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“Don’t you fucking dare,” he snarls, the warning sending ice down my spine. “Is this what you want? To go back to how it was before? Where you burn down obstacles in your way? Where you run because you can’t face the truth?” He reaches for my face, grasping my chin between his fingers, forcing us inches apart. “Do you want to go back to where you’re my property, and I can do whatever I want with you, my Wicked Wife?”

“I want you to own it,” I whisper, voice shaking. “Own who you are.”

He laughs, low and dark. “Be careful of what you wish for.”

For a second, everything freezes, my chin still gripped between his fingertips, the two of us staring at one another.

Then Timothy snaps.

He grabs me, hauling me against him with bruising force. His mouth crashes down on mine–ruthless, angry, all-consuming. He bites my lower lip hard enough to sting, then soothes it with his tongue before claiming me deeper. It’s bordering on violent, and yet my body responds with terrifying familiarity.

“Timothy! Stop! You shouldn’t–” I fight him, pushing at his chest, afraid of the healing gash. I twist away, but he’s stronger, lifting me like I weigh nothing, carrying me out of the small room down the hallway while still devouring my mouth. His teeth scrape along my jaw, my neck. I gasp, legs wrapping around him instinctively even as fear and heat war inside me.

He kicks open the door to his bedroom and tosses me onto the edge of a large bed, the scent of him clinging to the sheets. Before I can scramble back, he’s on me, hands pushing up my shirt, mouth on my belly. He overpowers me easily. His body is heavier, stronger, the months of recovery doing nothing to diminish the raw power coiled in his frame. In seconds, he strips me down, yanking my shirt over my head and tearing my jeans and underwear off in one rough motion. His own clothes follow, shoved aside until he’s naked above me.

Other than the thick, angry scar across his chest, you’d have no idea this man had fought his way back from death. His cock is already hard and thick, flushed dark and curving upward against his stomach as he stares down at me with burning green eyes.

“You want me to own who I am?” he asks, voice low and dangerous. One hand slowly strokes his cock from base to tip as he towers over me. “Fine. I’m Timothy Maddox. The leader of the Barons for two decades. The man who woke up too late to stop the chaos from taking over. Too self-absorbed and drowning in my own ambition to see the danger around me–how I was losing everyone and everything important to me, until it was too fucking late.”

He crawls over me, caging me in with his body. His mouth descends on my breasts, licking and sucking hard at my nipples before tugging on the piercings with his teeth. Sharp pleasure-pain shoots through me, forcing a gasp from my throat.

“I’m a bad man, Arianette,” he growls against my skin, biting down harder. “No one who crosses my path comes out better for it. Not my blood. Not my Barons.” He pins my arms above my head with one large hand, locking both wrists in his iron grip. His other hand shoves my thigh wide open, exposing me completely. The thick head of his cock nudges against my entrance, hot and insistent. “Not the string of Baronesses that served the House of Night.”

“I killed my cousin,” he continues, voice rough with self-loathing. “I locked my wife away from her child while handing her bastard son over to an even more evil monster who made every effort to use and destroy him. I fucked up Remington–forcing my beliefs and views on him, refusing to get him real help because I was terrified of how much he looked and acted like his mother. I’d do anything to maintain control and denial–even losing him to my enemy.”

He thrusts forward without warning, burying himself to the hilt in one brutal stroke. I cry out, back arching sharply at the sudden stretch and burn. He doesn’t give me time to adjust. He starts moving–deep, punishing thrusts that rock the bed beneath us.

“Look at my Williams,” he snarls, hips snapping harder. “I loved them like my own. I was ready to give them everything, and I lost them all. Mateo. Regina. I didn’t even see it coming.”

There’s movement in the doorway.

I look up and see Damon standing there, one shoulder against the frame, watching us. Our eyes meet. His eyebrow raises slightly–a silent question. All I have to do is say “DK,” and he’ll stop this. He’ll pull Timothy off me in an instant.

But I don’t say it.

Timothy is here with me–raw, furious, and finally letting everything out. And some dark, twisted part of me wants to take it. Needs to take it. I can handle him like this. God, I really fucking want to.

If Timothy notices Damon, he doesn’t stop. If anything, his pace turns even more relentless. He fucks me like he’s trying to punish both of us, hips slamming against mine, the wet slap of skin filling the room. His free hand grips my hip hard enough to bruise as he drives deeper.

“I’m not a good man,” he rasps, leaning down to bite the side of my neck. “I never was. I built an empire on blood and secrets and lies. I wore that mask for so long I forgot what my own face looked like. And when I finally took it off, I still couldn’t face what I’d become.”

His thrusts slow for a moment, turning grinding and deep, hitting that spot inside me that makes my toes curl despite everything. I moan, legs wrapping around his waist, wanting to feel him deep inside.

“You think I need to own who I am?” he growls against my ear. “Maybe I do. But you walked into my world broken and terrified, and you still chose to stay. You chose me. You chose them.” His voice cracks, just barely. “And I don’t know how to live with that. I don’t know how to be worthy of any of you.”

Tears sting my eyes, but I don’t look away from him. “Then stop running,” I whisper fiercely. “Stop hiding behind guilt and regret and come back to us. We’re not asking for perfect. We’re asking for you. You may no longer be my King, but you’ll always be my Daddy. The one that saved me. You’re my husband no matter how wicked I behave.”

Something in him seems to break.

He kisses me again–deep, desperate, almost punishing. His hips snap forward harder, fucking me with renewed intensity. The angle, the force, the overwhelming fullness of him–it’s too much and not enough all at once. I cry out into his mouth, body trembling beneath him.

Damon stays in the doorway, watching with dark, hooded eyes. He doesn’t intervene. I’m taking this for all of us–even him.

Timothy releases my wrists only to grab both my thighs, folding me nearly in half as he pounds into me. The new angle makes me see stars. Pleasure coils tight and vicious in my belly, building faster than I can handle.

“Eyes on me,” he says, voice rough and broken. “I want to see you when you come.”

I shatter with a choked sob, clenching hard around him as the orgasm rips through me. Timothy continues to thrust into me, burying himself deep and groaning my name like a curse and a prayer as he comes, hot and endless.