Sweet Retribution (Ruthless Games Book 2)

Beside me, Ryland makes a strangled noise in his throat.

It’s the only sound I hear. The orchestra has faded away, and the hubbub of surprised voices around us is swallowed up by the rushing in my ears. I feel Theo stiffen beside me as he catches sight of Marcus too, and then all three of us move at once.

There are people standing between us and the doorway as they stare at the newest arrivals, but just like the music and the voices, those people seem to have faded into non-existence. Maybe I walk around them, maybe I walk fucking through them, I don’t know. All I know is that I need to get to Marcus.

To touch him.

To make sure he’s not a mirage or a hallucination.

My pulse picks up with every step I take, my heartbeat an insistent drum in my chest, and when I’m just two yards away, I open my mouth to speak.

But before the words can escape my lips, another figure finally breaks through the pinpoint focus I have on Marcus. Victoria, the girl I remember from the church, steps up beside him. She’s dressed in a blood red gown with a train that trails behind her, and her shoulder brushes against his as she looks straight at me.

It’s that look, that hard-edged, cool stare that brings me up short.

Instead of throwing myself into Marcus’s arms like I intended to, my footsteps stumble to a halt just a few feet from him.

His breathtaking multicolored eyes are still fixed on me, but I can’t seem to stop my gaze from bouncing back and forth between him and Victoria.

Something isn’t right.

Something is wrong.

Marcus’s face is a bit thinner than I remember, and a little paler too. His angular features, strong brow, and straight nose are just as beautiful as they’ve ever been, but something in his eyes makes my stomach tighten painfully.

“Marcus.” Ryland’s voice is a low rumble beside me, shock resonating through the word. It deepens and hardens as he adds, “Victoria.”

The girl with the green eyes and auburn hair styled in an elegant updo smiles, although there’s not an ounce of warmth in her expression. “Ryland. Theo.” Her gaze turns to me. “And you must be Ayla. I saw you at the church.”

“What the fuck is going on?” Theo’s voice resonates with suspicion. I feel him edge a little closer to me, as if he’s trying to physically protect me.

Victoria shrugs elegantly. “What’s the matter, Theo? I thought you’d be glad to see your friend isn’t dead.” Her smile widens, and she wraps one delicate hand around Marcus’s arm. “I hope you’ll at least congratulate us on our engagement.”

Marcus’s jaw ticks, his body stiffening.

The ring on her left hand glints in the light.

I stare at it, transfixed by the gleaming princess-cut jewel as all the blood seems to leave my body, replaced with… nothing.

There’s nothing inside me.

I’m empty.

I step backward, nearly tripping over the hem of my dress in my haste to escape. Ryland reaches for me, but shock has slowed his movements, and I slip from his grasp. Whirling around, I stride away as fast as I can, nearly running as I weave my way through the bodies in the crowded room. I don’t know where I’m going. It doesn’t even fucking matter.

Anywhere but here.

I need to get out of this ballroom, away from the hum of voices and the soft strains of the music. Away from Victoria. Away from the truth that grips my heart like an iron fist.

Marcus is back.

But he’s no longer mine.

Tears sting my eyes, blurring my vision as I finally make my way through the thick of the crowd, slipping through an arched doorway and down a long corridor. I turn left when I reach another hallway, reaching out to steady myself against the wall as my legs shake.

I can’t breathe. Or maybe I am breathing, and my lungs have just gone numb.

I don’t understand. I don’t fucking understand.

“Angel. Wait!”

Marcus’s voice behind me hits me like a heavy weight, making my already weak knees threaten to give out. The sound of the nickname he gave me on his lips plucks a chord in my heart, but I don’t turn around.

“Fuck.”

I hear his low curse behind me, and a second later, a hand wraps around my arm, dragging me sideways. He yanks open a door that lines the hallway and pulls me inside, slamming it shut behind us and enclosing us in the space. It’s a small laundry room, with shelves full of sheets and towels and other household items. A washer and dryer sit in the corner, shiny and new.

Marcus stands in front of the door with his hand still resting on the handle. His grip is tight, and I realize with a start that he’s not just holding the door handle—he’s leaning on it, as if he needs the assistance to stay upright.

Of course he fucking does. He was shot two weeks ago.

The shock that’s been working its way through my system finally releases its death-grip on my tongue.

“You’re… you’re alive,” I choke out.

