by Zoey Parker
My fists tightened, but if I moved I’d end up with a bullet in my face, and then Olivia would be truly doomed. I was trapped.
“Come along, then,” he said, tugging the leash that was wrapped around Olivia’s throat. She couldn’t talk through the gag buckled around her mouth, but I could see everything I needed to see in her eyes.
Lobo handed the leash off to the last of his men still below. The Diablo pushed her up the ladder and followed, leaving Lobo and myself facing each other in the dingy room. I glanced at Steezy and Ember, but they were too injured to do anything. I was on my own. The light overhead flickered.
Lobo started to climb the ladder, keeping the gun trained on me the entire time. He never blinked. I watched, sweating in fury, as he climbed out of the hole above. “Adiós, amigo,” he said, waggling his fingers in a cheery wave.
Then he was gone.
I let loose a wordless yell and beat my fists against the wall. The sound of my knuckles on the hollow metal ricocheted all the way down the tunnels, over and over again, like the world’s most miserable church bells ringing just to acknowledge my misery.
I’d fucked up. Lobo had gotten away, taking my wife back to his godforsaken lair. I’d finally acknowledged that I loved her, only to have her snatched away yet again. What the fuck was this game I was embroiled in? It didn’t seem like there was ever any escaping it. I’d get so close, and then it would slip through my fingers.
I was sick of this shit. One way or another, it was going to end.
I heard footsteps bouncing down the hallway. Croak turned the corner, gun at the ready. When he saw there were no Diablos anymore, he lowered it.
“What happened?” he asked quietly.
I could hardly bring myself to answer. “He got away. He has her.” I looked up at Croak. His gray eyes softened. He could see the pain tearing me up inside.
He bridged the distance between us and crouched next to where I had fallen on my knees. The hand he clapped on my shoulder was full of brotherly sympathy. He locked eyes with me.
“I’m sorry, Blaze,” he said.
The rest of the men came pouring in. Like Steezy and Ember, several were nursing wounds, but we’d managed to get through without any casualties. They slumped against the walls all around where Croak and I sat and set to taking care of the men who needed medical attention.
Bringing up the rear were two prospects. They supported Luke between them. His arms were draped weakly around their shoulders. He looked like he was on the verge of death. The blood loss and the hours of torture had taken their toll on him. Even if he lived, he would never return to full strength.
Luke trained his gaze on me. Looking in his eyes, I saw that his spirit was as broken as his body. His head dropped, overcome by shame.
The prospects laid him gently to rest against a wall. His chest continued to rise and fall with breath, but he could barely sit up straight.
The men murmured to each other as they each did their best to help stitch wounds closed and set broken bones back into place. Eventually, they all fell quiet and an eerie silence hung over the crowded room. I could see the first rays of the dawn beginning to sneak in through the open circle above the ladder.
Luke’s rasping voice broke the silence. He struggled to talk, but he forced himself to continue. Labored breathing punctured every sentence. “Where…Where is my sister?” he finally said.
Everyone looked expectantly at me.
It took a long time for me to muster the strength to answer. “They escaped,” I said. “Lobo took Olivia. He fucking got away.”
My anger overwhelmed me. I started to beat on the pipes again. I needed to feel solid contact. With every smash of my fist against the wall, I imagined that it was Lobo’s face I was beating to hell. I could almost feel his bones shattering under my knuckles. I roared, letting my voice tear the sides of my throat raw.
“I’m going after them. I’m going to rescue her,” I said. My breath came in fuming spurts and my nostrils were flared like a bull’s in the ring. “And I’m gonna kill every last one of those motherfuckers.”
“No,” interrupted Croak. “You’re not.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I yelled at him. “Of course I am! That’s my goddamn wife he’s got with him!”
Croak stared me down without flinching. “You aren’t going after him. They’re well on their way back to the Diablos stronghold by now. You won’t be able to catch up to them, and once they get inside, it doesn’t matter how many men or guns you have—breaking into that place is a suicide mission. I’m not letting you get any of my men killed.”
I flipped the fuck out. “You can’t tell me not to go after her!” I brayed. “You think I’m going to just let him slip away?”
Still, Croak did not budge. “As long as you’re wearing this patch, you’ll do what I say. And you’re not going after them. That’s an order.”
The men around me stayed silent.
Croak wouldn’t let me go. He expected me to sit and wait. For what? Negotiations with the Diablos? There was no negotiating with that kind of insanity. I didn’t see another solution.
I played back Lobo’s threat in my head. I am taking her away with me, and I will use her like a whore until she is useless. Then I will discard her.
My blood burned hot in my veins. The thought of him laying a single fucking finger on Olivia sent electricity coursing through every muscle. I clenched and unclenched my fists, desperate to draw blood and hurt him.
