness away immediately after calling it forward. Doing it after being buried inside Jessica? I didn’t know how I was even standing.
“You went somewhere else . . . I didn’t know if I’d hurt you. You can’t do that after I fuck you, Jessica.”
“I don’t do this,” she yelled. “I don’t do this. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Fuck? Because I’m pretty sure it’s in your job description.”
She jerked back like I’d hit her and tears filled her eyes.
I hated myself for speaking. I hated the way I said and did all the wrong things when I was struggling for an ounce of energy.
I’d done it to Lily a lot too . . .
“Jessica . . .”
“I don’t let men fuck me,” she said through clenched teeth. “What you just did? I’ve never done. I’ve never given control to a man—to anyone.”
I stared at her, trying to figure out what exactly she did. What I’d done wrong. And why she let me.
“I have to be in control at all times. There’s a man who—” She swallowed quickly, her tongue darting out to wet her lips. “There was a man who tried to rape me from behind. Ask Beck. He nearly killed him when he found us.” She crawled off the bed as a few tears rolled down her cheeks. “I might sell myself, but I have rules. Not just any man who drives up asking for the time of day can have me. I only have certain clients and only some of them are allowed to touch me. And I am always in control,” she bit out.
I watched her, dread coursing through me as I tried to remember if I’d forced her to let me fuck her that way. If she’d told me to stop.
Now I didn’t know if she’d clawed at the dresser because she was trying to hold on, or because she was terrified.
I didn’t know if she’d screamed out of pleasure and pain or fear.
“Jessica, why’d you let me?” I asked, the question sounding like a horrified confession.
“Because for a few minutes, I wanted to be lost in you.” Her eyes flicked to the dresser, a sad smiling pulling at her mouth. “Because I liked the way you held me at the bar. Because I’ve never wanted to give up control as much as I do with you.”
“But—”
“But demons don’t stay in hell,” she whispered.
I knew that better than anyone.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, my voice thick.
She nodded slowly before looking at me. “This would all be so much easier if I didn’t want you the way I do. I need you to be like every other man I’ve ever met. I need to hate you. I need you to make me sick at the thought of you touching me.”
I did hate her.
I hated her for sleeping with men for money.
For making me want to erase the thought and encounters of every man she’d ever met.
For making me want her.
For blurring the lines of hate and lust and need.
Her slender throat moved with her forced swallow. “Why have you changed everything?”
Why have you?
I crossed my arms over my chest to keep from reaching for her.
After what just happened, I didn’t think grabbing her and showing her exactly how much I wanted her was what she needed.
Then again, it wasn’t what I needed either.
I’d had a knife out. I’d been seconds from killing her and had ended up bending her over my dresser to bury myself deep inside her instead.
I couldn’t get a read on this girl, and it was confusing me in a way nothing ever had.
One minute I was sure every one of my suspicions of her was correct. The next I couldn’t stand to go another second without claiming her in some way.
Chaos.
Complete and utter chaos.
“I’m sorry for your demons,” I said in a rough voice as I went to stand beside her. “I would fight them all if you asked me to, but I know you won’t. I know you don’t need me to.”
She lifted her chin, and my lips twitched into a smile.
I gently grabbed her head and pressed my mouth to it. “Leave if you want. Leave if you need to. You know where I’ll be.”
I didn’t look back at her as I walked over to turn the light off and let my drained body fall to the bed.
I didn’t hear the window, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t.
A few minutes later, the bed shifted so faintly it was almost unnoticeable. The only real sign she was there was the movement of my sheets as she slid under them on the far side of the bed.
“Nightshade,” she murmured simply.
I bit back a smirk. “Good night, Chaos.”