HJ“Do you have anything about this damn move under control?” I bellowed at Winona. She was shoving clothes into a cardboard box that Carlos, Sebastian, Dante, and I had brought over.“Oh, shut the hell up!” she screamed, holding up a shirt against herself in the mirror as if this was the time to determine what she wanted to pack.“Why the fuck are we doing this today?” I growled at Sebastian. We should have given Winona a year to pack up her stuff because a week wasn’t long enough.Ever the know-it-all, he stood stoically and replied with his arms crossed, “Because it has to be done today.”I didn’t hide my anger as I ripped the shirt from Winona and threw it in the box. “Try shit on later. Throw it in a box, and we’ll carry it down to the moving truck. I got stuff to do tonight, and at this rate, we’ll never be done by then.”She curled her glossed lip at me and peered around my shoulder to see Carlos moving a vase from her table. “Be like Carlos. Do something constructive like pa
WinonaWe got along more than fine.Sebastian moved mountains for me when he needed to.He wasn’t home much, but food was brought in most of the time for me. The dayshe was home, he cooked. Like, gourmet-meal cooked. He made pesto chicken with arugula and prosciutto one night, and I seriously almost took him to bed.We’d lived together two weeks, and the man was pretty much a saint every time he walked in. He removed his shoes, was quiet if he returned at night, cleaned up after me and himself. He even let me watch the shows I wanted to. Georgie always had on the news and wanted to talk politics, and Jimmy wanted to watch porn and do things a teenage girl shouldn’t be doing.Sebastian was incomparable to the others. He was like a Stepford boyfriend.“Want me to change the channel?” I asked one night while he scrolled his phone, sprawled out on the oversize chair near the couch. I realized that a historical romance with a duke telling the main character he wanted to marry her might n
WinonaWe walked around each other on eggshells for a few days after that. He didn’t try anything again. When he left me a couple of days later, he told me to take an SUV out if I needed to, to be careful about where I went.He was trusting me and giving me space when he shouldn’t have.I tried to steer my mind to the fact that Sebastian was here for me, wanted me, and that he trusted me to take control where I wanted to.Still, my mind veered off course and found its way to the man who didn’t want anything to do with me. HJ hadn’t called, hadn’t texted, hadn’t come to visit Sebastian in an effort to see me. He’d avoided everything we were, and now I wondered if it was because he was as broken as me. He’d lost his father by his own hands. The one person he should have been able to rely on made HJ exercise the monster in him in the most brutal way. He protected the family by taking his dad’s life.When I got to Heathen’s Bar, the host greeted me with a smile and waved me in. Every hea
HJI pulled her down into the black hole. It swallowed us up and ate us whole.Our light was gone.She orgasmed in my bar’s bathroom with one lone tear streaming down her face as I tookher heart and soul.I pumped my cock into her almost violently two more times before I buried my seed in her. Our breaths were labored, struggling for life after reaching something way beyond it. I hadn’t come like that with another woman ever.I backed away from her and took in her bruised lips, her wrinkled clothing, her mussed hair, and knew if I couldn’t keep away from her, we were doomed. With her, I only had tunnel vision. I couldn’t see past her blinding light to real threats to the family, couldn’t keep a clear head, and definitely couldn’t put the family first.I’d marked her neck, and the beast in me wanted to do it again and again, to lay by her side and snarl at anyone who looked at her. It didn’t care about anything else.And that was the problem.I was the monster. I had to keep it tog
WinonaIthought seeing HJ with Sebastian would be easier.He stood there in that boutique unscathed by my being there with another man. I was certain he had no true feelings except hate toward me after screaming at me to leave the bar.Not that I cared.Except that I did. Except that I couldn’t stop thinking of him sliding in and out of me, of how his eyes pulled me in, of how my body gravitated toward him and was repelled by anyone else now.He was supposed to care a little too. We were supposed to be bound by our inability to bind to anyone else.So I pushed every one of his red do-not-touch buttons.“Get the fuck back in the dressing room and change,” HJ said in a low voice.“What crawled up your ass?” I put a hand on my hip and waited for an answer.“You’re purposely trying to rub me the wrong way today, Winona.” “Maybe I’m rubbing you just the right way.” I winked at him.One of his massive hands went to the back of his neck, and he pulled on it hard as he sighed up to the ceili
WinonaHe backed away from me after he saw my face. He stared at me with this inquisitive look that seemed mixed with a little fear. I taunted him a bit, telling him to deliver the goods and the home run.He shook his head no and told me to get ready for a night with my friends.Our relationship was wobbling on a balance beam, and neither of us knew which side we wanted it to fall on. He’d started to become my friend, and I didn’t have a lot of those—not men, at least. If we were going to continue down this road, the lines needed to be clearer, and I was sure he felt the same.I let my curls fall loose in the shower and air dried them after. I pulled on a cut-off sweatshirt that hit just below my breasts and some matching pants. It wasn’t a night for me to go all out. It was a night to chill, to try to relax with those that supposedly wanted to be around me.Or it was a night I needed to feel comfortable in my clothes because everything else was going to be uncomfortable.The first kn
Winona“So, you have to go with Sebastian alone?” Brey asked me again, like I was the worst friend in the world a couple days later on the night of the gala.“It’s best just this one time. We’re running late, anyway.”“It’s been more than just one time now, and Jax and I can wait. We have the babysitter all night.”I winced at the reminder that my high school best friend, the one I’d somehow managed to keep by my side all these years, had a child. She had a family. A good one. A solid one.One I would not put in any type of danger.“We’re probably going to run really late, if you know what I mean.” I paced around the counter in Sebastian’s penthouse with my beaded black dress all zipped up, heels clicking on the tile while Sebastian chuckled softly as he read a newspaper.“No, I don’t know what you mean,” she deadpanned, totally and completely knowing what I meant. She was pissed, but my friend had the manners of an etiquette coach. I knew pushing anyone’s boundaries was hard for her.
HJShe wore the dress.It was like the devil himself wanted a damn show and had wrapped her up, helped her get ready, and served her to all of us that night. He was laughing in hell right now. I could almosthear his cackle.She strutted in on Sebastian’s arm. Regal, fuckable, mesmerizing. That dress was a waterfall over her legs, but every curve of them was visible. The beads shimmered under the crystal chandelier light, and her dark stiletto heels elongated her stride down the carpet.I tensed as she looked up at Sebastian and smiled adoringly. It may have been a show, it may not have been.Either way, it didn’t matter.The back of her bound up by that black-as-ink ribbon and the way her ass flared out from her waist, I heard some of the men visibly moan.Fucking breathtakingly beautiful.Feathers and beads and black strings had been wrapped around the most dangerous woman here. The mob and the government were watching. Everyone wanted her for different reasons, but we’d all take