by Shannon West
A girl with huge breasts came swaying into the ring stark naked between two of his big men. Her heavy breasts swayed as she walked and the extra flesh on her ass and stomach jiggled. She passed so close to Logan that he could see her fine skin texture and beads of pearly perspiration glistening like dew around the dusky pink and erect buds of her nipples. They led her to the center of the mat and then she began to dance, a slow sensuous movement, with the smoke of a hundred or more cigars and cigarettes clinging to her like a veil. The crowd began to hoot and yell at the boys in the ring to watch. “Watch her, faggots!” one man called out to the boys in the ring. “See what you’re missing!”
The mood turned uglier as the girl continued dancing, smiling faintly at the crowd who watched her with fascination. One man standing by the barricades was watching the girl hungrily, his lips loose and drooling. His shirt swelled with the paunch underneath, and each time the girl swayed her undulating hips, he swung his hips around too, in a slow, obscene grind. People, both men and women, reached out to touch her. Logan could see their beefy fingers sinking into her soft flesh. Logan could also see her eyes were dilated and huge, her full red lips smiling and never stopping. Logan knew she was stoned out of her mind.
Men jumped over the barricade to get to her. She kept trying to dance the way she’d apparently been told to, though she was being splashed by beer and pawed by men’s hands. She went down to the mat with men piling on top of her. There were too many people to get through to her, though Logan tried. He yelled at Dread who somehow lifted his head and seemed to hear him through the cacophony of the crowd. “Stop this, damn it! The fucking crowd is out of control! Stop it or I will!”
Dread threw back his head and laughed, his eyes gleaming. But he leaned over to the man next to him and said something and soon some of his men waded through the crush to pull the girl out with them. They lifted her over their head and carried her out, her arms and legs limp. Blessedly, she seemed to have passed out, and they disappeared with her through the exit.
Then a bell was clanging madly and to Logan’s horror, the fighting started up again. The boys were fighting each other this time, all of them, spread out over the mats. Gloves were smacking against heads and blows were pounding down on all sides. Some of the boys were stumbling around like drunks, trying to get away. Blood was flying everywhere, but whenever any of the boys tried to escape through the barricades, they were forcibly hurled back in. Everyone fought hysterically. Everyone fought everyone else, and no group fought together for long. Two or three of the boys fought one, then turned to fight each other. Blows landed below the belt and in the kidney, with the gloves open as well as closed.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, but was surely only a few minutes, just one boy was left standing, looking exhausted and covered in blood and sweat, his sides heaving with exertion. That’s when the bell rang again and Jackson came out of the side door, tossing down a cigarette and climbing back through the barriers.
“Jackson, no!” Logan cried, but he knew he couldn’t be heard above the crowd. He heard Luke calling Jackson’s name beside him too. But Jackson’s face was blank and set, and even from where he stood in the crowd, Logan could smell the rank sharpness of his stale sweat. Only his eyes seemed alive and glowing red with hate. Logan had never seen Jackson look that way before. Jackson charged the boy who had to be at least ten years younger and not nearly as muscular. But the boy had become the last one standing, so Jackson struck him with his bare fist and spun him around with one, vicious blow that must have dislocated his jaw. The boy fell like a stone and never moved again. The crowd howled for Jackson to “Finish him! Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!”
Others in the crowd took up the chant and soon, “Kill! Kill! Kill!” was reverberating around the room and bouncing off the ceiling. Every muscle in Logan’s body tensed, but Jackson backed away, shaking his head doggedly. The side men came in and dragged the boy out, despite the loud boos and catcalls coming from the crowd. As Logan watched, they reluctantly dragged the other boys from the ring, one by one. The crowd’s bloodlust was so out of control that Logan tensed, ready to step in and help Jackson if it became necessary. No one made a move though, other than shouting and Logan knew if it had been anyone else in there on the mats besides Jackson, they might have attacked him. The crowd had just seen him in action, though. Logan knew they were afraid of him and with good reason.
