CAGED (Bad Boy Romance): THE UNDERGROUND

by Alexx Andria

  I couldn’t fathom Damon dying for me.

  Damon was a good man, even if he was rough around the edges.

  He was my man, my brick wall.

  And there was only one thing I had going for me in this negotiation — the fact that Davonte wanted me bad.

  Maybe even bad enough to trade.

  “I’ll go willingly with you. I will even marry you,” I said, disentangling my hand from Damon’s in spite of his furrowed brow of shock. I took a step toward Davonte, my throat aching from the unshed tears of misery that I wanted to cry. “I’ll give you everything you want in a wife…if you let Damon go.”

  “I already told you, that offer expired,” Davonte said with a cruel twist of his lips, enjoying watching me beg for his mercy. “But I’m entertained by your attempt to resuscitate a dead deal.”

  Damon gave a minute shake of his head but I was past the point of return. I had to make this work.

  “Don’t be stupid. You have plenty of whores. What you don’t have is a woman who can elevate your place in society. I might not come from riches but I know how to act. I’ll be your arm candy if you just let Damon go.”

  In spite of Davonte’s claim that I was spinning my wheels, my argument seemed to hit a chord.

  “Just let him go?”

  “Let him leave Detroit. That way, you never have to suffer his disrespect again and I will be faithful to you and our life.”

  I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. Was I really committing myself to a disgusting pig like Davonte for the rest of my life?

  His expression turned sly and ugly. “Really? And what if I wanted to fuck you in the ass every night behind closed doors? Rip you wide open so that you couldn’t walk straight the following day? Would you still smile and act the adoring wife on my arm?”

  I swallowed the true lump of fear and managed a nod. I could almost feel Damon’s rage billowing out from his pores. Lord help Davonte if Damon managed to get his hands on him. “I will be your loving w-wife in all ways.” I barely got the words out.

  I was doing this for Damon.

  “I don’t know, boys. Do you think she’s worth it?” It was a rhetorical question his men knew better of answering. This was all for show anyway. Davonte wanted us to squirm. I was already on my proverbial knees offering up my dignity…I couldn’t give much more.

  Davonte’s cunning gaze flew to Damon. “Killing you might too kind for what you’ve done. Maybe the ultimate punishment would be leaving you alive so that everyday you knew that I was fucking your woman.”

  Damon’s fists clenched but I stayed him with a look. I wasn’t going to watch him die. Not over me.

  After a long, tension-filled moment, Davonte said in a voice brimming with satisfaction, “Well then, call me a softie but maybe you’ve persuaded me to put a ring on your finger after all.”

  I shuddered and released a pent-up breath.

  Davonte grinned, looking as smug as the Cheshire cat. “Come here darling, show me how much you plan to adore your loving and virile husband.”

  Lord, give me strength.

  I walked on unsteady feet toward Davonte, closing the distance until I was near enough for him to grab. I cried out as Davonte’s fingers curled onto my wrist, bruising the skin as he jerked me into his arms to smash his mouth against mine.

  My first instinct was to bit off his tongue as he jabbed the thing into my mouth but I forced myself to stop struggling and accept it, if only to protect Damon.

  Davonte twisted my breast as he grabbed at me, fingers digging into tender flesh. Then he made an obscene show of clutching at my mound, jamming his hand down my pants to roughly fondle what he wanted so badly.

  I squeezed my eyes shut to endure the humiliation but the roar that echoed sounded inhuman.

  Suddenly, there was a blur of motion and the ricochet of fired bullets hitting metal as Damon charged the men guarding Davonte.

  Just like that first night, Damon tore through the thugs like a fist through wet paper.

  Davonte shoved me away from him so he could grab his gun. I landed on the dirty floor and scrambled away, watching in awe as Damon broke bones and shattered faces.

  Like a hot knife through butter.

  Grunts, screams of agony, guns hitting cement from nerveless fingers, and Davonte shouting desperate, but ultimately useless orders…it was a symphony of destruction.

  The violence was bloody and vile but watching Damon protect what belonged to him…a thing of beauty.

  I wouldn’t apologize for the blood-thirst I was feeling.

  I wouldn’t apologize for Damon’s actions in a moment of pure fury.

  And when he got to Davonte…I didn’t even look away.

  “You’re never going to touch her again, you motherfucker,” he promised Davonte seconds before he kicked the man’s trachea down to his ass.

  Tiny bloody bubbles danced on Davonte’s lips as he gurgled his last breath, his fingers curling spastically, clutching at the life quickly leaving him.

  Within seconds Davonte was dead, and we were standing in a circle of carnage.

  I ran to Damon and he scooped me up, holding me tight as if his arms were the only thing tying me to this earth.

  “I killed him,” Damon said, his voice shaking. “I fucking killed him.”

  “Shhhh, I know, baby,” I crooned to him, kissing him softly, soothing the shock from his face. He’d killed every last one of them protecting me. “I know.”

  I wanted to hold him for days, assure him that he’d had no choice but we didn’t have time to go soft.

  Not yet.

  Now it was time to get the fuck out of there. “C’mon, let’s go,” I urged. “We can’t be seen with these bodies. Someone is going to find them eventually and we need to be far from the scene when they do.”

