“I can’t help myself,” he murmurs, passing out white boxes to the other boys until he finds his own food. “It’s just too much fun to scare people—particularly the ones that deserve it.” He steals a plastic fork from the bag and digs in while I study the fireplace behind Victor’s head, the one with the stones tumbling out of it. To fix that, we’re going to need, like, a mason or something—that is, if it’s at all savable.

We eat for a few moments in silence, Hael’s eyes flicking up to me every now and again until he finally sets his food down in his lap and gives me a look.

“You sure this is what you want to be doing right now?” he asks as the candles flicker and jump around us, casting strange shadows on the walls. There’s always a possibility that the GMP could’ve followed us here, that even now, they could be working their way through the woods at the back of the house, out of sight from the two police officers, as they get ready to strike.

But I don’t think so.

Ophelia wants that money. Maxwell probably does want to kill us, but he’ll be careful with his plans. As careful as we’re being. Because if he comes for us again and makes another mistake the way he did at the school, he’ll never live it down. His men won’t trust him. The feds will definitely try for RICO charges—that’s when you get the leader of an organization tried and convicted based on the things his underlings have done.

For now, I feel like we’re relatively safe.

It won’t last, obviously. Nothing this nice ever does. Or at least, it requires sacrifice, and I feel like we haven’t made any big ones just yet.

“This is what I want to be doing,” I confirm, adjusting myself so that I’m situated in a small nest of blankets. If I seem calm, it’s all bullshit. Because I’m not. I’m not calm because Pamela took away my power over her. By killing herself, she’s removed my last chance at reaping justice for Penelope. Now, Pam is dead, and she’s no longer suffering, and the world just keeps on turning, as if it isn’t a tragic loss that the woman never really paid for her crimes.

I poke at my food for a while, glancing up only briefly to make sure that Oscar is eating. He is. He’s been eating a lot more lately, so much so that he’s put on a bit more muscle mass. It ripples in his arms when he dresses in a tank top for bed. It shows in the valleys of his abdominal muscles and the way his dress shirt stretches across his shoulders after he takes off his jacket and loosens his tie.

A ghost of a smile teases my lips before it falls away again.

“Get the whisky,” I command, and it’s Victor who grabs it, unscrewing the top and taking a huge swig before he passes it down the line. When it’s my turn, I drink as much as I can stand, choking at the fiery burn in my throat but loving the way it warms up my cold belly, stealing away just a fraction of that fear and pain. I take a second swallow before handing it over to Cal.

“You’re upset,” Victor says, and it isn’t a question. It’s just a fact and a command, one that demands I spill my feelings out to him because he’s a dark god whose presence won’t allow me to be numb for even a single second.

“Of course I’m upset,” I say, setting my food aside and then crawling forward on my hands and knees to fetch the whisky bottle again. I sit back with it in my lap and then take another chug, one that makes bubbles gurgle inside the bottle. “My mother killed my sister. My mother. The same person who birthed Penelope killed her.” I take another drink. The boys won’t let me get so drunk that I’ll have alcohol poisoning, but if I want to be plastered and stumbling, they’ll watch over me tonight. “And now I can’t even … I feel like she’s just slipped through my fingers forever.”

My face scrunches up as Oscar’s tightens in a rare show of sympathy.

“I know how you feel,” he says, surprising me. He isn’t one to offer up his emotions freely. “For years, I felt the same way about my own father. He took his life and left me with no recourse to punish him. In a way, you’re glad that person is dead and gone, because they ruined your life in ways that can never be fixed. In the same breath, you mourn. In the next breath, you rage.”

I just stare at him for a moment before setting the whisky bottle aside and crawling through the circle yet again. This time, I’m not searching for booze. This time, I’m finding the warm comfort of Oscar Montauk’s lap.

The incredible thing about it is that I’m the only person in the known universe who’s allowed to touch him like this, cuddle him and feel his long fingers tangling in my hair. He lets out a long sigh, and even though I know he would never ask for something I don’t want to give, his cock thickens beneath my cheek and I find myself rubbing against it.

“My list is done,” I say, and Oscar’s fingers pause for a moment before he strokes one down the length of my nose, traces my lips, memorizes me with the one sense he used to be most afraid of but which is the most powerful of all: touch. “It’s all done.”

“It’s done,” he agrees, stroking me as I close my eyes and I listen to the other boys pass the whisky bottle around the circle. “Sometimes, when you finish something so important, it feels both good and bad. You wish you were still working on it, but you’re relieved that it’s behind you.”

