On the Edge of Love (Mama's Brood Book 1)

by Rucker, Shay

  Sabrina knew she wasn’t suicidal. As bad as life had been, it was her life, and she would stand toe-to-toe with the devil himself to keep it. For the hundredth time she wished Sam had held on to the same determination, but her sister hadn’t.

  “I can’t die today, you know. You promised you’d teach me how to use a blade to defend myself.”

  He frowned. He hadn’t actually promised her that, but she wasn’t above lying if it kept her alive a little longer. “I’m hungry, Bree,” he said, stepping closer, close enough for her to feel the hard ridge of muscle press against her abdomen.

  The wetness pooling between her legs was her body’s initial response to his declaration. It was a shame, but her body had been conditioned to him faster than Pavlov’s dogs had been to the bell. She wouldn’t give him her life, but she would gladly give him her body again.

  Randy was right. She was a nasty, slutty bitch. It wasn’t a title she usually wore, but she’d wear it with a crown when it came to Zeus.

  She rubbed against the hardness of his shaft and heard Zeus draw in air as if he was a man tortured.

  “Am I making things hard for you, big man?” she asked as she slipped her hand down his chest and molded it against his straining penis. She allowed her head to fall forward, and rested it where her hand had been near his heart. “I’m sorry, Zeus. I don’t mean to make things hard for you, but people have always told me how difficult I can make things.” She tweaked the head of his penis, bound beneath the taut material of his jeans. He groaned, and she smiled, rubbing her cheek against his chest.

  She so meant to make things hard for him.

  His fingers fisted in her hair, pulling her head back and exposing her neck. He held her head immobile as his mercurial eyes consumed every pore, every angle, every emotion that had ever left an imprint on her face.

  Sabrina inhaled, dragging his scent deep into her, imagining she imprinted her essence onto his DNA as she exhaled. Zeus’s mouth brushed over hers more gently than she’d imagined his need would ever allow. She groaned, tweaking his tip again, and cried out as the beast rose up and tried to devour her.

  Zeus bent her backward with the force of his kiss, his forearm a steel band of support at her lower back. He lifted her as he straightened, and she wrapped her legs around his hips. The rub of his jean-clad erection against her clit caused another guttural moan to escape as she rode the length of him. He pressed her back against the front door and ground into her, lifting one of her legs and draping it over his shoulder. If not for the higher powers of yoga, he probably would have snapped every bone in her body with the way he flung her limbs around.

  Hands tugged at her shirt. She felt her breasts exposed to the cool air only for an instant before hands and lips fastened on them. She cried out as she bucked against him, begging him to free himself and fill her.

  Not until Zeus loosed her nipple and growled did she realize the jarring vibration at her back was someone knocking, banging, on her door. Zeus hit the door one time. Hard. She had to turn to make sure he didn’t leave a hole.

  Sabrina scrambled to pull the T-shirt back down over around her waist while Zeus continued to grind against her.

  She slid her leg down so it hung in the crook of Zeus’s elbow and unwound her other leg from around his hip and let it dangle toward the floor. Zeus’s fist tightened against the back of her head, angling it to the side so he could suck her neck. Her vagina fought to take what Zeus had to offer, but her mind forced her to reach up and spread her hands across each side of Zeus’s face as she pushed his head away. She rained kisses over his eyes, his cheeks, forehead, then his mouth, coaxing him into a languid kiss. She pulled away and stroked her thumbs over his eyebrows and cheekbones.

  Zeus relaxed into her touch, though she could see he hadn’t fully released the reins of his need.

  Another round of knocking had him cursing and reaching for the doorknob.

  “Wait. Zeus, wait. Go to the kitchen. I promise. Let me handle this, and I’ll come in there and feed every craving you need fed.” She kissed him in the spot of his third eye, and he eased back.

  “Two minutes. You got two minutes, Bree. If you’re not on the counter straddling me as you place food in my mouth, someone’s going to get hurt. And it won’t be me…or you.”

  That meant Randy or Bride or whichever Brood member was at her door owed her their life. She watched Zeus walk to the back of the apartment before she unlocked and opened the door.

