Kings of Anarchy

by Caroline Peckham

  All in all it was a good day, and it was about to get a hell of a lot better because Tatum was about to come join me for our first kickboxing lesson of the term and I hadn't had her to myself since we'd been in that cabin waiting for her dad to arrive. We'd hung out a lot as a group with the other Night Keepers over the Christmas break, but the risk of them catching onto us had meant that I hadn't so much as touched her in all of that time and now that we'd already crossed that line, I found myself desperate to tear through it again.

  Even better than the fact that I had a perfectly valid excuse to be rolling around on the mats with her for the next couple of hours was the fact that I had her all to myself tonight too. And I planned to make damn good use of every single second of that time.

  I'd already crossed into forbidden territory with her and there was no way that I could turn back now. So if I was going to go to hell anyway then I wanted to be sure I'd sinned as much as physically possible before then.

  The door swung open just as I was drawing the blinds closed over the window. It was dark out anyway so it wouldn't draw suspicion.

  As Tatum stepped in, I moved towards her, turning the key in the lock behind her as I crowded her back against the door.

  "Fuck, I've missed you this week," I groaned as I leaned close and inhaled the sweet scent of her skin.

  "You've seen me every day," she replied with a laugh, swatting my chest and making me groan.

  "Yeah, but I can't touch you when the others are there. I feel like I can hardly even look at you either. It’s like a slow form of torture which has had my balls aching and me jacking off alone to the memory of your body every damn night." I pressed a kiss to her neck and she moaned softly as she arched into me. "And then I have to watch Kyan and Blake pawing at you all the damn time. It's fucking painful, princess."

  "You're the one who told me that you couldn't make me any promises. You can't expect me to be exclusive..."

  "I'm not saying that," I ground out, even though truth be told, it was killing me to see her with them and not me. But it wasn't fair of me to try and force promises from her when I knew I couldn't put her first. There would always be that one pressing thing which had to be my priority. And until I'd seen Troy Memphis pay for what he'd taken from me, I couldn't even commit to surviving whatever it was that I'd need to do to bring him down. Let alone make her promises of a future. "But I wish I could."

  "I know," she replied, her voice husky as she kept her palms pressed to the door behind her, like she was fighting the urge to touch me. "But even if you did want that, I'm not sure if..."

  I pulled back and looked down at her with a slight frown, tilting my head as I looked into her big blue eyes and found guilt waiting there for me.

  "Say it, princess, I'm a big boy, I can handle it."

  "You know how much I want you," she said, biting her bottom lip as her gaze trailed down my body. "But, I swore to belong to all of the Night Keepers and I kinda...don't hate the idea of that so much recently."

  I stilled as I considered that. I mean, it wasn't exactly a surprise that she had something going with Blake and Kyan, but I guessed I'd just thought that if I'd asked her for all of her, then she would have said yes. But maybe that just made me a fucking fool.

  "Oh."

  "Nash," she breathed, catching my hand to stop me as I started to draw back. "What difference does it make? You're not asking me to be exclusive and what I have with them doesn't have any bearing on how strongly I feel about you." She reached out to press a hand to my heart which leapt at her touch before she skimmed her fingertips down my body. "And you still want me, don't you?"

  "Yeah, I want you princess. I want you like I've never wanted anyone before."

  "So, take me. The rest of it doesn't make a difference to what we have."

  I nodded, because in theory, her words made total sense. It was just a little hard for me to fully comprehend, because there was no chance in hell that I wanted to be seeing anyone other than her. She was it for me. The only girl I thought of or fantasised about. But maybe that didn't matter. So what if she was hooking up with them too? It didn't really make her any less mine, did it? And as a teacher who'd fucked his student, it wasn't like I could really try taking the moral high ground.

  "Come on," I said, pulling her over to the corner where our gloves were waiting and reaching out to wrap her knuckles for her. I'd already done mine and I was itching to get in the ring with her.

  Tatum watched me as I worked and we both tugged our gloves on in silence before stepping into the ring.

