She steps into the bathroom and closes the door behind her as I run water into the tub. I can’t walk around for another second wearing Leon Evans’s blood. “What’s going on, Kaya?” I ask as I pour a generous squirt of bubble bath directly into the flow of hot water.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t bullshit me!” I wrench my shoulder out of the stretchy material and when I pull my arm free, the sleeve turns itself inside out. “They arranged a loveseat interview with Graham. They threw me a softball in the arena, and based on the fact that Evans hasn’t fought in a month, I’m guessing they were saving him for this very occasion. And you clearly already know that I’m fighting next week, even though no one’s supposed to know who’s fighting until the scheduling program spits out a bracket the morning of the fight.”
I pull my other arm free while she stares at me, biting her lower lip as if she’s physically trying to hold in whatever she wants to say.
“They’re putting me up against Graham, aren’t they?”
A sigh bursts from her throat, seeming to deflate her entire body. “I’m so sorry, Sylvie.” Kaya sinks onto the edge of the tub as if her legs will no longer hold her up. “I told them it was too soon. He’ll have twelve fights under his belt, and you’ll only have six. One of those you lost, and today’s…well that was pretty much a gimme. But there’s only one fight left in the season, so…” She shrugs. “There’s no more time.”
“You have to change their minds.” I shove the stretchy material over my hips, and it pools in a sticky pile on my feet. I’m completely naked now, and a couple of months ago, that might have horrified me. But since my arrest, I’ve spent eight weeks in the nude on the prison transport and have been seen not just naked, but in the throes of orgasm by eyes all over the fucking galaxy. So it’s almost cute how Kaya avoids looking south of my eyes as I step into the water and sink into the bubbles.
“I’ve already tried.” She taps one long, manicured nail against the side of the tub. “The decision was made over my head. I’m just here to bring in money through sponsorship.”
I shouldn’t be in here taking a bath. I should be out there watching Graham’s fight on the screen. But there’s no point, is there? If they’re planning to pit us against each other next week, then they’ll have made sure he survives today, just like they did for me.
Only it was really for them. For the UA.
“But this is all about money, right? So, pitch them an idea that will appeal to their greed. If they hold me back a season, they can get twenty more weeks of the galaxy’s first female fighter. Twenty more weeks of sponsorships…”
“Sylvie.” Her voice drips with sympathy, which fucking pisses me off. “That’s the first thing I tried. But the truth is…they don’t think you’ll last that long without help, and if they keep pitching you softballs, the audience will start to notice. They’ll lose interest.”
Alarm flares deep inside me. “Have they been doing that? Before today?”
Kaya only blinks, but I can see the answer in her eyes. “There’s a committee,” she admits at last. “When your sponsorships first started rolling in, the decision was made to keep you alive until the finale, if at all possible, because you’re a huge draw. Men think you’re hot. Women find you sympathetic. So ever since you lost to Yost, the committee has met every week to decide on your opponents, based on your strengths and weaknesses, and on whatever they see you training hardest on in the bullpen. But they can’t do that for another twenty weeks. And even if they could, your brother…” She shrugs.
Despite the heat of the water, my skin suddenly feels ice cold. Goose bumps rise all over my arms. “What about my brother?”
“Sebastian will be next season’s champ.”
“They already…?” Of course they already know who’s going to win. The selections were never random. At least, not at the top level. “So, Cohen Roth was supposed to be this season’s champ?”
Kaya actually laughs. “No, that would have been too predictable. Graham caught their eye early on. They gave him tough opponents so they could bill him as an underdog. ‘The man who avenged his entire family’s slaughter defeats a notorious rapist and murderer on the sand, earning his freedom in a nail-biting finale.’ Relative freedom, anyway.” She shrugs. “But then you showed up and threw everything into chaos.”
“You bastards!” I sink below the water, holding my breath as air bubbles roll up my face, headed for the surface. This has been a game for them the whole time. A puzzle they’ve been putting together piece by piece, to make sure it forms a picture they like. A picture they can sell.