  Damon nodded and gripped my hand as we ran out of the factory, prepared to leave behind the evidence of what’d gone down.

  But just as we cleared the factory grounds, another car rolled up.

  The window rolled down and Terrance smiled from the backseat.

  The expletive scrolled across my brain as Damon exploded in kind. “Where the fuck were you?”

  And right then, I wasn’t sure that Damon wouldn’t end Terrance, too for leaving us to twist in the wind.

  To be honest, I wasn’t sure I would stop him.

  Chapter 31

  Damon

  I was seeing red.

  Terrance exited the car, buttoning his suit with an approving smile as if I wasn’t glowering at him like he was the Antichrist.

  He gestured to his men who then melted into the factory, presumably to clean up the mess. Or maybe to take pictures and gawk, fuck, I didn’t know.

  “Where the fuck were you?”

  “Waiting to see if you had balls.”

  His answer baffled me into stunned silence until it was Charlie who said something first.

  “Excuse me? You’re the one who set up this fucking deal. What are you talking about?”

  “I wanted to see if Damon had what it took to do what had to be done. That’s the only way he’s going to make a go out of The Underground. Sometimes…business is messy.”

  I couldn’t reconcile what Terrance was saying to me. Until understanding dawned and it still took a minute to process.

  “You were never coming to kill Davonte. You wanted me to do it all along. You used Charlie to push me to do your dirty work.”

  Terrance chuckled and shrugged as if my theory was neither here nor there. “Point is, you proved you weren’t soft, son. Happy ending. You get The Underground and the girl. I’d say that worked out fairly well.”

  Charlie shook her head, murmuring. “This was your plan?”

  “Not exactly. Chantel helped convince me that you were worth testing. She seems to think highly of you and now I know why. Nothing is for free. You want something, you have to earn it…or have the balls to take it.”

  This was all a fucked-up life le
sson?

  I couldn’t believe the shit I was hearing but I supposed Terrance was right to a certain extent. I thought his methods sucked but I couldn’t argue the end result.

  “I’ll have the legal paperwork drawn up for McConnell’s and put in your name. The Underground is yours.”

  “And how exactly are you going to do that?” I scoffed, my head still swimming.

  He smiled. “I know people who owe me favors.”

  My head felt filled with spiders. I couldn’t quite accept that I’d killed Davonte and his crew. I wasn’t a killer before that moment. But I wasn’t sorry. Maybe that’s what was messing with me the most.

  Davonte had gotten what he deserved.

  Terrance added, “I’ll take care of the details here. You’ve earned a shower and a hot meal.” Then he handed me a fat wad of cash. “Consider this a gift toward our new partnership.”

  Partnership?

  I didn’t want to take the money but just as I was about to refuse it, Charlie accepted the cash.

  I guess she was thinking faster than me.

  Which was a blessing.

  Refusing the gift would’ve started a whole new war.

  Charlie bobbed a quick thank you to Terrance and then slipped her hand into mine, saying, “You heard the man, a shower and a hot meal. Sounds good to me.”

  We climbed into the truck and before I could ask, she said, “Just drive, Damon. My brain is fried and I just want to put some miles between us and what’d just happened.”

  I heard the strain in her tone and I couldn’t argue that reasoning.

  If we were starring in our own Quentin Tarantino movie, this was the part where we would ride off into the sunset in our bloody clothes while some vintage music played us off into the credits.

  But we weren’t in a movie. Endings weren’t always pretty.

  Guess that was the true life lesson of the moment and when I was no longer covered in someone else’s blood, maybe I’d give it some more thought.

  Until then…fuck it.

  A shower and a fucking steak sounded just about perfect.

  “Amen, baby girl,” I breathed. “A-fucking-men.”

  Epilogue

  Charlie

  Funny how things worked out.

  You might’ve guessed it, Damon knocked me up that first night.

  We were asking for it.

  No condoms. Total disregard for protection or consequence.

  But we hadn’t quite expected the news that I was pregnant with twins.

  Boys.

  We already had their names picked out but we didn’t actually know which one was which, until we could take a look at them, because you know, personality and all that.

  Thomas, after my brother and Leo, after Damon’s dad.

  So, now I looked like a bowling ball wearing a red wig because I was round and puffy everywhere.

  Even my feet were swollen.

  I thought I looked like a goddamn monster.

  Except when Damon looked at me.

  That’s when I melted.

  If I could spend the rest of my life seeing myself through Damon’s eyes, I’d never suffer a moment of weak self-esteem.

  The man’s gaze heated with instant lust, no matter that I was practically a shape human beings shouldn’t be.

  He would make love to me whether I was fat, thin, pregnant, breastfeeding (oh, good lord, how am I going to keep him off me when my boobs got ginormous?) or if all my hair fell out.

  Damon McAvoy, as I discovered, was the kind of man that just wasn’t made anymore.

  I hated the trite saying, “God broke the mold with that one” but it was true.

  And now I was bloated with his spawn.

  Spawn that he would teach how to be real men. My boys. Pride caused my eyes to water with sappy happiness before I could stop it.

