“Where’s Regan?” I murmured.
“At home. We’re casual . . . she’s okay with this.”
I knew Regan wasn’t the type to share; she hated the pass around attitude many of the men and women adopted in the Underworld. I gave the redhead a good, long, hard stare, and from somewhere in the depths of her drug addled mind, she found some good sense and backed away.
“It’s about the bruise, right? Dammit, I told Regs you’d freak. She fucking fell over. I swear it. You know how clumsy she is.” I still didn’t speak, just kept staring and thinking how Regan didn’t have a clumsy bone in her body. She was graceful and moved with the poise of a dancer, a tiny, nimble, sweet dancer who had no place in the Underworld. “So, you want a sniff?” Jake pulled one of the small, plastic disposable inhalers, which was fully loaded with the silver dusted chemical, from his jacket. I wasn’t looking at the drugs, though; I was watching his free right hand which had become twitchy as he stood facing me. From the unnatural bulge at his pocket, I was guessing he had a gun on him. Interesting . . . the few guns that circulated the Underworld were reserved for soldiers; it was illegal for anyone else to own one. I knew he was going to move before he did. His eyes gave him away. They flicked down to the hidden piece right before he reached for it. I moved, grabbing the hand that was loosely holding the weapon with a complete lack of confidence, and snapped the appendage with a satisfying crack. Jake’s wail would have raised the dead, and eager to shut down the noise, I jabbed his throat and the gurgling sound that crippled his voice box was like music to my ears. Clutching his broken wrist and gasping for air, Jake crumbled to his knees.
Lowering myself, I leaned in close and whispered in his ear, “Touching her was your first mistake.” I grabbed the back of his hair and pulled hard, forcing his gaze to meet mine. Spittle fell from his begging lips that pleaded for mercy. Tsk, tsk, tsk, he should know by now; I had none. “Your second mistake was trying to pull a piece on me.” I picked up the gun lying on the floor and tucked it into the strap of my thigh holster. “If I weren’t so full of rage right now, I’d leave you to the king. Dealing on the side is punishable by death. He’d torture you first though, in ways your simple little mind couldn’t even begin to comprehend. So, I guess it’s your lucky day.”
On my knees, my eyes level with his, I saw the hopelessness followed closely by acceptance as I took his head between my hands and twisted with enough force to break his neck. I didn’t spare Jake any more of my time as I rose and absently took in the crowd that had formed around us.
“Good job spottin’ the piece,” Shadow whispered from behind me. I removed the gun and placed it in his hand before stepping around him and moving towards the door. “Your father will be happy,” he persisted, following me into the open arena. I walked briskly toward the steel doors that led to the red sector, keeping to the shadows. “But you weren’t exactin’ punishment for the king now, were you?” I tried to ignore him, but that deep, husky voice seemed to sink into my flesh and command me to answer. I pressed my lips together, hard. “Such a tough little princess.”
Those final, last whispered words gained a response from me that was swift and full of fury. I spun and tried to sweep him off his stubbornly sturdy feet. Shadow lunged out of the way, and when he would have tried to come in from behind and restrain me, I twisted, pulling my baby from my thigh holster. The hiss that fell from his lips as I sliced the back of his left hand actually made my lips twitch, right before he ducked and grabbed both my wrists, pushing my back against the stone wall with a bone shuddering thud. My wrists were clamped in a tight grip as Shadow pressed his entire length against my body, not allowing me any room to move. My knife was still in my grip, but completely useless.
For a moment, panic threatened to consume me. Being restrained like this, held against my will, was a familiar feeling from a night long ago that I tried hard to forget. With a distinctive memory like mine, that was impossible, though. Taking long, deep breaths, I fought for composure. Shadow was holding my wrists tight, but he’d moved his body back to create a slither of space between us. He was close enough to impede a leg strike, but far enough away to give me the room I needed to keep steady. To fight him now would be futile and wasted energy. I held still, not relaxed exactly, but not pressing against his hold.
“You’re two for two tonight, princess.”
