Lose Me In The Shadows (Bad Heroes, #2)

by Jo Brenner

To all my readers who asked if this one also has a cliffhanger. Yes.

If Luke were currently capable, he would laugh. Nothing was funny about the current situation, of course. But as an orphan who’d been through so much shit in his life that for a long time it felt like he either needed to laugh or he would kill himself, the fact that he’d just been shot—twice!—in the shoulder by the woman he loved was darkly funny.

He’d betrayed Kara by making her think he was helping her escape, and Kara had betrayed him right back. What made the situation even funnier was that he was the one who’d taught her how to hold a gun; never in a million years had he thought she’d use it on him. Pretty fucking funny. Too bad he was in too much pain and losing too much blood to laugh.

Distantly, he heard the Jeep start up. Was blinded by the head and taillights as Kara peeled out of the long drive and took off. Stop her, he tried to say. Don’t let the bitch leave. But the words wouldn’t come. He was too busy dying. Mo...

“You asked if I was scared of heights. I’m not. I’m scared of failing. If I think I’m going to, I get…anxious, and it’s like that panic is a wave and I get sucked into its undertow and thrashed around.”

“If she’s not safe… if something happened to her… I’ll finish the job she started.”

“You’re ours. No matter what you do, no matter who you hurt, you belong to us.”

“This bathroom is swanky,” she said. “You must owe Marcus a whole hell of a lot.” “You have no idea,” Conor laughed, going to a drawer and pulling out hair dye. “We’re going to have to give him our firstborn child.”

“Never thought I’d say this, but the thought of putting a baby in you makes me want to bend you over the sink and fill you up.”

I am sorry for hurting you or making you feel like you didn’t matter. When I say I want you, Kara, it’s not just for your pussy. It’s all of you: the good, the bad, and the bitchy. I am sorry for hurting you, but that doesn’t mean I’m giving you up. That’s for selfless, self-sacrificing men, and you wouldn’t want that anyway.”

“I can want to keep you and be sorry I hurt you at the same time. I wish you could admit you’re sorry for hurting us, too—and that you want to be kept.”

Does your anger keep you safe, really? her inner voice asked, not shit stirring, just curious. Or is it just a habit at this point? It certainly didn’t help you at the Black Ops site. Touché.

“Oh, filthy girl, I don’t have to make you. You’re going to do it yourself because you’re my dirty little slut and want it so badly. You’re going to bend over the counter and grab onto the sink, and I’m going to fuck you while you’re bared to me—all of you. Fill you up with my come until you’re dripping and Micah and Luke can smell me all over you. Breed you. You want that, don’t you? I can see your thighs clenching.”

“I missed this,” he growled. “I missed my pussy. Was terrified I’d never see it again—and that it was my fault.”

Wow, was he an asshole. Insightful, but still an asshole.

“I don’t care if you’re the richest man in the world, or that we owe you seventeen favors,” he said, voice filled with icy rage. “Either of you say a word like that again, and I will rip both your dicks off your bodies and force feed you each other’s. You hear me.”

She felt so tight, and she still fit him perfectly, like her pussy had been shaped exactly to fit his cock inside her, two meant-to-be puzzle pieces. He hated her a little for that. He hated himself more.

“Ride me. Make love to me like you want to twist my heart up into pieces and then rip it into shreds. You’re good at that.”

“Sit, Kara, don’t hover over me. I want you to smother me with your pussy while I stick my cock deep down your throat.”

Even if you hate me. I’d rather spend the rest of my life with you, knowing you hate me, than a lifetime without you.”

“And the most fucking terrifying thing in the world that I have ever faced is the painful truth that I don’t want to run from the three of you. Not anymore.”

“How about we do something different for once. Instead of beating each other to a pulp and then fucking it out, we could try talking about our feelings.”

Keeping an eye on them, Conor went to the nightstand. And yeah, there was a bottle of lube in the drawer, because Marcus was like the Hugh Hefner of hosts.

You’re still there, stuck on that wall, terrified of failing and too paralyzed to take the leap.

