After a few minutes, I compose myself and find him out on the balcony. He’s holding onto the railing, fists clenched, knuckles turning white. He must have heard me, because he addresses me without turning around.

“You have to leave. The next time you piss him off, he’ll just kill you. Simple as that. You can’t stay here, Samantha.”

I swallow, tilting my head back, looking up at the sky as it turns pink and purple, the sun low on the horizon.

“I could help,” Jase says suddenly. “I could help you get out.”

I shake my head. “I can’t leave. I’m not leaving.”

Jase stalks over to me, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me. “He’s going to kill you, do you understand? Christ, it’s like history repeating itself.” His shoulders sag as he lets go of me, deflated.

“He won’t kill me,” I say, brushing tears from my cheeks. “Not yet.”

Jase’s face turns stony and closed again, and I can only imagine the years he’s spent being shut down, being wailed on by his brothers, being fucked around by Dornan. I wonder how many graves he’s had to dig for his father, how many drugged bitches he’s had to pay off, or whatever, to make sure they didn’t go to the police and end up dead. And I know he can’t help himself. He’ll keep saving the stupid girls who come to the Gypsy Brothers clubhouse looking for protection and ending up with a gun to their head or a knife in their thigh.

But he won’t want to save me, not after I’m finished. Not after I’ve destroyed his entire family.

He might not get along with his brothers, but they’re all he’s got. And when I’m finished, he’ll have nothing.

My heart skips a beat, just one, as I allow myself to think for a moment what would happen, right here and now, if I just told Jase the truth. About who I really am and what I’m really doing here. He’d be mad, sure, but after that? Would he care? And if we ran? If we left this place and took my money and just ran, would I be able to sleep again, knowing he was with me?

“He will,” Jase says with conviction. “Just when you least expect it, he’ll be there. And it’ll be the end for you.”

“You don’t understand,” I say to him. It’s almost like I’m begging him to understand even though I won’t tell him what.

He shakes his head. “If you change your mind, let me know. He’s here.”

He points down at the parking lot in front of the building, where Dornan is pulling in on his Harley, the sunset casting a dull gleam on the polished black metal and chrome.

We stand there motionless, watching from afar as Dornan parks his bike and disappears into the stairwell below us.

I start to cry again. Jase remains stone faced. “Pull yourself together,” he hisses.

“It’s that fucking morphine you gave me,” I hiss back, wiping my cheeks and rushing inside, towards the bathroom, where I can wash my face and compose myself.

So of course, I almost scream when I collide blindly with a hard chest covered in leather.

It’s him.

I look up, those tears still fresh in my eyes, to see Dornan’s black eyes staring back at me, piercing straight through me. I freeze as he looks suspiciously from me, to Jase, then back to me.

“What the fuck did I just walk into?” he asks.

I fling myself at his chest and stand on tiptoes, planting little kisses on his cheek. “I thought you weren’t coming back for me,” I say breathlessly. “I missed you so much.”

Jase closes the door to the balcony with a heavy thud. “She hasn’t stopped whining about how much she missed you for the entire day,” he snarls at his father. “Next time, I’m going to gag her.”

Dornan breaks out into peals of laughter that reverberate against my chest and make my insides fill with dread. He tilts my head up and kisses me, the longest, most passionate kiss I’ve experienced from him. It still doesn’t even mildly compare to the intensity of the fleeting kisses Jase and I shared.

It isn’t even in the same fucking universe.

Dornan breaks away from me, and I catch my breath, avoiding Jase’s stare. “I gotta shower,” he says. “Been on that bike for too fucking long. You,” he stabs a finger into my chest, “ better meet me in there in five.”

He plants one last lingering kiss on my mouth before turning and walking into the bathroom. A moment later, I hear the shower running.

“You’re an excellent actress,” Jase says behind me, every word measured and deliberate. I turn, wiping the back of my hand against my mouth—wiping Dornan away. Jase’s eyes are cold, his arms folded across his chest as he studies me, the look of disgust on his face impossible to miss. I am deeply troubled that he is already seeing through the façade that Dornan is oblivious to, but at the same time, I am secretly relieved. Because if he knows it’s a lie, maybe he’ll still want me, as crazy and fucked-up as that sounds.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” I say softly, letting my hand drop to my side.

