“Do I make jokes very often?” Vic retorts, standing there near the end of the bed with so much tension in his body he looks liable to snap at the wrong word. “Get off of her and get out.”

“You're insane,” Hael says, turning back to me. But then Vic is grabbing his shoulder and yanking him back. It's a weird sensation, to have Hael pulled off of me like that, and I sit up, grabbing the sheets as my own anger rushes to the surface.

“What the hell, Vic?” I snarl as Hael tears from his friend's grip, panting and shaking, his teeth bared in a snarl.

“What are you even doing?” he snaps, flinging out his hand to indicate me. “We talked about this. Bernadette is a Havoc Girl. Not Vic's girl. If you wanted her to be yours, then why didn't you say so when we were talking price?”

Whoa.

This conversation got real, real fast. Hael tears the condom off his still-hard dick and chucks it at the wall before zipping up his jeans. He rakes his fingers through his hair and closes his eyes.

“Sit back down and—”

“No,” Vic says, standing his ground. “Get out.”

“I'm not fucking leaving!” Hael yells back at him. “You might be the boss, but she's not just your girl.”

“She's my future wife,” Vic says, still completely frozen in that dark well of shadows he's drawn around himself. “If you touch her again, I don't know what I'll do. I can't be held responsible for my actions.”

“Do I even get a fucking say here?” I snap, standing up from the bed. “I might've agreed to your price, but I'm not some fuck doll for you to fight over.”

“You are not a fuck doll,” Vic says, but he doesn't move his attention from Hael's face. “But this isn't about you. This is about me. I'm a jealous, possessive asshole, and I wanted to kill Hael for fucking you in his car. He's my best friend, Bernadette. There's a problem here.”

“Victor,” Hael starts, but Vic just shakes his head.

“Get out. Now. This is the last time I'm going to ask.”

Hael looks at me and then back at Vic, and there's something in his face that says maybe this one time, he's not going to listen. Maybe this one time, he's going to fight Victor and see what happens.

The tension stretches between the three of us until it's almost unbearable, until I can't breathe.

“Fuck you, Vic. Seriously, fuck you.” Hael turns away in a storm cloud of his own rage, unlocks the door, and then yanks it open. He pauses once before leaving to look over his shoulder. “I love you, man, but you almost pushed it too far this time.” Hael leaves and slams the door so hard that one of the framed pictures on the wall crashes to the floor and shatters.

For a whole minute there, the room is completely silent.

“Get on the bed,” Vic tells me, glancing back in my direction. He stalks over to the lamp and turns it off, plunging us into darkness.

My body is shaking with a mix of frustration and anger. I was this close to having another orgasm, and he ruined it. Fucking Victor stupid-ass Channing.

He turns around to look at me, moonlight filtering between the mini blinds on the sliding doors to his left and limning his large form in silver.

He's jealous, I think as my mind runs through all the ways I could handle this moment. I could tell him to fuck off, openly defy him, and see what he might do. Or … I could let the hot, wild heat taking over my body run wild. Despite his bossy possessiveness, despite the way he treated Hael, I still want him.

Stepping back, I drop the sheet to the floor, and then I lie back on the bed, my knees crossed together, my elbows keeping me propped up.

Victor slips his shirt over his head and tosses it aside before kicking off his shoes, peeling off his socks, and then shoving his jeans down his muscular hips. As my eyes adjust to the light, I notice that he has a condom in his hand. He slips it on before moving over to me and climbing on the bed, his weight denting the mattress and making me bounce slightly.

I can smell him now, that bergamot and musk scent of his, all male, all Vic.

My breath catches as he reaches up with a big hand and cups the side of my face. His entire presence is edged in violence, but his touch is gentle enough.

“I'm apologizing in advance for how hard I'm going to fuck you,” he says, and a wash of heat spreads from my core to the hardened points of my nipples, the bruised curve of my lips. “But after, I'll take it nice and slow.”

He grabs my hips and flips me over, pulling me back and into him. I can feel the heat of his body as Vic presses up against me, a sigh shuddering through him as he runs his palm down my spine. I can feel the tension in his hands as he caresses me, and then, it’s like a switch has been flipped. Vic grabs my hair and yanks my head back, making me cry out. It doesn’t hurt per se, but it rides that fine line.

“I’m having a seriously hard time fucking controlling myself right now,” he growls, and his hands tighten on both my hip and my hair. “There are so many things I want to do to you.” Vic leans down and kisses my shoulder, swirling his tongue in a circle against my skin before he bites me—hard.

