Chapter 15: Bash's POV
I was there.
I was leaning against the cold brick in the deepest shadows of the mezzanine, far back from the VIP booths where Miller and the guys were making asses of themselves. I didn't want to be seen. I wanted to watch.
When she stepped onto that stage, my breath hitched so hard it felt like a physical blow to the solar plexus. The tinsel wig was a jagged, neon mess. The makeup was warpaint—aggressive, loud, and intentionally "ugly." She looked like a radioactive glitch.
And I have never wanted her more.
I knew exactly what she was doing. I’d told her months ago how much I hated neon, how it was "noise." This was a middle finger wrapped in lime-green spandex. It was her way of trying to turn me off, to push me away from the "Sugar" she thought I was obsessed with. But the sass, the pure, unadulterated spite in every line of her body? It was intoxicating.
I watched the way the tinsel caught the light as she arched her back. I thought about those white combat boots, and all the filthy, ruined things I wanted to do to her while she was still wearing them. I wanted to strip that neon mesh off her with my teeth. I wanted to see if her skin tasted like the pumpkin cream we’d shared only hours before.
Then I saw him.
Dante. The way he moved into her space after her set made the blood in my veins turn to acid. I stayed back, my pulse thundering in my ears, as I watched them through the hallway gap. I was close enough to see the way she ducked away from him, but I was also close enough to hear Dante as he turned to one of his associates a moment later.
"She’s vibrant, isn’t she?" Dante murmured, his voice smooth and cold. "I think I’m done sharing. I want to own that. Every inch of it."
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. The way Dante carried himself—the stillness, the expensive suits that felt like a uniform—it didn't scream "biusinessman." It screamed "Cartel."
The last shred of my decorum snapped. If he thought he could put a price tag on her, he was dead. But I couldn't move yet. Not here. Not with the cameras.
I followed her.
I kept my car two blocks back, watching the bus through the rain like a predator tracking its prey. I watched her walk to her apartment, her head down, looking small and exhausted. I waited until the lights in her window flickered off. I waited until the silence of the street felt absolute.
The lock on her window was a joke. I was inside her room before the rain had even dried on my jacket.
She was asleep, her red curls splayed across the pillow, the neon makeup mostly scrubbed away but leaving her skin raw and pink. She looked so innocent. So unaware of the war I was willing to start for her.
I didn't wake her. I didn't want her to scream—not yet.
The air in the room was thick with the scent of her—vanilla orchids and warm spices. My pulse was a physical roar in my ears, a rhythmic thrum that matched the heavy, dark possession anchoring me to the floorboards beside her bed.
I stared at the pale expanse of her midriff, the skin glowing like alabaster in the weak moonlight filtering through the blinds. She was so still, so vulnerable, and yet she had spent the night trying to go to war with me through neon spandex and spite. She thought she could turn me off? She thought she could make herself "noisy" enough that I wouldn’t want to claim every single atom of her?
She had no idea.
I reached out, my hand hovering over the heat of her body. My shadow fell over her like a shroud. The adrenaline was a living thing now, coiling tight in my gut, demanding a release that had nothing to do with the "Golden Boy" persona I wore for the cameras.
I unzipped my pants and pulled out my steel cock. I slowly started to work myself, up and down. I imagined it was Sera’s small soft hand on me. Her warm, wet mouth taking me down her throat, eyes filled with tears as I fuck her face with no remorse. She’d look like a whore on her knees for me, but she’d be my whore. No one else would get to see her like that. I was pretty sure no one had ever seen her like that since one drunken night sophomore year Sera told me she was still a virgin and I was 99% confident no one had gone near her under my watch. Thinking of being the first man to take her, to own her had my spine tingling and my balls tightening.I needed to mark her, needed to do something to settle the beast inside me.
When the heat finally spilled over, I angled it towards her like an offering. I watched the liquid settle against the curve of her stomach, stark and white against her skin. I didn't pull away. I leaned down, my breath ghosting over her navel, and used my fingers to spread the warmth. I rubbed it into her skin in slow, possessive circles, feeling the friction and the silkiness of her until the mark was invisible to the eye but branded into her pores.
My DNA was on her now. A literal part of me was sinking into her, a biological claim that Dante or any other suit-wearing bastard could never scrub away.
But as I watched her stir slightly in her sleep, a deeper, more primal hunger took root. My mind skipped past the surface, past the skin, imagining this same heat blooming deep inside her. I could see it—the ultimate conquest. I didn't just want her name or her time; I wanted to fill her. I wanted to see her belly swell with a part of me that she couldn’t hide behind a wig or a pair of glasses.
I wanted to tether her to me with a life we made together, a permanent, living anchor that would ensure she could never run, never dance for anyone else, and never be anything other than mine. A child with her red curls and my ice-blue eyes—the final, irreversible "fuck you" to the rest of the world.
Suddenly Serra moved. I thought I was fucked and she’d wake up and catch me here, ruining our game that had barely begun. But no, she did something even better. In her unconscious state she rolled over and moaned “Bash.”
She was thinking about me. Or she could feel my presence and instead of being scared, she was, dare I hope, turned on? I always knew Sera was the only woman for me, but that solidified it. She liked the golden boy but it was looking like she’d like the midnight beast in me too. I couldn’t wait for her to come face to face with that side of me in the waking world.
Looks like we both had two sides.
I leaned down to carefully kiss her head. "Sleep well, Cupcake," I rasped, my voice a jagged edge in the quiet room. "You're carrying a piece of me now. Soon enough, it’ll be a lot more than just a mark on your skin."
I stood there for another minute, watching the way her breath hitched, savoring the secret I’d left behind. Then, I vanished back into the rain.