“You knew all along?”

“Not all the details,” Gage said, his voice soft. “But we knew you were working for them. That’s why you had Puck on you.”

“I guess that’s not a huge surprise,” I admitted. “It all felt wrong—I kept thinking you knew. Not that it matters. I couldn’t find anything for them, and then they called me again today. I talked to Jessica, and then I watched them throw her down on a concrete floor. She hit her head and started having a seizure. He told me I have to kill Reese or she’ll die. If he dies, they’ll dump her at an ER. So I tried to kill him.”

“Did you ever see their faces on the video?” Reese asked, his voice like ice.

“No, they only let me see Jess.”

“Where did you get the gun?”

“They gave me an address and I drove there using the GPS on my phone. Up north of Hayden. It turned out to be the middle of a field, and a man met me there. He showed me how to use the gun. I didn’t learn his name or anything.”

“What then?”

“Then I went to Nate.”

The air in the room changed. Sudden menace radiated from Reese, and his hand tightened so hard on my throat that I couldn’t breathe and my vision started to swim with black dots.

“Let her go,” Horse said suddenly. “You’re gonna hurt her, Pic.”

I squirmed, desperate for air.

“Fuck,” Bam Bam said, his voice urgent. “Pic, let her the fuck go. You don’t wanna do this, bro. Believe me.”

Reese let me go, stepping away as I collapsed down in the handcuffs. I gasped for oxygen, vision hazy as Reese stalked around me, tossing his knife back and forth between his hands. He wasn’t looking at me, though. No, he stared down his club brothers like a force of nature.

“Get the fuck out,” Reese said, the words soft and calm and more terrifying than anything I’d ever heard before in my life. “Or I’ll kill you.”

“Fuck, bro—” Gage started. Reese shook his head slowly.

“Not playin’ games,” he told them. “Get out. My woman, my business.”

Horse cocked his head, eyes assessing. Then he gave a sharp nod and left the room. Bam Bam followed, smacking his hand hard on the wall as he passed through the door. Gage stayed, studying us.

“Don’t kill her,” he said. “You’ll regret it. Walk away.”

“Last chance,” Reese said, the words quiet and cold. Gage sighed and gave a sharp nod.

Then he walked out, leaving me alone with a madman.

He turned and our eyes met. I searched his, trying to identify what I saw there. Hate? Anger? Maybe rage or betrayal?

None of those words were strong enough to describe the air of cold menace filling the space between us. Menace, but also a flicker of awareness. There was something broken in my libido, I decided. I shouldn’t be turned on by this. Not even a little bit. He started stalking toward me, lifting the knife and touching the side of the blade to one cheek.

“You went to Nate.”

I closed my eyes and swallowed.

“I didn’t want to kill you,” I whispered. “It’d gone too far. Looking for papers is one thing, but shooting a man is another.”

“Yet you pointed a gun at me and pulled the trigger.”

“That’s because of Nate,” I replied. He lowered the knife and raised his hand, brushing a finger down my cheek. Then he caught a strand of my hair and slowly wound it around his fingers, until it pulled and I couldn’t move my head. He leaned forward, brushing his nose against my cheek and whispering in my ear.

“Did you fuck him?”

The hot touch of his breath sent a thrill through me, some sort of twisted lust mixed up with fear and adrenaline, and a sick, savage pleasure that he wanted to know, ’cause nothing fucked up about that, right?

“No,” I said, the word hoarse. “I met him at a diner. I told him what was happening, and what they were trying to get me to do. Then he said he knew all about it and that he’s the one that blew up my house.”

“Told you he wasn’t a very nice guy,” Reese said, sucking my earlobe into his mouth. I moaned, and he twisted my head back, forcing me to look up at him. His mouth ghosted across my skin, and he nipped at my lip. I gasped, almost expecting a kiss, but instead he asked another question. “Let me guess—he’s buddies with the guy holdin’ Jessica, and this was all a setup?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “He said he … He said he had sex with Jessica. That he gave her money. Melanie told me she had an older boyfriend who bought things for her. I think it must’ve been him. He told me I had to kill you and that the police couldn’t do anything to help me.”

