FERAL FACES
**Set the Mood: *Bound to You* Official Playlist**
*Cue up these tracks before you crack open the book — dark, sexy, and obsessive.*
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
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1. Closer — Nine Inch Nails
2. Earned It — The Weeknd
3. Wicked Game — Chris Isaak
4. Crazy in Love (Remix) — Beyoncé
5. Bad Things — Machine Gun Kelly & Camila Cabello
6. Dark Horse — Katy Perry
7. I Put a Spell on You — Annie Lennox
8. Haunted — Beyoncé
9. S&M — Rihanna
10. Take Me to Church — Hozier
11. Fetish — Selena Gomez
12. Desire — Meg Myers
13. River — Bishop Briggs
14. Unholy — Sam Smith & Kim Petras
15. Love Is a Bitch — Two Feet
16. Seven Nation Army — The White Stripes
17. Control — Halsey
18. You Should See Me in a Crown — Billie Eilish
19. Bury a Friend — Billie Eilish
20. Glory and Gore — Lorde
21. Dangerous Woman — Ariana Grande
22. I See Red — Everybody Loves an Outlaw
23. Power — Isak Danielson
24. War of Hearts — Ruelle
25. Castle — Halsey
26. Survivor — 2WEI
27. In the End — Linkin Park
28. Believer — Imagine Dragons
29. Love Me Like You Do — Ellie Goulding
30. Young and Beautiful — Lana Del Rey
31. Experience — Ludovico Einaudi
32. Skin — Rihanna
33. Middle of the Night — Elley Duhé
34. Lost in the Fire — Gesaffelstein & The Weeknd
35. Infinity — Jaymes Young
36. Pony — Far
37. Or Nah — The Weeknd
38. Partition — Beyoncé
39. Often — The Weeknd
40. Motive — Ariana Grande & Doja Cat
41. Tear You Apart — She Wants Revenge
42. Rev 22:20 — Puscifer
43. Scream — Avenged Sevenfold
44. Change (In the House of Flies) — Deftones
45. The Death of Peace of Mind — Bad Omens
46. Venom — Little Simz
47. Sick Like Me — In This Moment
48. Flesh — Simon Curtis
49. Strange Love — Halsey
50. Worship — Ari Abdul
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🌶️ *Press play. Lock the door. Let the obsession begin.*
AXLE
The rumble of the highway was still a fucking vibration in his bones, but the high from a clean run was fading fast, curdling into something sour and tight in his gut. Axle paced the length of the clubhouse, his heavy boots eating up the scarred concrete floor. Back and forth. Back and forth. The men gave him a wide berth, pressed into the shadows of the room like cockroaches when the kitchen light flicks on.
Something was wrong.
His eye had been twitching since dawn. Not the kind of twitch you ignore—the kind that meant the universe was about to take a steaming shit on his day and call it fate.
“The fuck is taking so long?” he muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. The leather cord he’d used to tie it back was already fraying, strands of dark brown slipping loose, falling across his face. He looked unhinged. He knew it. Didn’t give a single fuck.
Grimm, his VP, sat at the bar nursing a whiskey that had gone warm in his hand an hour ago. “Prez. They’ll be here. Voss don’t fuck around with the money runs.”
“I know what the fuck Voss doesn’t do,” Axle snapped. “I’m not worried about Voss.”
He was worried about everything else. The train station. The handoff. The three hundred grand in a sage-green trolley bag that was supposed to be in his hands thirty minutes ago. A million things could go wrong. Cops. Rivals. Some random civilian with a hero complex and a phone set to 911.
The front door banged open.
Voss walked in first—cold, precise, his ex-military accountant face revealing absolutely fucking nothing as usual. Behind him, Hound hauled the trolley bag like it weighed nothing, which it didn’t, because Hound was built like a brick shithouse with arms.
But it wasn’t the sight of them that made Axle stop pacing.
It was the smell.
Something sweet. Floral. Vanilla and something darker underneath, something warm and distinctly, unmistakablyfemale.
His nostrils flared. His jaw locked so tight a muscle jumped in his cheek.
“You motherfucker,” Axle said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous register. “Stopped in a whorehouse on the way back?”
Voss blinked. The only sign of surprise he ever showed. “Prez?”
The clubhouse, which had been tense but scattered—men on couches, men at the bar, the low murmur of dark jokes and darker business—went dead silent.
“You heard me.” Axle took a step forward. Then another. The men parted for him like the Red fucking Sea. “I send you to do a simple pickup. Exchange hardware for cash. In and out. And you come back reeking like a goddamn perfume counter. So I’ll ask again.” He stopped inches from Voss’s face, close enough to smell the nothing on him—just coffee and gun oil. “Did you stop at a whorehouse?”