  Her intention of teasing the person in the hall vanished as she looked into the vibrant blue eyes of an expensively dressed stranger. Her first thought was that one of Randy’s new boy toys had gotten lost. But why did he look familiar? Maybe it was an intensity in his eyes, which rivaled Zeus’s. She took a step back.

  “Sabrina.” The stranger smiled at her with so much sincerity and kindness she couldn’t decide if she should return it or run. When she noticed the two large, well-dressed men behind the man standing in front of her, instinct urged her to run. She couldn’t move.

  “You are more beautiful than I remember. It feels like I’ve been searching for you half my lifetime.”

  A wrongness settled over her. Not just with the situation, but with him. He felt familiar, and he felt…wrong, despite the pretty packaging. She took a step back, confused about why she was being so passive. There were killers after her, and for some reason she couldn’t find her voice, couldn’t react to the man who appeared to be so captivated by her.

  Then it clicked.

  “Kragen,” she said.

  Rapist, torturer, killer of over a dozen women who all looked disturbingly like her. The man who’d had her beaten and kidnapped, possibly with every intention of raping, torturing, and killing her also.

  She took another step back, and they followed her into her apartment. She wanted to call out to Zeus, but she knew with every fiber of her being the two men behind Kragen were strapped with guns. She didn’t want to be taken, but more importantly, she didn’t want Zeus shot or hurt if he charged in and tried to protect her. Taking a deep breath, she regrouped and did what she had learned to do all her life—talk until she could find the best opportunity to escape.

  “You remember me.” Kragen’s smile was all things pleased.

  “You look familiar, but no, I don’t remember you. I lost some of my memory a while ago, but I remember the men who abducted me saying the name Kragen. They described you as the man who’d hired them. A pretty boy playing with daddy’s money, they said. You’re here, obviously a wealthy man, obviously attractive. It stands to reason you’re the man that paid them to kidnap me.”

  She watched the play of emotions on his face as she spoke. In the end his mouth settled in an indulgent smile.

  “You were always my smart girl, weren’t you, Sabrina? It was one of the qualities that kept you burning through my blood all these years.”

  He took a step toward her, and she took another step back, racking her brain for some sign that she had any history with this man. Sometimes she didn’t remember things, but that was singularly related to the details of some physical altercation she had with Ernesto.

  “If we have such a wonderful history, why have me kidnapped? Why have me beaten nearly to death?”

  She didn’t think the sadness and grief he displayed was fake or contrived, but what she did know was he was the closest thing to evil she had ever come into contact with. But it didn’t matter that his expression seemed to beg her forgiveness.

  “I made an error in judgment. I gave men I didn’t know or trust the job of securing you until I arrived. They weren’t supposed to hurt you. I promise. If they weren’t dead already, I would take pleasure in allowing you to watch them die.”

  Yeah, well, she’d already watched, and it hadn’t been a pleasure at all.

  “So, um, the cops were telling the truth when they said my abductors were dead? I hadn’t seen anything on the news.”

  “They were alive when you last saw them?”

  She nodded, sticking to the story she’d told the cops.

  “The only way I was able to get away was because they left me by myself. When I came to, I escaped from a window. I never looked back.”

  “I’m glad you made it out alive. I never would have forgiven myself if I had lost you to their incompetence.”

  “Lucky for all involved—”

  A pan clattered in the kitchen. Sabrina flinched.

  “Ah, the bodyguard, I presume?” The man, Kragen, looked over to the bigger of the two men, who reached inside his coat as he trod softly down the hall in the direction of the kitchen.

  Zeus! she screamed in her head. When her mouth tried to follow suit, Kragen’s hand covered it as his other arm fastened around her like a manacle.

  “No. I don’t want you to see any more violence,” he said.

  Then stop bringing violence into my life, she thought. Her heartbeat was an erratic staccato, a silent rhythm that called out for Zeus to protect himself.

  She heard a struggle. Waited. The silence that descended was almost as deafening as the gunshot that followed.

  “Come, Sabrina. It’s time I take you where you belong.”