Love, to Kara, meant pain. So she’d run from even the possibility of it, and never stopped running—not until a month or so ago, when she’d been caught by the very men she’d run from.

And wasn’t there something incredibly fucked up about her for finding his words equally aggravating and reassuring? For both wanting to be free—and wanting to be kept? How had that happened? Had they successfully Stockholmed her, fake as the syndrome was? Or had she changed?

Her men had changed her…but she’d changed them, too. The thought froze her. Her men. Hers. They were hers.

She should investigate that feeling, deeply, maybe with a therapist. Because either she’d become a violent person recently based on her experiences… …or it had always been latent in her, waiting to be woken up.

“You’re so beautiful like this, baby girl,” he told her. “I want a lifetime of this with you.”

“Do you know how much I want you? Every second, of every day, I think about being inside you, being with you.”

“I know you worry that all I want is your pussy, but I don’t just want the pussy. What I want is the woman.”

Kara never cried. She hadn’t cried when her parents got divorced, she hadn’t cried when Chris ruined her life, or when his wife called her a whore. But this man, with the ache in his voice, threatened to set off tears she’d successfully kept at bay for so long.

“Not how good your pussy feels, how good my pussy feels. Because she belongs to me, and so do you—even if you don’t want to. Even if the idea of belonging to me makes you stubborn, my pussy is mine to please and my woman is mine to protect. No matter how angry she makes me, no matter how many ways I fuck up with her, she’ll always belong to me—and I’ll always belong to her.”

Belong. It was scarier than being owned. Could this be real?

“Luke, don’t⁠—” “Lie? I’m not lying. You not believing it doesn’t make it a lie....

Sweet baby girl. A claim on her from all of them. Kara swallowed, then nodded.

She wasn’t in control of her body anymore—but she was in control of theirs. And she fucking loved every second of it. Was this what a power exchange was really about, when it was healthy and non-toxic? If so, put it in her fucking veins. It hurt so good.

God, men were gross. And stupid.

Billionaires, she decided, were much stupider and grosser than the average man.

Micah sighed, stretching. Kara clocked the skin that showed between his pants and tight shirt, the smear of blood on his Adonis belt. “Well, we got what we needed. Time to clean up this mess.” Who was the woman who wanted to crawl across the floor and lick it off? Dear god, not her.

There was a difference between men punching someone for hurting you, being protective, and literally torturing and killing some pathetic asshole for attempted assault. And yet—that they cared this much, that all someone had to do was touch her and they’d die… …that was power she’d never imagined for herself. It was bad, dark, messy power, but power all the same.

She swallowed. She wanted to hate the symbol of it. She wanted hate herself, because the smell of blood should make her want to puke. And it did, it did! But it also made her want to fuck. It was their fault. They’d marred her, changed her, corrupted her… …and she loved it.

Micah marveled at how his baby girl could be both a strong ass, take no shit, manipulative and violent woman, and a spoiled sex princess.

“Open up, generous girl,” Conor murmured. “Make me,” Kara taunted, power and sass in her voice—along with the desire to be forced.

“You do like the blood. You like that they’re bloody because they were punishing someone for hurting you. When we get Chris, we’ll fuck all over his dead body. You want that, don’t you, sweetheart?”

This. This was what he wanted. The four of them together, bound tight by not only desire, but by love. He’d once thought of Kara as the glue that would hold the four of them together, and he’d been right—this proved it. But she was more than that; she was, as he’d told her not so long ago, everything.

Fuck, she was planning for the future. Did wedding registries and picking out a dog from the shelter come next?

She’d killed a man. Coldly. Without deliberation, remorse, anything.

Kara, who’d never once belonged to anyone, and had told herself she never wanted to, wanted to belong to this man.

“You put anything phallic in that mouth without our permission, and I swear to god, I will edge you so hard, you’ll never remember a time you weren’t crying. You let another cock near you that isn’t one of ours, and you get to watch while we slice it off and feed it to its owner. Understood, troublesome girl?”