Society of Psychos (Dead Men Walking, #2)

by Caroline Peckham

This book is dedicated to unleashing your inner crazy… The world demands you to be sane, but let’s all board the crazy train. Be wild! Be free! Shake your ass at a tree. Hoot to an owl, hit a melon with a trowl. Hug a goat, milk a cat, wave a coconut at a bat. Dig a hole and meet a mole, have a real ol’ fancy rigamarole. Throw a party and invite a bunch of moths, make them tiny invitations out of tablecloths. Go wherever the wind blows, and feel the sand between your toes. You get one life, so don’t waste it playing small. Be the biggest badass of them all.

I couldn’t figure out why Mateo had come here, wasn’t I just his BFF BJ buddy? Hadn’t he just been using my mouth for pleasure like Niall had said, and really, I meant nothing to him at all?

“Glove.” She still hadn’t even noticed I addressed her as if she were winter handwear instead of using an endearment, and I was all giggly over the fact, so I even managed to give her a smile.

I frowned, trying to think of an enemy that this ferocious creature couldn’t take on. I heard koalas could be pretty aggressive. Maybe a pack of those could take him down, especially if they were friends with a few muscly kangaroos. We’d better stay away from Australia.

“Me pones tan duro, quiero matar a todos los demás hombres en este mundo, así que soy el único que queda en la tierra para complacerte.”

“I wish I wanted that woman, it would be so much fuckin’ easier, you know that? But I don’t give a fuck about that bitch and her fake tits. The only girl I care about is you. Even when you piss me off, or drive me to insanity or give my weapons incorrect names, because you are the only person in the world who’s ever made sense to me. The only one who can answer my ramblings with ramblings of her own, the only one who would give a fuck about things that I give a fuck about. Like the fact that sharks have two penises.”

“Don’t turn away from me like I’m some mistake you made or some burden to you. Everyone I’ve ever known has always seen me as one of those things or another, Hellfire, but never you. Never before this.”

“They’re just pain pills, love,” I promised. “I don’t want you hurting for me over this.”

“This is a symbol of that promise I made ya, love. Always and forever. Here’s the proof of that, and if I ever break it, I want you to drive this knife into my worthless heart in payment, you understand?”

“So do you,” I growled. “And this is me proving it. You matter more than my fear of what my love might cost you. You matter more than my insecurities about not being enough for you or being a burden on your heart. You matter more than the family who I have been forced to stay loyal to for my entire hellish life and you matter a whole lot more than some fucking Russian woman who I’ve been told I have to marry.”

“I want to marry ya because I see everything I am and everything I could ever want to be in you, Spider. You wake me up when the darkness presses in on me and you don’t shy away from the bloodiest, most brutal pieces of my being. Yer a mirror to my cracked and splintered soul but you’re also something so much purer than I could ever hope to be. You’re wild and free and endlessly beautiful because you don’t give a single fuck about what anyone in this boring world has to say about what is right and normal and you just do you. You shine so bright that I haven’t been able to look away from you for a single second since I first laid eyes on ya. I don’t want to look away. And if I can offer you any piece of happiness in this world which is too often filled with bad then I want to do that. I want you smiling and dancing in the rain and barefoot in bloody puddles. I want you crying and raging and all the things in between which make your heart pump faster and your electric eyes spark. I want you gasping my name as I hold you tight in my arms and offer you every broken piece of me to do with as you will, Spider. I just want you. So the question is, do you want me too?”

“Anything you say, wife. I’m yours to command,”

That was what was real. Me and him and a house far, far away where two beautiful, twisted souls and my cuddly pooch were waiting for me to come home.

A wild laugh tore from my lungs and I clutched my sides as I fell completely apart, watching my madman of a husband slapping his huge, inked hands down on Esteban’s ass and playing a pretty neat tune with surprising skill.

“Being with you is a pleasure like nothing I have ever known. Donde sea que estés, quiero estar.”

“Wow,” Brooklyn breathed from the backseat. “It looks like two mansions got together for an orgy with another two mansions, and then all of them had quadruplets and then they all bought really big dogs and then they all kinda squished themselves together to become a mega mansion.”

Mateo cursed, too slow to avoid a little snappy as Brutus chewed on his arm. It was so cute how much they loved each other.

“Who’s shooting at us?” I asked in confusion as we made it to the stairs. “Fuck if I know,” Niall growled. “I’ll be sure to ask ‘em when they’re dead though, love.”

My heart panged as I accepted that that was what we were now. A bonded unit. Dead Man, Hellfire, AJ, Bruty-tooty and little old me.

“Eres mi sol. Eres mi luz en la oscuridad. Nunca me dejes,” he snarled and my soul rumbled with the power of his words. “Does that mean…you’re mad? And you’d like a cookie?” I translated. “No,” he hissed through his teeth. “It means, you are my sun, my light. And I command that you don’t ever leave me.”

“Oh, I don’t really like to run. I prefer to get my cardio from riding huge men.”

“The problem is, I want you like that too much, chica,” I swore to her. “And that kind of desire only makes me more dangerous. You saw the way Niall had to force me off of you. You experienced the force of my passion when it is unleashed. I couldn’t live in a world without you, mi sol, I couldn’t bear to be the reason you were lost to it.”

“I want to love you, mi sol,”

“Te amo más que a cualquier otra cosa en este mundo.” “I could eat a pineapple too,” Brooklyn gasped and I couldn’t help but laugh, an honest to shit smile on my face as I held her in my arms and fucked her sweetly and slowly, relishing the feeling of us joining together and building to a high unlike anything I had ever even thought to claim before.

I smiled at her, unable to help myself and getting lost in the depths of her eyes once more.

“You saved me, chica loca,” I said. “Only you could calm that darkness in me and make it anew the way you have.”

The sound of footsteps close on my heels made the small hairs along the back of my neck stand on end and suddenly, I wasn’t alone anymore. A pack of heathens walked at my back, their loyalty somehow surprising and yet not so all at once. There was so much between us. So many hurts and hates and bitter resentments, but there was something else growing there too. A kinship of sorts which revolved around mi sol and the darkness which lay inside each of us. We were a work of art crafted from the messiest of strokes, coloured with brushes dipped in blood and yet somehow, there was beauty in what we were becoming.

Brooklyn replied, her voice dropping into that sultry, sexy tone which always had the three of us panting over her and I cleared my throat.

I would rip and tear and destroy my way to her if that was what it took to get there. Nothing would stop me from doing so. Not even death itself. I was coming for my sweet obsession and all she had to do was hold on until I made it.

Bloodshed, carnage, mayhem and us. That was all I never knew I needed, and all I’d ever want now. Just me, her, a feral dog and two bloodthirsty arseholes who loved her beyond the point of sanity too. And that was all I desired in this world of chaos, our own little home in the storm.

“You freed me, Brooklyn,” he panted. “From every shackle that has ever been wrapped around my soul. Gracias, chica loca. Te amo más de lo que amo el sabor de la muerte.”

We were one entity. One guild. A Society of Psychos. And long may we reign.

I gritted my teeth and squeezed his hand so fucking tight that I was likely to break bones, holding his gaze while I was pegged by the love of my life as she took the cock of the violent criminal we’d set loose on the world. And if that wasn’t a happily ever after, then I didn’t know what the fuck else one might look like.