“Unfair?”Lily squawks, her broken nails digging into the edge of the table as she tries to surge up from her seat. “Noneof this is fair.I’mthe victim here.”
“Still spinning that tired old story, Lily?” Jake sighs like he’s deeply disappointed in her. “If you confess to your crimes, I could ask the warden to give you a cell with a window. He might even let you crack it open once a week.”
“I don’t care about any of that,” Lily snaps, leaning towards him with adoring eyes. “I only want to prove myself toyou, Jacob.”
“It’s Jake,” he says grimly. “But only to my friends. And since this is the last conversation I plan to have with you, I really don’t care what else you have to say.”
He sounds like he’s already left the building, but I know he needs a confession to really be free of her. Otherwise, her lawyers could spin this nightmare out for years, dragging his name through the gutter in the process.
I’ll be damned if I give the bitch the opportunity.
She must sense my anger, because she shoots me a malicious glance before fluttering her lashes at him. “I bet she can’t take your knot like I can. Those slick bitches are little more than plastic sex dolls. Good for deposits, but lousy for pleasure.” She licks her lips and leans as close to him as her chains will allow. “If you give me another chance, darling, I promise I’ll remind you of exactly what you’re missing…”
Kane makes a disgusted sound as he surges away from the wall, his teeth bared in rage. “Shut her fucking mouth, Jake, before I bury my boot in it.”
“No, let her talk.” I shoot Kane an appeasing glance as I slide onto Jake’s lap. I’m not sure how he’s sitting so close to thesource of the horrible stink in the air, but I smile up into his eyes as I stroke a hand down his chest. “What does it really matter what she says? She might have tricked you into touching her B-grade body, but you saved your bite for the real thing.”
“The onlyreal thingabout you is the scent you don’t deserve!” Lilly hisses, venom twisting her mouth into an ugly line. “Your memories are fake, your father threw you away like trash, and one of your precious mates was actually your jailer.” She laughs at the rage flickering in Dex’s eyes. “Oh, yes, your employers told me all about you and your pathetic brother. The real crime here is that you’ve all wormed your way into Jacob’s life, when he could have hadme.”
“You had your chance,” I say coldly. “And you only got that by stealing and lying. You should know that the first time I met Jake, he purred for me. Pure instinct, because he knew in his heart he’d met his scent match. Did he ever purr foryou, Omega?”
I’m glossing over a lot of things here, but Lily doesn’t know that, and jealousy darkens her strained face. “I’mhis perfect match!” she snaps. “You’ve just confused him with your slutty scent!”
The hypocrisy is astounding, but I click my tongue and give her a pitying look. “Sorry to blow your bubble, Lily, but Jake told me you didn’t even really smell that good. I’d check with the investigators to see if the Carrillos were even giving you my scent. It was probably just a B-grade version they cooked up in their labs.”
“Stop calling meB-grade!” she shrieks, trying to launch across the table at me. She doesn’t get far in her chains, and Kane is there anyway, shoving her back into her seat. “I bought the exclusive rights to your slick, and my accountant has the records to prove it!”
I lean back against Jake as he starts to chuckle, his thumb stroking lovingly over his mating bite. “Well done, Diana. Nothing like baiting a piranha into giving itself a death bite.”
“What?” Lily demands, her gaze flicking from my smug face to Jake’s grin. “I didn’t…What?”
I should probably be gracious at this point and leave it there, but I can’t resist leaning across the table. “The thing is, Lily, if you’d justaskedfor my scent, I probably would’ve shared it with you for free.”
She looks like she wants to strangle me, but she swallows it down enough to demand, “Then tell the authorities that! I just did what any other woman in love would do.”
“Except,” I snarl, rising to my feet and leaning down into her face, “you stolemy mate, and then tried to erase his memories so he’d forget who he was. For that, I hope you rot in hell for a long, long time.”
While Lily starts to spit curses at me, Jake gets to his feet and pulls me into a hug. Dex and Rowan immediately form ranks around us, but Kane is staring down at Lily with murder in his eyes. “You want to end her here, Diana, just say the word and she’s gone.”
It’s tempting, but she needs to ponder her sins. Especially if it’s alone in a jail cell that’s no bigger than my room in the slick factory. “No, let her stew in her stink for the rest of her days. I’m going home to shower with my mates.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“I can see why you love this so much,” I tell Kane as I wrap my arms around his waist and nuzzle into the back of his leather jacket. He smells like night air, pine needles, and warm alpha, and I shiver as I draw his scent deep into my lungs.
He creaks as he glances back at me. “Oh, yeah? Which part do you like best?”
“All of it.” I squeeze him tighter, so happy I can barely put it into words. “The bike. The view. The moon. But mostly, you.”
“You can’t be saying sweet things like that and not get a reward, Omega.”
I shiver at the promise in his voice, my heart skipping as he eases me off his V-twin Softail. Turns out, it’s a motorbike, a black and chrome beast that gleams in the moonlight. I don’t know anything about its mechanics, but when Kane jerked his head for me to get on the back, I almost fell over my own feet in the rush to obey. From the moment we leaned into our first turn I was hooked, and now we’re parked on the top of the world, the mountains at our back and the whole city spread beneath us.
“You didn’t mind the vibration?”
Kane might seem oblivious to other people’s pain, but he’s just quiet about it. He warned me that the ride would shake me to my core, and he’s right, but it’s nothing like the suffocating grip of a slick suit. In fact, when he opened the throttle on the highway, I suddenly understood how it feels to be free. Every vibration from the bike seemed to wake up another part of me, and I can still feel it now, like electricity dancing in my blood.
“I loved it,” I tell him as he climbs off beside me, unzipping his jacket just enough for my hands to slip inside. It’s a warm night, and I melt against him, breathing in his delicious scent with a relieved sigh. Getting to wrap my arms around him for hours has been sweet torture, especially with the way my pulse is now humming between my legs. “Can we do it again tomorrow?”