“So you came home and tried to shoot me?”

“Yes.”

“That was very, very stupid,” Reese said, his voice growing hard as he pulled back from me. “And now you’re going to pay. But you’re a very lucky girl, did you know that?”

“Why?” I asked, my voice a whisper.

He offered a feral smile.

“Because I still want to fuck you.”

More of that sick lust tore through me, all mixed with fear as he raised his knife. Grasping the neckline of my shirt, he slowly slit the fabric in half, exposing my upper body and bra. Then he tugged the bra down, popping my breasts out the top.

I saw the pulse pounding in his neck, smelled a hint of musky sweat. It was messed up and horrible and wrong in every way, but I wanted him inside me. Desperately. That’s my only explanation for what I did next.

Licking my lips, I spoke, taunting him.

“You wanna talk or you wanna fuck? ’Cause I know which one I’d prefer.”

His cheeks flushed dark red and then the knife whipped upward, slashing through the rope holding my handcuffs. I collapsed instantly, and he caught me, throwing me roughly over his shoulder as he carried me out the door. I had a vague impression of bare concrete, bright white lights, and a grim-faced Gage as we found the little room with the cot. Reese slammed the door shut behind us with his foot.

I hit the bed hard, knocking the wind right out of me. Then I heard a slithering, whipping sound, and Reese was cinching my hands to the top of the bed with his belt. Seconds later my pants came down around my ankles. His hands grabbed my hips, lifting them high and I felt his cock at my entrance.

Then his eyes caught mine and he snarled.

I screamed when he slammed home, because it hurt and I was scared and it felt incredibly good and my brain just wouldn’t work anymore. Reese wasn’t a gentle lover under the best of circumstances, but this was brutal. He stilled and braced above me with those strong arms of his, smiling.

It wasn’t a friendly or loving smile.

No. This smile was a baring of teeth, and in his eyes I saw rage, pure and simple. Rage and hate and some kind of unholy, twisted desire that cut through both of us, no matter how sick that was. Holding my gaze, he pulled back and thrust again, this time harder. It burned and I cried out, but he didn’t stop. I didn’t want him to, either. I wanted more—I wanted him to pin me and fill me with his come and I didn’t care anymore whether that was wrong or right.

I just needed this terrible tension building between us to break. I needed him.

“That the best you can do?” I demanded, laughing almost hysterically. He growled and my laugh turned into a shriek as he showed me that no, it wasn’t the best he could do. It was just the beginning, because Reese started thrusting into me so hard my body could hardly take it. My legs spread wide and my hips pressed back into the thin mattress and I screamed again. I had never, ever in my entire life felt anything so amazingly good as the sensation of his body tearing into mine.

This wasn’t sex—this was revenge and it was perfect.

He pounded into me without mercy after that, our eyes glued to each other, lips snarling. There were no tender kisses, no playful giggles. Just the raw desire of two people whose lives had crashed together in the worst possible way. My orgasm didn’t build slowly and wash over me. Nope. It slammed through me, ripping apart my existence until I cried out and tears ran down my face.

Reese didn’t even acknowledge that it’d happened.

He just sank deep inside over and over again, driving my body toward another explosion. I think my synapses weren’t firing right, because I knew I’d be raw and bruised after this. I just didn’t care. I wanted to take all of his hate and pain and anger and own it because I deserved it, but instead of suffering he just kept filling me and it felt way, way too good.

Then it hit again. I blew apart, my fragile mind all but shattering with the intensity.

This time he came with me, groaning painfully as his hot seed shot deep inside. His arms quivered and his heavy frame hung over mine as I crumpled, utterly exhausted. I’d used up my adrenaline, lost the edge of fear in favor of lust, and couldn’t even bring myself to think about poor Jessica. My brain had had enough, and my body agreed. Reese pulled away from me without a word, and I realized we hadn’t used a condom. Oh well.

My life span probably wouldn’t be long enough to worry about STDs anyway.

