Page 38 of The Rise

“Fuck you!”

“Later. For now, say the words,” I tell her once more. She ignores me, fighting against the hold the guys have on her. I eye her, and she watches me.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she hisses at me.

“I told you I wasn’t letting you go, little rebel. I wasn’t joking when I said it,” I tell her. She keeps tugging, but they don’t let her go, and they’re not going to.

“You didn’t say like this, Hunter!”

“What’s the difference? Either way, you weren’t leaving me.”

“How do you know this is what I want? You’ve only known me a few months.”

“I didn’t ask you what you wanted, Lana. This is how it is. I said you’re mine, and regardless if you say the words or not, you belong to me now.” I see the tears in her eyes but she still doesn’t say them. I shrug my shoulders and turn back to Malcolm.

“With all that I have vested in me, you are now Mr. and Mrs. Gram. Congratulations, Hunter.” The crowd screams and whistles for us, but Lana doesn’t say a word. I reach for her, grabbing her hand in mine and tugging her along with me. We walk down the steps and over to the set of chairs that sit off to the side. Malcolm meets us there and sits in one of the chairs as I sit Lana in the other. She doesn’t stay, of course, my girl tries to run. I smirk and pull her back into me, sitting in the chair and holding her in my arms. I wrap my legs around hers so she can’t kick as I hold her arms down with mine.

“What the hell are you doing now?” she yells. Fuck, she’s making my cock hard.

“Now you will wear the God’s mark,” Malcolm tells her. She tries to jerk free, but I don’t let her go.

“If you move and he fucks it up, I’ll make you pay,” I growl in her ear. That seems to get her attention. Lana breathes heavily as Malcolm tattoos our logo on her chest. For her first tattoo, she’s taking it well, or she’s just highly pissed off at me. Either one is fine by me.

When he’s done and cleans her up, she looks down at her chest. I can feel her sigh as if it’s all settling in now.

Once Malcolm is cleaned up, everyone leaves, ready to go to the party except us. I let Lana loose and she stands from my lapand paces the floor for a second. I know she needs a minute to process this shit, and I’ll give her that.

I stand up and let her pace the floor for a few minutes longer before I tell her it’s time to go.

“Where now?” she asks softly.

“To a party. Then home.”

“Do you even have a home?”

“Chaos is my home,” I tell her. She nods her head and walks toward the car with me right behind her. She doesn’t wait for me to open the door; she just pulls it open herself and climbs in. I love her firey attitude. It’s the Lana I’m falling for. The one who takes no shit and goes after what she wants. That’s the version of Lana I want. The one who slammed another girl's face into a table because she was near me.

I climb in, and we take off, driving away from the chapel and straight toward the party. Rylan let us use his parent’s old house for the party since there’s a pool and a lot of people wanted to swim. I didn’t mind at all.

I pull into the driveway and kill the engine before looking over at her. She’s pissed, and I understand why. This isn’t her world. She wasn’t raised like us and doesn’t know about the society the way we do.

“It’s just how we work, Lana.”

“And?”

“And this is who we are,” I tell her. She turns her head to look at me now.

“How you are, Hunter. Not how I am. Did you bother to think this would be harder for me?”

“Because of your boyfriend?” I ask her, trying to keep my tone as calm as possible when all I want to do is rip her apart for letting him touch her. It doesn’t matter that it was before we met. Lana opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. This is about him. “He’s done, Lana! He’ll never have you again. He won’t touch you, he won’t look at you, and he sure as hell won’t fuck you!”

“You can’t just make all these decisions without me, Hunter!”

“What decisions? He fucking used you, Lana! He didn’t love you, or he wouldn’t have let your brother touch you. He can’t touch you the way I can. He can’t make your heart race the way I do, and he sure as hell can’t fuck you like I do!”

“Is that all this about for you? Sex?” I scrub my hand over my face and sigh.

“No.”

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