“Yes.” His voice is low.

“How?”

His jaw muscles ripple as he clenches his teeth. He looks even more haggard and worn out than Ryland and Theo have for the past two weeks, and there’s a rasp to his voice that I don’t remember being there before.

“Victoria.” He finally releases the doorknob, taking a step closer to me. “She found me. After Carson shot me. She killed him and dragged me away. She had a car parked between buildings and got me inside it.”

A memory flashes through my mind—a streak of blood leading away from the place where I woke up, fading out and then disappearing entirely. That must’ve been where Victoria got him into her car.

My gaze refocuses on Marcus as he continues, my teeth clamped so tightly around my lower lip that it hurts.

“I was bleeding out in her back seat,” he grits out, his mesmerizing gaze boring into mine. “Three bullets in my back. She offered me life, angel. She said she’d save me if I agreed to marry her.”

“And you accepted her bargain.” I force the words out past unwilling lips.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Marcus is alive. He’s alive.

The thing I prayed for, that I hoped for even when it seemed nearly impossible, is true.

So why do I feel like my heart is breaking?

“Yeah.” He nods, his face unreadable. “I did.”

“That’s…” I swallow, licking my lips. “That’s good. You should—”

Marcus growls, closing the space between us in three strides. His steps are a little uneven, and he grimaces in pain as his large hand wraps around my jaw, cutting my words off.

“No.” He sounds tortured. “Don’t fucking finish that thought, angel. Nothing about this is good.”

His hand is shaking, and I can’t tell if it’s from the effort of staying upright or the violent emotions cascading through him. His pupils are blown out, overtaking the blue and brown of his irises as his features twist with agony.

“There have been dozens of times over the past two weeks when I wished I hadn’t done it,” he says harshly. “When I wished I’d told her to go fuck herself and died in her goddamn back seat.”

He bares his teeth, his grip on my jaw tightening as he takes another step closer to me, his chest brushing against mine. He’s dressed in a tux just like the other men are, but not even a tuxedo can make this man look civilized.

He’s wild.

Rough.

Untamed.

His voice drops to a low murmur as he gazes down at me, a torrent of emotions raging through his expression. “But I couldn’t do that. I could never do it. I couldn’t let myself die without at least trying to live, Ayla. Because I had to come back to you.”

My breath catches, my heart pounding so hard and fast in my chest that it rattles my entire rib cage. A traitorous tear slips from the corner of my eye and slides down my cheek. “But you didn’t come back to me. You can’t.”

Something sparks in his eyes. Something feral and possessive and dangerous.

His arm wraps around me, his palm meeting the bare skin exposed by the plunging back of my dress, and he tugs me tight against him.

He’s hard. His cock throbs against my lower belly, hot and demanding as he stares into my eyes.

This man can barely stand, and yet he’s hard as a rock.

For me.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, he lowers his face the last few inches, closing the small distance between us. When his lips brush against mine, all the dead pieces inside of me spark back to life, my entire body responding to that featherlight touch.

“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough, angel,” he murmurs, his lips ghosting over my skin with each word. “When I said you were mine, I fucking meant it. And I’m yours.”

As if that last word is the spark that lights the flame, he crushes his lips against mine, kissing me with such ferocity that I stumble back a step. He comes with me, following me until we crash into the shelving unit behind me. With the shelves at my back, there’s nowhere else for me to go, and Marcus takes full advantage of that fact, kissing me even harder as his body grinds against mine.

My lip is cut, or maybe his is.

Blood flavors our kiss, and the coppery tang of it reminds me of the blood that caked my body when I woke up on the ground in the warehouse district. It reminds me of the warm, wet feeling of Marcus bleeding out on top of me.

It reminds me of how fucking fragile we both are, how tenuous life is.

We’re nothing but blood and bone, and it takes so little to end us.

But Marcus is here.

He’s here.

I wrap my arm around him, sliding my hand up to scratch at his scalp and tug on his thick brown hair.

“You’re here.”

I gasp the words into his mouth as our bodies collide with desperate movements, writhing and grinding against each other like we could each somehow disappear into the other person.

That’s what I want.

I want Marcus to swallow me up.

I want to lose myself in him.

I want our bodies to fuse into one so that no one can ever fucking take him from me.