I had to choose: my patch or my woman. Croak had given me an ultimatum. Did I defy the rules of the only real family I’d ever known? Did I renounce the people who’d taken me without question when I’d been exiled from my hometown? Did I leave behind my brothers?
How could I not?
I hadn’t realized it while it was happening, but Olivia had become everything to me. I had claimed her as mine, in body and soul, and as long as I was alive, I was responsible for protecting her. For the first time in my life, I was at one with the voice in my head, the one that always spoke up even when I tried to muzzle it while I chased the women, the booze, the fighting, or whatever else I had used to distract myself at one time or another.
You love her, it had told me, and it was right. I did love her. She was mine.
And there was no fucking way I’d let the devil take her from me.
As all the men watched, I reached into my boot and drew out the little knife I always kept there. I didn’t say a word as I reached it to the chest of my cut and sliced the threads that held in the grinning skull patch. One by one, I cut the cords that bound me to the club, until the patch fell on my lap.
The room was deathly silent. I handed the patch to Croak and stood.
“I’m sorry, brothers. But this is the only choice I have.”
Then I turned and climbed up the ladder. I was on my way to the end of the earth to do battle with the coldest son of a bitch this world had ever produced.
My girl’s life depended on it.
Chapter 9: The Gates of Hades
Olivia
I would never be the same.
One by one, I watched Lobo chain up men I had known my whole life and torture them with excruciating patience. One slice at a time, I watched good people die in the most horrible way I could ever possibly imagine.
I lost count of how many times I’d thrown up as blood spurted on the floor. More blood than I knew was in one person, multiplied by twelve. So many screams. So many unbearable images.
They washed over me, as relentless as the waves on the beach I’d been on just a couple days ago. It was impossible to think of that, too, that only a few dozen hours separated this nightmare from the moment I’d had on the beach with Blaze.
His kiss on my lips, the wind on my skin as he stripped me with slow, caring hands. The moving together as one, knowing in my heart that I loved him and he loved me, even if we hadn’t yet dared to say it to each other.
I’d seen it in his eyes at the
end of that tunnel. Even with a rope around my neck and the disgusting saliva of that sickening villain still shining on my neck, when Blaze looked at me, I could tell he really did love me.
If only that was enough to save me now.
I was tied down in the back of a truck that bounced down the sun-bleached highway at breakneck speed. Every bump in the road jostled me, scraping my wrists and ankles against the rope that secured me to the truck bed. My neck bore a bright red stripe where I had been leashed, as if I were an animal.
They’d knotted the fabric around my neck and lashed me to the pipes so that I couldn’t go anywhere. I was forced to watch the torture along with my brother. As bad as it had been for me, I couldn’t imagine what he had gone through. What he was going through. What he would never been done with, not until the day he died.
Those were his men. He’d sworn an oath to protect them and to lead them responsibly, but it was his scheming that led to their death at the hands of the devil himself. I was worried that the weight of that burden would kill him.
I closed my eyes and tried to block out all the thoughts. If I kept thinking about everything I’d seen—the blood, the bodies, the wide-eyed fear of Luke’s men, and the booming laughter of their torturer—I’d go insane.
All I needed right now was the comforting darkness of sleep. It took a while, but eventually the jolting motion of the vehicle I was trapped in gave way to unconsciousness.
* * *
I was on the beach behind the villa again. My head rested on Blaze’s chest. I could hear his heartbeat thudding powerfully behind his ribs.
Ba-boom. Ba-boom. Ba-boom.
It was steady and consistent, over and over again, never failing me, never letting me down. I wanted to curl up between the beats and live there forever, knowing that it would always be there to rely on. If I ever needed reassurance, all I had to do was put my head on his chest and know that he was there and he loved me.
I felt his fingers brushing back my hair. He looked down at my face, those green eyes glimmering as they reflected the sun setting over the ocean at our feet. He grinned that grin of his, the same smile that had come over him when I’d walked out of the changing room in that ridiculous lingerie.
That was the first time he’d ever truly seen me as a woman. Back then, maybe he’d thought of me as just another girl to add to the pile of the many he’d had. But looking back on it, we knew better. That was the moment that the seed had been planted. It took gentle kisses as well as probing tongues to make it grow, but between us there was something flourishing. I didn’t want it to die—ever.
His fingers were soft on my face. He cupped my chin and pulled my mouth to his. I paused midway so that my lips hovered just millimeters away from his, close enough that our breath mingled in the space between us but our bodies were still tantalizingly separated.
“Enough of that teasing shit,” he growled. I laughed and fell into him, crashed into him, sending my tongue scurrying to find all the places in him that I had not yet explored. I wanted them all. I wanted to fall completely through him, inhabit the same space as him and feel everything he felt.
I wanted him to know how good it felt when he touched me, when he kissed me, and when he made love to me.
