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“Not when he roped you to a chair?”

I was glad my teasing tone made her lips twitch toward a smile, but it was small and brief. “Okay, maybe that. But the point is, I’m done with blind loyalty.”

Caroline finally lifted her head. Her eyes were stupidly pretty in the sunlight. They were defiant as hell, too. “You Devils have been trying to get rid of my father for a long time. My relationship with him is over. When you told me what your father did and how it seems you’re better off without him… it’s giving me courage to want a better life for myself, too.”

I was at a loss for words. Then I found a few, even if they stumbled out. “You… you’re using my shitty dad Harlon’s neglect of me to give my MC permission to off your dad? I mean, I told you all that hours ago! It can’t be that easy to change your mind. We just met, basically, two days ago. No way you turned over a new leaf that quick. Why the hell am I trying to talk you out of this? Why am I rambling?”

I clamped my mouth shut, abruptly feeling very unlike myself. “Woman, you’re flipping my whole damn reality inside out. I don’t want to be the one who—Oh, shit.”

Caroline’s eyes were glassy. She was trying not to cry. She had floodgates inside her keeping all traces of emotion locked up, and with just some help from little old me, I put a crack in them. And now they were about to burst. Again. Fuck.

Her lower lip started to wobble. She clapped her hand over her mouth as if to stop a sob.

“I don’t know who I am without him.”

The words hit harder than any punch Vane could land.

Caroline angrily swiped at her eyes to get rid of the tears that hadn’t fallen yet. “Every decision I’ve ever made… Every plan, every move… it was all shaped around what he needed. What he wanted. What would earn me one goddamn scrap of approval. And now? Now I’m free, I guess.” Her voice cracked, bitter. “But it doesn’t feel like freedom. I still feel his shackles around my neck. There’s still a leash. He’s just not holding it anymore. But it’s still fucking there.”

My chest tightened with an ache that was old and familiar. I felt the same way once. Harlon was a shadow I’d spent years trying to get out of, even after his death. The Devil’s Luck got me out of it.

Maybe it would get Caroline out, too.

I couldn’t stand the way she was holding herself—rigid, as if she was bracing for something bad. Like she was expecting me to treat her like her father treated her.

I leaned toward her slowly, carefully.

“Caroline.”

She winced slightly but didn’t pull away when I rested my hand on her knee. My hands slid up her thighs, then her hips, then her sides. Her eyes never left mine as they went glossy with tears again. I crooked a knuckle under her chin, lifting her face to mine, and then I kissed her.

CHAPTER 16

CAROLINE

I was about to fuck Nathaniel “Royal Flush” Knox, one of the Devil’s Luck MC. The cocky bastard who ruined my plan at the poker den just two days ago. The man who got me tied to a chair by my father.

The man who saved me from a cruel fate.

The man who risked his own neck with his president for his club’s greatest enemy.

The man who took me far, far away from my father, who now only wanted to punish me.

The man who was about to fuck me right.

I didn’t trust easily—at all. I didn’t trust any man as far as I could throw them. All they were good for was violence, spilling blood, and clawing for money and power. Sometimes they were accessible for an occasional fuck. But for me, that was all they would be: fleeting pleasure, a physical transaction. I refused to form attachments, and usually the bachelor Wolverines I’d fucked were glad to do the same. No one wanted to be in any kind of relationship with Walter Bates’s daughter.

It escaped me why a Devil’s Luck was interested in me at all—if that was why Knox was kissing me right now. I had no idea why he hadn’t hogtied me and tossed me in the river to fend for myself or die for all the terrible things my father and I had done to his MC. Instead, his hand was gripping the underside of my thigh, slowly lowering me onto my back on the mattress.

Knox loomed over me, but I didn’t feel the need to push him away. I just let him touch and kiss me as much as I wanted to touch and kiss him last night when I was drowning in pain and trauma. Now I was sober and feeling like my entire world was tipping over, and I was falling.

But maybe I was falling into something better.

I stopped overthinking when Knox’s tongue parted my lips and swept into my mouth. He groaned deep in his throat. His hand slipped under my shirt—his shirt that I stole from the drawers built into the bed frame. They were rough and callused but warm. A shiver went down my spine, and I gasped into the kiss. My fingers fisted in the sheets. He smelled like leather and the faint iron tang of blood.

My split lip stung when he nibbled it, but I barely felt it. His hands were scraping my sides and it felt so damn good. Heat pulsed between my thighs, and I hoped he wouldn’t mind me getting the crotch of his pants wet when he made me come.

My hands roamed, too. His dark stubble bristled against my palm, making a scraping sound when I ran my thumb across his cheekbone. My eyes were closed as he kissed me deeper, pressing me into the mattress with his heavy body. I never closed my eyes when I had sex.

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