Page 80 of Reckless: Collision

Ryker continues as though he didn’t hear a goddamn word. “As I said, they can touch you all they want, but...” that smile again, sharp as a blade’s edge. “They just can’t make you come.”

My jaw drops as laughter fills the SUV, the sound a melody of masculine satisfaction.

Ryker turns around and puts the SUV in drive. “Don’t let her cum.”

Jinx and Theo obey their alpha, repositioning my legs—a special kind of torture given how swollen and aroused I am. Jinx fastens my seatbelt, looking pleased as fuck with himself.

“That’s it?” I screech.

“That’s it.” Ryker replies, pulling away.

“What the fuck?” The growl tears from my throat. “I’ll just finish the job when we get back.”

“Go ahead,” Ryker dares me, his voice dark honey. “And they won’t touch you at all.”

“Excuse the fuck out of you!” Murderous rage bubbles up inside me. “You’re using my orgasms against me.”

Ryker slams on the brakes and whips around, getting in my face. “You started this by fucking my alpha in a bathroom. You started this by parading your arousal around not even twenty-four hours after arriving.” His words cut deep, precise as a surgeon’s blade. “You started this when you used sex as an escapism from reality. We,” he gestures around me, “are just changing your rules.”

Ever so slowly, he turns back around and drives away while I have to pick my jaw off the floor.

I could go back and get off. I could.

But I won’t.

I’m far too competitive for that shit. Game fucking on.

One thing is for damn sure though, I need a new hiding spot for this USB drive. And I just know where to hide it. In plain sight.

Chapter 17

Cayenne

Insomnia wrapsaround me like badly written code, each attempt at sleep bringing new errors to debug. My body aches with exhaustion, but my mind refuses to compile, churning through variables I can’t control. The basement apartment feels both too large and too confining, a prison of comfort I didn’t ask for but can’t seem to reject.

Something’s off. An error in my system I can’t quite trace. I’m cranky, I’m grouchy (which are absolutely different states of being, no matter what anyone says), I’m...

“Ow.” The cramp hits like a security breach, tearing through my defenses without warning. “Oh hell no.”

The phone’s LED display mocks me with its 3 AM brightness, confirming what my body’s already screaming—the red wave has arrived. Mother Nature’s monthly reminder that even my biology refuses to play by society’s rules, a rebellion written in blood and pain.

I attempt to execute a careful extraction from the bed, but my uterus launches a denial of service attack that doubles me over. The irony isn’t lost on me—a beta’s body punishing itself for not producing children in a world where our fertility rates barely register as a statistical blip.

That’s when I feel it—the warning shot, the first wave of what promises to be a full-scale invasion.

“Oh no you the fuck do not.” I abandon stealth protocols for pure survival mode, making an awkward sprint to the bathroom that would probably fail every tactical assessment in Ryker’s book. The cabinet offers nothing but pristine white towels and broken hopes—not a tampon or pad in sight.

Toilet paper becomes my temporary defense system as I launch a desperate search through my hastily packed luggage—or rather, the luggage others packed for me while I was busy trying to save the world one hack at a time. The contents spill across the floor like corrupted data, each useless item another reminder that I didn’t plan for this. Didn’t plan for any of it.

Including ending up here, in a pack’s territory, bleeding and vulnerable and trying very hard not to think about how four sets of enhanced senses might react to the change in my scent.

I reach for my period tracking app only to remember it’s on my phone—the one Quinn’s locked awayfor my own good. My memory scrolls back through recent months like flipping through a bad playlist. February was light—I remember because I was too busy chasing down trafficking rings to deal with anything heavy. January...

The memory clicks into place with the force of another cramp. I was at that bar, the one where we first discovered the trafficking pattern. I hadn’t left my apartment for three days straight, too focused on following data trails to remember basic human needs.

“Well, fuck.” The realization hits harder than any cramp. “This is going to be the period from hell.”

A desperate search of the bathroom cabinets reveals an unexpected mercy—a box of my exact brand of organic tampons, placed with a precision that screams of pack intervention. Foronce, their over-preparation feels less like surveillance and more like salvation.

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