He tears his lips away from mine, grabbing my hair by the roots and tugging my head back to expose the soft line of my neck. His mouth trails hot kisses down the column of my throat before his teeth scrape over my collarbone, his tongue darting out to lick away the sting.

When he bites down hard on the place where my neck and shoulder meet, I let out a muffled scream as sensation explodes inside me, my clit throbbing hard and fast. He doesn’t let go, just clamps his lips around my skin and sucks in long, deep pulls, making my eyes roll back in my head.

He’s marking me, I realize.

He’s staking his claim.

But more than that, he’s doing exactly what I wished he would. He’s trying to consume me.

I groan, hooking a leg around his waist as the fabric of my dress slides up. It hurts. He’s bruising my neck, and I can feel every bit of it. But I don’t fucking want him to stop.

His hips thrust into me, and he grunts against my skin like an animal, his hands roaming possessively over my body. He squeezes my breasts through the dress, then slides his large hands around to the back again, delving them under the fabric of the low-cut back to palm my ass.

Finally, he releases my skin with a wet pop, and the rush of blood through my veins makes me almost dizzy.

“I will always come back to you, angel. Do you understand that?” he murmurs, breathing hard as he gazes down at me. His eyes are almost entirely black, and he looks more like a devil than a man in this moment.

My devil.

My man.

I nod in response, unable to form words. I swear I can feel every minute I spent mourning him, missing him, needing him. Each one of those minutes fuels me as I pull him toward me to kiss him again.

He hauls me away from the wall, and the two of us stumble across the room, groping and panting and moaning. When my ass hits the washing machine, we jolt to a stop, mouths still locked together.

“I need to be inside you, angel.” Marcus’s words are a tortured rasp. “I need to be fucking sure you’re real.”

I know how he feels.

My skin is marked and bruised by him, my hair ruined and my pulse racing, but it still feels a little like I’m kissing a mirage.

Like he’ll vanish if I let go of him for even a second.

Like he’ll disappear into thin air.

Reaching between us, I fumble for the button and fly of his pants. As soon as I get them open, I shove my hand inside, relishing the feel of velvet steel against my palm.

Marcus growls, like he’s pissed I got my hand between his legs before he got his between mine. But he must not be that mad, because he thrusts into my palm, fucking my hand with harsh, uneven strokes.

Then he pulls away from me, stepping back so fast it leaves my body reeling. He grabs my hips and spins me around, folding me in half over the washing machine. The cool metal shocks the bare skin of my arms and chest, and a breathless gasp falls from my mouth as he fists the material of my dress and shoves it up around my waist, leaving my bottom half covered by nothing but my flimsy thong.

His sharp, desperate movements slow, although I can still feel him breathing heavily behind me as he takes in the sight of me like this. He was in a hurry a second ago, but now that he’s got me where he wants me, he seems determined not to rush.

“Mine.”

The sound is a low rumble, almost a purr. His calloused hands slide up my thighs, gripping and massaging my ass cheeks, spreading them apart, digging his fingers into the firm flesh. His thumbs slide under the waistband of my panties, and then he grabs the lacy material and shreds it off my body, hurling it away.

I don’t know where my ruined panties end up. I can’t focus on that, because his hands are on me again, hotter and more demanding than before. He groans again, kneading my flesh like he’s trying to bend it to his will, like he’s trying to alter the very form and shape of me.

The side of my face presses against the top of the washer as my eyelids droop, sensation ricocheting through my body. My fingertips latch on to the edge of the sleek machine, gripping tightly as I arch my back slightly, shoving my ass back toward Marcus.

“Fuck, angel.”

There’s a rustling of clothes as he pushes his pants down, and then I feel the smooth head of his cock against my ass. He shifts his stance slightly, grabbing my hip with one hand as he presses his hips forward, sliding his cock through my wet folds. His thick length brushes against my clit, and I clamp my lip between my teeth, whimpering softly.

He does it again, pulling back and sliding slowly forward, fucking my slit without ever breaching my entrance.

It’s torture.

It’s too much and not enough all at once, and I press back against him harder, moving my hips to try to draw him inside my body.

But his grip on me tightens, stilling my movement. One broad hand traces the line of my bare spine all the way to where the fabric bunches at my lower back as his cock slides through my pussy lips again.

“Do you want this? Do you want me?”

His tone is full of a filthy, beautiful promise.

“Yes,” I gasp out, so far beyond lying that I’d tell him any fucking truth he wanted to know right now.

