Sinners' Playground (The Harlequin Crew #1) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,178

being able to actually have her. It was a whole different kind of hell. And if I didn’t claim her soon, my dick was going to fall off from lack of use. But my lips still tasted of her and as pissed as I was, I had felt her grind on me, heard her moans, felt her desire as it shook the foundations of her body. Maybe she only wanted to fuck me, but that was a start. So I was calling it a win.

I reached my truck, unlocking it and dumping my shit in the passenger seat before climbing into the driver’s side. I pulled on my jeans and shoes, carving my fingers through my hair as sexual frustration made me want to go on a killing spree. I could just see the news headline now. Ten men found dead with their dicks cut off because Fox Harlequin had blue balls.

I sighed, starting up the truck and pulling it round to park up in front of Rogue’s trailer. Then I dropped my seat back and started plotting out where exactly I was going to install the secret cameras outside this place. I needed to make sure I could keep her safe when I wasn’t here. Because I couldn’t always be here to watch her, especially when she was making it so fucking hard to be her boyfriend. But Rogue was worth the effort. I had zero experience in this shit, but I was going on my gut instincts and that was to protect her, keep her, and never let her go. So that was exactly what I planned on doing.

I woke up with a groan, pressing my tongue to my busted lip and flinching away from the pain of it. Kissing that asshole had clearly been a bad idea so far as that injury went. And so far as bad ideas went too. Because Fox Harlequin was a very, very, bad idea.

If he got his dick inside me, that was it. He would never ever get the message that he didn't own me. And I didn't want to be owned. Especially because, despite the big game I talked, I knew in my heart that I'd never really been free in any other place than this one before. And here in my little trailer with my little dog, I actually had something that was just…mine.

Sure, I might have been willing to cut and run from any and every situation I'd found myself in before now because I kept my emotions out of any and all connections I'd formed with people. Especially boyfriends.

But in my heart, I knew that Shawn had been the one who had come closest to owning me before. I hadn't even wanted to get close to anyone high up in the gang hierarchy, but the problem with being criminally addicted in my occupations was that it meant that wherever I found myself, I always ended up tied to the less than legal rulers of the place. And for anywhere around here for miles and miles, that meant falling in beneath one gang or another and having to bend to their rules.

It turned out that in the town of Sterling where I’d rocked up a few years back, The Dead Dogs ran everything. And everyone with a criminal inclination was expected to pass their takings through them if they expected to be allowed to continue to operate.

That was how I'd met Shawn and I couldn't deny that he'd drawn me in right away. He was just one of those dudes with the biggest balls in the room and the hardest glare. His aura made everyone look his way and when I found him looking back, I'd made the dumb decision to encourage it. Call it dick blindness, but every girl craved powerful cock from time to time, right? And it turned out that once he'd had a taste of me, he'd decided that he wanted another and another until somehow, I became his.

Not that he'd ever stopped fucking other girls apparently, as I’d found out the night he’d tried to kill me. But I was the one he claimed publicly, the one he wanted most often and the one who was dumb enough to think that was a sweet enough deal at the time.

But sweet and Shawn really weren't combinations that mixed and I had been an idiot to fool myself into believing that he was more hooked on me than he clearly was.

I'd been with him for