“You won't like it when Victor takes you to bed. He's a rough, angry sort of lover.”

Aaron’s words echo in my head as I shift my body and Vic growls, holding me in place. He’s bruising my hip, making my scalp burn, and yet it’s not unpleasant. His mouth traces up the line of my shoulder toward my neck, and he bites me again, drawing another long, embarrassing groan from my throat.

Vic releases my hair and curls his inked fingers around the front of my neck. With his other hand, he guides the tip of his cock to my throbbing heat, slicking the length of his body against my wetness.

“We didn’t want a girl to come between us and yet, here you are, doing just that. Are you fucking proud of yourself?”

“Screw you,” I snarl, gritting my teeth as Victor teases me with his cock. He lifts my head up even further, forcing me to curve my back and push my ass against him.

“You’ve hated me for so long, haven’t you?” he asks, and I realize then that I’m shaking. He’s stripping me bare again, and I hate it. I hate it, but I also … I can’t explain it, but I want more. His voice is like smoke, curling around and enveloping me. It’s sumptuous, lavish, regnant perfection. “What’s it like? Having me touch you this way?”

“Eat shit,” I gasp as he adjusts himself, his fingers curving under my jaw. He holds me in a tense grip, his anger hot and evident on his skin. His muscles are taut, slick with sweat. A droplet slides from his inked skin and drops onto my own.

Victor crushes his mouth to mine, holding me just where he wants me, taking my lips the way he’s taking over the rest of me—body and soul. His kiss is savage, almost brutal, bruising my mouth but inciting this near desperate need for more. Our tongues slick together as he tastes me, biting my lower lip just hard enough to make me bleed. Not that it matters, right: blood in, blood out. And we’ve already shared blood, cum. We’re already intertwined.

“I bet I could make you come on command,” he purrs, pulling back slightly, smirking at me in the dark.

I grit my teeth and start to struggle against him, but his grip is complete, his control absolute. If I asked him to stop, would he? I only have to think for a split-second before I have an answer to that question: yes. Victor was serious when he said I was a part of Havoc, a part of the family. He won’t hurt me, not anymore.

A surprise gasp slips past my lips as Vic pulls his hips back slightly and replaces the tip of his cock with his finger, slicking it along the wetness of my core, teasing me. Everything in my body hurts right now. I’m aching with need, like each molecule is fired up and quivering. This isn’t helping.

“Stop teasing me and—”

Victor clamps his hand over my mouth at the same time he pushes a single, inked finger into my pussy. A sigh of relief gets caught in my throat as Vic maintains his iron-clad handhold over my face, hooking his finger inside me and drumming up sensations that I’ve never felt before. I wiggle against him, but I’m seriously trapped here, his hot, heavy body behind me, his hand covering my lips.

“Come for me, Bernadette. That’s an order.” Victor thrusts his finger deep, slicking it against my aching insides. My nipples are so hard now that I’m frantic for a caress of any kind, but Vic’s only touching me as much as he has to. I get nothing extra, even less than I got during our first, fucked-up sexual encounter against the wall. “I want to hear you cry out the way you did when you were sitting on Hael’s cock.”

A rogue whimper escapes me as Vic inserts another finger, sliding the two of them in and out, nice and slow. It’s pure goddamn torture, and he knows it. His chuckle is dark and angry, rife with frustration. No part of him actually thinks this is fun. To Vic, this is a necessity. He slips a third finger in, amplifying the pleasure coursing through me, and then releases his hold on my mouth.

“Ready?” he asks, and then he drops his second hand to my clit, using the natural lube from my body to make it nice and slippery. He works the hardened nub with his thumb in slow but firm circles. I want to resist him, put up some sort of fight, but it feels too good. I find myself falling, collapsing, shattering to pieces. “Let me hear that climax, baby.”

Vic flicks his thumb in just such a way that I fall over the edge, shuddering as the orgasm unfurls inside of me like a whip. A sound tears from my throat that I can’t stop, that I’m sure the whole house can hear.

It hits me hard and fast, leaving me a boneless, shaking, sweating mess.

“Good.” Victor slaps me on the ass and then grabs my hair again, yanking me back toward him. “I told you that you’d mewl beneath me.” Before I even get the chance to recover, he’s removing his fingers and replacing them with the tip of his cock. With one hand locked on my hip, he drives into me with a fierce growl, hitting the end of me and drawing sounds from my throat I wasn’t even sure I could make.