Cold Hearted Bastard (Underworld Kings)

“Fuck me, Arlo.”

I groaned and slammed my mouth down on hers, the beast coming alive once more and washing through me. I let go of her throat and gripped her waist, urging her to rise slightly. I grabbed the base of my cock, aligned the tip with her entrance, and then I was pulling her down, both hands on her hips, bruising fingers in her skin.

I tipped my head back and groaned loudly, the noise mixing with her gasp of pleasure and pain. I knew she was sore and told myself to be gentle. Be easy. But as she started riding me, I saw a haze of pleasure and need. I lifted my hips and pulled her down on me, fucked her like she was the air and I was suffocating.

I wanted to come in her again. I wanted to leave a little part of myself inside her like she’d done to me. Galina had worked her way into my body, torn away layer after layer, skinned me alive until I was the most vulnerable I’d ever been. And she didn’t even know it. Would never grasp how naked I was.

“Mine,” I growled right before I took her mouth in a bruising kiss. She clutched at me as if she was afraid I’d ever let her go.

Never.

With Leonid gone, there was only one threat left to get rid of, and that was going to Vegas and finding the men Galina had run from, who’d threatened her, thought they could hurt and use her. I wouldn’t wait. I’d do it right away, take Galina with me, because I couldn’t stand to not have her by my side, my worry for her and the need to protect her too strong to ignore. She’d never be safer than when she was with me.

I was a strong man. An evil man. But for her, I wished I was good and gentle.

I wished I could be someone else entirely.

23

Galina

A handful of days had passed since Arlo claimed me, since I gave myself to a man for the first time.

Since he ruined me for all others and had put an invisible brand on me that deemed me as only his.

Even now I was still thinking about that first time… and the days that followed, how he’d taken me every night in his bed, in the shower, from behind, as I rode him. Being with Arlo was untamed, like we were two animals rutting together, sweaty and desperate, both needing to get off because it would be the final completion of bringing us together.

It had been wild and dirty. It had been aggressive and violent.

It was perfect.

And although all I wanted to do was stay wrapped in that fairy tale where the villain had made me his and I never had to worry about the what-ifs, reality was crashing back into me.

I stared out at the sight of Vegas. It had the same feel for me as it always did. Desperation, longing… hunger. It was a thick, sticky feeling that coated a person from head to toe, trying to suck them in with the flashing lights, the promise of euphoria and pleasure, the lie that if you just stayed a little bit longer, you’d fall in love.

A beautiful lie. For me at least.

But I knew there were the stupid in the world who embraced it all, if only for a moment in time. They’d get lost in how pretty things were on the outside, not knowing that if they dug a little deeper, they’d come to the rotten center. But I’d never been fooled, not when I spent my whole life nestled away in the slums where the beauty of what could be never touched you.

We’d taken a private jet from Desolation to Vegas almost two nights after Arlo killed Leonid. I wanted to tell him it was too soon, to let me think about this, for us to try to figure something else out. It wasn't that I was averse to him taking out Henry. In fact, when I thought about it, this sense of all things right filled me. And that scared me, terrified me that I was comfortable with the grit and destruction that came with the man I loved.

Because the truth was, I was sick in the head because I wanted Henry gone. I wanted my father to see the repercussions of what would happen if he tried to hurt me. I wanted Arlo to show everyone what he was capable of.

I didn’t want to seem weak, never had been in my entire life, but for the first time ever, I felt as if I was cocooned in this bubble, as if I lived this whole other life. Feminists around the world would probably skin me alive at how much I loved the lengths Arlo would go to, to ensure my safety.