by Black, Paula
INFERNAL
Bite The Bullet
JESS RAVEN & PAULA BLACK
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Published by Raven & Black.
Copyright © 2014 by Jess Raven and Paula Black
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the authors except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Infernal is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents other than those in the public domain are the products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Explicit scenes of sex and violence make this book suited to an 18+ readership.
BY THE SAME AUTHORS
THE BECOMING TRILOGY
Irish myths, never sexier.
Book 1 Becoming Red FREE
Book 2 Becoming Bad
Book 3 Becoming Blood
The Becoming Trilogy box set edition
THE ROUSING
The Rousing. A Celtic in the blood novella.
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CHAPTER ONE
“Show-time pussycats!”
The shout came from out in the corridor, and with it my heart took up residence like a crazed drummer in my throat.
This was a huge mistake. My last dance audition had been ten years ago, and there was a reason I hadn’t done another. What was it again? The buzz in my head was overriding my brain. Gripping the cool metal of the padlock in one fear-dampened palm, the stench of sweaty crotch and cheap perfume left me queasy. I was one erratic heartbeat from emptying both the contents of my stomach and my locker onto the tile floor.
There’s still time.
I could gather up my pride, scuttle out of the studio, and leave this to the professionals. Who was I trying to fool? I was a fitness instructor with yellowed dance qualifications gathering dust in my attic, more Fitness TV than MTV. I was no professional dancer, and I was no detective either. After my brother’s friend told me about the advertisement at the funeral, I’d applied for the audition on impulse. I’d grasped at the tenuous link to Daniel’s murder but never expecting to get shortlisted, I hadn’t thought it through.
“That’s our casting call.” Gracie laughed and smacked me on the ass, pushing me into the stream of bodies flowing out towards the audition room. Her tiger-print nails curled around my upper arm, dragging me along, when every instinct I possessed screamed at me to run.
I’d only just met Gracie - short for Gracious she said - in the locker room. She’d ambushed me with her super-white teeth, fake hair and larger than life personality.
From amongst the many toned bodies jostling for space, I’d singled out the striking black girl, but it’d taken me a moment to realise she was speaking to me.
“You’re not going out there dressed like that,” she’d declared, in that sexy-rough South-London accent. She reminded me of some freakish fairy godmother.
Sat on the bench, looking up at me, she’d primped sleek, blonde hair-extensions, and displayed her ample, jiggling assets in a lurex bikini top and booty shorts.
“I’m not?” I’d replied.
“You’re new at this music video thing, huh?”
Was it that obvious? God. Even now, shuffling down the corridor, self-doubt prickled over my exposed flesh.
She’d fluffed her hair with those fierce nails, and informed me that this wasn’t the Royal Ballet. Beastrider’s videos were all about literal sex on the dance floor, apparently. “You want the gig?” she’d asked.
“I need this.” My jaw tensed, and I guess she saw the hunger in my eyes, because she gave me a knowing nod.
“We all got to pay rent,” she said, misreading my motives. “But you got to work for it. I’m not saying whore yourself. All I’m saying is, you might wanna show off the merchandise a little.” She stood then, and did a booty shake demo, her pretty face grinning at me over her shoulder.
And in the space of those few chaotic minutes, I’d let her talk me out of my safe leotard and yoga-pants combo, and into a revealing tied-under-my-breasts top and ass-hugger shorts. Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, and I’d been transformed from a serious dancer to a desperate, wannabe hooker with my ass hanging out for the world to see.
Another mistake, I thought, tugging at the lace trim that barely covered my cheeks. Out here in the corridor, without the blanket of Gracie’s reassurances that I looked sexy, I felt over-exposed. They weren’t even shorts. Without a change of clothes, I’d improvised with the purple boy-shorts I had on as underwear. At least she hadn’t attacked me with her makeup palette. Her own gold and blue lidded, fake-lashed eyes were testament to a heavy hand, and no way could I pull off the hooker chic look. Whenever I tried to wear more than lip-gloss and mascara, I invariably wound up feeling like the kid who’d broken into her mom’s cosmetics.
This is for Daniel, I told myself. It doesn’t matter what you look like. It doesn’t matter if you dance like a drunken elephant on a stormy deck, as long as you get into their inner circle.
I swallowed down the anxiety clogging my throat, and stepped into the windowless, mirrored room.
Perhaps twenty dancers, men and women, were warming up on the bars and free-styling moves to their own inner beats. I stretched awkwardly, the other auditionees assessing eyes making freedom of movement a struggle. They were popping moves whilst I, trying to work the nervous rigidity from my muscles without dancing full-out, stuck out like breast implants on an anorexic woman.
A double-clap from the front drew us to a halt, and we gathered in the centre of the studio. I forced myself to the front, beside Gracie. However good my competition might be, I couldn’t afford to hide, or I’d blow this opportunity. I crooked Gracie a smile. In profile there was something masculine about the line of her jaw, at odds with the rest of her pretty face. She glanced at me and threw me a thumbs-up, but then another double-clap commanded everybody’s focus to the man up front. He was small and wiry, with a neat goatee curling at his chin. As he stepped forward, he grinned, flashing a gold tooth. The choreographer, I assumed, though he looked more like the Devil, if the Devil wore pink spandex and had a fetish for fake tan.