Our loud, harsh breaths are still filling the small room, and I can feel the tension in his body, the effort it’s taking him to hold back. He wants to be inside me. He needs to be inside me.

But he won’t give either of us what we need until he’s ready.

“Are you mine, angel?” he demands. “Do you believe that?”

“Yes.”

There’s no hesitation. No hint of doubt in my voice. And it’s not just because I want him to fuck me so badly I’m literally shaking. It’s because I do believe it.

I hate that it took him almost dying to break down the last of my walls, but everything I felt when he was gone burns in my chest ten times stronger now that he’s here with me again.

I’m done pretending this thing between us makes sense.

I’m done pretending it needs to.

Marcus hums in satisfaction, stroking his cock through my folds again and coating himself in my slick arousal. His hand skates up my spine again, destroying what’s left of my updo as he grabs a fistful of my hair.

“And am I yours?” he murmurs roughly. “Tell me I’m yours.”

Now I do hesitate.

The words sit on my tongue, trapped behind my lips as I suck in air through my nose.

I saw the fucking ring.

I saw the look in Victoria’s eyes.

Marcus tugs my hair sharply. I gasp, tears springing to my eyes as all my focus rushes back to him. To the feel of his body looming behind mine, his cock so close to where I need him. To the electric current that passes between us, so strong I swear my skin must be sparking.

“Say it, angel,” he rasps. “Say it and fucking mean it.”

“You’re mine!” I shout. My body is shuddering, already so close to an orgasm that I can feel the warm wave spreading through my limbs. I bump my ass harder against him, punishing him just like he’s punishing me, feeding the desperate need inside both of us. “You’re fucking mine, all right? You’re mine! You’re mine! You’re mi—”

The last word is driven from my lips as Marcus draws back and then pitches his hips forward, filling me in one hard thrust. Our bodies slam into the washing machine, drawing out an unholy screech as the heavy appliance moves a little, grating across the floor.

We both stop moving for a second, lost in the feel of our bodies connected like this.

Joined.

United.

Irrevocably one.

Marcus lets out a barrage of muttered curses, his cock pulsing inside me as it stretches my inner walls. My body knows this feeling, recognizes the shape and size of him, and I squeeze hard around him as if I’m welcoming him home.

He curses again, finally drawing out and beginning to thrust in short, sharp strokes.

One hand is still wrapped around my hair, the other holding on to my hip, as his pelvis slaps against my ass, filling the little room with the debauched sounds of our fucking.

He shouldn’t be doing this. He took three bullets just over two weeks ago, and I could see in the way he held himself earlier that he’s weak. In pain.

But I know he wouldn’t stop even if I told him to.

And there’s no way in hell I’m going to tell him to.

My legs have turned to jelly, and the only thing holding me up anymore is the washer and Marcus’s firm grip on me. Pleasure is building to a glorious peak inside me, and when Marcus pulls out, I actually scream in fury.

“I have to see you,” he grunts. “I have to look at you.”

He pulls me upright, spinning me around to face him before heaving me onto the washing machine. I try to help him, bracing my hand against the top to lift some of my weight. I can see him grimace with the effort, and his face looks a little paler than it did before.

This is costing him, hurting him, but still, he doesn’t stop.

As soon as my ass is perched on the edge of the washer, he guides his cock to my entrance again, sliding in like he resents every second we had to be apart. The change of angle makes him hit a new spot inside me, and I hook my legs around his waist, looping my arm around his neck as he grabs my face in both hands.

His thrusts before were hard and fast, but now every movement in and out is slow—as if he knows he’s close to coming, and he’s trying to literally slow down time, to draw every bit of this out as long as he can.

Earth and air stare back at me as I gaze into his eyes, lost in their depths and everything I see there.

“Come with me, angel,” he whispers, a plea in his voice as he buries himself inside me again. “Come with me.”

And I do.

Just because he told me to.

Because I’m his and he’s mine.

My pussy clenches around him as pleasure breaks through me, and he grunts, his cock jerking and swelling as he empties himself in my womb.

My eyelids flutter, my vision going blurry at the edges, but I don’t look away from Marcus’s face. I watch every emotion that plays over his features as he comes, and I let him see every one of mine.

And for the first time since I met him, it doesn’t feel like either of us is hiding a single goddamn thing.