Voss didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. “Prez, we ain’t stopped nowhere. The train ran late. Swear on my fucking patch.”
“Then why.” Axle’s voice was a razor dragged over gravel. “Do I smell flowers and vanilla in my fucking clubhouse?”
Hound, still holding the trolley bag, looked genuinely confused—an expression that sat awkwardly on his misshapen face. “Boss, I can’t smell shit right now. Can’t smell nothing but Grimm’s unwashed ass and motor oil.”
A snort from somewhere near the back. Knuckles, probably. The dumb-fuck prospect couldn’t help himself.
“And Sydney’s yeasty cunt,” someone else muttered.
The room erupted—not in laughter, exactly, but in the kind of harsh, relieved barks that came when men thought they might’ve just dodged a bullet. Grimm rolled his eyes so hard it was a miracle they stayed in his skull. “Fuck every single one of you. I showered Tuesday.”
“It’s Friday, you nasty bastard.”
“Thursday,” Grimm corrected. “I showered Thursday. Get your facts straight.”
Axle didn’t laugh. His eye was still twitching. The smell was still there, clinging to the back of his throat like a promise he didn’t want and couldn’t ignore. “Put that fucker on the table,” he said, jerking his chin at the trolley. “We count. Then we stash. Then we drink. And if one goddamn thing is off—”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.
Hound heaved the sage-green bag onto the scarred wooden table in the center of the room. The men gathered, a loose circle of leather cuts and hard eyes and hands that had done things the law wouldn’t forgive. Voss stepped forward to unzip it.
The zipper opened smooth. Buttery. Too fucking smooth for a bag that had been through three transfers and a train ride.
The teeth made a soft ripping sound.
The lid fell open.
And the smell—that fucking smell—assaulted them like a physical blow. Expensive. Feminine. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
The clubhouse went quiet. Not the tense quiet of before. This was different. This was the silence of a bomb going off without sound, the sucker-punch whiplash of seeing something so unexpected your brain just... stopped.
It was a woman’s suitcase.
Silk. Satin. Lace. Dresses folded with a care that bordered on reverent—soft fabrics in burgundy and cream and midnight blue. Panties—delicate, barely-there scraps of black lace and pale pink that made something hot and unwelcome twist in Axle’s gut. Bras that matched, the kind that looked like they cost more than some of his men made in a week. A stack of romance novels with titles like The Highlander’s Forbidden Kiss and Surrender to the Duke. A makeup bag. A worn stuffed lamb missing one button eye.
And a vibrator. Pastel pink. Unmistakable.
“What the fuck,” Grimm breathed.
No one laughed. No one moved. The men stared at the contents of the suitcase like it was a live grenade, and in a way, it was. A live grenade dressed in La Perla and smelling like a goddamn dream.
Axle started to laugh.
It wasn’t a good laugh. It was low and hollow and utterly devoid of humor—the laugh of a man who’d just realized exactly how badly his day was about to go. His hands gripped the edges of the table, knuckles going white. More hair slipped free of the leather cord, falling across his face, and the laugh kept coming, soft and terrible.
“Prez—” Voss started.
“Shut up.” Axle didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. The words cut through the room like a blade. “Just... shut the fuck up.”
He reached into the suitcase. His fingers—scarred, calloused, built for violence—closed around a scrap of black lace. A panty. He held it up, and it was so small, so impossibly soft, delicate against the rough leather of his palm.
He didn’t know why he did it.
Maybe it was the adrenaline. Maybe it was the rage. Maybe it was the way the smell of vanilla and something darker, something musky and warm, had wrapped itself around his hindbrain and was squeezing.
He brought the panty to his face.
The lace was soft against his stubble. The scent hit him like a freight train—clean cotton, vanilla, the ghost of some expensive perfume, and underneath it all, a hint of something that was just...her. Whoever the fuck she was.
His dick twitched.
He was going to kill someone while hard from sniffing a stranger’s panties. That was his fucking life now.
“P-p-prez—” Hound stammered, because apparently he’d drawn the short straw on who got to speak next.
Axle’s head snapped up. He shoved the panty into the pocket of his cut—he’d deal with that particular humiliation later—and rounded the table in three strides. His hand shot out and closed around Hound’s throat, slamming the bigger man back against the wall hard enough to rattle the framed phoenix mural.