Our kiss deepened, flooded with passion. Our hands scrambled over each other, ripping off clothes as fast as we could. We were each hungrier than each other. I longed for the fullness of him inside me every bit as much as he wanted to feel me closing around him, pulling him inside me and not letting him go until he had released everything for me to keep and savor.
The sea breeze tickled our bare skin as we rolled around the towel, naked. Blaze pushed me onto my back and spread my legs apart with soft hands. He began to kiss me, starting at my knees and moving up my thighs, supplementing the gentle cloud of his lips with flickering licks and bites that teased my milky skin.
Up and up my legs he went, leaving behind a ringing euphoria that had begun to spread throughout my body. The simplest kiss on my hip made the feeling deeper and warmer.
He used two fingers to spread me open. I laid my head back on the sand and wove my fingers through the curls of his hair. Closing my eyes, I felt myself open. My knees fell to the side to make way for Blaze’s head as he approached where I was warm and dripping wet for him already.
His tongue ventured out and touched my clit like the barest of suggestions. I sighed as sensation rippled outward from where he had made contact. Again he touched the tip of his tongue to me, and again, a steady pattern of attack and retreat had my whole body quivering just moments after he’d begun.
He began to stay longer and retreat less often, letting his tongue work slow circles around my clit. His hands caressed my thighs, my hips, the curves of my ass where it pressed into the ground. He reached one arm up and encircled my breast between his fingers. My nipples had hardened already into brown peaks, turned solid by the electricity of his tongue on my moistness.
“Oh, Blaze, you’re incredible at this. Everything you do feels so good.” I sighed gently. I had to tell him now, before I had gone too far past words to be able to let him know what he did to me.
The motion of his tongue and lips intensified. He laid wet kisses between my folds, returning often to lick my clit again and again. The rhythm grew faster and I started to shift my hips towards him. My muscles were beginning to cry as they clenched and released with each successive wave of feeling that flowed outwards from where Blaze’s hot mouth consumed my pussy from top to bottom.
“Yes, yes,” I murmured. My lips were starting to fail me, becoming numb. Soon, it would be all they could handle just to open and let loose the cries that were building deep in my core.
Deeper yet again. He unraveled his tongue at my entrance and pushed the whole length of it, then withdrew.
“Oh, yes, baby,” I said, hanging onto his curls like they were a life raft in the middle of the ocean. “Fuck me with your tongue.”
He kept going. In and out, letting his tongue tease me with a hint of what was yet to come. Every time he pulled it out, he lapped my clit. My juices had begun to flow, combining with the saliva he lavished on me, so that everything flowed around and around—his tongue on my clit and then inside me, then the whole experience all over again.
I was building already towards the crest of my first orgasm. I arched my back and let the budding sensation dance all the way up my spine to the top of my scalp and then stream down over me like water from a shower head, dripping lightly down my skin and gathering again right where Blaze’s tongue was ravishing my clit.
This was where it would come from, right where his tongue had started working rapid laps around my button. He sucked it into his mouth with an easy motion and kept going, surrounding the pinpoint of me with heat and warmth and that whirling, whirling tongue. It went faster as he added his fingers to push inside me, reaching just deeper than his tongue had, so that I was pushed ever closer to the brink of the coming that was about to break over me.
“I’m about to come, baby,” I gasped. “Don’t stop, don’t you ever stop.”
He continued to fondle my breast with his free hand, while the other fingers probed inside, nuzzling the walls that were stretching open to take him soon.
That tongue turned one lap and another. The friction was building. The feeling was mounting. A lap. Suck in. A lap. Fingers twisted within me. A lap. A lap. And thenthe orgasm broke over me, exploding outward from where his tongue had slaved against my soaking pussy.
He released me and watched as I bucked and moaned in the grips of the storm. My hands dug into the sand on either side of the towel, desperate for some purchase. I almost wondered if I was going to erupt. My skin could barely contain the first few bursts that rocketed through me.
This was pure demolition; he built me up and then he broke me down, but oh my God, it was incredible. My lips fluttered, unable to even form the words that would express what was going through me.
The waves gradually eased
. My breath was coming in ragged gasps, filling my lungs with the salty air of the ocean. I opened my eyes and looked at him.
I wanted to say something, anything, to let him know what he had did to me, where he had taken me. I was full of everything—love, the still-simmering orgasm that his tongue and fingers had unleashed over my body—and yet it wasn’t enough.
I needed more.
He didn’t wait to see what I was going to say. Hell, I had no idea what I would have said. My eyes must have told him everything he needed to know, because he reached forward and pulled me into him without a moment’s hesitation.
Our mouths met again midair, starving for one another. His hands dug into me. I wanted to be closer to him than I’d ever been. I wanted to show him I was his wife, that the marriage was real to me—that we had made it real in spite of everything else that had happened.
