My little bird.

What she probably didn’t realise was that I spilled in my jeans as she came, watching her contort in release as Kenzo pounded into her tight, slick body from behind. It did things to me. Sure, I would have preferred more blood, but it was one hell of a show.

After she stormed off, I winked at Kenzo, who laughed, and ducked into my room to clean up. You ever had jizz in your jeans? Not fun. It’s almost as annoying to get out as blood. Slipping into just my boxers, I lounge on my bed. I can hear the others talking downstairs, no doubt updating Kenzo on what we found. But I was there, I don’t need to hear it again.

No, what I need is my little bird. She’s scared right now, even if she won’t admit it, and the Vipers are circling. She’s going to run again, I saw it in her eyes, and I can’t let that happen.

She’s mine now.

When this all started, she was just a toy, just a debt. A faceless woman I could torture for her father’s sins…now she’s the woman who kissed me like her life depended on it. Who looked into my eyes, who saw my darkness, my monsters hiding there, and got off on it. Even if she won’t admit it. No, my little bird is more like a snake than she realises, but she’s spent so much time amongst prey, she doesn’t know how to be a predator.

I’m going to show her. I’m going to break her free and let all those emotions out. I’m going to make her a Viper.

She was never going to get away from us, but it’s obvious to me now that this is more than that. She even has Ryder twisted up in knots, and Garrett, that poor bastard, she’s bringing back all his bad memories. He hates her for that, but also wants her. I heard him jacking off last night, her name on his lips.

My little bird will either bring us closer together, or burn us. I can’t wait to find out which.

So I wait for the others to go to bed, knowing Ryder will undoubtedly stay up all night in his office, trying to figure out who the hitter was. It was an insult that he managed to escape, that he almost got the drop on one of us. I can’t wait to get a hold of him and show him just what the Vipers’ den is like.

Once everything is quiet, I slip from my bed and pad downstairs. I walk through the dark, expecting Roxy to be trying to open the front door. But she’s not, so maybe she had a turn of heart? Or maybe she’s still waiting.

Heading to her room, I crack open the door and peer in. She’s still, curled up on her bed in one of her old shirts. I watch her from the darkness, noting the steady rise and fall of her chest. She’s asleep. No wonder she didn’t try to escape yet, it seems Kenzo tired her out.

Slipping in, I shut the door gently, so as not to wake her. This is becoming a habit, watching her while she sleeps. But I’m drawn to her and need her. To rip her open and expose her insides to my flames. I can’t help the compulsion.

Garrett says I have an addictive personality, probably from my junkie mother who shot up while I was still in her womb. I don’t care, it means my focus is a hundred percent on my little bird. I see the things the others don’t want to or can’t.

Like she belongs with us, even though she hates us…but does she? If Roxy really detested us, we would be dead already, she would have slit our throats in our sleep and damn the consequences. She hasn’t attacked us, even though she’s angry over what happened.

No, she’s wavering. She wants to hate us, feels like she has to because of how this started, but she’s slowly crumbling. If it’s anyone she should hate, it’s her fucking father, the stupid bastard. He sold her. We simply accepted.

The best thing to happen to us is the day we walked into that bar to collect. I still remember the way she took down Garrett and tried to attack me. My cock hardens at the memory. I wonder if she’ll fight me like that when we fuck.

I hope so.

Creeping across the room, I get onto the bed behind her, slipping closer until I can feel her heat. I wrap my arm around her and drag her against my chest. I’ve seen this in movies, but I’ve never tried it myself. Usually, the women I’ve been with are either passed out, or so scared they run away and we have to pay them to be quiet.

It loses its fun after a while—all that fear. Just once, I want someone to match me, to not burn in my fire, but be reborn in it.

I hope Roxy is that one.

Because either way, she’s being plunged into it, and there is no escape for her. Not now, not ever. She knows that now, I see it in her eyes. She sighs in her sleep, snuggling closer and pressing that plump ass against my cock, making me grunt as desire pulses through me. What I wouldn’t give just to rip off her panties and slam into her wet heat. To hear her scream, to paint my madness across her skin.

Sliding my hand upwards, I press it under her shirt until I feel her soft, silky skin. She’s perfect. Fire and heat wrapped up in a curvy, beautiful package. I want to see her come apart for me like she did Kenzo. To feel her pussy or her ass clenching around my cock as I fuck her.

All I keep imagining is her tied up in my den, her body naked and covered in blood, the fire roaring behind her as I take her. Fuck her. She would enjoy it, my little bird, the same way she enjoyed my kiss, the same way she enjoyed me killing that man, even if she tried to shy away from it. She wanted him to pay. Needed to feel that somewhere, the world wasn’t all bad, and those bastards get what they deserve.

We might be Vipers, predators, but often the men we kill are evil.

Rapists, abusers, cheaters, and killers.

Our world is filled with them, and if we take down just one, and save a life, then I would dirty my soul every day, wading through the blood and bullshit. Not everything we do is about money, after all, we started when we were all lost. No family, with vengeance in our hearts. All different, but brought together by pain. By need. It shaped us, remade us until we were this.

And each person we tore down, each person we killed, made us lose another piece of the boys we once were. I don’t care, that boy was a trusting fool who loved his junkie mother, even though she would try to sell his body for a hit. Who kept on running back, even when the state took him away. Until there was nothing to run back to.

I don’t regret the path that brought me here, because it brought me to her, and I now know that was my purpose all along, all that pain, all that suffering and darkness I had to plunge into was so I could find my little bird.

She whimpers in her sleep, her body stiffening in fear. Poor Little Bird, trapped inside her own darkness. Pinching her stomach, I wake her up. I feel the moment she registers she’s not alone. Her breathing stutters, her whole body tightening against me as I continue to stroke her soft stomach. So soft, so silky, I wonder if it would part for my knife like butter?

“Little Bird, Little Bird, trying so hard to fly away from us, even in her sleep,” I murmur against her neck, the pounding of her pulse loud and matching mine.

“Diesel?” she whispers into the night. I don’t think she realises that when she knows it’s me, a breath whooshes from her and she relaxes a fraction. She’s beginning to trust us, even if she doesn’t see it.

“Tired, Little Bird? Not trying to escape tonight, even after you fucked Kenzo and he made you realise just how much you want us?”

She snarls and flips over, glaring at me. Smirking, I drag her closer, placing my hand on her plump arse to keep her near. “I don’t want you, it was a stupid mistake…I didn’t even want it.”