  "No holding back," I said, the hint of a smile tugging at the corner of my lips.

  "I need this today," she admitted as she rolled her shoulders, her gaze assessing me as I lifted my fists, waiting for her to get ready.

  "Then hit me with your best shot, princess. I wanna feel all of that rage in you."

  "You might regret that offer," she said, moving to my left and forcing me to match her as we circled each other. "Because I have more rage in me than I think could even be put into words at this point."

  "And grief," I pointed out. "I know you're trying not to think about your dad all the time. But I know that grief, that pain. Don't forget I've lived it too. And I know that trying to ignore it won't work in the long term. You really need to-"

  Tatum lunged at me so suddenly that I couldn't block it in time, her fist slamming into my chin before she followed up with the other to my gut. Her blue eyes were wild with a reckless kind of savagery and a piece of me knew that she shouldn't really be fighting in this emotional state. But I also knew she needed it. So if she wanted to throw all of that pain my way then I was willing to take it.

  I ducked back and took a half assed shot at sweeping her legs out from under her which she managed to jump before leaping at me again.

  "Don't go easy on me, Nash. If you won't fight properly then I'll get Kyan down here. He's not afraid to go hard on me."

  I gritted my teeth at that insinuation. I'd seen the bruises on her skin after she'd come back from her trip to see Kyan's family at Christmas and I'd also been thoroughly chewed out for trying to insinuate he'd hurt her. Because apparently she’d been begging for every one of them – Kyan’s words, not hers, but she hadn’t denied it either.

  But that didn't mean I was going to let that animal get in the ring with her.

  She came at me again and I took a shot to the ribs before returning it with a punch to her gut.

  We quickly fell into a brawl, scrapping and punching and fighting with a desperate kind of urgency to her moves like she thought she was on a time limit to do this.

  I managed to knock her back a few steps but she quickly rushed me again, ducking low and throwing her shoulder into my gut with enough force to unbalance me. She managed to hook her leg around mine before I could right myself and the two of us crashed down onto the mats.

  Tatum was totally lost to her anger and her grief and as she straddled my waist, she threw punch after punch, her breathing ragged and eyes swimming with tears she refused to let fall.

  I fought back, but not hard enough to unseat her, taking her anger and grief and letting her throw it into my body until the strength faded from her limbs and she ripped her gloves off, tossing them across the room with a growl of hopeless frustration.

  "It hurts so fucking much, Nash," she breathed, her voice a broken, empty thing as she dipped her chin and her blonde hair cascaded forward to curtain her beautiful features.

  "I know, princess," I replied, letting my grief show too as it rose up keenly in my chest to meet with hers.

  She dropped down and kissed me hard, my breath catching in my throat at the feeling of those full lips against mine and the taste of her heartache on her tongue.

  Tatum's hands slid down my shirt which was clinging to me with perspiration from our workout and she ground herself down over my dick, making it hard for me to think of anything aside from her.

  I shifted to sit up as I kissed her back and she tug
ged my shirt over my head with a hard yank, pausing to rip my gloves off too when my shirt got caught on them.

  "Wait," I murmured against her mouth as our heavy breathing filled the room and I had to fight to keep hold of my thoughts as I tried to break away from her. I was drunk on this girl. Totally, helplessly, inebriated and out of my damn mind over her, but I needed to try and regain an inch of control because if we did this here then I knew we’d just keep taking risks, hooking up anywhere and everywhere we could. "We could be caught," I panted. "Let's just wait until we get back to mine. I've got a fuck ton of junk food and candles and all kinds of romantic shit-"

  "Just fuck me, Nash," she replied, grinding down on me in a way that seriously had me changing my mind about this, but I really had wanted to try and be at least a bit sensible about this.

  "Come on. We can be back at my place within like fifteen minutes and then I promise I'll make you-"

  "I can't come to your place tonight, Nash," Tatum huffed, pulling back an inch so that she could look at me and we were no longer kissing between every word.