“Don’t let the camp attitude fool you,” Gracie whispered. “Raider is a total hard-ass. Put a foot wrong on his warm-up routine and you’ll be back in Kansas before you can click your heels together and say Killer Queen.”
Gracie wasn’t kidding.
The heavy, hypnotic base-beat of the music started, and he showed us the routine. Once. He’d culled half the group before the warm-up was through.
If he snapped his fingers at you, you were gone. No second chances.
Somehow I held on. I’d never had my brother’s raw talent, but what I lacked in ability I made up for in discipline. And it helped to be a quick study. I picked up steps easy as pie. Not that I ever understood how pie was easy.
When the music stopped, I looked around, and there were only a dozen of us still standing. Raider was a hard-ass alright, but was he a murderer?
“Now we’ve separated the wheat from the chaff,” he said, strutting in front like a pink and tan peacock, “let’s get down to business. Beastrider have specific requirements for their upcoming tour, for which we’ve brought in a specialist.” He gestured to the door, and everybody craned in unison to see who walked through it. Gracie gaped, and I had to lock my own jaw to stop from mirroring her expression.
“Meet your torturer for the next two hours. This is Konstantyn Lazarenko, ex of the Kiev ballet and the Ukrainian Special Forces. This man can kill you five hundred ways and look fucking graceful doing it.”
I believed him.
Looking like he brushed his teeth with straight vodka, Lazarenko was a fierce wall of muscle in a tight black tee and combats. A dark buzz-cut topped his hard-chiselled face. Even darker brows brooded over eyes that saw everything and appeared to hate it. A shiny bullet-casing dangled from a silver chain around his muscular neck. Scars and tattoos patterned his thick forearms with a Cyrillic script I couldn’t understand. The only soft thing about him was his full mouth. Saying that, it had a cruelty to it that probably made it akin to kissing the edge of a blade, if you were so inclined.
Primal instinct clawed in my belly. Raider might have been a killer, but this man definitely was.
“Fortunately for you,” Raider went on, “there will be no actual bloodshed. Today is about interpreting fight moves through the medium of dance.”
Not even the choreographer’s dance brief could pull my attention from the man who was staring right at me.
Threatened was not a strong enough word for what I felt.
CHAPTER TWO
“You,” Lazarenko growled.
An Eastern European accent flavoured his syllables and my heart kicked to a gallop.
“Me?” I asked, pointing to my own chest, while sweeping the room to be certain I was his focus. “I’m Neva,” I said, attempting a smile. Thankfully my voice didn’t betray the pounding of my pulse.
“Did I ask for your name?” he barked. “Come here.” He crooked a finger in my direction and I took a tentative step forward. Well, I’d wanted to be front-row, right?
“You are fighting for your life,” he said.
I was unprepared for what came next. He snapped a hand around my throat and pushed my chin high. A gasp escaped my lips. Staring into his dark eyes was like looking into the face of death. My heartbeat pounded against his rough palm, and his hold forced me up onto my toes. I tried to swallow but my throat was drier than the Atacama Desert.
“Do you understand?” he asked. His tone was brutal, without a shred of compassion.
The man left me with no doubt: he had the power of life and death in his bare hands. Yet in spite of his firm grip, he wasn’t hurting me.
I stole a glance at the other auditionees, and realised they were hanging on my response. I nodded my head as best I could.
Fighting for my life. Right. Not that hard to imagine with this huge man’s hand circling my throat. His extended arm bulged with muscle and I managed a nervous swallow. Were we waiting for a sign? Should I just wait or -
The music started: a rhythmic bass I recognised from the radio. His hand tightened and my self-defence instructor’s voice sounded in my head, jerking me through moves she’d drilled into us. Don’t panic, I thought, even though my instincts were screaming danger. I took a sharp step to the left, swung my arm across the brawny strength of his and twisted around in a lithe curve.
I succeeded in knocking him loose from my throat, but the move pushed me back until his chest was a hard heat fused along my spine. At least I’d gotten free, but now I had his hand trapped in the crook of my elbow, and was acutely aware of where it rested, just below my breast.
His long fingers spread out along my ribcage, brushing the sensitive skin, and the touch jolted me. Or was it the rough yank he tangled into my hair, arching my head back to his hard shoulder?
Well... ouch.
My mouth opened on a gasp. Now we were both trapped. I narrowed my eyes up at him and his nostrils flared.
“Not bad,” he grunted, his accent harshening the semi-compliment, “for a street fight.” He released me and I stumbled forward gracelessly, getting as much distance as I could before he spoke again. “This is interpretive dance, not elementary self-defence.” He shot a withering look in Raider’s direction. “I thought you said they were good.”
Asshole.
Raider flipped his palms up in submission before glaring daggers at me.