I scream under the water, venting my rage in virtual silence so that the cameras in the next room can’t hear it. Then I break the surface and rub suds from my face. Kaya is staring at me with her brows furrowed in concern. Like maybe she should call the doctor in. Except I’m not hurt. Because they gave me an opponent I could easily beat, so that I’d show up healthy for next week’s finale. Where they’ll expect me to either kill or be killed by the man I love.
And I do love him. There’s no sense denying that, even to myself.
“So, who’s supposed to win next week? Graham or me?”
Kaya hedges, picking at her perfectly painted nails.
“Kaya!”
“You’re going to kill Graham,” she says at last. “They did a massive viewer poll, and you’re the fighter people most want to see win and the fighter people think least capable of winning. Which means that the highest possible viewer satisfaction would be achieved if you have to kill your lover in order to survive.”
“No.” Suddenly the water is freezing, though I can still see steam rising from it. “No. I won’t do it. He won’t kill me either.”
“Sylvie, you can’t save him. If the two of you refuse to fight, they’ll just execute you both. And it won’t be either quick or easy, because they’ll have to deter anyone else from trying the same thing. Do you want your brother to see that? Your parents?”
Of course not. They’ve already lost one daughter under horrible circumstances.
But if there’s no way for both of us to survive, I can’t make Graham be the one to kill me. And I sure as hell can’t kill him.
“Even if I wanted to fight him, I couldn’t win, Kaya. How on earth do they expect me to beat Graham? Do they really think he’ll just stand there and let me kill him?”
Actually, he probably would. But that wouldn’t make for a very entertaining match. Which means that’s not their plan.
“In tier four, you’ll be eligible for a weapon. Sponsors have been bidding for the privilege of providing that weapon for two weeks. Ever since it became obvious that you might make it to the finale.”
“And Graham?”
“He will not be getting a weapon.”
Fuck.
Okay, think, Sylvie. You have a week to come up with a way out of this. Except that I don’t. If I wait until the next fight day, it’ll be far too late…
“Do you know what the weapon will be?”
She frowns, thinking. “I don’t believe it’s been selected yet.”
“Good. I need a favor.”
“No!” She stands and backs away from the tub, hands on her hips. “No more favors. I can’t keep—” Her mouth snaps shut.
“Kaya, I haven’t asked you for anything…” Oh. “What did my brother do? Is this about the omelets?”
“Omelets? No, I… It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing I can do for you. I shouldn’t have even told you any of this.” She turns toward the door, already reaching for the knob.
I push myself to my feet, and water sloshes over the side of the tub. “Kaya, if you want to keep your job, you better turn around right now and hear me out.”
She turns, slowly, her eyes wide, as if she might have heard me wrong. As if it’s not possible that a death row inmate might be threatening her.
“I know about you and my brother, and I’m guessing that if UA knew about your little
crush—that you’ve been doing favors for him—you’d be out of here so quickly I’d still hear the echo of your footsteps when the ship takes off.”
Relief washes over her features, and I realize I’ve taken the wrong approach; whatever she was worried I was going to say, that wasn’t it. “Sylvie, half the galaxy has a crush on your brother, and it’s my job to make sure that percentage only increases. And none of the ‘favors’ I’ve done for him are in any way a violation of my contract with Universal Authority. No one cares if he requests omelets or wants to be photographed only from his left side.”
Photographed…? Damn it, Sebastian, what a fucking waste of a favor.
If her favors for my brother aren’t what made her turn around and take my threat seriously, then what was? What would threaten her job? I mean, as long as she’s bringing in money…
Oh.
“Okay, then, what is UA going to say if Sebastian stops fighting?”
She rolls her eyes. “If he stops fighting, he’ll get killed.”
