Furore (The Night Skulls MC #1)(32)

“If the mark I left on you isn’t enough to make you understand you’re mine, I’ll have to claim you some other way, baby. I can’t promise I’ll be gentle the next time, though.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come tomorrow, and you’ll never have to know. Wear something pink.”





CHAPTER 20


Jo



My body loved the threat. My brain screamed at me to run for the hills. There was a thrill to the forbidden and a kick in breaking the rules. To be the object of desire to someone who didn’t take no for an answer that he’d destroy anything in the way to have you, even you. To want what you couldn’t have, to crave what destroyed you.

I had that with Ty. Why would I want it again with Laius?

It had to stop. No matter how much I wanted him, I couldn’t repeat the same mistake and expect a different result. Furore and I would end the same way Ty and I did. In pain, tears and heartbreak. The only way.

I refused to remain in that narrative when I was treated as property only to be disowned later. A disgrace. Something to be used for twisted men’s pleasure and then tossed away when they were done. I’d learned my lesson, which I should have learned way earlier, even before Ty, because I saw what happened to the women who did that. I refused to become like my mother. I wasn’t Madeline Kelly, and I wouldn’t meet the same destiny.

I didn’t care if the thought of Laius alone made me smile or that his touch was the only source of happiness there was in my life when I was certain I was going to be alone forever, trapped in a bleak life enforced by the danger that would always surround me.

I didn’t care if he said he was going to protect me because even if he’d proven he was capable, even if I believed he meant it now, once he was done with me—and he would because that was what my father did to Mom and what Tirone did to me despite their promises—I’d be in danger again and piling up more heartaches.

You couldn’t overlook all the red flags and expect something good to come out of it, right? Declan Larvin was a mafia boss, a criminal who broke the law and took lives on a daily basis, not to mention he was a cheater. How could Mom have expected he would have protected her or me?

And I, an idiot who repeated her mistake falling for another toxic man, boy, who at seventeen wasn’t afraid of breaking the law—and I didn’t just mean sleeping with his teacher—who constantly used me for his pleasure, whispering false and dark promises in my ears, manipulating me emotionally to keep me while he’d been planning a disappearing act all along. How could I have expected him to live up to such promises of love, protection and forever?

Furore, although different from those two men because he’d demonstrated several acts of both honesty and chivalry, wasn’t any less toxic. He was an outlaw and one of those who took what they wanted whenever they wanted. How could I expect his promises to last as long as I, not he, wanted them to last?

We had our fun, Furore and I, but that was it. That was why I was here at the gates, filling another form to visit him. He had to know, face to face, it was over.

As I walked down the hallway after the security check, I practiced my speech. I needed to be firm so he’d know I was determined to—

A hand grabbed me and pulled me toward a side door swinging open. My heart stopped, and so did my brain for a second. Then I recognized the tattoos on the arm.

The door closed behind us as he pulled me into the pitch black room. “Furore, what the hell?”

“Is what the hell very creative, Miss Meneceo? I know you can do better than that.” His lips crashed down on my mouth and claimed mine.

Giddy, too lost in the swirl of emotions showering me in that kiss, our first kiss, I forgot everything I’d practiced to say to him. I forgot the reason I came here and all the lectures I’d been giving myself all the way. All fear and danger and logic abandoned me. All that was left was hunger and need that could only be fulfilled by Laius’s lips.

His hand held me by the back of my neck, as if I were a cat he was petting, but he didn’t tangle his fingers in my hair as he pulled me tight against his hard body. Did he know that wasn’t my hair?

I couldn’t wonder or ask because my whole attention was consumed by the tongue slipping past my lips, taking without permission. My mouth parted wider in surrender. The part of me I’d been fighting all night and all day, the part that wanted him to have every inch of me he desired, to be used for his pleasure, to submit to his dominance no matter how toxic, triumphed over everything else.

In that kiss, I fell backwards. In his lips I drowned back into my old ways, and I didn’t give a shit.

DIRTY SLUT.

“I wanna see you,” he groaned, his hand leaving my neck. Light flooded the room as he flipped a switch, and I was grateful for my sunglasses.

I took in the place and realized we were in some sort of a holding cell. Then my heart dipped when I discovered we weren’t alone. There was a guard in the room.

“Don’t pay attention to him. He’s good,” Laius said.

“Good? What do you mean good?”

“It means for the next fifteen minutes, he’s guarding us.”

“In exchange for what? Watching?” I was sick to my stomach.

The guard cleared his throat and gave us his back. Then he pretended to be busy with his phone.