  "But it's my night with you," I protested, realising I sounded like a little bitch but unable to stop the way the words came out. "I only get you once every four nights." No need to mention the fact that I'd been counting down the fucking days. We'd missed our last assigned night because Saint was being a fuckwit about taking his pain pills but it had been over a week now and he was well on the mend. Besides, I didn't really give a shit if he took his pills or not. That asshole deserved at least a little pain. It was better than what my brother had got.

  "Sorry Nash, but I can't come and stay with you tonight. Saint still needs me. He won't listen to anyone else and I don't want his recovery getting fucked up because he's too stubborn to look after himself."

  "Who gives a shit?" I snapped, sexual frustration and my hate of all things Memphis colliding to make me pissier than usual. "That motherfucker did all kinds of fucked up shit to you, not to mention what his family did to mine. Where are your letters, Tatum? Is he still keeping them under lock and key? That whole thing is so fucked up and you know it."

  Tatum's jaw set angrily and she leaned back even more, her hands slipping from my chest as she folded her arms and scowled at me.

  "Saint almost died trying to protect me. The least I can do is make sure he doesn't end up with permanent injuries," she growled forcefully, leaving no room for argument. But that was bullshit and she knew it. I might have been able to accept her having something with Blake and Kyan, but Saint was cut from the devil's cloth.

  "So, what? He takes a bullet for you and now you've lost interest in all of our plans?" I demanded, my heart galloping in my chest at a fierce pace as I considered that. I didn't want to admit to how relieved I'd been to finally have help in my vendetta against the Memphis family, but the idea of her backing out on me felt like having a dagger plunged right into my back and twisted.

  "That's not what I said," Tatum growled, shoving to her feet like she wanted to put distance between us and I got up too, glaring as I stood over her and waited to hear what the fuck she had to say on this. "But you do realise that blaming Saint for what his father did is exactly the same as the way the Night Keepers blamed me for the Hades Virus. They believed my dad was responsible and so they made me pay. How is you going after Saint any different than that?"

  "You can hardly compare yourself to Saint Memphis," I snarled. "He's a fucking monster. He practically enslaved you, he half drowned you, locked you in a coffin, made you believe he destroyed those letters-"

  "I know," she all but shouted at me. "I know exactly what he fucking did to me! But I'm also starting to think I know him. And I don't think we understand the half of what he's been through in his life. The shit he survived to make him the way he is-"

  "I don't give a damn!" I roared, totally losing my cool. "Poor little rich boy had a daddy who didn’t love him. Big fucking deal. I bet he cries himself to sleep on his mountain of hundred dollar bills every night. But I had a family who did love me. I had a mom who worked herself to the bone to provide for us and a brother with his whole fucking life laid out ahead of him and Troy Memphis just took all of that away from me like it meant nothing at all. He killed them. And unlike you, I haven't had the chance to take my revenge on the man who killed my parent yet, so maybe you just don't have a fucking clue about what I've lived through, or maybe you just don't care."

  "Fuck you, Nash," Tatum snarled, her eyes flashing with rage as she stormed towards the door, but there was no fucking way I was letting her walk out on me.

  She turned the lock and ripped the door open, but my hand slammed into it above her head as I forced it closed again.

  Tatum whirled around as I caged her in, her chin rising as she glared up at me. "You know, I actually thought you were better than them, but you're not, are you? You might have treated me better but you're just as ruthless, just as cruel. You don't even care who you hurt in the process of getting your revenge, just so long as you get it."

  "You think I'm as bad as the Night Keepers?" I blanched, staring at her as the fury in her eyes burned right into my soul.

  "No, Nash, I don't think you're as bad as the Night Keepers. I think you are a Night Keeper. You're just as much of a monster as any of them, maybe even worse. Because their actions were based on grief and shock. Once they realised that I wasn't really the one they should be blaming, they backed off, apologised, even proved they care about me. But you? You've had years to figure out where to aim your grief and how to get your revenge and yet you still chose to aim it at the son of the man responsible as part of your plans."

