“Yeah,” I tell him. “Me too.”
He leans in and kisses me, despite the cut on his lip, and somehow the taste of his blood seems appropriate for…whatever this is. For the collision of his unlikely hero complex and my desperation not to spend the last few weeks of my life alone and in pain.
I’ve only known him for a few hours, and every single second we’ve spent together has been charged with passion and threatened by violence. This may be brand new, but it isn’t clean and shiny. It isn’t simple and sweet. It’s dirty and painful—a battered island in a sea of savagery—and this blood-flavored kiss seems to sum the whole thing up perfectly.
When our kiss finally ends, he leans with his forehead against mine, his eyes closed. Just kind of breathing me in. And as badly as I want to give in to the same impulse, I can’t.
“Graham… Nothing I could say could express how grateful I am for what you just did. But if you try to jump in every time someone raises a hand against me, neither of us is going to last a week. I knew what I was getting into. Hurt is better than dead. This is my only chance, just like it is yours.”
“That’s not the same. I’m not a target like you are.”
“You might be now,” I point out. He shrugs, but doesn’t argue. “How long will the lockdown last?” I ask as I slowly move my face closer to his. Letting my cheek brush against his stubble until I can take his earlobe in my mouth.
“No idea,” he murmurs. “This has only happened once since I got here. Lasted a couple of hours, maybe. Just long enough to kill the momentum of the riot.”
“There’s no riot this time.” His neck smells so good that I can’t resist flicking my tongue out for a taste. He tastes good. Like clean sweat and something entirely Graham.
“Yeah, but the champ went down. That disrupts the pecking order, so a riot was probably inevitable.” His breath brushes my ear, triggering an ache much lower in my body, and I have to resist the urge to climb into his lap, well aware that the men across the aisle are probably watching.
“You think they’ll keep us locked in here until Roth wakes up?” I breathe. “To preserve the natural order?”
“One can only hope…” He groans as I kiss my way down his neck. “Sylvie, we have an audience,” Graham reminds, even as his hands settle onto my hips in a possessive, protective grip.
“I suspect we’ll have to get used to that.” I stretch out on the thin mattress and pull him down on top of me. “But maybe you wouldn’t mind taking the top, to block their view. Assuming you don’t mind people seeing your ass.”
“We shower en masse. I don’t think there’s a man in this place who hasn’t seen my ass, and vice versa.” But he frowns when I start to shimmy out of my underwear, without sitting up. “Are you sure you want this, after Roth?”
“Graham, I intend to suck every drop of pleasure out of whatever’s left of my life before this place kills me—if this place kills me. But if you don’t want to…”
He grins. “Pleasure, coming up.” He lowers himself over me, still fully clothed, though I can feel his erection through the rough material of his pants.
The men across the aisle groan, practically in unison. “You’re blocking the view, asshole!”
“That’s the idea,” Graham grumbles.
I ignore them as I pull him down for another kiss, mindful of the cut on his lip, and when we come up for air, I slide one hand behind his neck, holding him in place. Searching his gaze. “Nothing that happens between us, has any association for me with what Roth wanted. I hope you know that.”
In answer, he claims my mouth again as he pushes his pants down and settles between my thighs, gliding one hand over my leg as he tucks it around his hip.
His erection brushes against me, teasing, and he groans. “You’re already wet.”
“My body remembers what you did for me last night,” I whisper, and he groans again.
He leans down for another kiss, and I sigh into his mouth when he slides inside me slowly. I block out the catcalls and obscene suggestions as I run my hands over his side, indulging in the play of muscle beneath his skin as he thrusts into me, establishing a rhythm far too gentle and patient for my mood. For my need to forget where we are, and what just happened.
I arch into him as I grab his ass, encouraging him to go faster. Deeper. To give me what I need and to take from me what he needs.
“A woman who knows what she wants, huh?” he grunts into my ear as he thrusts hard enough to make me gasp.
