Chapter 1
ALICE
You’d thinkthat finding out these men have probably lied to me and are using me just the same as my fath—asGuido—had done in the past would make it harder to climb into bed with them, but apparently, I’m just as depraved as they are. I went from a wallflower—a quiet, nervous virgin who only ever touched her deepest fantasies when the lights were out and no one was around—to this starving thing.
This creature crawling in and out of their beds, letting them ravage me one by one.
The only one of them I haven’t conquered is the king. Hades, the god of death.
Kane.
The one who keeps denying me, and maybe that’s why I can’t let go. Maybe that’s why I feel like I’m losing my mind every time I see him walking around. He must know it. The way he catches my eye and holds me pinned by his gaze for so long that I feel like I’d be willing to drop to my knees and promise anything?
There’s no way this is all happening by accident.
Jesus, I sound bitter. Which,ha, is probably because Iam.
I walked away from the engagement party with a second secret living deep inside me. It split me in half between the would-be misfit falling deeply in love with her four killers and the woman who was itching for a taste of freedom.
But I don’t know what to do with any of it.
I don’t know who to believe or who to trust—including myself.
A small part of me wants to believe Leo because he’s family, and the desperation to have someone on my side from my past is impossible to ignore. But I’m not foolish enough to believe that blood means anything in this world.
All of it makes me feel young and naïve. It makes me feel like I really am that sorry, sheltered little girl Guido kept ignorant of everything.
How quickly I’d fallen under the spell of Kane and his misfits makes me realize how successful Guido really was with his plan.
I want them with every fiber of my being, and the fear that they’re using me or might betray me at any given second isn’t enough to make me turn away. My need for them follows me into my dreams—into strange, sex-laced nightmares that end in sobbing and blood.
I often wake with a scream lodged in my throat and my heart racing and a need to get lost in their arms.
When those nightmares happen, whoever is in bed next to me never asks me about them. They just hold me until I can breathe again and then fuck me until I’m too tired to stay awake.
When it’s Phoenix, it’s slow and powerful. He rolls me onto my hands and knees, forces me to grab the headboard. Then he takes me from behind until I’m a whimpering mess from his slow, rolling hips and his perfect, strong,dangeroushands. We sleep after that with his palm against my lower belly and his nose against my neck like he can keep me from shaking apart that way.
And sometimes it works.
Ariel isn’t as kind, but he’s more possessive. He wants to watch me as I fall apart so he keeps me on my back with my legs spread so wide I can feel my pussy lips part. He watches himself finger me until I can’t take it, and then he fucks me so hard and so fast, I see stars.
He never kisses me during, but sometimes he kisses me after. He places his hand against my throat—not enough to cut off my air, but enough to remind me that he isn’t safe.
And somehow, I sleep even better.
James is different than all of them. He fucks me with the edge of tenderness. There are whispered words of affection on his breath, his stump pressing to my chest, his hand tormenting my clit as his pierced cock drags along the walls of my cunt until I’m shaking.
He loves me.
Iknowhe loves me, beyond the fact that he’s told me.
And there’s something about his love that’s wholly addicting. Maybe it’s the way he likes to share me more than the others do. More than once, he’d make sure we were angled toward the camera, and more than once, Phoenix and Ariel would find their way inside the bedroom to join us.
There’s something powerful about being under their full attention—but there’s something even more powerful about watching them together. Their history, their affection, their fears, their vulnerability. They became different men under each other’s hands, and watching Phoenix hold Ari by the throat and force him to open himself up on his cock shows me a side of Ari I wouldn’t get to see otherwise.
It’s the only time he’s weak. It’s the only time he allows it.
We sleep in a big pile on those nights, and it’s fine, except there’s a gaping hole in the shape of Kane, who refuses to join until the wedding.