I shrug. “He doesn’t know you’re setting him up to win next season. He put himself in here knowing damn well he might never walk out again. All he cares about is making sure I make it out of here alive, and if that doesn’t happen—if UA executes me right in front of him—why would he keep playing nice for the camera? He already feels guilty that he’s still alive when Skye died. He felt guilty that he was free, when I was on death row. If you let them execute me, my brother might very well stand there and let his next opponent beat him to death. And every single sponsorship you’ve brought in for Sebastian will die along with him. As will your bonus. And, I’m guessing, your job.”
“You don’t know that.” But she’s bluffing. And she’s a really bad liar.
“I know they don’t usually let sponsorship liaisons handle three fighters at once. And I know that after the finale, when both Graham and I are gone, the only fighter you’ll have left is my brother. If he blames the UA for my death, there’s no way he’ll keep bringing money in for them.”
Kaya’s face goes pale. “Damn it. Sylvie, I want to help you. But if I get caught—”
“You won’t. If this works out, no one will have any idea there was even anything for you to get caught doing…”
22
GRAHAM
“You were right.” Sylvie whispers as the gate closes behind us.
“About what?” I’m whispering because she’s whispering.
“They’re going to pair us against each other next week.”
I slide my arm around her waist, beneath her supply pack, and speak into the top of her head, because it’s clear she doesn’t want this overheard by whatever cameras are hidden in the walkway to the yard. “We don’t know that for sure.”
“Kaya told me,” she says. “They’ve been planning it for weeks.”
Fuck.
Sebastian looks at me over his sister’s head, and moonlight glints in his hard, expectant gaze. I give him a nod she can’t see, acknowledging that the moment we’ve dreaded for weeks is finally here, and that I will stand by my word. I’d tear my own damn throat out before I’d lay a violent hand on Sylvie.
Sebastian returns my nod.
In the atrium, he heads into D block, as far as he can get from our A block cell, because though he hardly leaves Sylvie’s side during the day, he doesn’t want to be close enough to hear her moans at night. Which is just fine with me.
Our cell is still standing open and empty, though lockdown began a couple of hours ago—we were held up by another stupid cocktail party on the blimp, hobnobbing with sponsors excited about next week’s finale.
The inmates don’t try to take our cell anymore, in part because between the three of us, we’ve killed nearly two dozen men in the bullpen alone, and even though we’ve never laid a hand on anyone who wasn’t a direct threat, our neighbors don’t seem willing to push their luck.
However, I think the real reason our cell goes unclaimed every night is that the rest of the men—other than Sebastian—would rather have one of the neighboring cells, for the entertainment value. Because Sylvie isn’t…quiet.
But no matter what they’re imaging, all alone in their beds at night, the reality is that her moans, groans, and sighs are all mine.
I close the cell door behind us and in seconds, we’re mostly naked in bed. We’ve asked Kaya to sneak us a bed sheet about a hundred times, but she always refuses, claiming she would lose her job. Evidently video of us in bed—even with no X-rated bits showing—still brings in quite a bit of money for the UA. So, when we can’t get some privacy in the shower, we’ve learned to make do with leaving Sylvie’s shirt on and using my body to block as much of hers as possible. Which is what I assume we’ll be doing tonight, until she pulls a grease-stained cardboard box from her supply pack and shows it to me with a mischievous grin.
“What’s that?” I ask.
She flips open the lid, and where I’m expecting to find leftover slices of brisket and maybe some potato salad, I find a squirt bottle of barbecue sauce instead. “I snuck this in while I was packing a doggie bag,” she says, and when she lifts the bottle, I see several slices of meat beneath it—the source of the grease stains.
“Don’t you think that’s overkill for those three little slices of beef?” I ask.
Sylvie laughs. “The sauce isn’t for eating. It’s for…painting.” To demonstrate, she shakes the bottle, flips open the lid, then turns to face the camera mounted high in the corner of our cell. We’ve tried dozens of times to reach it, but that can’t be done. And nothing we’ve tried to throw at it has so much as nicked the lens, that we can tell.