“And who wants it often.” From him, at least.
He groans again and lowers himself onto his right elbow, freeing his other hand to slide up my side, beneath my shirt, so he can lift my breast. Run his thumb over my nipple.
Moaning, I arch into his touch, flattening my breast against his palm until he squeezes. Then he leans down and sucks my nipple into his mouth through the material of my shirt, teasing with his teeth for a second before his tongue takes over.
“Sylvie,” he moans softly, as his thrusts come harder. Pushing me toward a peak with every lick of delicious friction between our bodies. With every brush of that sensitive spot inside me. “Sylvie…”
He’s close. I can feel the effort it takes for him to hold back, but I need…
“Almost,” I pant, and he groans again when I arch up to meet him, changing the angle just a little. “Harder.”
He slams into me, grinding against me with every thrust until an inarticulate sound rolls up from my throat and I clutch him with my legs, riding overlapping waves as my body clenches around him.
He comes with several more hard thrusts, his face buried in my hair. Then he collapses on top of me for a second, before rolling us both to his right. Shielding me from sight with his body, while he’s still buried deep inside me, my leg thrown over his hip.
“Holy fuck, you assholes just missed a show,” one of the men across the aisle shouts, and I block him out with sheer will.
I pull away a little, so I can look at Graham, holding his gaze as my heart continues to race. “You make it almost possible for me to forget where we are. That we’re just here waiting to beat someone to death. Or to die on the sand.” I brush a ghost of a kiss across his poor, split lower lip. “I might need that oblivion pretty often.”
“I live to serve. As long as I do live…” he says. And I wonder what deity was watching out for me when Ray pushed me past his cell. That could have gone so differently. It could have gone so wrong.
It still can.
But I shove that thought away as Graham slowly pulls out of me and sits up to hand me my clothes, still blocking my lower body with his own. This place is what it is. I’ll do whatever I have to do. And I can handle that, whatever it is, as long as he’s here with me.
9
GRAHAM
I watch Sylvie slide her foot into her rubber-soled shoe, sitting on the edge of the padded concrete bench that passes for a bed in this hellhole, and I can’t quite process how quickly my life has changed. Yesterday, the only things on my mind were getting enough food and enough time on the weight machines to keep myself in good enough shape to survive my next fight.
Today…
I can still taste her. I can still smell her hair. I can still feel her clenched around me.
Today, I have Sylvie, and Cohen Roth lies unconscious in the cell across the aisle.
She should have let me kill him. Maybe if I hadn’t hesitated, I could have crushed his skull before Shaw ordered a lockdown.
This new reality is fragile. Sylvie and I are like a glass vase falling in slow motion, intact for the moment, but destined by every law of nature to crash into the ground and shatter into a thousand pieces. It’s only a matter of time. And I can’t watch them break her.
I’m not a stupid man, but I will do stupid things for her. There’s no sense even pretending I won’t. But I can’t get myself killed, even for her, because then she’ll fall to the mercy of the whole fucking bullpen.
And the bullpen has
no mercy.
“Why don’t you two try that again, but this time put her on top?” an inmate named Paul calls from across the aisle. I ignore him, pretending I don’t know that he just jacked off all over the floor watching us, so that I’m not consumed with the need to pound his face in.
“Yeah, let’s see some—”
Kyle bites off the end of his sentence with a strangled sound, and for a second, I think Paul has punched him in the gut. Then I hear two thuds, a split-second apart. Sylvie’s eyes widen, and she pushes herself backward across the bed, huddling in the corner.
I spin around, placing myself between her and whatever—
A guard stands in the aisle, dressed in full riot gear and holding a laser pistol. He aims it at me, and I clench my fists, waiting to feel fire bite into my chest. Even though we’ve followed the directions. We’re locked into a cell, no threat to the guards on the ground.