I clenched my jaw tight and glared at the bastard. “I did not kill Viper, and I am no princess.”
“Viper will be put down; there’s no room for a cripple in this world. And . . . you are the king’s daughter,” he murmured after a long, thoughtful pause.
“He fucked my mother, nothing more.” I didn’t bother acknowledging the information he had divulged about Viper. I assumed as much would happen.
Shadow grinned. “That’s all it takes, tough girl. Perhaps you need someone to explain it to you?” He pressed his groin against my stomach, and I didn’t miss the hard, hot length of his cock. My heart beat painfully as panic threatened to drag me under, and my breaths came in gasping wheezes, just as if I were drowning.
“Sure,” I gasped. “But I’d prefer it be someone with a big dick who knows how to use it.” His fingers squeezed my wrists, and I wondered if they would break. Kingsley would be pissed if I were unable to throw a punch for the next fight; then again, it would add an extra flare of drama to the occasion. “What’s the matter, Shadow?” I managed to spit out, my voice only quivering slightly. “Did that little show with Jake interrupt something? Did your whore leave you unsatisfied?”
“You are one cocky puta,” he sneered. “And I came down that bitch’s throat until she gagged, so no, I was definitely not dissatisfied, but it takes more than a sub-par blow job to see me done for the night.”
Shadow leaned in and buried his nose in my hair. A whisper of panic escaped my lips. A ghosting of a feather-light touch ran down my jaw, the graze so gentle it belied the images of sexual brutality that my mind was conjuring up. The air no longer passed through my lungs, and soon there were black dots dancing before my eyes. Breathe, just fucking breathe, and live, the rest I could deal with later. I assumed this was when Shadow would try to defile me, and try he would have to, because as soon as his grip loosened, I was going to cut the fucker open. Instead though, he pulled back and his curious eyes looked deep into mine.
“They really fucked you up, didn’t they? But you still like to fuck, so they didn’t break you; they just twisted you up some.”
“There is nothing you can do to me that hasn’t already been done. I’m fucking unbreakable,” I said through gritted teeth.
Shadow’s genuine grin shocked me to stunned silence. I had never seen anything like it; a smile like that, something light and foreign, didn’t belong here. “Un-fucking-breakable, indeed.” His head tilted thoughtfully. “Tell me, tough girl, what are you hidin’?”
If his smile hadn’t already completely unhinged me, his question would have. Hiding? I was hiding so much it was a wonder my secrets didn’t leak from my pores. The trick to keeping a secret was to pretend you didn’t have one.
“No more than anyone else in this godforsaken shithole.”
“Hmmmm.” Shadow wedged a knee between my thighs, and my heart that had been slowly lured into a gentle thump lurched into a hard hammering pace again. “You need some help comin’ down from that fight?”
“That was hardly a fight, and I prefer to be a participant in my fucking. Being held down isn’t so much fun.”
“Oh, sweetheart, you’d be present, participatin’, and accounted for if I was fuckin’ you.” He pressed against my body, trapping me completely, and I was unable to do anything but watch as he leaned forward and brushed his lips against mine. I could have bitten him, but my body had frozen in shock, my disbelieving ears wondering if they had heard him correctly. Sweetheart. Nobody had ever wasted such an endearment on me. The inflection in Shadow’s tone suggested the word was laced with sarcasm rather than flattery, but it was still a wo
rd I never thought to hear directed at me. That carelessly tossed word dug into my skin and buried itself deep. “I think what you really need is a man who knows how to fuck you just right. Someone who can fuck those secrets from your lips.” He pulled back, and the lingering warmth from his mouth disappeared. Why had he been so gentle? And furthermore, why did I find such a thrill from his soft touch? “I want to hold you down and cut that defiance from your body and watch it bleed from your veins.”
I looked into his eyes, trying to figure out this game he was playing, trying to understand what he was searching for in my gaze. What did he want from me? I was so fucking sick and tired of people using and abusing me. He could try and cut me, he could bleed me dry, but it wouldn’t make me compliant, and it wouldn’t give him the answers he sought.