As Jackson walked slowly behind the men, he disappeared out the exit, maybe going out to smoke again or get some air. Logan couldn’t say he blamed him. He grabbed Luke’s arm and spun him around, looking down into his eyes. “Have you seen enough now, damn you?” Luke nodded, looking a little dazed, and Logan wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him furiously away, prepared to kill anyone who tried to stop them.
Chapter Six
Logan opened the door to their hotel room and gave Luke a shove as he stepped past him into the room. Luke whirled around, his fists raised to hit Logan but stopped when Rio suddenly whined beside them. The old Lab, who had come bounding over to meet them as they came in, was wagging his tail but looking nervously from one to the other of them, sensing the strange tension that had followed them all the way home. The strain of the last hours had been riding Logan hard, and apparently it had affected Luke too. Neither of them had spoken a word since they left the club. They had been beside each other physically, but Logan felt an almost insurmountable gulf dividing them.
Logan grinned mockingly now at Luke. “What? You want to fight me? Hold that thought while I put your dog in the bathroom.” Luke glared at him but grimly shook his head.
“I’ll take him,” he said, softly so as not to scare Rio any further, but his eyes were sparking fire and writing checks that Logan thought his body couldn’t cash.
“Go ahead,” Logan said, folding his arms. “I’ll wait.”
Luke closed the door after Rio and glared at Logan accusingly. “You’re such an ass.”
“Really? Maybe I’m acting that way because you walked away from me when I told you we needed to leave. Or maybe because you let that son-of-a-bitch put his hands on you.”
Not bothering to deny it, Luke stepped closer to him, as if daring him to make a move. In the dim light from the lamp, his face was full of shadows, his eyes greeer and darker than Logan had ever seen them, a green so deep it was almost emerald. They were cold as the ice that was beginning to fill Logan’s veins. “What of it?” he snarled. “You don’t fucking own me.”
It was the wrong thing to say to Logan in his current state. He grabbed Luke and shoved him up against the wall. He had to consciously remind himself that this was Luke and he shouldn’t—wouldn’t—hurt him. The light from the bulb in the lamp began to fluctuate wildly, blinking on and off again. Logan wrapped a hand around Luke’s throat, and held him pinned there to the wall, both of them breathing hard. Luke gave him a venomous look. Luke had never looked at him quite that way before, even in those first days. He looked as if he hated Logan and wanted to run through him. He made another attempt to break Logan’s hold, but Logan was too strong, stronger than Luke, and they both knew it. Though they were equally matched in many ways, Logan was still the strongest of any of their team. He pushed Luke’s head up against the wall none too gently, bumping his head against the wall and put his knee between his legs to hold him there, making him ride his thigh. Luke squirmed like a bug stuck on a pin, obviously hating every second of it.
“Now see, that’s where you’re wrong,” Logan taunted, just to see the fury wash over him as he realized he was helpless against Logan’s greater strength. “I do fucking own you. You’re mine, Navy. Every inch of you. Until I decide you’re not worth it anymore.”
A part of Logan—a big part, if he were honest—reveled in Luke’s humiliation and fury as he struggled for breath, but those damn big beautiful green eyes were also huge in his face, and Logan found he didn’t like that in the least. What the fuck was the matter with him? Why had he said that? And why c
ouldn’t he just stop? He had no intention of actually hurting Luke, so why was he threatening him?
Or did he want to hurt him? It had been a strange night, and old resentments were simmering just beneath the surface, ready to boil up and overflow into this already tense situation, but before he left to go to the club, he hadn’t felt anything like this. Tonight, though, right up until a moment ago when he’d looked into Luke’s eyes, he’d wanted to hurt him, to rough him up a little…see him suffer.
Because Luke has always been an arrogant bastard from the first day you met him! Pigheaded, violent, temperamental— He needs to be shown who has the real power. He needs to learn his place!
