Dance for Me

by Kay Elle Parker

  “Leaving so soon, darling daughter?”

  Oh fuck.

  Her feet thudded over the sill of the car frame, then hit the ground as Abraham hauled her effortlessly from the vehicle. The time of Reckoning had come, but Christ, she was unprepared. A month ago, she’d have taken what was coming without complaint, but now...damn it, was it too much to ask for a simple life? To be left alone to enjoy what she’d found with Braun?

  Her father was a bear of a man, more in width than height. Bodie was quickly reacquainted with his strength as he dragged her, feet skimming over the asphalt, toward her apartment. He wouldn’t be concerned with witnesses—the law held no meaning to him. Rats and do-gooders would be silenced if they dared to interfere or call the cops.

  Just about everyone knew Abraham, or believed him to be a legend if nothing else. Everyone knew the consequences of getting up in his business, so Bodie was well aware there’d be no help from her neighbors, if they were even in.

  Her apartment door swung open as Abraham reached it, and he tossed her into the hallway before bending to kiss his wife savagely.

  Bodie bit her lip as her knees and palms burned upon meeting the carpet, then she lost her breath as her mother walked past her, the woman’s heavy black biker boot striking Bodie’s stomach as she waited where she’d landed.

  Moving meant punishment.

  “There's nothing here, Abe. Sneaky little cunt cleared the place out.” Diane continued into the living room, leaving her eldest daughter in the hall struggling not to throw up. “Comes swaggering home after a week of living the high life, dressed up in fancy new clothes, and shows no gratitude toward the people who raised her.”

  Fancy new clothes? Bodie nearly laughed. If jeans and a sweater could be called fancy, she’d obviously gone up in the world of fashion. And as for gratitude...she was grateful for her time with Braun. It would help her survive the next hours of hell.

  Abraham flicked on the hall light as Diane did the same in the living room. Their trap had paid off, Bodie realized. Lying in wait in the dark. She’d almost walked straight into it. “No gratitude at all. We give you a good life, feed you, clothe you, keep you in the family even after you damn near killed your baby sister, and you think you can just run off without so much as a word? Don’t work like that, babygirl. Everything comes with a price.”

  Bodie lowered her head to the carpet, tried to ignore the throbbing pain in her cheek. Worse was heading straight for her, and if she showed any sign of aggression, it would hit her hard enough to send her into the next century.

  Abraham walked over to her, stepped past her, then bent and gripped her hair in his hand. “Even smells fancy, too. Got yourself hooked up to some dumb fuck, girl? Found some clueless asshole to take you in? Bet you didn’t tell him what a worthless whore you are, how you fuck anything that gets a hard-on.”

  The grip of his fist in her hair was nothing like Braun’s or Jasper’s. Cruel, menacing, designed to hurt. The Masters would never pull viciously enough to snap her head back painfully, to strain the tendons and ligaments in her neck to breaking point.

  “You want to leave the family, babygirl? Take off with the sap you’ve conned into letting you warm his bed and wet his dick? That’s fine with me, but there’s some restitution to be made before you step outta that door again.”

  Only the fear of consequences stopped her from clawing at his hand as he hauled her into the next room using her hair as a leash. If she so much as lifted a hand, he’d cut it off. He’d once ripped her two front teeth out with pliers when she dared to bite him as a child.

  She’d acted in self-defense; his actions were his training methods.

  They worked. She’d never tried to bite him again.

  “She’s quiet as sin,” her mother drawled. “Guess there ain’t nothing she can say. Knew she was a wrong 'un from the start.” Diane stepped forward as Abraham pulled Bodie to her feet, then curled her fingers around her daughter’s windpipe tightly, digging her nasty inch-long nails into the vulnerable skin. “Flitting about like you own the fucking world while my girl rots in a goddamn chair. Should’ve been you dead from the waist down.”

  Bodie stared into eyes the same shape and color of her own, repulsed by the manic gleam of hatred in them. She hoped she never became so bitter, so jaded, that one day she looked in the mirror and saw her mother staring back at her. “The accident wasn’t my fault,” she choked out.