  She fought for her life then. She didn’t want to go. She wanted to run, not away but down the hall, to the kitchen. She’d always been about self-preservation, but she needed to get to Zeus.

  Behind her, behind Kragen, there was a metallic click, click. Sabrina craned her head around to see a gun barrel pressed against Kragen’s temple. Bride reached inside the coat of the other burly guy as Kragen released Sabrina.

  Bride palmed the other man’s gun and motioned for him to get down on his knees. Good ol’ silent Bride.

  “And I thought we’d taken care of your guard detail,” Kragen said.

  “Actually she’s not my guard. She’s my neighbor.”

  He smiled. “How unfortunate for me, huh?” He turned to look at Bride. “Hello, neighbor. As charming as I’m sure you are, I’d rather have not made your acquaintance.”

  Bride kicked in the knee of the man who was over twice her size, sending him to the floor a little more rapidly, because apparently he wasn’t getting to his knees fast enough.

  A shadow filled Sabrina’s hall and silently moved closer to them. When she saw it was Zeus, she took a step in his direction when she should have run from him. Fast.

  She prayed there wasn’t a dead man in her kitchen, but as Zeus moved through the shadowed hallway, her heart sank. Something bad had been unleashed in him, and he was stalking through her home.

  Sabrina moved away from Kragen, and he had the good sense to let her. He must have sensed the man advancing was beyond being reasoned with. Zeus’s eyes, gray orbs in the shadows, were locked on to Kragen, who appeared unfazed by the almost certain death stalking him. That man had his own demons, Sabrina determined. And strangely, they didn’t appear intimidated by Zeus in the least.

  “So, the rescuing bodyguard survives,” Kragen said. He was aware of Zeus, but his eyes were focused on Sabrina as if he didn’t comprehend the level of danger he was in. Maybe the sight of her was the last thing he wanted to see before he died. Though she didn’t think he believed he was going to die.

  Sabrina didn’t believe he was going to live. Not the way Zeus’s energy was filling the air with dark jags of electricity. Flashes of silver appeared from the shadows to Zeus’s left, then more flashes to his right. In the moment between Zeus striding from the shadows and arriving in the muted light of the living room, she almost believed he was a god made flesh. Pale, golden-bronze beauty, power, death. Hell, he was making her as delusional as he was. Those weren’t flashes of electricity bursting from his hands but light reflecting off rapidly revolving metal blades different than any she had seen him use before. There was no hilt on these blades; they were flat, oblong pieces of double-edged metal with needlepoint tips. No place for a normal person to safely hold without having their fingers cut to shreds.

  He was a man possessed. God, demon, it didn’t matter. Whatever humanity he’d displayed when he touched her, held her against his warmth, was devoured by this metal-eyed killer.

  The blades in his hands moved so rapidly they blurred. Silver streaked through the air. Bride shifted, moving into the hall and out of sight. When Zeus’s blade sank high into the right side of Kragen’s torso, he was propelled backward into the hall, sliding down the wall across from her door.

  The bodyguard kneeling on the ground reached for something at his ankle, and another flash of silver catapulted into him. He fell face-first. Sabrina didn’t scream, didn’t make a sound when she saw that the tip of the blade had pierced through to the back of his neck. He was dead in a matter of seconds.

  Kragen wasn’t so lucky. He was like a fish on the hook, waiting for death to come.

  “I could shoot you,” a voice offered Kragen from the hall. Bride. Was she being humane, or did she simply want the kill?

  “A knife and a gunshot wound? I don’t think Dolce or Gabbana would forgive the insult.”

  There was a moment of silence. Sabrina imagined Bride shrugging her acceptance on the other side of the wall.

  Movement inside her apartment forced her to turn back to Zeus. There was another blade in his right hand when he stopped alongside her. She’d never seen this one either. It was like a small machete. Where the hell he was pulling them from, she had no idea.

  “Go upstairs,” he commanded, his voice surprisingly normal.

  “No.”

  “Then go to the kitchen.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “No, the bathroom.”

