Alivia wasn’t part of his world. She was part of the high class, the elite, while he was nothing but a salvager trying to make a decent life for himself and Noah. If he was smart he’d keep his lips and his feelings to himself.
But he’d never been considered overly smart.
He had a feeling he knew where Noah had been taken. He’d dealt with Max before and men like the pimp bastard were nothing if not predictable. He reached down and reset the blaster from stun to kill, avoiding Alivia’s probing stare. She had no idea what type of man Max was, or what kind of world this was. Right now Noah’s life was in danger and Ronan would be damned if he didn’t protect his partner with everything he had.
The employee passageway they were in came to a T juncture and without hesitation he turned right and headed up a set of metal stairs.
“How do you know this is the right way?” Alivia asked him.
“I just do.”
“I don’t understand,” she continued. “Wait! Are you sure–”
“Positive,” he snarled, halting to turn and look at her. Since she was behind him, she stood two steps lower and gazed up at him with a mixture of fear and concern on her face. Best she understood now. “This stairway leads all the way up to the tenth floor, which has all the sin you could possibly think of. Any kink, any flavor, men or women, boys and girls. Some even have animals. And I know because I used to frequent the tenth floor…a lot.”
To her credit she didn’t back down, although she did flinch a bit at that last revelation.
“Who is this Max?” she asked, lifting her chin.
“A pimp.”
“What’s that?”
“He controls prostitutes while taking a percentage of their earnings.”
He saw she was starting to put the pieces together. “Why did he take Noah?”
“I’m sure you can guess.”
“Noah…worked for him?”
“Yes. Noah was one of his boys.”
Ronan waited. She had a choice to make, to either accept Noah now or reject him for who he was, and if she rejected them then no matter what burgeoning feelings he had for her, Noah came first.
Noah would always come first.
Because Noah had saved him.
“Let’s get him back before that asshole hurts him,” she said quietly.
Ronan felt some of his tension ease. It was hard to admit her answer had been so important because, even though he told himself he’d let her go if she couldn’t accept Noah, he knew a part of himself would’ve fought like hell to keep her.
He turned and hurried on with Alivia close behind. As they rushed up to the next level, he turned to step onto the landing and it gave beneath his feet. The staircase collapsed, sending him off kilter and for a moment he teetered on the abyss. Beneath him was the wide ventilation shaft that led straight to the engine rooms. He’d never survive the fall let alone what would happen once he reached the incendiary levels needed to keep this station afloat.
Then hands grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him backward. He crashed into her and they tumbled down the stairs they’d just come up, landing in a heap of tangled arms and legs at the bottom. He’d banged his elbow on the way down and it hurt like a motherfucker, but the moan coming from underneath him had him scrambling to his feet. Alivia lay on her back, her eyes closed. Her hair lay like ribbons of blood around her head, pouring through the service stairs’ open grids.
“Alivia!” he cried, wanting to grab her up and hug her but afraid of hurting her more.
“I’m okay,” she said. “But you are so heavy!”
She opened her eyes and smiled at him, holding out her hand so he could help her up. He pulled her up gently and ran his hands over her arms and legs to make sure nothing was broken.
“You saved my life,” he said. Fuck it! He bent his head and kissed her on the mouth, pulling her body into his arms. The fact that he’d literally faced death just a moment ago made his heart race and that, combined with the fight he’d just had, made his dick throb with the need to bury itself inside her snug channel. His tongue swooped in, taking claim and exploring all the hidden secrets of her mouth, until she was moaning and writhing against him. Her arms had crept around him, holding tightly, which flattened her breasts against his chest. He could feel the pebbled hardness of her nipples and ached to suck them into his mouth, taking them while he took her. Never before had he felt such an overwhelming urge to bury his cock into a warm and wet pussy, not like what he felt toward Alivia.
But now was not the time.
They had to get to Noah, to save him from whatever mad revenge Max could cook up.
Reluctantly he pulled back, although he didn’t let go of her.
“Thank you for your quick thinking.”
She nodded, panting, trying hard to catch her breath. He could see her eyes were a little dilated. It turned him on even more, made his dick throb even harder. Damn! He and Noah were going to have to do some major talking soon. As he disengaged himself from her arms, he reached down to adjust himself in his pants. She watched him with big, fascinated eyes.
“Yes, you do that to me,” he admitted to her. “You make me so damn hard I keep forgetting this is a rescue mission and not the time to seduce you.”
“Seduce me?”
“Oh, honey, I want to do so much to you that I’ve been in a state of almost-constant arousal for some time now.”
She blushed and looked down.
And that was another thing he and Noah were going to have to deal with.
Her virginity.
Damn!
He shook his head to clear his thoughts. “All right. Don’t know why this stairway collapsed but the fact that no one has come to investigate tells me we’re not going to get any help from the enforcers. We’ve got to go up the traditional way.”
He took her hand and led her from the service area back through a door to the main section of the station. They were on level six now, away from the hustle and bustle of the food gallery. Shops lined the hallway now, stores selling everything from trinkets to survival rations.
