Vixen: A Steamy Reverse Harem Biker Romance (Claimed by Outlaws #2)

CHAPTER 1 BLADE The night speaks to me through hushed waves of silk, the earth like felt beneath my booted feet. Even the birds in the trees go quiet as I pass them. Awed by my stealth. Frightened by my blade. It has been two months since I last saw her. I thought she was on the lam, running after what she did to me, or perhaps simply dead, killed by another mark. She always believed that there was something better out there for her. I could read it in the fine lines around her mouth when she lay awake in the night. For nearly six months we were together, but though she was always beside me, she was always so far away. I should have known then that when she looked into her own future, she did not see me in it. Fire rises in my chest. I do my best to push it down as I slink over the emerald lawn, but it blisters behind my ribs and scratches at my spine with nails of steel. Sorrow and rage, the sharp harbingers of grief, have never left me, not since the day she vanished, but it was somehow better when I imagined she was alone. Or when I imagined she was already dead—that she had no choice in it. But she did have a choice. She chose to steal from me. She stole what might have been our future. We would have been good together, a partnership for the ages both in the business world and in our private—very private—lives. Turns out I was only a means to an end. To see her with those other men is like being stabbed in the belly, my guts yanked out and trampled. I imagine her with them every time I close my eyes. Is this how she felt when she laid awake at night, running through what she might do next, how she might escape me? Did she imagine herself with them even then? One thing is certain: she did not imagine that I’d ever find out who she was. But rumors among outlaws have a way of spreading. I steady myself and take the last few steps over the grass and into the gilded glow of the porch. The back door of the house is open to the night, yellow lamplight spilling onto the back lawn as if the home is bleeding gold. The man inside does not notice me approach. They never do. I am the Blade. I am the enforcer. I am one with the velvet night. A sound at my back makes me turn. I slide my knife from its holster, as silent as the whispering trees, in time to see the squirrel skitter into the brush. Unassuming. Soon, I am alone in the dark once more. The first of the porch’s steps is a muted thunk that I feel more than hear, a shuddering vibration of anticipation. She made me stop killing when we were together, gave me something better—another more lucrative outlet to slake, or at least redirect, my bloodlust. But now… The third step creaks ever so slightly, and I pause and duck beneath the window, listening to the hissing of the breeze, waiting for the scraping of a chair, the thunk of feet on the floorboards inside, but no other sound rattles my eardrums besides the subtle rustling of the leaves. See me. See me. He does not. I tighten my fingers around the handle of the door. My Kite, so free now. But not for long. If I’ve learned anything over these last two months, it’s that none of us are really free.