Oscar lowers himself over me, rubbing his body against mine. For someone that hates to be touched, he sure does seem desperate to connect our bare flesh. It’s as if he’s a starving man who’s just finally found his way to a picnic.

He’s going to eat everything.

My fingers weave together behind his neck as he fits himself to my opening and then pushes inside. There’s a moment there where he freezes up, his body shuddering as we adjust to each other. The smell of blood is in the air, but it doesn’t bother me as much as it should. As weird as it sounds, it actually seems to suit us, having our first time with the scent of copper surrounding us.

Oscar moves his hips with long, slow, undulating strokes, the metal in his cock teasing me in strange places, making me squirm. Hael is pierced, too, but Oscar must have some unique metal because the sensations he’s giving me are new.

He kisses me again, but I find that I suddenly don’t recognize him at all.

He’s … kissing me softly, almost reverently. His body moves the same way, at complete odds with his personality.

Jesus fuck, Oscar Montauk is making love to me.

My entire body flushes hot as I press my cheek to his, closing my eyes and enjoying the way his lean form feels on top of mine. His hips push me into the couch cushions, staining us both with the red of my womanhood. It feels extra good, actually, to do it like this. Whenever I get my period, I always feel like my cunt is more swollen, more desperate than usual. The blood even gives us extra lube, adding to the slip and slide, the beautiful friction.

We spend, quite literally, over an hour on that couch, locked together, moving together, joined into one person. I come more than once, but it’s hard to say how many times, lost in a fever of pleasure and connection.

We have something here, me and Oscar. I didn’t expect that, not at all.

Things change as soon as he comes, shoving his cock deep and hitting the end of me, making me cry out as he fills me with hot seed. His muscles tighten, fingers digging into the sofa on either side of my head. But there’s no release after that, no collapse, no panting.

Instead, he just sort of … freezes.

Crap.

He’s panicking, isn’t he?

“Oscar,” I start, trying to head off whatever unhealthy emotional response he’s having. He pushes up on his forearms to look down at me like he’s never seen me before, like he isn’t even sure how he got here.

“What.” Just that one word, but really, there’s not even a question mark at the end of it.

I’m so stunned by the shift in attitude that I just stay where I am, heart thundering, my emotions twisted into a violent tangle.

Without a word, Oscar sits up and pulls out of me, looking down at the red on his pelvis, his lower belly, his upper thighs, and scowling fiercely.

He stands up, yanking his pants over his dick, and takes off.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” I shout after him, struggling to get up. My body feels heavy, used, but in the best possible way. Whatever that just was, I want more. “You can’t leave me to clean this up by myself!”

Oscar acts like he can’t hear me, pounding up the steps and slamming the bathroom door behind him. My cheeks burn as I get up and pad to the downstairs bathroom, wiping myself down, and then leaning my palms on the countertop to look at my reflection in the mirror.

“God, that was weird,” I murmur to myself, but I can’t deny that it was incredible, too.

The question here is: what the hell is Oscar so freaked out about?

I decide I don’t care. But I am pissed. Royally fucking pissed.

He’s going to owe me for this, big time.

Only a total dick fucks a girl on her period and then doesn’t help clean up. I spend another hour scrubbing the couch cushions before Vic finally comes out of his room to stare at me.

“Jesus,” he murmurs, lighting up a cigarette before heading outside the sliding glass door to smoke.

“Thanks for the help,” I snap out through gritted teeth. That gets his attention, and he comes back in to look at me, leaning his big body against the inside of the sliding glass door.

“If you think I’m cleaning up a mess you made while fucking another guy, then you’ve seriously missed the boat on my personality. Who do you think I am, Bernadette?” I ignore Vic, but I know he’s right. Doesn’t rankle any less. “By the way, isn’t it like Thanksgiving next week or some shit?”

I pause in my scrubbing and then glance back at him in surprise.

Oh. Crap. It is, isn’t it? Well, in like a week and a half or something.

We’ve been so busy this month that I spaced it completely.

Victor doesn’t want me to go home anymore. I agree with that, but it also means that the danger level is amping up. My mother isn’t going to take this lying down. The Thing most definitely won’t. He loves to pick at me from across a dinner table—even more so on holidays. He laps my pain and anger up like a lizard sticking its long tongue to a fly.

“It’s on the twenty-eighth,” I say, but I don’t really care. It’s an okay holiday, and I get the modern meaning of it, but there’s also just a wee bit of genocide in there, too. Heather, though, she might get upset if we don’t do anything at all. I put my forehead on my arm, the fingers of my right hand still curled around the sponge.