  "I'm nothing like them," I growled, moving so close to her that our chests brushed and she was forced to tilt her chin right back to look up at me.

  "No?" Tatum hissed, her rage turning into this deadly kind of coldness that had my entire body tingling with fury. "How come you've got matching tattoos then?"

  She shoved me hard enough to knock me back a step, ripped the door open and was gone before I could even reply.

  I roared my rage at the empty room, kicking my water bottle hard enough to send it flying into the wall where it broke and sent water spraying everywhere. I marched straight over to the punching bag where I began pounding on it with all the fury of my grief and loss.

  I didn't even know how long I stayed there punching it, but my knuckles tore and bled as I went, giving some outward show to the pain which lived inside me. By the time my energy burned out, it was long past midnight and Tatum had never come back.

  I sank down to the floor and dropped my head between my knees as the most heart breaking memories of that car crash which had stolen my family overwhelmed me and I just sat there, all alone in the company of my grief.

  “You know,” Kyan’s voice made me look up what must have been at least an hour later, and I scowled as he strode into the gym like he owned the fucking place. “For two people who are taking part in a real life dirty fantasy, you and Tatum sure have been giving off some savage sexual frustration vibes tonight.”

  “Fuck off, Kyan, I’m not in the mood,” I growled.

  “Sure.” He sat down beside me and pulled a hip flask from his pocket, offering it to me and I took it without a word, tipping it up into my mouth and letting the Jack Daniels burn its way down to my gut as I drank every last drop of it.

  We sat in silence for a moment while I pursed my lips and I twisted the empty hipflask between my fingers as I glared at the boxing ring in front of us where I’d been wrestling with Tatum before it had all gone to shit.

  “When I was about nine or ten, my Grandpa decided to send me to play pee-wee football,” Kyan began slowly.

  “Is that so?”

  “Mmm. I thought for a while that maybe I’d done something to deserve it. Like…I was getting a reward or some shit, but it was all just more of the same old bullshit really, a ploy to get me in the good graces of the children of the most powerful fuckers in the state. Anyway, point is, it didn�
��t take me long to start noticing that my family weren’t exactly…normal.”

  I snorted derisively. He’d told me enough about the O’Briens for that to have become painfully obvious. Besides, a Google search had given me plenty of articles on the biggest crime family in the state if I was interested in looking into it, though I’d stopped snooping after getting a brief overview. Point was, Kyan’s family were not nice people.

  “Yeah,” he agreed even though I hadn’t said anything. “Anyway, long story short, I know you don’t like to talk about what happened to your family and shit but it’s pretty obvious that they’re not around anymore. And I guess, maybe you should just try to remember that you were lucky to have them while you did. Because if you miss them this much then I’m guessing they were better people than any I’ve ever been related to.”

  “What makes you think I’m thinking about my family?” I muttered, wondering if I should just tell him to fuck off or maybe challenge him to get in the ring with me. I didn’t know if him being here was making me feel better or worse.

  “Come on, man, we’ve been hanging out here for years. You might be a grade A asshole when it suits you, but you’re also one of a very small group of people who I don’t ache to murder through pure irritation at their existence. You might not want to think of a mean motherfucker like me as one of your only friends, but that’s what I am. No, in fact, fuck that, you’re a Night Keeper now, which means I’m your family. And I take note of the people I give a shit about. So I know what you look like when your grief is eating at you and I figured out a long time ago that you don’t really like to talk about it. And that’s cool. I’ll be your punching bag if you prefer to vent your demons like that.”

  I pushed my tongue into my cheek as I considered his words. I’d been a loner for so fucking long that I hadn’t really considered the fact that I didn’t like it that way. And he was right, the two of us had a bond which I didn’t easily form with other people. But maybe I had been holding back on account of my family. I didn’t want to lose anyone else. But if I was willing to risk letting Tatum get close to me, then what reason did I have to fight a friendship with Kyan or anyone else for that matter?