“You lost three hundred thousand dollars.” Axle’s voice was barely a whisper now, and that was so much worse than the shouting. “You lost my money. And you brought me a suitcase full of some bitch’s underwear. Give me one reason—one single fucking reason—not to put you in the ground right here, right now.”
Hound’s face was going red. “D-didn’t—bag—identical—fuck, Prez, the bags were identical—”
“They were identical,” Voss cut in, his voice steady but tight. “Green trolley bags. Same brand. Same size. Sitting next to each other at the baggage claim. We grabbed the wrong one. It’s a mistake. A stupid, simple mistake.”
“A mistake.” Axle’s grip tightened on Hound’s throat. “A mistake that cost us three hundred grand and left a civilian with a bag full of unregistered firearms and enough cash to buy a small fucking island. You think she’s just gonna shrug that off? You think she hasn’t already called every cop, fed, and news van in a fifty-mile radius?”
“I—can’t—breathe—Prez—”
The front door banged open.
Every head in the room turned. Axle’s grip loosened a fraction, his murderous attention shifting to the new intrusion.
Knuckles stood in the doorway, his face pale as milk, his eyes wide as dinner plates. The prospect was maybe twenty-two, still soft around the edges, still trying to grow a beard that looked less like pubes glued to his chin. Right now, he looked like he’d seen a ghost.
“Prez,” Knuckles squeaked. Then, realizing how that sounded, he cleared his throat and tried again, dropping his voice to something he probably thought was tough. “Prez. There’s—uh—there’s a—”
“Spit it the fuck out before I use your teeth for target practice.”
“There’s a woman at the gate.”
The silence that followed was a physical thing. Heavy. Suffocating.
Axle released Hound, who slumped against the wall, gasping. His hand went to the gun at his hip—pure instinct, the kind that had kept him alive this long. “Did you say a cop, prospect?”
“No, sir.” Knuckles swallowed hard. “A... a woman. A real pretty woman. She’s got a bag. Like, a suitcase. Green. Looks a lot like—” His eyes darted to the table, to the explosion of lace and silk, and he visibly paled further. “Uh. Like that one.”
“Is she alone?”
“Far as I can tell. She said—” Knuckles paused, clearly weighing the wisdom of delivering this next part. “She said, and I quote, ‘I believe we had a little mix-up at the train station. I’m here to exchange the luggage.’ End quote, Prez.”
Someone swore softly. Grimm, maybe. Or Voss. It didn’t matter.
Axle stared at the prospect for a long moment. Then he looked at the suitcase on the table—the lace and silk and soft, feminine things that had no business being in a den of wolves. Then he looked at the door, where somewhere out in the night, a woman was standing at his gate, holding a bag full of illegal guns and enough cash to disappear forever.
And she’d come here. Alone. To exchange the luggage.
“Who the fuck does that?” he muttered.
No one had an answer.
“Bring her in,” Axle said, and the words came out rougher than he intended, scraped raw by something he didn’t want to name. “And check her for a wire. Pat her down. Thoroughly. If she so much as twitches wrong, you put her on the ground.” He paused, and the next words tasted like ash and anticipation. “This has gotta be a fucking trap.”
The woman that walked into the Sons of Ash clubhouse was not a woman.
She was a trap. A beautiful, soft-looking, perfectly constructed trap that men walked into willingly, gratefully, with their dicks in their hands and their brains disconnected.
Axle’s jaw tightened so hard his teeth ached.
“Fuck me,” someone breathed behind him—Grimm, maybe, or one of the other sorry bastards who’d just forgotten how oxygen worked. “The fuck is that?”
She had dark curls that cascaded down her back and framed a face that belonged on a fucking Renaissance painting. Her eyes were whiskey-colored—no, deeper than that, the color of aged bourbon held up to firelight—and her mouth was a goddamn crime. Plump lips, the upper one with a prominent cupid’s bow that begged to be traced with a thumb or a tongue, the lower one fuller, softer, made to be bitten.
She wore a dress—a modest thing, ivory lace over some kind of slip, with a neckline that didn’t show much and a hem that fell below her knees. It should have been prim. It should have been boring.
It was not boring.
Because her body—fuck, her body—even covered, even draped in that soft, feminine fabric, was obscene. Her tits strained against the bodice, the kind of full, heavy curves that made a man’s hands itch. Her waist was tiny, the kind you could span with two hands, and below it, her hips flared out in a pinup silhouette that the dress only emphasized. She held a small handbag in front of her, both hands clasped around it, and she wore small-heeled shoes that made a soft clicking sound as she walked.
The room was so quiet you could hear a man sweat.
“Hello,” she said.