About the time I realize the guard isn’t firing, I notice that behind him, Paul and Kyle are still breathing. They’re just unconscious. The guard’s pistol is only set to stun them. Depending upon the setting, they could be out for minutes. Or hours.
“What’s going on?” Sylvie whispers, and I answer her without turning my back on the guard.
“I have no idea.”
From down the aisle comes another thump, as someone else in D block hits the ground. Then a second. And a third. “That’s all of them,” an unfamiliar voice calls out, as footsteps approach.
They’ve just knocked out every single inmate in D block. Except for us. This can’t be good.
Another guard steps into view in the aisle, staring in at us like we’re actors on the feeds. Or animals in the zoo. “That’s them?”
The first guard snorts. “Unless you know of some other woman in the bullpen.”
The other man ignores him and looks past me at Sylvie. “I’m a big fan of your work.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about.
“Okay, we’re all clear. Come on back!” the first guard shouts, waving to someone down the aisle. I hear more footsteps, and a minute later two guards step into sight, escorting a hovering stretcher. In fucking D block.
I’ve never seen a stretcher in the bullpen. Last time there was a lockdown, I only saw two guards on the ground—though there were no doubt more—and they were there to execute the handful of men who didn’t make it into a cell before they auto locked. Not to give them medical attention.
Sylvie and I watch while two of the guards head into Roth’s open cell and carry him out by his ankles and his shoulders, then heave him onto the stretcher. It bobs beneath his weight for a moment. Then one of the guards taps something on the screen strapped to his forearm, and the stretcher follows them down the aisle, and presumably out of the bullpen entirely.
“Where are they taking him?” Sylvie asks.
The remaining guards don’t reply.
I know the answer. What I don’t know is the reason.
Guard number two pulls a slim black cylinder from a pocket over his thigh. It looks like a rolled up sheet of paper. He grasps it by the exposed edge and with a flick of his wrist, it unfurls into a thin, rigid screen. He taps on it a few times, clearly navigating menus and options we can’t see. Then he clears his throat. “Roth is secure, sir. And we’ve got inmates Graham Anderson and Sylvie Wolfe standing by.”
I guess technically that’s true. Considering that we can’t go anywhere.
“Put them on,” a voice says. The guard taps on his screen again, and suddenly the side facing us lights up with an image of a man sitting behind a desk so big that it threatens absurdity. The name plate on the front edge tells me this is the warden.
“Warden Shaw.” Suddenly Sylvie is standing at my side. “Nice to see you again.”
“I’m sorry I can’t say the same.” The warden stands and circles his desk to perch on the front corner. “This will not be a pleasant conversation.”
“Have I done something wrong?” Sylvie’s voice is high-pitched and sweet, at utter odds with our surroundings. With my knowledge that she killed two men within minutes of being dropped off in the bullpen. And that she must have killed at least one before that, to wind up here in the first place.
“On the contrary. Our investors’ interest in you has…grown. I thought it only fair to let you know.”
“Well, I guess I appreciate that. Though I’m not really sure what that means, or what to do with the knowledge.”
“That means that your actions since you got to the bullpen have impressed some very important Universal Authority investors, and they’d like to see you make it into the arena.”
“You’re going to isolate her?” I ask. “Keep her alive?”
The warden shakes his head. “Regulations forbid me from interfering with the fights in any way, including extending an advantage to any of the participants.” He turns back to Sylvie. “But I thought you should know that you’ll be featured heavily on the promo reels. That you already are, in fact. And you’ve drawn quite a following.”
“Like I said,” the second guard calls from behind the screen. “I’m a fan.”
“A fan of what?” Sylvie asks, but I can tell from the sudden edge in her voice that she’s drawing the same fucked up conclusions I am.
“Show them,” the warden says, but the other guard is already tapping on a second screen. A second later, it lights up with crystal clear, greenish infrared footage of my favorite cell, taken from the camera in the top corner.
