Chapter 57: You Wanna Fight?

DRAVEN’S POV

"Can we?" I asked her.

She didn’t answer with words. She just pulled her top off.

Her breasts were perfect, full and pressed against her bra, and everything I’d been quietly fantasising about had just walked right up and offered itself to me.

She placed my hands on her and I began to knead slowly. Then she guided my hands to the back of her bra clasp while she kept kissing me, her mouth never leaving mine.

Her fingers found the zip on my pants.

"You look so hot," she breathed against my lips. "And you kiss hot too."

Her warm breath alone had me pulling her closer. The foreplay stretched on ... unhurried, deliberate ... and every second of it was doing something to me.

Then she reached into my boxers and pulled me out.

She took me into her mouth like she had all the time in the world. Handled me like something she actually wanted. She was so damn good at it that I started thrusting into her, and she took every bit of it without flinching.

Her throat was deep. I couldn’t hold back the moan.

I gathered her blonde hair in my fist, holding it back from her face while she worked, until I hit my peak and pulled out just in time ... spilling across her chest and down to her stomach.

She smiled.

She looked so soft from the outside. So composed. But I wasn’t entirely surprised by what she’d just done. It was always the gentle ones.

She stood, and I brought her back down onto the bed so I could return the favour ... mouth on her breasts, my dick rubbing against her skin while I sucked until she hardened beneath me. Natural. Beautiful. I took my time.

She pushed me flat onto the bed.

Then she slipped off her underwear and what I saw between her thighs ... I didn’t have words for it. Gold wasn’t even close to enough. Perfectly clean, perfectly pink. I couldn’t wait to find out what it felt like from the inside.

"Lay back," she said. "Let me grind you tonight."

She climbed on top and started riding.

Slow and steady at first ... I loved the pace, the way she worked to take me in, the small catch of breath when I finally slid inside her. Then something shifted and she turned into a sprinter. Fast, relentless, bouncing on top of me without letting up for a single second. Her moans started building as she climbed toward her peak, growing louder, until she shuddered and squirted all over me.

Two naked people. Heavy breathing. One bed.

She didn’t waste any time. She was on her feet and getting dressed almost immediately, like she had somewhere to be.

"Now I believe you fucked your mate’s sister," she said, fastening the last of her clothes.

"I didn’t know you were that good in bed," I said, watching her.

She paused at the door and looked back at me. "I’ve survived." Then she was gone.

I rushed to get dressed too ... but I didn’t follow her out right away. The last thing I needed was everyone connecting the dots. Seven minutes. We’d lasted seven minutes, and it still felt like something I could’ve dreamed up. If someone had told me when I first set foot in Valdris that the first and most beautiful she-wolf I laid eyes on in a foreign land would be riding me the same night as our first mission ... I would’ve laughed in their face.

The drink hadn’t fully cleared from my head yet, but I could stand. That was enough.

Two minutes after Jade left, I followed.

Rex was the first person I ran into. He had a bottle in one hand and a lady wolf tucked close to his other side. "Where have you been?" he asked.

"The drink hit me harder than I expected. I went to get some rest."

He laughed. "You can’t handle it? You need to toughen up, you hear me?" I nodded. He shoved the bottle from his own hand toward me. "You get stronger the more you take. Come on ... drink it."

I took it right there in front of him. It tasted like absolute shit. But it hit like a freight train.

Rex laughed like he’d just initiated me into some exclusive club of hard wolves.

He moved on, and I drifted back into the party, just watching. Jade was across the room, smiling ... and that smile was saying everything without saying a damn word. It was the smile of a woman who’d just had something she hadn’t had in a long time, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Nico called out to me from across the room. Dorian still wasn’t speaking to me. He’d been icing me out since I handed him that beating on the night of my induction. I didn’t come to Valdris looking for enemies, especially not in a place I barely knew ... but that was his business, not mine.

I went over to Nico. He said he wanted to get a game going. Nine of us.

Cards.

I sat down at the table. I’d played before ... not an amateur, not a professional, somewhere in the middle ... and I knew enough to be comfortable. I didn’t sit down with high expectations. But there was money on the line, and that changed things.

The money we’d just earned from the mission was about to be gambled away at a card table. Beautiful.

"Everyone’s putting in five thousand," Nico announced. The confidence in his voice made it clear he thought he already had this in the bag.

We all tossed in our cuts.

The game moved fast. I kept my queens and kings buried ... holding my best cards as a late weapon. While I played, I watched everyone else closely. Nobody at that table was an amateur.

Viktor was the first to go ... eliminated by Dante. We all laughed at him.

Nico took out Gia next. I’d been right to watch him. The way he read the table and deployed his arsenal was something else ... calm, calculated, like he’d played this particular game a thousand times.

Mira knocked out Rafael.

Then I eliminated Camila.

Five of us left. Then four. Then it came down to me, Dorian, Nico, and Dante.

Dorian eliminated me.

That one stung ... not out of wounded pride exactly, but because I genuinely thought I had it figured out. I hadn’t. He read me better than I expected.

At least it gave him something. Some kind of win over me. Let him have it.

Nico took the whole pot in the end. Forty-five thousand dollars, freshly minted Valdrian bills, stacked neatly in front of him.

A few faces around the table weren’t happy about it. The music was still playing. Anyone could’ve won ... it was just a game. Camila was saying as much to me when the night cracked open.

Nico and Dante went at each other.

Not words. Actual blows.

They were fighting with the kind of intensity that made it clear this had been building for a while. Nobody could get close enough to pull them apart ... it would’ve been a waste of time and a good way to get hurt.

A gunshot cracked through the air.

Everyone stilled. Including the two fighters.

Rex stood with the gun raised.

"What the hell is going on?" he asked.

"Dante is a fucking thief," Nico spat, chest heaving. "He wants money I won fairly in a game."

"Yeah, I do," Dante said, voice dangerously low. "Call it retribution. Didn’t you fuck my girlfriend?"

Mouths dropped open around the room.

"And so? I already apologised. Stop acting like a bitch about it."

Dante lunged.

"Enough!" Rex’s voice cut through everything.

He looked between them ... cold, unhurried, like he’d been expecting something like this to happen sooner or later. "You want to fight? Then you’ll fight. To the death this time." He shifted his eyes to Rafael. "Get the ring ready. They’ll settle it in there."

My stomach dropped.

Both men’s faces went tight. Fists clenched. Jaws locked. But neither one of them backed down.

This was going to be brutal. And from the looks on their faces, it wasn’t even close to being the first time either of them had stepped into that ring.

That was how the celebration party ended.