“You can’t,” I answered simply.
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because it runs deeper than blood, it’s like fire and it fills every inch of me, and it demands I stand up and fight.”
“Shadow!”
He didn’t move from pressing me against the wall, he didn’t even glance in the direction of the voice that called for him; instead, his eyes narrowed as he searched for something in me. I knew he wouldn’t find what he was looking for. My secrets were locked down tight; he wouldn’t see anything except for the undercurrent of panic from being pinned and the hate that burned like a fire clawing at the heavens.
“What?” he growled.
“Put your dick away. The king wants you to . . .” Shadow finally moved, and when the soldier saw me, his voice trailed off to a whisper. “Find the girl and bring her worthless ass to his suite.” He then grinned. “You fucked the girl. Holy shit!”
“Not yet . . . and, girl, don’t you ever fuckin’ walk away from me again,” Shadow whispered ominously as he stepped away.
I didn’t try to correct the soldier’s assumptions, nor did I argue with Shadow. There was no way he’d ever have me. His body had felt strange pressed against mine, a heavy, muscular presence that somehow felt wrong and right at the same time. He could have hurt me, he could have tried to take more from me than had already been bled from my body, but he didn’t. It was the only chance he would ever have, because next time I would cut off the hand that touched me.
I could feel Shadow following me to Kingsley’s rooms. His eyes on my back prickled my skin and made me want to tense my shoulders. Instead, I walked casually, my body regaining confidence now that my knife was back in my holster, my fingertips lovingly caressing the hilt. I had to remind myself to ignore his steely presence and keep my focus. Shadow had rattled me, but it took nothing more than a few deep breaths for my heart rate to lower. My hands remained steady, my back ramrod straight. I was ready to see my father.
4
SHADOW
I couldn’t bring myself to call Kingsley’s room a suite; this sure as shit wasn’t the Hilton. We lived in rooms that were little more than large storage closets, though some bigger than others. The king’s, of course, was a hell of a lot more extravagant than others. His room was easily the size of the small apartment I had lived in when I’d been above ground, with its own adjoining study and bathroom. There were a number of bathroom blocks designated to the different color sectors in the Underworld. They were not gender specific, much to the enjoyment of the men. Kingsley had his own bathroom, with his own never-ending supply of running hot water. Just for that alone he needed a team of soldiers watching his back; plenty of men and women down here were eager for something more than the scraps that both Kingsley and the good citizens from above were willing to give them. Plenty of inmates dreamed of plunging a knife into Kingsley’s back, which was why he always had no less than two soldiers with him at all times.
I watched as Nada paused before the two men who guarded Kingsley’s room. They openly leered at her, and it fucking pissed me off. I’d had my lips on that sweet ball of fury only minutes ago and another man was already eyeing her. I had to remind myself she wasn’t mine, and I sure as shit didn’t want her. But for a moment, when my body had pressed against her shivering one, I had wanted her. It wasn’t the cold rock wall that rocked her body with tremors either; it was pure, unadulterated fear. I knew she’d been raped; I’d been unlucky enough to walk in on the assault. A distasteful coil of disgust sat in my stomach at having seen her so broken. The image still turned my hands into tightly clenched fists. The Underworld wasn’t a pretty place, and even though I knew men often took advantage of women, seeing the brutal ferocity of the girl’s attack had filled me with a frightening rage. Kingsley didn’t give a shit that the girl had been hurt, but she had a fight the very next night and was sidelined for a number of weeks because of the attack. The brutal assault had not only damaged the girl, but it interrupted Kingsley’s profitable cage fights, and that was enough for a death warrant.