Two syllables. That was all. Her voice was soft and breathy, a low hum that somehow cut through the testosterone-fueled silence like a hot knife through butter. It was the kind of voice that crawled down a man’s spine and settled somewhere deep and primitive. The kind of voice you wanted to hear moan your name in the dark.
A small smile tugged at the corner of her lip. Tentative. Polite.
“Fuck,” Grimm said, and this time Axle heard it clear as a gunshot.
She didn’t seem to notice. Or if she did, she was too well-bred to react. “I believe our bags got swapped at the baggage station,” she continued, her voice that same impossible, breathy purr. “I realized it after I felt it was heavier. I couldn’t pull it out of the—well. It was heavier than I expected.” The smile flickered, a little embarrassed now. “So I opened it. And I realized it wasn’t mine.”
She paused. No one spoke. The men were staring at her like she’d grown a second head. A beautiful, fuckable second head.
“I have a luggage tracker in my bag,” she added, as if that explained anything. “That’s how I found this place. I’d just like my things back, please. If that’s not too much trouble.”
Axle found his voice. It came out like gravel wrapped in barbed wire. “You a fucking cop?”
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Didn’t do any of the things a normal person did when a six-foot-three wall of tattooed outlaw loomed at them with murder in his eyes. Her calm didn’t crack. It just... settled deeper, like bedrock under still water.
“I assure you,” she said, “no one would give me that job. I’m just here to exchange the luggage.”
“Bullshit.” He took a step closer, invading her space, close enough to see the faint dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. “You wearing a wire? Got friends in the feds waiting outside? This some kind of sting?”
She blinked up at him. Her expression didn’t change—still that same placid, patient calm—but something flickered in her eyes. Something old and tired and almost... sad.
“You seem like a very distrustful person,” she said softly. It wasn’t an accusation. Just an observation. “But I understand. You can check. I’ll wait.”
She gestured toward the suitcase on the table—her suitcase, the one full of her soft, private things that his men had been staring at for the last five minutes. “My bag is right there. May I?”
“No.” Axle jerked his chin at Hound, who was still rubbing his throat and looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. “Check the bag. Count the money. Check for bugs, trackers, anything that shouldn’t be there.”
“And her?” Voss asked.
“Tiffany. Pat her down.”
One of the club girls peeled herself off a barstool—a hard-eyed bottle blonde who’d been with the Sons long enough to know the drill. She approached the woman with the efficiency of someone who’d done this before.
“Arms out, sweetheart.”
The woman—what was her fucking name?—complied without fuss. She held her arms out and let Tiffany pat her down, the blonde’s hands moving over her curves with professional disinterest. She didn’t flinch when Tiffany checked under her arms, along her ribs, down her hips. She didn’t protest when the search dipped lower, more invasive.
“I assure you,” she said, her voice that same breathy, impossible thing, “I don’t make it a habit of touching things that don’t belong to me.”
“Then how’d you end up with three hundred grand and a bag full of guns?” Axle demanded.
“A mistake.” She met his eyes. Hers were steady. “The bags looked the same.”
Across the room, Voss and Hound had torn open the other suitcase. The money was there—neat stacks of banded bills, all accounted for. The guns were there, serial numbers filed off, mechanisms clean. Voss checked the lining for GPS trackers, bugs, anything that could transmit. He found nothing.
“Prez.” Voss’s voice was tight with disbelief. “The money’s fine. Everything’s fine. It’s all here.”
“Check again.”
“I checked twice.”
“Check a third fucking time.”
While Voss complied, Axle turned back to the woman. She was still standing there, patient as a saint, her hands clasped in front of her again. Her eyes had drifted to the table, where her suitcase lay open, her private things spilling out for every hard-eyed bastard in the room to see.
The lace. The silk. The vibrator. The romance novels with their shirtless Highlanders and heaving bosoms.
A faint blush crept up her cheeks. The first crack in her composure.
“May I?” she asked again, quieter this time. “Please?”
Axle didn’t move. He stood between her and the table, a human wall of leather and muscle and barely contained aggression. “You just walked into an MC clubhouse,” he said. “Full of men. Full of guns and money you accidentally took. And you came alone, at eleven o’clock at night, to return it.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping. “You fucking crazy, or just stupid?”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes flicked up to his, and for a moment, something passed between them. Something that wasn’t fear, exactly. Something more complicated.
“Prez,” Tiffany said, stepping back. “She’s clean. No wire. No weapon. Nothing.”
“Thank you,” the woman said, as if Tiffany had just held a door for her.