I cannot believe I had sex with Oscar Montauk this morning.

At this point, I’ve screwed every Havoc Boy but for Callum. I’m sure we’ll get there soon, I think, and then sigh. Not because I don’t want to see what Cal might be like in bed, but because I hate holidays and all their stupid rituals.

“The girls will want to do something,” I say as Vic comes over to sit in the armchair on my left. I lay my cheek against my arm and turn my face to look at him. He stares at me with equal parts possessiveness and tender adoration. I’m not sure he’s even aware of the latter bit. “But I’m not sure I have the energy.”

Victor nods, sweeping his palm over his purple-dark hair. He doesn’t like me sleeping in Aaron’s bed, but I keep doing it anyway because I have a feeling that after the wedding, I’ll rarely be out of Vic’s wicked fingers.

“Hael can make tacos with that ground turkey meat shit you like. How does that sound?” Vic lights up a joint, the smoke drifting toward the open sliding door. “Gobble motherfucking gobble.”

I smile, but I don’t have the energy to laugh.

“Tacos and Havoc Boys. This might be my most exciting Thanksgiving yet.” I sit up and plop the sponge into the bucket of pinkish water. Victor and I don’t talk about me screwing the other guys, not really. It’s implied that I stay within Havoc. I’m dead certain that if I fucked a guy outside of this circle, he would kill him, and I would most certainly suffer.

Not saying our relationship is healthy or hashtag-goals or anything like that, but it is what it is.

And I revel in it.

“The day after, can we get a Christmas tree?” I ask, and Victor gives me a weird look as I push to my feet.

“You’re one of those people, huh? A sentimental asshole with a need for dead pine trees and lights.”

I glare at him as I climb to my feet, swiping a hand across my forehead. When I reach out for the joint, he passes it my way and then yanks me into his lap. Victor’s lips brush my ear, and my entire body flashes white-hot before relaxing into a desperate sort of cool, like a dip in a pool after getting a sunburn.

“Why do you have to mess with me like this?” he continues, and it takes me a second to realize he’s not talking about the Christmas tree. No, he’s talking about Oscar. “You know how I feel when I see you with another man, don’t you?”

“Grateful for a night off?” I joke, and his hold tightens on me. I pretend not to notice, smoking the joint with two, tattooed fingers. The A and the V from my Havoc tattoo stare back at me.

“Murderous,” he tells me, and then he takes the joint back and pushes me off of his lap just as Callum comes down the stairs.

“Off to the studio?” I ask, lifting the bucket. Cal shakes his head, coming over to take the bucket from me. I almost don’t let him. After all, he doesn’t know what the pinkish water in it means, but then I decide to just enjoy not having to dump the heavy thing in the sink.

“Not today,” he tells me, rinsing the bucket with the detachable sprayer on the sink. He looks ridiculously comfortable cleaning up blood. Not his first time at the rodeo, am I right? “I was going to climb onto the roof and watch the sun rise.”

I stare at him as goose bumps prickle across my arms. I’m wearing his hoodie again, drowning in fabric and the fresh smell of talc and laundry soap. Callum turns around and leans his ass against the sink. His hood is down, but he’s wearing a sweatshirt similar to mine, tucking his hands into the front pocket.

“My grandmother and I used to do that, every Sunday morning.” He shrugs, like it’s no big deal. It is. It’s huge. I focus on his blue eyes and try not to get lost in the vibrancy of them, but it’s impossible, like falling into the ocean during a storm and praying that you don’t drown. “When she could still get around well-enough to do it, that is.” He ponders on that for a moment. “I might go home in a bit to check on her.”

Obviously, I knew each of the boys had a family and a backstory and all that crap, but I guess I’m just as much a narcissist as the next asshole because I never really let myself think about that. To me, they were always just … mine. My boys. My property. I would piss on them if I could.

All of these revelations, though, they’re rocking me.

Vic has a socialite for a mother and a drunk for a father; Hael’s dad is a murderer and his mom is broken; Callum only has a grandmother to his name. Of course, I know all about Aaron, but when it comes to Oscar? He’s an enigma. I wouldn’t know if he lived with snakes in a wild tangle in the woods.

“Do you mind if I join you on the roof?” I ask, feeling my heart stutter a bit. The animal side of me says, Bernie, you fucked four of your boys; get that last one. But I need some time to process what happened with Oscar, what’s happening with me.