He marched with grim determination to the bank of elevators against one wall and waited until one opened. It took a minute for it to empty out and then they were inside. He hit the button for the tenth floor and a second later they were zooming upward.
Alivia looked out the glass window of the elevator and he followed her gaze, seeing the massive hollow center of the station. It was the same shaft he’d almost plummeted into a moment earlier and the lingering effects of his near death still slithered through his body. With steel resolve, he pushed them aside.
When the elevator came to a halt on the tenth floor, the last floor that was accessible to visitors, his hand tightened around his gun. He sent a quick glance to Alivia, just to make sure she was still with him. And then they were immersed in a den of sin.
He knew what to expect, of course. He grew up here. Pimps holding the leashes of whores for sale, naked women strolling up and down the promenade, barely clad boys, and fetishes of all kind. Whips were cracked, masked dominants and submissive players all intermingled with the smell of aphrodisiac herbs and the bitter tang of alcohol. Pretty people, ugly people, and all walks of life in between. Hell, he wasn’t kidding about animals.
If pain was one’s pleasure it certainly could be found, as well as virgin auctions where the virginity was dubious at best. Ronan ignored it all and pulled Alivia along with him, hoping she wouldn’t focus on one thing too much. He didn’t relish trying to explain some of the sadistic vices to be found on level ten.
He kept his eyes sharp, swinging back and forth, looking for either Max or his Twinks. What he found were three more of those brutes, clones of the first two laid out somewhere on service deck five. He paused, Alivia standing next to him. He shot her a glance. The last thing he wanted was to be knocked the fuck out and leave Alivia alone here, of all damn places. He turned to retreat and found himself staring at two more of Max’s goons.
Seriously, the man was putting out some major moolah for bodyguards.
“Fuck!” he swore under his breath.
“What?”
“Rescuing Noah is going to be a little trickier than I thought.”
“Shoot them!” she urged.
“Too many people,” he replied. “I don’t mind killing in self-defense, and while many of these people might have questionable moral ethics, they don’t deserve to be accidental causalities. Plus there’s you.”
“What about me?”
“I don’t want anyone getting their hands on you,” he told her. “This is not the place a woman like you should be.”
He began looking around for an escape route. They were too far from the elevators and already boxed in from the rear. The only other thing was the trash chute.
Ah, fuck!
He squeezed her hand. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she answered without hesitation. Her quick response warmed his blood but also made him pause. He’d never had someone’s unquestioning loyalty before, except for Noah’s. It made his heart pound in his chest.
“Then trust me that you’re not going to like this,” he said grimly.
“What?”
The next second he turned and ran for the trash chute. It opened when he got near and he picked her up, throwing her in feet first. The next instant he grabbed the door frame and hoisted his own body through it, sliding headfirst into the nastiest-smelling tube in the universe.
Chapter Thirteen
The first thing that greeted Noah when he opened his eyes was the pain radiating from his shoulder. It helped mask his headache and the awful taste in his mouth.
“Hello, my pet,” Max murmured from somewhere to his left.
Noah twisted around, cursing as the pain in his shoulder burned with white-hot pain. He locked gazes with his old master, Max. The man who had taken him and turned him into something he hated and regretted. He tried to get up but that’s when he saw the bindings around his ankles.
“Not escaping me this time, pet.”
“Don’t call me that! Don’t ever fucking call me that again, you sick fucking asshole.”
In a flash, Max stood over him, swinging the back of his hand. Noah felt the slap across his face flare with fire but he held in the whimper with sheer force of will. He wouldn’t give this man the satisfaction of seeing his pain.
Max got off on pain.
“I’m not a boy anymore,” Noah spat out, venom in every word. “I can, and will, kill you.”
He saw hesitation flare in Max’s soulless eyes and satisfaction filled him, empowered him. Right now he may be lying here, bound so he couldn’t run, but he was far from helpless. The mental image of the scared little boy he’d once been, cowering in fear from this monster, shattered. For too long he’d made this man out to be the devil but in reality, seeing him again showed that Max was nothing more than an aging, perverted man.
Why have I been so scared of this man?
“Let me go,” Noah demanded.
Max snorted and taped the left side of his ribs. “I’ve got a little payback to give you before I send you on your merry way.”
“I only wish the wound I gave you had been fatal. The universe would be a much better place without scum like you.”
Max went to slap him again but this time Noah was prepared, he caught the hand and flung Max away.
“I made you!” Max roared as he righted himself.
“You used me!” Noah roared back. “I was a kid and you sold me like cattle!”
“You are cattle. Everyone is cattle!” Max yelled, sweeping his arm around as if encompassing everything. “I’m just making a profit from it.”
“How did your Twinks know who I am?”
“Your vid images of course,” Max said. He flicked his head toward a desk. “I still have all those lovely photos you helped create.”
Noah felt sick to his stomach. Yes, one more thing to add to his debauchery list. At the time he made the photos all he cared about was making enough money so Max wouldn’t sell him. Now they were one more reminder of a past he wanted to forget.
“How’d you end up on Tortuga?”
