Page 40 of Cerberus's Branding

Turning to help my brothers, I fire my gun, hitting some until the remaining men retreat. As much as I want to follow, I stick with my brothers. Thanatos and Ghost were hurt pretty badly, but only a few others were bleeding from wounds. Reaper being one of them. He’d taken one in the leg.

“You know Ivy’s gonna kill us,” Angel remarks, shaking his head.

“She ain’t gonna kill y’all. It’ll be me she plots murder on,” Reaper grunts, tightening a tourniquet above the wound to stop the bleeding. “Let’s get out of here before the law comes. Someone’s gonna have reported the gunfire.”

The fact that we’re just outside of Palestine on the way to Jacksonville, off seventy-nine isn’t a coincidence. Samir might have been the one to choose the location, but we all know the area very well. If we’d gone a little bit farther to one side, it’s where we go when we go to the river.So, we knew these woods.

“She won’t be the only one to want to kill us,” Hellhound grumbles, holding his arm. “As for reports coming in, I say we get the fuck out of here and not chance that shit.”

I couldn’t agree more. All I cared to do right now is get back to my woman. With Samir dead, most of the men in his ‘Nameless Milita’ dead, there’s nothing more they can do. Means for Ember this is over, and we could move the fuck on with our lives.

For me, I was sure as hell looking forward to moving the fuck on with Ember. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s marrying me. I intended for us to both get branded with each other’s names. I wanted anyone and everyone around to know she was mine and I was hers.

I planned to make sure that the two of us spent the rest of our lives together in a way that when the time comes, when she goes, I’m gonna be right there with her. Her last breath will be mine. But the two of us are gonna have a family together. We’re gonna build a life with just us and with kids.

First, though, before anything else, I intend to climb into bed next to her and sleep knowing she’s mine.

EPILOGUE

EMBER

Christmas Morning . . .

“Oh God, yes,” moaning, my body arches off the bed, Cerberus moves inside me.

“Fuckin’ love how tight you are, baby.” Cerberus groans and thrusts deeper, faster, harder.

It’s the first time he’s been inside me since the shooting, and I couldn’t ask for a better gift. Sex with Cerberus is everything. The connection it gives us means more to me than any material gift out there.

Okay, except for one. But he doesn’t know about it yet.

Cerberus woke me up with his mouth betweenmy legs and an orgasm on the verge of driving me over the edge.

The two of us cling to each other, more like I cling to him while he powers into me, giving me everything that I’ve been missing out on. I thought he was going to wait until the doctor cleared me, but I didn’t go back to the doctor for another week. I’m just glad he didn’t wait. I might have to do something about it. I mean, I’m still healing, but I’m now able to move around without pain. I was going back to work the first of the year, maybe.

Cerberus pulls out of me, whips me to my stomach, lifts me so I’m on my knees, ass aimed high. He doesn’t play around with thrusting inside me again, taking me hard. It’s amazing, and my release hits me when he hits just the right spot. It’s not long before his groans join mine, and he’s coming deep inside me.

Long moments passed and we’re both lying on our sides with him still inside me.

“Merry Christmas, babe,” Cerberus murmurs against the shell of my ear and kisses the side of my neck.

“Merry Christmas, Jase,” I whisper, tilting my head slightly to look back at him.

Grinning, he pulls out, rolls me to my back, and kisses me longingly. I don’t want the kiss to end, buteventually he lifts his head. “Time to shower. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.

We do. Between Christmas here at the clubhouse and his family’s house, it was going to be a long day for certain. First, though, I wanted to give him my gift in private. Stella was the only one who knew the truth. The others might suspect, but she’d drawn my blood and kept my secret for me. She even helped me in getting Cerberus’s gift made. It was a miracle she’d been able to get it for me in time. But she’d managed.

The day before Christmas Eve, she came into our room and placed a mini-Christmas tree all decked out with lights and tiny ornaments. Underneath, she placed my present for Cerberus.

When Cerberus had seen the tree and the gift, he’d laughed, opened a drawer and pulled out two boxes, placed them with mine, and there they’d sat.

“Let’s open our gifts before we go deal with the chaos,” I suggest.

“Yeah.” Agreeing with me, Cerberus rolls out of bed and moves to grab the gifts.

By the time he makes it back to the bed, I’m sitting up with the sheet tucked around me.

“Open this one first,” Cerberus says, handing me a small box.

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