Logan clutched his head with one hand as the thoughts suddenly exploded into his brain. They were so alien, so untrue in almost every respect that it brought Logan up short and made him moan. He snatched his hand holding Luke away, taking a quick step back. Where the fuck had those thoughts even come from? He loved Luke—and while it was true Luke could be a little stubborn, he was also brave and loyal. The best, most moral person he’d ever known. Far from violent, Luke tried hard to avoid any kind of brutality at all costs, only fighting when he absolutely needed to. And besides all of that, Logan loved him. Would do anything for him, even give his life to keep him safe if he had to. Luke’s only “place” was at Logan’s side.
Luke was still sneering at him, though, his beautiful face cold and hard. And Logan still felt as if he might fly apart if he didn’t hit something, do some violence to someone or something. It was a little like the way he’d felt back at the cabin in Alabama when he was attacked by The Institute’s mercenaries. He had wanted to kill those men, to destroy them, to annihilate them and tear them apart. Once he’d gotten started, it had been almost impossible to stop. He had tried to pull the rage back inside himself, but it didn’t seem to fit inside anymore. It was too big, too expansive. He needed to expel some of it and something deep inside him still craved this outlet the violence was offering him.
But this was Luke! Logan had no intention of raising a hand to him. He took a step back toward him but caught another look from those flashing eyes, and a strong surge of jealousy and maybe even a touch of fury, more powerful than he’d ever felt toward Luke before, swept over him in a wave. A feeling of restlessness and hostility—some of the same things he’d felt in that basement—rushed at him from out of nowhere, trying to consume him. That wasn’t a feeling that should ever be directed at Luke. He loved Luke, though they rarely spoke about their feelings. It was just something intangible between them, only occasionally acknowledged, but they both knew it was there and it was real.
Logan knew he was dangerous just then to Luke, though, and he concentrated on moving away from temptation. He backed up until his legs hit the bed and then he practically fell back on it because his hands were itching to do Luke some violence. For a long moment, Logan simply stared at Luke as he stared back, his eyes coolly assessing Logan, as if looking for some advantage. Logan knew that a fight was about to break out between them and such a thing might not even leave this hotel standing, let alone either one of them. Trying to break at least a little of the tension, he sighed, holding out a hand to Luke.
“I’m sorry. You drive me crazy sometimes.”
Luke gave a harsh bark of laughter. “It’s not a long trip for you, asshole. You wouldn’t have to pack a lunch.” Despite the heavy tension, Luke’s remark startled a little laugh from Logan, and he looked up into Luke’s eyes and shrugged.
“Okay. I guess not.”
“I think you make yourself crazy,” Luke said, his tone still cold and loud, obviously trying to pick a fight. “This jealousy of yours is ridiculous, don’t you think? I haven’t made any fucking promises to you.”
Logan gazed back at him in surprised hurt. “Oh, is that right?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” he said, charging across the room and slapped Logan’s face with an open hand. Logan jumped back to his feet, grabbed Luke’s wrist and flung him away, then clenched his fists and reminded himself that he loved this man, and it would be a seriously bad idea to react right now.
“It’s the truth and you know it!” Luke yelled at him. “Let’s face it, if we hadn’t been forced together the way we were, we’d never have been…like this.”
“Like what, Navy?”
“You know what I mean. We’ve fucked a few times…helped each other out. But that doesn’t give you any rights over me. It doesn’t mean you get to tell me what I can and can’t do.”
“Oh yeah? Then why did you say what you did back in Mississippi? That you loved me. Was that all a lie then?”
Luke made a dismissive, mocking sound and walked away, pacing up and down the room like a caged animal. “Sex talk. It wasn’t serious, and we both knew it.”
The silence between stretched out even longer this time. Logan couldn’t quite look at him.
“Okay,” he finally said softly. It wasn’t enough, but it was hard to get even that much out. Even that one stupid word had cost him dearly.