  “I’m not leaving,” she said. Something in the region of her heart rooted her where she stood, because she believed Zeus would need her to pull him from the depths of nothingness once Kragen was dead. “You’ll need me to be your witness.”

  “You’d let him hack me to pieces like yesterday’s mackerel, my love?” Kragen asked, smiling as if this whole situation was humorous.

  “Look at my face. I’ve been kidnapped and beaten because of you. If not for him, it would have been a lot worse, so, yes, I will bear witness to whatever punishment he decides.”

  Kragen positioned himself a little straighter against the wall. “I always said you needed to develop a harder shell, Sabrina. You were always such a timid thing. I don’t know if I should be proud you took my advice and became a bit bloodthirsty during our separation.”

  Zeus twirled the machete slowly as he advanced. “He’s damaged. Need to put him down, Bree.”

  Kragen’s gaze followed Zeus’s advance. There was no fear in the injured man. No conflict, only acceptance. She knew it wasn’t death Kragen accepted, but the belief that no matter what was said or done Zeus didn’t have the power to destroy him.

  Sabrina agreed with Zeus. Kragen was damaged. He was a sadist who supposedly enjoyed hurting women before he threw them away, as if they had less value than his designer suit. But she wasn’t quite willing to see him murdered before her.

  Kragen slumped farther down the wall. “You’re breaking my heart. I know you say you don’t remember, but what we shared was more powerful than anything you could have had with this crude mercenary. When we’re together again, you’ll see. I’ll forgive your affairs of desperation, but when we’re together, there will be no one but me. Just you and me.”

  “Insane,” Zeus muttered as he leaned forward and pulled the smaller blade from Kragen’s shoulder. Kragen yelled out as if he’d been stabbed again.

  A buzzer sounded down the hall, indicating someone was being let in the front door. Sabrina stuck her head over her door’s threshold to see Detectives Cassidy and Sedgwick enter the building with guns drawn.

  “Drop the weapon,” Cassidy ordered, pointing the gun at Zeus. A killing would be easy to justify with Zeus holding the machete close to Kragen’s head.

  “Detective,” Sabrina said, ready to defend Zeus against the detectives’ trigger fingers.

  Cassidy didn’t acknowledge her as he leveled the gun at Zeus’s head. “Drop it.”

  Zeus released the blade.

  Kragen cried out as the tip lodged in his leg.

  Rapid footsteps stomped overhead, and in moments, Randy was descending the stairs, only to come to an abrupt stop as he took in the sight of the cops pointing guns in her direction and Zeus standing over a bleeding Kragen with a mini machete sticking out of his thigh.

  Randy held up his hands. “Officers, I’m the one that called you. Me and my roommate here.” He pointed to Bride, who was still leaning against the wall near Sabrina’s door with an unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth. “Heard a loud crash, then a shot, and thought someone was breaking into Sabrina’s place again. I just knew she and Zeus were dead. You okay, Bree?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay. Zeus protected me.” She didn’t want to say again because the cops didn’t know about what really happened at the warehouse.

  Zeus pointed toward her apartment. “Dead men inside. This is their boss. Guess his name?”

  “Kragen?” Cassidy said as he lowered his gun. His partner was slower to follow. Cassidy approached and looked Kragen up and down.

  “EMTs are on the way,” Sedgwick said. His fingers played with a chain around his neck as he eyed Zeus.

  “What happened here?” Cassidy asked.

  “Purely a misunderstanding,” Kragen said. His skin had grown paler; maybe due to blood loss, maybe because he was about to be arrested, especially with all the bodies he had hidden in his closet.

  “There wasn’t a misunderstanding,” Sabrina countered. “I answered the door, and he was there with two of his men. He sent one to the kitchen to ‘take care’ of Zeus. The guy in the living room was reaching for what I believed was a weapon, and Zeus must have agreed because he buried one of his blades in the other man’s throat. This guy,” she said, waving toward Kragen, “said his name was Kragen and tried to get me to go with him. What are the chances he has the same name as the guy the kidnappers were working for? He tried to force me to come with him. Zeus stopped them from taking me.”

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