  Abraham’s fist flashed from nowhere, crashing into her already swelling jaw and wrenching her from her mother’s grasp. She felt the sting of skin ripping, the warmth of blood trickling down her throat, then the almighty pain of the blow come to full fruition. Tasted the familiar copper tang of blood in her mouth.

  “Keep your lies to yourself,” he snarled, raising his fist for another shot. “Alicia told us what happened. How you led her astray, letting her tag along when you went to meet one of those teenage pricks so he could fuck you behind the dumpsters. How you shoved her off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic when she was gonna be a good girl and tell us what you were up to behind our backs.”

  Same old bullshit. Alicia speaks no falsehoods. Alicia the perfect.

  “I was going to the goddamn library!” Bodie spat, unable to hold the words back anymore. For years she’d held her tongue. Any attempt at discrediting Alicia and proving her sister to be a liar resulted in violence. “The goddamn library, because you had whores and fucking drug runners in the house!”

  It was Diane who struck her this time, the second part of the destructive tag team that was her parents. Her fist smashed into the soft flesh below Bodie’s sternum, doubling her over as best she could while still pinned by her father’s hand. “You got something against our friends, our employees, you snooty bitch? All fucking high and mighty now, ain’t you? Those whores and drug runners kept food in your belly and clothes on your fucking back.”

  “Fuck you,” she wheezed. As far as she could see, she wasn’t exacerbating the situation from a beating to murder. No, her parents knew she was cutting off their cash cow from further milking, and they were here to do what they did to every loose end in their life.

  Snip snip.

  She was kind of surprised they didn’t already have a tarp on the floor and gasoline cans lined up for the grand finale.

  Abraham launched her across the room, sending her careering into the paper-thin wall. Plaster dust rained down on her as she came to a stop half in, half out of the flimsy barrier.

  That’s definitely the security deposit gone.

  “Alicia followed me to the library,” Bodie ground out between wracking coughs. “They wouldn’t let her in after the last time she went and set a stack of books on fire in the kid’s section. So she had a tantrum and said if I went in, she’d tell you I was meeting boys for sex.” She winced, bracing herself as Abraham stalked toward her, fury alive in his dark eyes. His mane of silver hair seemed all the more intimidating from down here, lending him an otherworldly edge. But she kept talking while she still had a tongue in her head. “She started playing chicken in the street, daring me to go after her and pull her out of the way. Almost got hit twice, and the third time, I pushed her from in front of a fucking bus.”

  Had damn near been creamed by it herself. Bodie remembered the gaping sensation in her gut when she’d realized her sister had pushed her taunting too far. She’d run across the road, connecting with Alicia’s smaller body and knocking her onto her back on the sidewalk.

  Alicia had been safe, Bodie had felt the brush of the bus against her back as it blew past with an obnoxious bellow of the horn, and then all hell had broken loose.

  While she dealt with the shock of almost being run down by a bus, Alicia had lain silent on the sidewalk, her eyes open and mouth moving silently. Bodie wouldn’t find out until later that Alicia had fallen awkwardly, breaking critical vertebrae and severing her spinal cord.

  Abraham was an ungodly shade of red. “So you admit it.”

  Bodie tried
to crawl out of the wreckage of the wall, yelped as her father snagged her wrist and wrenched her free. “I’ll admit to saving my sister. I did the only thing I could in that moment. If I’d done nothing, she’d be dead. Maybe that would’ve been kinder than leaving her to rot under your roof.”

  In the next breath she took, Bodie understood she’d just pulled the pin on the grenade of her life. She kissed Braun goodbye in her head, settled her aching cheek against the breadth of his powerful chest, and whispered the words she hadn’t been courageous enough to give back to him yet.

  She held herself in that vision, kept herself anchored in her Master, as the world stayed still for a long, quiet moment.

  When the pain hit, Bodie stood straight and hit right back.

  *

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me she lived in this dump?” Braun demanded of Liam as they cruised into town. He shook Bodie’s note at her best friend, infuriated she’d managed to let this little detail go undetected. “You think I’d have even let her think about coming back on her own if I knew she lived here?”