That night, the ugly scene before me became lost to a haze of red, raw fury. The soldier who had been inside her was the first to die, and unfortunately, it had been a quick death. The other two were saved for later and taken out at Kingsley’s orders. I’d taken my time with them. Cutting them and bleeding them. That day my fists had loosened teeth and cracked bones, and my knife flayed them like a butcher might carve open an animal. They had both screamed, and I reveled in their pain. That thought alone allowed me to shake off the fury over feeling the girl tremble beneath my touch. She’d been scared, but when I pressed my lips to hers, she stilled, and curiosity calmed her frantic body. Yeah, my head didn’t want the fucking girl, but my body damn well did. And Nada might not want my attention, but she was curious enough to allow it. I’d gentled for her, pressed my lips to hers as if she were some exquisite creature that might break. I didn’t do gentle. Fucking, to me, was just that, a hard brutal release, but for the girl I had somehow restrained myself.
Calling on the calm façade that allowed me to endure the horrors of the Underworld, I stopped myself from ripping the spine out of the one soldier who continued to watch the girl’s retreating ass and followed her through the heavy steel door that barricaded Kingsley from the general population.
The first room was the study. A massive wooden desk sat at the far wall, and one large chair sat empty behind it. Lavish rugs covered a thick, wool carpet. Pictures of the above world adorned the walls and the ridiculously huge painting of the sun, which hung on the wall behind his desk, was an obvious indication that Kingsley missed the light just as much as I did.
Six sentries stood at attention, three against one wall, three against the other. Kingsley always had them present when the girl was here. He told them he wanted her intimidated by their company, but I knew the truth. As closest to the man, forever watching his back, I saw how his body tensed when she was near. He was fucking scared of her, and it had only become more apparent as she gained strength. He might have been blind to the increased defiance and hidden secrets she carried, but he knew she had the right skill set to kill him. In an attempt to break her spirit, he gave her a tiny room barely bigger than a closet. The winnings from her fights were hardly worth the soldier’s time it took to deliver it to her door. Nada’s life was not her own. Kingsley owned her, and he dictated her every move. He had her training every day for hours on end, and when she wasn’t training, he had her doing the worst of the worst jobs, like washing the linen in the Whore Pit, or shoveling shit from the buckets in the Wild Zone. Newbies would sometimes wait several hours between drop offs before someone escorted them into the Underworld, and apparently, the combination of nerves and fear made you shit . . . a lot. We took in all of New York’s villainous scraps, all except child molesters. They were ended in a world of pain, usually with fists and knives, then dumped in a furnace and delivered via a cloud of ash back to the saintly people above.
As Nada fell into an at ease stance, the king pushed through his bedroom door and entered the study. He was dressed in a red robe, and the hardness at his groin and the tension around his eyes indicated we had interrupted something. I
didn’t give a fuck if he had to leave his latest whore hanging; I just wanted to get this shit over with, beat on my bag for a couple of hours, and get some sleep. I’d been on duty the last two nights in a row, and exhaustion was taking its toll. Over a year ago, we found evidence that the Underworld may have been infiltrated by spies from the above world. Since then, we worked around the clock at bleeding them out into the open. Several men and two women had died during our attempts to find the mole, but none of them had given us anything remotely concrete to go on. Aware of my ability to move through the darkness of the Underworld with silent stealth, Kingsley began pushing me hard to find the rat. ‘Rebels’ they called themselves, men and women from the world above who were on a mission to give the innocents freedom. Whispers also suggested they wanted to take down Kingsley. I didn’t give a fuck about losing the innocents, they shouldn’t be here anyway, but as Kingsley’s most trusted soldier, it was my job to protect him. I hadn’t failed a mission yet, and I wasn’t about to. We had a vague idea of their plans, but we had no idea how they would go about implementing them, and until we had answers, I would keep digging. I’d learned to operate on little sleep, but tonight I was so damn tired my eyes felt like sandpaper.
Rolling my neck, I took up position just slightly behind Nada, my hands clutched behind my back. The room remained silent as Kingsley sat back in his chair and watched Nada with cold, calculating eyes. He knew his silence and stare didn’t intimidate her, but he needed his men to see her indifference didn’t affect him either. It was a play for power, and in the end, it was the girl who won at this game.
When Nothing Is All You've Got Page 4