I frowned at Lazarenko. I’d done what he’d told me to do, what more did he want? Jazz hands?
Like he’d heard my mental snark, Konstantyn beckoned me back into arms’ reach.
“Again. This time, more fluid.” His voice softened to a liquid caress on the ‘fluid’, and I heard feminine sighs behind me.
I was fighting back tears of frustration, and they were swooning over the bastard? Just fucking great.
I can do this, I thought, armouring myself in my trademark stubborn determination. He wanted a dance, I could dance. I was just rusty.
I straightened out my skewed tank top, and rolled my shoulders to unknit the tension that had crawled up my spine from being so close to him. Then I stepped into range and his fingers curved around my throat again. Except this time, it wasn’t death I felt in his hold. His fingers were soft as a caress. I took a shuddering breath, and tried to imagine myself as water.
He couldn’t keep hold of me if I was water.
My arm stroked over his in a liquid curve that pushed his hand from my throat. His fingertips trailed over my collarbone and skimmed the tops of my breasts as I twisted and arched my spine to fuse to the muscular wall of his chest. I felt his body heat, melting through my bones, and once again his palm flared out across my ribcage, the slow-flowing connection leaving me breathless. This time, when he wrapped his free hand in the fall of my hair and bowed my spine back into him, my eyes narrowed with something that wasn’t irritation. And this time, I managed not to stumble when he released me, and made me do it again.
With each repetition, my body anticipated the movements, until they became a smooth, undulating circuit, and when his fingers tensed underneath my breast, I was prepared for him to spin me out, his powerful body becoming airborne in a roundhouse kick that went over my head as I swept low. Our makeshift audience gasped, but we were still moving, his hands catching my waist and lifting me into him as I arched dramatically to escape.
He’d said I was fighting for my life. Leaning into the way he held me would not be convincing, so I braced to push off him.
But then a strong palm caged my thigh against his hip, trapping me for something that fried my brain of all thoughts of escape. His muscled body rolled in a way that made mine curve for contact, but he was studiously distant, his face hard, those beautiful, cruel lips smirking.
Bastard, I thought, determined to wipe that smirk off his face.
I swept my free leg up between his, hooking behind his knee and sending him into a tumbling roll.
He was so elegant, so controlled, even as surprise flickered across his features and the other auditionees cheered.
Perspiration trickled down the small of my back, but Konstantyn Lazarenko hadn’t even broken a sweat. He lay on his back, arms braced behind his neck.
That’s when I saw it: a peace symbol carved into the skin on the inside of his right forearm. Just like that ‘Ban the Bomb’ group used. Just like the one they’d found on Daniel’s body. And the man didn’t strike me as a pacifist. I stood there, slack-jawed, and tried to formulate something to say, or do. Blurting out an accusation of, ‘Did you murder my brother?’ wouldn’t cut it.
Turned out I needn’t have worried about embarrassing myself, because the session ended as abruptly at it started. He surged to his feet and walked away, leaving a vacuum that Raider struggled to fill.
The choreographer was no match for the other man’s hard energy. His barked instructions sounded meek compared with Lazarenko’s gruff orders. We were to return tomorrow evening, on time, or we were out.
As the other dancers milled about, I chased after the surly Ukrainian, tapping him on the arm just as he reached the door. This might be the only opportunity I’d get to ask him about Daniel.
He swung around to pin me in a glare so murderous, I almost lost my nerve. But I remembered my purpose. Like it or not, this man, with that sym
bol on his arm, was the closest thing I had to a lead.
“The lesson is finished,” he said. “Tomorrow, I choose.”
“I know,” I said, breathless. “I just... back there, you looked at me like maybe you recognised me.” I had to whisper to avoid being overheard. “I wondered if we could talk, you know, in private?”
His dark brows disappeared into his hairline.
“I am familiar with your type, Miss Neva,” he replied, pronouncing the ‘ss’ like a ‘z’. He was not whispering and his next words resonated around a studio gone deathly quiet. “Do you know how many ambitious dancers I get offering to suck my cock?”
“What! I –”
“I suggest you conserve your energy for the final audition. I cannot be bought.”
He slammed the door in my face before I had a chance respond, leaving me with my cheeks flaming and my mouth hanging open.
Un-bloody-believable.
I turned around in shock to find Gracie and the rest of the room giving me the hairy eyeball.
Just my luck.
Now everyone thought I’d been propositioning him to get ahead.
Good thing I wasn’t there to make friends, though my job would be that much easier if people didn’t hate me.
“I said show off the merchandise, not shove it down his throat,” Gracie said spicily. All the same, she looked impressed that I’d had the balls to do what she thought I’d done.
I hadn’t been the one shoving things down anyone’s throat. Lazarenko had a serious attitude problem and my face was still burning from his reaction. Whatever. He was an asshole. I just had to be on point and perfect to get the job; I didn’t have to like him.
“Alright. Show’s over.” Raider clapped his hands, breaking the strain and sending everyone filing off into the locker rooms. “Tomorrow. Seven PM sharp, or you’re out,” he declared.