Grimm, who had been watching the whole exchange with the expression of a man who’d seen everything and was somehow still surprised, cleared his throat. “Axle. Behave yourself. She just fucking returned your money without calling the cops. Show some respect.”
“Respect.” Axle laughed, that same hollow, humorless sound. “You don’t know that. You don’t know what’ll happen after she leaves. She could walk out that door and speed-dial every fed in the state.”
The woman—she had a name, he remembered suddenly, he’d seen it on her ID when Voss checked the bag, Scarlett Hayes, 25—sighed. It was a small sound, barely more than a breath, but it carried weight.
“Mr. Axle, is it?” she said.
His name in her mouth. That voice. That breathy, impossible voice wrapping around the syllables like silk around a blade.
His dick throbbed. Fucking hell.
“I don’t have a very good relationship with the police,” she said, and there was something in her tone now—something old and cold and buried deep. “So I won’t be calling them. I really don’t think they’re as effective as they’re given credit for.”
She smiled again. That same small, sad curve of her lips. “I can manage my way home, thank you. I don’t want to be any trouble.”
She took a step toward the table. Axle didn’t move.
“Grimm,” he said, not looking away from her. “Get her bag.”
Grimm moved to help—started to fold one of the delicate bras, his scarred, brutal hands looking obscene against the lace.
“Please don’t,” she said quickly, the blush deepening. “I’ll—I’ll handle it. Thank you.”
She crossed to the table, moving with a quiet, unhurried grace that seemed entirely out of place in this den of violence and stale beer. Her heels clicked softly on the concrete. Her hips swayed just enough to draw every eye in the room.
She packed her things quickly, efficiently, her movements economical despite her blush. The lingerie. The dresses. The romance novels. The little stuffed lamb. The vibrator—which she slid into the bottom of the bag with a practiced, discreet motion that suggested she’d done this before.
Axle watched her the whole time. He couldn’t look away. None of them could.
When she was done, she zipped the bag and turned to face him. “Thank you,” she said. “For not—well. For being reasonable. I’ll go now.”
“Where are you staying?”
She paused. “I’m sorry?”
“Where. Are. You. Staying.” He bit off each word. “How are you getting back?”
“Same way I came here, I suppose.” She shrugged. “A cab.”
He laughed. This time, it was almost genuine. “At eleven fucking p.m.? Out here? Sweetheart, no cab is coming to this neighborhood after dark. Anyone dumb enough to drop you here is long gone by now.”
She swallowed. The first real flicker of unease crossed her face—not fear of him, he realized, but of the situation. Of being stranded. Of having no exit.
“Vanessa,” Axle barked. Another club girl looked up. “Get your car. Drop her wherever she’s staying. No detours. No stops. You go straight there, you come straight back.”
“No, please—” the woman started.
“Did I fucking ask?” He turned on her, and the full force of his presence hit her like a wall. She took a half-step back, her calm finally cracking. “You’ll go with Vanessa because I fucking said so. Or you’re not leaving this compound. I’ll lock you in the basement until I figure out what the fuck to do with you.”
She stared at him. Her chest rose and fell with a breath that was just a little too fast, a little too shallow. The fear was there now, swimming in those whiskey-dark eyes. But so was something else. Something that looked almost like... resignation.
Good. Be scared. Smart girl.
“Fine,” she said. And then, with a sigh that seemed to come from somewhere ancient and exhausted: “Whatever.”
The word hung in the air between them—defeated but not broken, soft but not weak. She adjusted her grip on the suitcase handle and turned toward the door, her spine straight, her head high.
Axle watched her go. The sway of her hips. The fall of her dark curls. The faint, lingering scent of vanilla and something darker, something that made his chest tight and his jeans uncomfortable.
The door closed behind her.
“What the fuck,” Grimm said into the silence, “just happened?”
Axle didn’t answer. His hand went to his pocket, where the black lace panty was still hidden. He could feel it there, soft and damning, a secret pressed against his thigh.
He pulled it out. Looked at it. Thought about the woman who wore it—who wore things like this under modest ivory dresses and smiled with sad eyes and walked into a den of wolves without flinching.
“Prez?” Grimm again.
“Shut up,” Axle said. But there was no heat in it. He was still staring at the door.
Somewhere in the distance, an engine turned over. Tires crunched on gravel.
And Axle stood there, in the middle of his clubhouse, surrounded by his men and his money and his guns, holding a stranger’s panty in his scarred hand, and wondering why the fuck he suddenly couldn’t remember how to breathe.
Scarlett Hayes.
The name whispered through his mind like a promise. Like a threat.
Like the beginning of something that was going to ruin him completely.