But on her first squirt, Sylvie manages to get a stream of thick, dark red sauce within a couple of inches of the camera. Of course, the rest of it plops onto the floor, but I get what she’s going for.
“That’s brilliant!”
“Here. Take a shot.” She hands me the bottle.
It takes me a couple of tries, but I manage to layer a thick glob of barbecue sauce on the camera lens. Most of it drips off, so we give what’s stuck a chance to dry while we eat her leftovers, then Sylvie goes over the lens with another layer. And finally, we have privacy.
Unless you count the fact that all of A block can hear us.
“I’ve been waiting for this for weeks,” she says as she slides her hands beneath my waistband and pushes my pants and underwear down together. She takes my cock in her hand and strokes it several times, her grip growing a little tighter with each motion, until I can’t even think about anything other than being buried deep inside her wet heat.
Then Sylvie plants one hand on my chest and pushes me back until I’m sitting on the edge of the bed. “Since we don’t have an audience…” She sinks onto her knees in front of me, and I have just an instant to anticipate what she’s clearly about to do before she opens her mouth and nearly swallows my cock whole.
“Oh, god,” I moan, leaning back as her mouth tightens around me, her tongue undulating against the back of my cock. Then she begins to move, her tight lips sliding up and down my length, tongue swirling around the tip with every stroke. She wraps one hand around the base of my cock and works me with her fist and her mouth in concert. Taking me so deep that I bump the back of her throat.
Then she loosens the muscles and takes me just a little deeper, until her throat tightens around my tip, squeezing mercilessly, blissfully, while her tongue caresses the underside of my shaft.
Holy fuck, if I’d known she could do that I would have found something to blind that damn camera with a month ago.
Sylvie sucks harder now, moving faster, until I realize I’m riding a runaway train, barreling through all the crossings, and if I don’t stop her—
“Sylvie.” My voice is hoarse with need. With the strain of holding back. Of resisting the unbelievable urge to thrust into her mouth.
“Mmmm?” she asks around my cock, and the vibrations nearly push me over the edge.
“Stop. I’m
almost—”
She opens her throat again, swallowing against me—around me—practically demanding my surrender to her touch, and I release deep inside her, lost in the moment. In the ecstasy of her hot, wet, tight…gift.
Her hand still wrapped around the base of my cock, Sylvie sucks her way off of my length, sending shuddering aftershocks through me. Then she sits back on her heels, looking up at me with a satisfied smile, while my cock bobs between us. She licks her lips with the tip of her pink tongue, and suddenly I think I could go again. “Well?” Her soft, sweet voice gives no hint of the fucking masterful blowjob she just performed.
I say the only thing I can think of, with most of the blood my brain needs still trapped in my cock. “Fucking. Barbecue sauce.”
Sylvie throws her head back and laughs, her curls cascading over her back, and I realize that that’s what I love most about her. These rare moments when she looks truly, utterly happy, despite the constant risk her life is under, here in the bullpen. Despite the lives she’s been forced to take. I live for these short moments of joy in her eyes.
And for those soft little moans she makes in the middle of the night, her face flushed with pleasure…
“My turn.” I stand and tug her up by both hands, then lay her out on the bed. And I realize I’m just as excited by the opportunity to explore her, without limits, as she was to explore me.
We don’t talk about it, the next day. About the fight. We just train, and eat, and shower, and train some more, as if we don’t know that in six days, we’ll be shoved out onto the sand and ordered to kill each other in front of a live audience of millions.
We don’t talk about it the day after that, either. Or the next day. We go on about our lives, training, and fighting, and making love, telling each other how we feel with our bodies, instead of our words, because nothing we say aloud will make any difference anyway.
Every night, we apply more barbecue sauce to the camera, and every day I expect guards to descend with a wet sponge mounted to a pole to clean it off. The fact that they don’t can only mean UA already has enough footage of us naked and writhing. Or that the layers of sauce haven’t done as much as we think they have.
Champion Page 24