He just shakes his head, his hands balled up into angry fists, and storms out of the room.


I hear a rattle of keys, the front door slams loudly, and my heart sinks as I realize Jase is gone.


I make it the longest five minutes possible before I slip out of my T-shirt and hobble slowly into the bathroom to join Dornan under the shower. He smiles as he sees me, his gaze going to the crudely stitched wound on my thigh. “I’m sorry, baby girl,” he says, kneeling down on the tiles, inspecting the new row of stitches his doctor has professionally installed in my leg. He runs his fingers along it oh-so-gently, before tightening his grip on the back of my knees, forcing me to spread my legs wider so I don’t fall over. He plants a soft kiss on my sensitive nub, his breath against my skin making me squirm.

He rises, taking the time to suck on my hardened nipple before standing straight again. I shiver, grasping his hard biceps as he grinds himself against me.


“Get on your knees, baby girl.”

A sense of panic rises in my belly. “I can’t,” I whisper. “My leg—”

Frustration flashes across his features briefly, his black eyes burning into mine. His eyes flick down to my stab wound before settling back on my face.

“Pain is good,” he says, his hands squeezing my neck tight before releasing me again. A warning. “Remember? Pain means I fucking own you.”

I nod reluctantly.

“Say it.”

“You own me.”

“Why?”

Remember Chad. Remember who you are. I smile.

“Because I’m yours.”

“You’re goddamn right, you’re mine. Now get on your fucking knees.”

He holds my weight as I kneel slowly and with difficulty, my leg screaming with fresh pain that radiates to my extremities and makes me want to hurl.


I feel a couple stitches pop open and glance down to see thin rivulets of blood break free and slide down my leg, diluted by the warm water. The scene revitalizes me. Today, I’ll give my blood for him, and one day soon, he’ll give his blood for me.


Now,” he says smugly, pressing the tip of his hard cock against my lips. “Show me how much you missed me.”


Jase was right. I am an excellent actress.

I open my mouth, and I lie.

Thirteen

After our shower, Dornan takes me back to the clubhouse on the back of his bike.

Riding with Dornan just feels wrong. I don’t feel free in the wind; I feel trapped, like a butterfly encased in glass. Fluttering my wings feebly, only to keep hitting them on my invisible fortress.

Only this fortress of mine is of my own making.


I shouldn’t complain. But I’m impatient. It’s been almost a month and so far I’ve killed Chad, kissed Jase twice and screwed Dornan enough times to make my head whirl. I wonder what my father would think of me right now, and then I squash that thought, because he’d be horrified. He’d be beside himself.


His little girl killing, and fucking, and lying.


It still kills me when I think that he died trying to save me from this life.

* * *

A week passes with no nasty surprises and no stabbings. Just a lot of sitting in Dornan’s room, waiting for him to be there, and a lot of laying on my back, being fucked. Every day of my life is starting to feel exactly the same, a veritable groundhog day for vengeful whores.

I learn to bite my tongue and not answer back, as impossible as it is for me. Jase is barely around, and when he is, he won’t look me in the eye.

That makes me very, very sad.


I am laying on Dornan’s bed one afternoon, headphones in, bopping my head, listening to the Revenge playlist that Elliot made for me. I’m at “These Boots are made for walkin’” when Dornan bursts in to the room, yelling into his phone.

“It was fucking them!” I hear him growl into the phone, his low voice reverberating in the confined space. “I saw their warehouse. Barrels of pure meth stacked to the ceiling, and they’re the ones importing this shit through the shipping yards.”

I turn down the music, intrigued, but continue to bop my head like I can’t hear anything he’s saying.

“They’re our enemies. Of course they want to fuck me over.”

The person on the other end of the phone says something and Dornan seems placated for the moment.

“Tomorrow we ride,” he says. “Assholes think they can fuck with my kid? My club? I’ll burn that motherfucking warehouse to the ground with them in it.”

He throws the phone down, his entire body tensed. I remove my headphones and slide them under my pillow, along with my pink iPhone. He’s seen it, knows I have it, but I don’t flash it around in case he tries to take it from me.