Page 61 of The Pretty Psycho

I probably needed this more than anything else right now, and I could not explain why.

My finger traced the single line on his pec, looking straight into his eyes.

"Does it hurt?"

"Nothing you do could ever hurt me, Bambi," he said. "Not a single thing." But I knew that one thing could hurt him, the very same thing that could hurt me if he ever tried to leave me. I drewthe blade of the knife back up, creating aVright on top of his pec.

I didn't stop there, I couldn't, and focusing on his pec and that dusted brown nipple was easier than looking into his eyes as I carved my entire name into his skin, marking him forever as mine. I could feel his eyes on my profile as I finished theA, running my fingers through the spilled blood and feeling him shudder beneath my body.

But I wasn't ready to admit what this meant. I wasn't ready to admit that marking him like this gave him the keys to my own heart, to my soul, and if one day he woke up and decided he didn't want it anymore?—

"Vega," he murmured while I stared at my name on him. "Look at me, baby girl."

"I don't know if I can."

"Hey." His fingers landed underneath my chin, lifting my head and forcing me to look at him. "I am yours. Today, tomorrow, in sixty years, I'm yours. And you." He pulled me closer, taking the knife from my hand. "You will always be mine. No matter what."

I believed every single word that came out of his mouth, but I couldn't stop thinking about the mess waiting for us outside of this cabin and all those enemies that wanted to see us dead. And I couldn't stop thinking about the possible outcome where he would get stolen from me.

For the first time it wasn't the fear of loving him that had me paralyzed.

It was the fear of losing him.

My thoughts were a jumbled mess, ready to swallow me whole, but something else niggled at the back of my mind.

The guys were supposed to be here by now, so why weren’t they?

19

ADRIAN

After an almost perfect night,minus the fact that I had to get up extremely late, or early, however you want to call it, and waking up next to Vega, the last thing I wanted was to be sitting in this room, glaring at my friends and my soldiers, trying to decide on their punishment.

Because they acted like children.

And I didn’t fucking have time for children.

Jax sat with his arms crossed, his eyes swiveling from me to Vega and back, pissing me off without a single word being said.

We had a problem, a massive one, and he made sure I knew he and Dante both came to my cabin only to, well, hear Vega and me going at it. Then instead of coming back later, the motherfuckers went into town and got drunk as fuck, coming back to the Academy only after midnight.

Perhaps I wouldn't have been as pissed as I was if it wasn't for a handful of other people joining them, jeopardizing the entire operation.

"I know, I know," he murmured, his eyes dropping to the floor. "We screwed up." Yolanda sat on his right, refusing to look at him, while the rest of The Brotherhood, including Dante, satbehind them, all waiting for the ass chewing that was inevitably coming. "It was only supposed to be Dante and me."

The door opened at that moment, revealing a way too fucking perky-looking Gabriela, waltzing inside as if she owned the place.

"Well, well." Her eyes landed on Dante, who kept his eyes closed, probably nursing a hangover from hell. "Would you look at this?"

"Not now, Gabriela," I barked, focusing back on the people in front of me.

"Fiiiine." She snickered and sat down next to Jax, turning slowly around toward Dante. "You all look like shit. What happened?"

"Vodka," Yolanda moaned just as Jax said, "Too much whiskey." I didn't miss the way he looked at her or how she avoided eye contact with him. I also didn't miss the way she basically ran away from him, until he sat down right next to her, staring at her like a man possessed.

Fucking hell, Jax.

"There were also some shots," Helena, one of our soldiers from southern Europe, added from the back, gagging the moment those words came out of her mouth.

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