I heard the sound of him zipping up, and then his big hands came down around mine, pulling the belt free but leaving me cuffed. He turned and walked out of the cell, slamming his hand against the wall as he went. The door clanged shut and the bolt slid home with a thunk.

I blinked in the darkness, trying to figure out what had just happened.

Holy. Shit.

I had no place to store this in my head. I didn’t want to think about what we’d done, how much I enjoyed it, or whether it meant anything. Considering this situation too carefully was scary, and I couldn’t afford to be afraid right now. Not if I wanted to survive and save Jessica.

My natural pragmatism kicked in. I was alive. I had no idea how much longer that would last, but I had to make the most of it. I closed my eyes and started taking deep breaths, counting to ten on each inhale and exhale. The relaxation technique had served me well over the years, and it didn’t fail me that night.

Eventually sleep crept in, bringing an entirely different kind of release than what I’d found with Reese.

The cold woke me.

I tried to reach for the covers, to pull them up and over my freezing body. Then I realized there weren’t any, because I was on a cot in a cell in the Armory basement. My shirt and bra were ripped apart, my hands were cuffed together, and my wet jeans were still tucked around my ankles.

Other than that, things were great.

I rolled onto my back, bemused. I hadn’t really expected to make it this far. I sort of assumed that I’d tell them everything and they’d shoot me. The end.

Finding myself alive threw me.

I tried to think, figure out what the next step should be. Nothing came—all of this was so far beyond my ability to process that my brain just spun out.

None of that changed the fact that I was cold. Maybe I could do something to fix that?

It took me a couple of tries to stand up because my legs were cold and rubbery. One of my feet had fallen asleep, too, which wasn’t such a bad thing once I caught my balance. The tingling pins and needles helped me wake up and sharpen my perspective. I set about pulling my pants up, which was harder than you’d think, because they had that cold, wet, clingy thing going on that makes jeans so unpleasant sometimes.

My bra was a lost cause, but I managed to stretch my shirt across my chest. It wasn’t great, but it was better than just sitting around all naked and vulnerable. I walked around the cell, testing the door with my cuffed hands. It didn’t open—big surprise there, right?

By that time I was getting seriously cold. I sat back down on the bed and realized that what I’d thought was the mattress cover was actually a thin, woolen blanket wrapped over the padding—one of those striped army surplus ones from three wars back.

Crawling under it wasn’t easy, but I figured the wool might help me stay warm. Theoretically, wool holds in heat even when it’s wet. Practically, huddling under a wet wool blanket in a basement sucks ass, and I’m saying that as a lady who tries not to cuss. My teeth started chattering as I considered my options.

I still wasn’t quite sure what to make of that last little episode with Reese. I felt sore between my legs and dirty in my soul, but I couldn’t deny it’d been the best sex I’d ever had in my life. Messed up, but I don’t believe in hiding from the truth—apparently scary life-and-death situations turned me on.

Or at least they turned me on when Reese was involved.

Go figure.

I supposed I could use that to try to stay alive, manipulate him somehow—I was over the whole “I don’t care if I live or die” numb feeling from the night before. When the shit hit the fan and Reese whipped out that big knife of his, I had very much wanted to live.

Okay, so I had that figured out. I wasn’t going to just lie down and die. Good to know.

But what was I willing to do to stay alive? Yesterday I’d decided to kill an innocent man to save Jessica’s life. That hadn’t ended so well for me, and I was forced to admit the truth. I really wasn’t a very good assassin. This limited my options, which was probably just as well.

So what should I do next?

The answer seemed clear. I’d do whatever I could to help the Reapers fight their enemies, because despite my little episode with Reese, I knew who the real bad guys were. Nate and his drug dealer friends down south. They’d killed Amber, they were killing Jessica—if they hadn’t already—and they’d almost made me kill Reese.

A knife at my throat followed by crazy monkey sex in a basement wasn’t all that bad in comparison. I tried to shoot him. In exchange he’d given me two orgasms, so I guess in some ways that counted as a win?