  Liam glared at him. “You’re her Dom, Braun. She’s been living with you for a goddamn week; you didn’t think to ask?”

  Atticus's massive truck was filled to capacity with five Masters. The man himself was driving, following Liam’s directions rather than following the navigation system. Jasper, faster than the rest, had called shotgun immediately. Liam was wedged between an irate Braun, and a napping Loki.

  When he’d realized his subbie lived in a notoriously shady area, Braun had summoned his buddies. Leaving a bemused Connie in charge of Avalon while the plumbers worked their magic—something Braun was going to pay for painfully, if the look of intent on her face meant anything—the Masters of Avalon were riding to Bodie’s aid.

  If she wanted her old apartment clearing so badly, well, it would be cleared. In half the time. He wanted her nowhere near anything dangerous, and he certainly didn’t want her to be a sitting duck if her asshole parents turned up for one of their regularly unscheduled visits.

  “No,” Braun admitted grudgingly. “We covered a lot of stuff but where she lives exactly didn’t crop up in conversation.” He clenched his fist, bouncing it off his knee. A kernel of unease wound its roots into his belly. “How much longer before we get there?”

  “Well, if our resident chauffeur takes a right here, and then the second left, we should be there.” Liam leaned between the seats to point, then his back stiffened as two shiny motorcycles revved loudly, tires almost screaming as they came around the corner at speed.

  Braun’s attention was caught by the broad guy riding the bike closest to the truck—the man rode without a helmet, his bulky form stuffed into black leathers. Silver hair streamed back from a craggy face as the bikes bulleted past with a whine of engines.

  “Heisler,” Liam said tightly, “put your fucking foot on the gas. Now.”

  “Liam?” Atticus spared a glance at him, then set his attention back on the road as he made the turn.

  “Put your fucking foot down!” Liam had lost all color in his face and, to Braun’s horror, looked as though he wanted to cry. Never in all their years of friendship, not even after his asshole boyfriend took off with another man, had Braun seen William Carradine shed a tear.

  He set his hand on his friend’s shoulder, pulled him back into his seat. “Tell me what’s going on, Liam.”

  Stormy gray eyes met Braun’s, and the pain in them was equal to his fear. “That was Bodie’s father. The guy on the bike. It was Bodie’s father, Braun. You understand what that means?”

  Braun resisted the illusion that the man might just be in the area. Criminals had their territories, but from what Bodie had told him, the city was his territory, which meant he could go anywhere he pleased, whenever he liked. But for him to pull out of a street leading directly to Bodie’s apartment?

  Coincidence? He thought not.

  “Atticus, step on it.” Keep a cool head, Fitzpatrick. “You got a first aid kit in here?”

  The truck sped up, pressing them back in their seats as it rocketed down the dark street. Buildings blurred past, then Atticus wrenched the wheel, spinning them around a corner on what felt like two wheels, then slammed on the brakes as they careened into a compact parking lot.

  The headlights spotlighted the dusty little wreck Bodie liked to think was a suitable method of transport.

  “First aid kit under Jasper’s seat,” Atticus said as they bailed out.

  Braun’s were the first feet to hit the ground, and he was running before he realized it. His heart stopped as he saw the broken driver’s window, the jagged glass still in the frame smeared with blood. He hauled the door open, swallowed hard when he saw drops of blood spattered like fine rain on the wheel.

  A flash of blond caught his attention and he sprinted after Liam, catching up with him in seconds. Footsteps thundered behind them, and he knew he had good friends at his back. “Which apartment?”

  Liam skidded to a halt outside a door, and Braun noticed the lights were off in the apartment itself. Everything around here was deathly quiet—no screaming babies, no blaring televisions, no nothing. Just an eerie silence. “This one.”

  Braun shouldered his friend out of the way when he hesitated, gripping the door handle and pushing. “Fucking thing’s locked. Move,” he snapped, knocking Liam away into Loki, who looked stunned by the events which had unfolded as he slept.

  With terror and fury boiling his blood, Braun reared back and kicked the door. Wood squeaked, and he thought it bowed under the pressure. A second kick splintered the frame, and a third broke the lock, slamming the door wide open.

