Christ, she was fucking magnificent.

“Snap.” It was a plea.

He dragged the pads of his thumbs hard over her nipples, then tweaked them with his thumbnails.

“Oh God, baby,” she breathed.

Moving his hands, he held her with his left at her waist and flattened his right on the small of her back.

It was time.

“Go, baby,” he whispered.

And she went. Head flying back, fingers tight around the headboard to give her leverage, Snapper watched her at first, fucking herself on his dick.

Then he watched their glistening connection as she drove back into him, again, again, again.

One of her hands released the headboard, dove between her legs, and Snap clenched his ass, then his entire body to beat back the rush of feeling that would overwhelm him if he let it as she rode his cock on her knees, touching herself. She didn’t do this long before she cried out and kept at her rough ride through coming, coating him so fucking slick, they both had to be dripping.

Only then did he let go but he did it focused on his dick sinking deep into her wet until he could see none of him, none of her, just the two of them together, and he gritted his teeth to drive the beauty of what they had down his throat, his lungs, his gut, his ass, through his balls, out his cock, shooting it in glorious pulsing floods into his Rosalie.

He came down to find she was already down, now fucking herself, and him, on sweet glides.

That was when he moved his hands over her skin, taking her in in a different way, giving her something at the same time.

She made a move as if to draw him out, shift position, and he murmured, “No, honey,” and she stilled that movement, but continued to fuck him sweet.

He let her until he lost it and had to slide out completely, but he kept his hands moving on her waist, her lower back, hips, ass, fingertips tracing down the backs of her thighs.

She shivered in front of him and didn’t move, quiet, contained, the world that bed and their bodies and Rosalie offering him everything he needed, on her knees, dripping his cum, holding for him, there for him, his world.

“Pete’s making a play,” he said softly.

“Yeah,” she agreed.

“How you feel about that?” he asked, still touching her.

“If she lets it happen, happy for Mom. Thrilled for Big Petey.”

He smiled at her back because her words were good.

Renae needed happiness in her life that came from more than her daughter, her daughter’s happiness, the relationship she was building with her daughter’s man and the Club that man gave them both, and if Pete, who hadn’t reached for it himself in years, could give it to her, that worked for Snap.

But he was on the other side, knowing Pete as he did. He’d be happy for Pete if he found someone again. He’d be thrilled for Renae, because she couldn’t do better than finding Petey.

The silence settled nice and warm but Rosalie broke it.

“Things are not good.”

Yeah, he was right, Rosie had felt it.

“Nope,” he confirmed.

“You’re all twitchy.”

“Yep.”

“Anything I can do?” she asked.

“Nope,” he answered.

She jerked her head so her hair slid to one side and looked up at him out of the sides of her eyes.

“You sure?”

Laid out, ass up, pussy dripping.

Her invitation was not veiled.

He grinned at her.

“Nope.”

She grinned back and wiggled her ass. “Take your time, Mulder.”

His drifting fingers slid between her legs. “You better believe it, Scully.”

She bit her lip.

He started playing with her clit.

Slowly, his old lady closed her eyes.

And nothing penetrated, not rival bike clubs, not dealing, pimping psychopaths, not what was left for them on that picnic table, not the shift happening in the Club.

The world was small.

In the scheme of things, tiny.

Just Snapper and his Rosalie.

But it was about to crack open.

Open wide.

Sucking them all into a dark void of insanity.

It was raining hard.

He was soaked.

His throat was choked.

His hair was straggling in his eyes, eyes that were blinking away the hair and the wet.

And the blood.

His hands were in fists, including the one with its fingers curled around the butt of his gun.

And Everett “Snapper” Kavanagh stared.

This was it.

The end was near.

And by what he was right then seeing, what had just been done, something that had already been hideously nasty was going to get seriously…fucking…ugly.

The red staining the rainwater was pooling at his boots.

It was Black again.

The asshole had tried to pull the same thing on Snap that his mentor had succeeded in doing to Black.

Take out the brother that everyone liked. The even-keeled one.

The calm in the storm.

Take out the brother that would light a fire under the whole Club that was already a powder keg in an attempt not to blow it sky high, but to force them to scramble to put the light out then toe the line.

But this time, seriously fucking fortunately, they’d failed.

“I am the master of my fate,” he whispered, head unbowed, blood and water and sweat mingling as it trickled down his neck, into his cut, drenching his tee, the adrenaline that had suffused him as the life he wanted to share with Rosie nearly went black on the stroke of a blade, staring, damned staring, unable to tear his eyes away. “I am the captain of my soul.”