  “What are you smiling about?” he asked, catching me in my mental conversation. “Should I be scared?”

  I laughed at the idea of little me scaring a man as big and fierce as Damon.

  His arms circled around me — or at least he tried — and I pointed out ruefully, “You know, eventually, I’ll be so big that you’ll wonder if your wife is still in there.”

  Yes, I said it.

  Wife.

  I married the big lug.

  Okay, so ours wasn’t a fairy tale.

  Unless you count blood, death, carnage and murder part of the average fairy tale but we got our happy ending so I guess it all worked out.

  And, even though I still wasn’t in love with the idea of Damon running The Underground, I had to admit, he’d kept his word about turning it around.

  First, he booted Manny Riggs out on his ass as part of the clean up.

  Then, he took the (blood) money that Terrance had gifted him and invested it into the gym so that it no longer looked like all the equipment came from the back of a truck fifty years ago.

  He had rules that made sense.

  He encouraged the ones with potential and steered the ones who didn’t into going back to school.

  That was my stipulation and he was happy to put it into play.

  So, I guess you could say, we were the next generation of The Underground.

  Oh, and my father did me a solid and choked on his own vomit after a bender, leaving me my grandparents house.

  Even though the neighborhood still wasn’t fancy (or at times, entirely safe), Damon and I had worked to fix up the bungalow to its original glory.

  Our love story was an urban fairytale.

  Sure, there were still bars on the windows of our castle but my king was a beast who wasn’t afraid to show his teeth now and then to protect his queen.

  And let me tell you a little secret…that was sexy as hell.

  I’d never understood the power of true chemistry until I’d experienced what’d sparked between me and Damon.

  Some might call our love story doomed to run its course with a flash and a bang because we fell in love so quickly.

  Anything that kindled so fast, had no staying power.

  To them, I would say, fuck off.

  Somethings you couldn’t explain, you just felt.

  Now I couldn’t imagine loving anyone how I loved that man of mine.

  Life hadn’t turned out the way either of us had expected — in truth, it’d turned out far better than we could’ve dreamed.

  And I couldn’t wait to see what else our future had in store.

  The End

  PAYBACK

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  By Alexx Andria

  © 2016 Alexx Andria. All rights reserved.

  Cover by Kim Van Meter

  No part of this NOVEL may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. All characters are fictitious and any resemblance to an actual person is purely coincidental.

  The following NOVEL is approximately 43,000 words and an original work of fiction by Alexx Andria.

  Back Cover Blurb

  He kidnapped me—so why do I feel alive for the first time in my life?

  Holly

  I’ve spent my entire life avoiding trouble, unlike my brother Butcher. But when Cason O’Connor kidnaps me, I’m shocked that I’m now being used as a pawn for my brother’s crimes. I should hate my captor, but I don’t. I hunger for his touch, I crave his intensity, I feel alive for the first time in my life. Will he be willing to abandon his plot for revenge or will I be nothing but payback?

  Cason

  The plan is simple—kidnap Holly Brannon, baby sister of the man who shot mine. Revenge should be sweet. I’ll torture the only person he loves. Instead, I’m the one being tortured by this fiery redhead with incredible curves. I’m obsessed with her. Now I must choose between making Butcher pay for his crimes and my desire to possess Holly, no matter the consequence. She was my victim—now she’s my woman. And I’ll never let her go.

  Warning: This is a bad boy romance with dark themes. It is over-the-top sexy wi
th all the dirty sweetness you’ve come to expect from an Alexx Andria read.

  Chapter 1

  Cason

  Strawberry blonde hair twisted in a messy bun, tiny tendrils escaping to frame a soft jaw.

  Dark-rimmed glasses perched on her nose as she turned a page, oblivious to the busy world around her.

  Drenched in sunlight on the campus lawn.

  And the sweetest hips and tits I'd ever seen.

  I smiled. Target acquired.

  "When?"

  A single question.

  "Tonight," I answered, continuing to watch. Something about her reaching inside and twisting my nuts so hard I could barely breathe.

  "Why not now? Let's get it over with," my buddy Tito Sanchez countered, impatient, twitchy. "This place makes me want to take a shit. Bunch of over-privileged assholes, you know what I mean?"

  I smiled briefly, my eyes never leaving her.

  "Nice to meet you, Holly Brannon," I murmured, firing up my '73 'Cuda. The vintage muscle car growled, the torque shaking the frame with barely contained brute strength. "Now I know why your brother has been hiding you all this time."

  "She's hot," Tito observed, adding, "Nice and thick, too. Enough meat to hold onto."

  I agreed. Holly was an unexpected surprise.

  A gift hand-delivered and placed right at my feet.

  Perfect for my plans.

  Holly had no idea I was the predator and she was the prey.

  Recently, I discovered that Butcher Brannon, leader of the Ice Town Rebels, had a little sister he'd been trying to keep secret.

  But the thing about secrets was that eventually, someone talked.

  And that's exactly what happened when I started applying pressure to one inside Brannon's inner circle.

  It's amazing how quickly people talk when extreme pain was involved.

  Which brought me to this private college campus, away from the city, away from the dirt and grime, shit and piss that people like Butcher and myself often called home.