  “Loki, keep Liam with you. Guard the door in case someone comes back.” Braun fought down the urge to be sick as he stepped into a dark, narrow hallway. The scent of damp and mold was almost as nauseating as the idea of something bad happening to Bodie. “Atticus, Jasper, with me.”

  There was no protest from Liam, but from the look on his face, he knew something Braun didn’t. He wore the expression of a man watching a doctor walk toward him with bad fucking news. The boy was grieving.

  Braun found the light switch, flicked it on. His stomach turned once, his brain envisioning his subbie living in this rotting excuse for a home, before he steeled himself and strode into the dark living room.

  He paused, feeling Jasper at his back, then took a deep breath and grimaced. There was more than damp and rot here—there was the sickly-sweet scent of blood. “Bodie, sweetheart, can you hear me? Don’t be scared, baby. I’m here; we’re all here.”

  There was no reply, not even a whimper.

  He slid his hand over the wall to his left, found nothing. Repeating the action to his right, his fingers brushed the hard plastic of the light switch. With a harsh breath, he flipped it on and let a barrage of profanity escape as he faced a scene straight out of a crime documentary.

  The room was damn near empty. A lone armchair was tipped on its side. He spotted a hole in the drywall, a big one, and felt his stomach twist. But it was the blood, all the fucking blood, which scared him most. Splatters of it across the walls, a pool of it not two feet from the toes of his boots. And a trail, a swath of crimson, leading toward a door to his left.

  “Motherfucker,” Jasper breathed. “That’s a lot of blood, Braun.”

  He swallowed, nodded. “Wait here.”

  “Brother, I think you should let me check that room. Whatever’s been done here...you shouldn’t have to see it.” Jasper’s hand was firm on his shoulder, but Braun shrugged it off. “Braun, listen to me for once in your goddamn life.”

  His feet were already moving toward the door, drawn to whatever waited for him beyond it. His heart balanced on a precipice, ready to plunge into eternal suffering. The room, Jasper, revenge...they all faded into nothing, his vision blinkered and focused on that goddamn door.

  The handle was cool in his hand, squealed in protest as he twisted it. When the door swung inwards, he was str
uck by the odor of blood and urine, years-old damp and mildew. It was colder in here, stinging his skin as his breath puffed out in a visible stream.

  Before he shed light on the inevitable, he said simply, “Call an ambulance, J.” His voice was hollow, strained. He didn’t need light to know Bodie was in here. He could feel her. “Call an ambulance, and the cops.”

  “She’s there?”

  “Just do it.” His hand shook terribly as he searched for the switch. His heart plummeted into the dark as muted light bathed the room, and the broken figure tossed carelessly on a blood-stained mattress, limbs bent in unnatural directions, her back to the door. “Goddamn it, little one.”

  His knees were weak, but he forced his legs to work. He crossed to her, his throat and chest tight enough to squeeze the breath from his lungs. Falling to his knees beside the mattress, he reached out and brushed his fingers over her hair.

  They came away sticky and red.

  Jasper’s voice floated through the open doorway, cold and controlled. The tone he used when his emotions were compromised.

  Braun turned her, ever so carefully, onto her back. Tendrils of ice wound into his chest, strangled his lungs, his heart, until his vision blurred.

  That beautiful face, capable of expressing so much emotion, was slack and waxy pale. Swollen and bruised, smeared with blood. The eyes he loved were closed, blackened. A gash cut deep into her hairline.

  He blinked, clearing his vision, and studied what had been done to her. Part of him couldn’t believe he was bearing witness to such cruelty. Part of him was gearing up to hunt down her father and rend him limb from motherfucking limb.

  There were gouges along her throat, bruises forming on her windpipe. He wasn’t a doctor, but he thought her legs were broken. One was, for certain, from the ugly angle it rested on the mattress. The other didn’t look good.

  His fingers were cold when they pressed against her throat, seeking a pulse. He didn’t expect to find one, not with the blood in the other room. Not when she’d obviously been worked over by experts with a knack for causing pain.