Luke looked back at him in surprise tinged with a bit of suspicion, like he thought Logan might argue. Like this was some trick. But the truth was Logan was reeling. He felt like he’d taken a direct shot to the heart. They hadn’t been in bed when Luke told him he loved him and he’d told Luke the same, and damn it, he hadn’t known Luke wasn’t serious about loving him. He didn’t understand this sudden change of heart. He felt like a fool and he was afraid to say much of anything for fear of how shaky his voice might come out. Or God forbid, his eyes might fill with tears. He’d see Luke dead and in hell before that would happen or before he’d admit how much he’d hurt him with the poisonous words he’d just said.
Neither of them ever said the word “love” all that much, but Logan hadn’t thought they’d needed to. To find out he’d only been kidding himself all along—that Luke had never given a damn about him as anything other than maybe a convenient fuck—that was a shock and a nasty one. He felt as if the rug had been yanked out from under him, and that their time together up to now, every promise they’d ever made to each other, had all been lies.
Luke brushed past him and went to open the bathroom door to let Rio out. Rio glanced at Logan as he trailed after Luke to the bed, where Luke flopped down on his back, studiously ignoring Logan as he picked up the tv remote.
“So that’s it? We’re not even going to talk about any of this?” Logan said, looming over him, his voice sounding a little thinner than he’d intended.
“What’s left to say?”
“Plenty, I think. Putting aside anything to do with us, surely you felt that malevolence in there in that basement tonight. How the crowd acted…how Jackson acted, not to mention the rest of you. Damn it, none of that was normal.”
Luke glanced over at him and rolled his eyes. “What the hell, Logan? I just wanted to see the damn fights, and you kept badgering me about leaving. I just left the bleachers to get away from you, and a little closer to the action.”
Logan’s lips tightened. Away from you, he’d said. Another comment no doubt intended to be a shot to the heart, but he was almost getting used to them now. He could crawl away to lick his wounds later.
“How do you explain that woman in the ring? She was drugged out of her mind, and if Dread hadn’t said something that crowd wouldn’t have just raped and assaulted her—they would have torn her apart. And what about those young guys in the ring and what Jackson did to that one boy at the end? I think he hurt him pretty badly. Hell, the crowd was chanting for Jackson to fucking kill him!”
“He didn’t kill him though, did he? They carried the guy out, and I’m sure he’s probably fine. The same for that girl. The crowd was excited, that’s all, and Dread did stop it. She wasn’t hurt. I don’t see what the big deal is.”
“The fact that you don’t see anything wrong with it scares me more than anything else this whole evening. How can you say that? I feel like I don’t even know you anymore!”
&nbs
p; “Oh, for God’s sake!” Luke shouted, throwing the remote down on the floor. The batteries popped out and rolled across the carpet. Rio yipped and ducked off the bed. “What a fucking drama queen! Give it a rest, will you? You overreacted, plain and simple. It was an underground fight—what did you expect it to be like? Did you think they’d serve us tea or something? Grow a pair. And by the way, you just abandoned Perry and Jake to find their own ride back to the hotel, after all your bullshit talk about ‘leave no man behind.’ You know they don’t have the money for a cab.”
That gave Logan a nasty jolt. It was the first time since they’d left the club that he’d even given them so much as a second thought. What was the matter with him? He’d never left any of his team behind like that before and while that usually referred to being in a war zone, that basement had almost felt like one tonight.
He started toward the door, but Luke’s voice stopped him. “Relax. They’re smart enough to find their way back. Maybe they’ll get Jackson to loan them some of his winnings. He seemed to be doing pretty well for himself!”
“We shouldn’t have gone to that basement.”
“You’re the one who insisted on staying in the first place, Logan. Jackson told you that he’d see you later and tell you about it, but hell no. You had to go and see for yourself. Well, you’ve seen it. Now stop clutching your pearls and get over yourself. It was just a few fights.”
Jake turned, unable to stay in the room with Luke another moment longer without doing some violence to him, and stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. It was childish, he knew, but he felt like acting juvenile and spiteful right now, damn it. Too much had been said and Luke was acting like a complete stranger. Worst of all, Luke had said he didn’t love him, and now that Logan was alone, he could admit it felt like he was coming apart.