“You bastards,” Sylvie breathes, as on-screen, I kiss my way down her stomach, exposing her breasts to the camera. Fury builds in the pit of my stomach as I watch my face disappear between her thighs. Her hands curl in my hair, her head thrown back, her mouth open.
“There’s more.” The guard swipes one finger against the back of the screen, and the infrared footage slides to the left, replaced with full-color footage from moments ago, of her clutching my ass, begging me to take her harder. Faster.
“You have no right.” My voice shakes with rage, my fists clenched so hard that my forearms ache with the strain.
“Actually, we do,” the warden says. “You both signed over the rights to your likeness and to any footage that is shot during your time in zone two when you agreed to forgo lethal injection in favor of a chance to earn a commuted sentence in the arena.”
“I thought that was fight footage,” Sylvie snaps. “Background commentary. You’ve never shown anything like this on the feeds before.”
“Not on the UA feeds,” the warden agrees. “And we can’t show this ourselves either. It violates about a hundred regulations for a family-friendly feed. But we have a contract with a sub-provider who airs the more salacious footage from our monitoring of the security cameras, to be aired in the appropriate venues, giving full credit to UA, of course. For promotional purposes.”
“You sell security footage porn to another feed provider?” I can’t even process the things I’m saying. This can’t be real.
“I don’t,” Warden Shaw insists. “That’s all handled by the corporate board. I’m in charge of the prison, not the footage or the feeds.”
“Why would you give them that footage?” Sylvie demands.
“The board has direct access to every camera in zone one. They see everything live, just like I do. I’m here to remind you that there’s no privacy in the bullpen. Or anywhere on the grounds of zone one. And I didn’t have to do that. I won’t do that again.”
“What about…” Sylvie’s voice cracks. She’s trembling next to me, and I can’t tell whether that’s from anger or horror. “What about…with Roth?” Her gaze flicks to the cell across the aisle. “Or if one of the other inmates…? Will they show that too?”
The warden clears his throat. “Yes. There’s a strong legal market for non-consensual relations. That’s what most of the previous salacious footage is, though obviously we’ve never had a woman in the bullpen before.”
“Oh my god.” Sylvie bac
ks away from the bars, and I turn to see her sitting on the edge of the bed. Staring at the ground. “This can’t be real.”
“I warned you.” On screen, the warden circles his desk again and sinks into his chair. “I told you that if you went into the bullpen, I couldn’t be responsible for what happens to you.”
“But you never fucking mentioned that you would air it!” She explodes off the bed and attacks the bars, slamming her palms into them. “That I’d become spank bank material for rape fetishists all over the fucking galaxy. Oh god, my parents.” She lets go of the bars, and I ache to hold her, but I’m afraid I’ll just make it worse. “My brother.”
I want to tell her they’ll never see it. That unless they have those sick interests in the first place, they’ll never come across the footage. But I can’t lie to her. People will send them the footage. They’ll suffer right along with her. Unable to help her.
“So, these investors, they’re only interested in me as a source of pornographic revenue?”
“They were interested before that. There were around five hundred people watching your arrival in the bullpen, because we’ve never had a woman before.”
“And because there was a strong betting pool,” the second guard says as he stuffs the rolled up second screen into his pocket.
“There are men who die here without ever striking a death blow,” the warden continues. “You killed two men in minutes. Investors were already interested in you. They were expecting Roth to lay claim to you. But you two surprised them.” The warden’s gaze flicks toward me, before settling on her again. “They will use any footage you give them. Think that through, Miss Wolfe. Mr. Anderson. That doesn’t have to be a disadvantage.”
“You fuckers are sick.” I’m not helping her. I’m not helping myself. But it has to be said. “You’re no better than the men in here. No better than the rapists and murderers you’ve locked up, if you’re profiting from their crimes.”
“Glass houses, Mr. Anderson,” the warden says. “You’re here for a reason.” He clears his voice again, then leans forward to rest his elbows on his desk. “That’s enough, Miller.”
Champion Page 9