Max gave him a nasty smile, his lips twisted into a sneer. “After your heartfelt good-bye on Isaren, I had to conveniently make my way to a safe place. The Cold Lands aren’t enforced so I came to Tortuga for medical aid. I happened to like it here and now I run the tenth floor.”
“You run it?”
Max spread out his hands. “I’m the enforcer here. And for a price, I make sure all the sin shops are under protection.”
Noah could only imagine how he took over that role. He reached down to test the strength of the tie binding his legs.
“Don’t bother, they’re unbreakable.”
“Give me a fucking knife,” Noah ordered. “I’ll be sure to return it to you.”
“Like the last time? Buried in my abdomen?”
“Next time I’ll make sure you’re dead.”
Max clapped. “Wow, you’ve grown an amazing set of balls. Perhaps I’ll take them from you and eat them for supper.”
Noah felt his stomach clench but he didn’t let it show. He was done letting this man rule his nightmares.
“Just remember, payback is a bitch,” Noah commented, maintaining eye contact. He refused to back down and was rewarded when Max blinked and looked away.
“Bah! I’m done talking to you,” Max grumbled. “I’ll let you lay here stewing on the fact that I plan to get even, not knowing when I’ll strike or what I’ll do.”
“Then you better plan on making sure I’m dead, Max, because if you don’t and I get free, I promise you, I’ll cut off your dick and feed it to you before I kill you,” Noah warned coldly. “I’m not afraid of you anymore, Max.”
He could see the words had hit the other man hard but he finally saw what he couldn’t see at thirteen. That this man was nothing more than a bully. He watched Max leave with cold, unflinching eyes.
* * * *
Alivia screamed on her way down the trash chute until she landed with a thud on top of a huge pile of refuse. Since the pile was in a triangular shape, she ended up rolling down it until she hit the slimy ground floor. A moment later, Ronan’s body thumped into hers. She had to push garbage off her head and that’s when she noticed several workers in a brown coveralls staring at them. They had gas masks on, shovels in their hands, and they stared at her and Ronan like they were creatures they’d never seen before.
Ronan jumped from the trash heap and pulled her up next to him. He gave a jaunty salute to the workers.
“Chute inspection,” he said in an authoritative voice. “Making sure it’s all clear. And it’s all clear. Keep up the good work!”
Then he took off running. Since he was holding hands with her, she was jerked to follow along. The garbage dump was huge, large piles sat in various locations, collected from the various levels. Men were shoveling and sweeping it onto conveyor belts that led to the incinerators and Alivia gave a mental sigh of relief that the chutes didn’t dump directly into those pits of fire. Now they were dirty, smelly and she had no idea how far from Noah they were.
“How are we going to save Noah?” she asked although she was beginning to pant from the running.
“I used to live on this station,” he informed her, not breaking strides as they rushed to a bank of service elevators. He hit a call button and a moment later one opened. He tapped for the fifth level.
“Live?”
“Yeah.” He turned toward her. “My mother was a whore. She worked on the tenth floor.”
“Oh,” she said and sagged a little in relief. “That’s what you meant about visiting there often.”
He raised a brow. “That’s all you have to say?”
“What else should I say?”
“Aren’t you disgusted by my lineage?”
Her brows creased in confusion. “No. Why would I be?”
He ran a hand through his hair
and glanced to see what floor they were approaching. Unlike the other elevators, these didn’t have the see-through window to gaze through. The service elevators were just ordinary boxes that went up and down.
“Because you grew up sheltered,” he finally said. “Pampered. Probably taught lust was a sin and all those born into it just plain old sinners.”
“You’re assuming a lot about me,” she told him.
He shrugged, not looking at her. “I can guess who you are, or at least, what you are. And in no way should you ever associate with the likes of me and Noah.”
“Stop it!” she yelled. “Do you honestly think I’m two faced like that?”
Again, he shrugged.
She pushed him, hard. He stared at her in shock.
“How dare you assume I’ll judge you by circumstances out of your control!” she snapped. “The only way I see you and Noah is as caring, compassionate, helpers! Do you judge me because I was born to wealth?”
“Alivia—”
“Answer me!”
“No! Of course not.”
“Then you hush up,” she said, pointing at him. “No more of these thoughts that I’m too good for you or that you’re not good enough. What matters is what’s inside, what’s in the heart, Ronan. You and Noah are brave, beautiful men, and I’m so glad you’re the ones that found me. I know you wanted to walk away. I understand your hesitation, so I feel blessed that whatever magic exists in this universe, it sent you to find me.”
And then she reached up, grabbed his shirt in two handfuls, and yanked his head down to hers. She placed her lips upon his and kissed the hell out of him. And this time, when his mouth parted in surprise, she slipped her tongue inside. She wanted to kiss away all the negativity in his mind and his heart, stomp out all the words that had poisoned him over the years to make him think so little of himself.
She didn’t care about his past. She didn’t care about Noah’s past. Whatever hell they’d been through had shaped them into the amazing men she was fast coming to love. She knew it was too soon to feel anything like that, but she couldn’t deny what her heart wanted.
When she finally released him, she was breathing hard and she noticed he wore a dazed look on his face.
Sleeping Beauty (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 9