I roll onto my back and open my eyes, so that I can stare up at him. He very carefully reaches his fingers up to his loosened tie and begins to undo it. We’re going to have sex in this crumbling old house tonight. He knows it; I know it; I’m sure the rest of the Havoc Boys know it.

“Don’t let the last name on my list be so … anticlimactic,” I murmur, feeling my hands shake as I lift them to Oscar’s face. It was born in drama, right, that list? And so it has to go out with the same fashion, with a bang, with a spark that burns too bright and too hot to ignore.

“I promise,” Oscar murmurs, leaning over to kiss me, “that it will not be anticlimactic.”

His rapier of a mouth slices against mine, so sharp and so painful that I’m sure I’m bleeding, but yet, I can’t stop. I crave this pain because it matches my own, because it sings the same tunes and paints in the same colors.

Oscar’s tongue gives a hot swipe over mine before he pulls away, sitting up and undoing the buttons on his shirt as Aaron crawls over to me, moving between my legs to undo the black leather pants I’m wearing. They’re so tight that he has to peel them down the molded curves of my hips, past my pale silky thighs, and tug them from my feet.

The tattooed god above me tosses his tie aside, throws off his shirt. And then Aaron is flipping me over so that I can watch Oscar free his cock from his black slacks. With the tattooed, pierced length of him bobbing in front of my face, there’s nothing more I want to do than take him into my mouth.

His breath hisses out, almost like he’s pain, but he kneads my scalp with his fingertips in a very clear message: do not stop. At the same time, I feel warm hands encouraging me to put my ass in the air. When I heed that call and do as Aaron’s asked, I can feel his hot mouth taking my cunt, tongue slicking along my folds as I groan with my own lips pressed to Oscar’s cock.

He continues to knead my hair with his fingertips, encouraging me to continue what I’m doing as Aaron slips two fingers inside of me. He fucks me nice and slow with his hand while my head bobs up and down on Oscar’s dick.

Victor is the only one of the boys that I can see, and he stares down at me like he’s the ruler of this entire room, like this is a gift that only he could ever give me. I should be grateful to touch Oscar the way I do, to feel Aaron between my thighs. Because he’s the only one that could grant me the right to do that.

It feels like, with the way he’s looking at me, that if the other boys are gods then Victor is the king of the gods and we all belong to him. When Oscar flicks a slight glance in his direction, I can see it and I know: these boys belong to Vic just as much as they belong to me. The idea of that makes me sting with jealousy, but only for a split-second. Then it thrills me, it thrills me so much that I really and truly feel like part of a ruling pair.

As the queen, it’s my job to take care of these boys the way they need. So, as Victor strokes himself beside me, one hand leaning back to balance his big body as he reclines effortlessly on the floor, I continue to suck and lick and scrape with my teeth. Vic looks almost bored as he does it, stroke himself like that. Our eyes stay locked as I bring Oscar to climax inside my mouth, hot jets of cum teasing my tongue at the same moment that Aaron thrusts into me and I cry out.

I lift up onto my hands, panting and swallowing, and then Oscar takes my chin in his fingers and kisses me, cleaning my tongue and lips of his seed. Aaron holds my hips in a tight grip as he fucks me from behind, and I can’t help but risk a glance over my shoulder, just so I can see chestnut hair plastered to his sweaty forehead.

Fuck.

Letting my head drop, I push my hips back against him, meeting his thrusts with my own.

“Shit, screw this,” I hear Hael murmur, and then he’s approaching me, sitting down on the floor and letting me make the decision of whether or not to touch his cock. I do, dropping my mouth down on the tip and giving it a harsh suck as his hips thrust in response.

Aaron pulls out before he’s finished, and then I feel the hot, hot heat of his release on my back and ass. Holy shit, this is going to make a huge mess. But I love that. I love the idea of seeing the occasion marked in the smears of dust on the floor, the wet spatter of arousal. It turns me on as I glance back and see Cal approach me.

He kneels down and guides the head of his cock to my cunt, sliding in nice and slow as I lick and suck frantically at Hael’s dick in response, flicking the piercing at the tip with my tongue as his hips rise up off of the floor.

Oscar, Aaron, and Victor are all pressed close, watching. Well, Oscar and Aaron are watching me specifically. Vic is watching all of us, his dark eyes taking in his pack of wolves, his dogs of war.

Vic waits for Hael to come in my mouth with a sharp, masculine cry, Hael’s hand fisting in my hair as he drives himself as deep into my throat as he can. When he’s finished, he slides back just enough that Cal and I have space to move, rocking into each other.