Disengaged: A Dangerously Forbidden Love Affair (17 page)

EIGHTEEN

Slayton

Pain was my lifeline. It was the one thing that told me I was still in here somewhere. That I was still human.

I didn’t know what month it was. What day. If it was light or dark outside. I didn’t know shit. I thought about giving in a million times. Just stand there and taking the fucking hit, have some sick fuck rip me to shreds with his hands. But every time the thought came, or right when a mind-bending hit landed on me, I’d see her fucking eyes.

They’d jerk me out of the pit of self-pity I was in and demanded I stand up. That I fight. That I kill. I hated her for the longest time. Some part of me still does. No...it’s not her I hate. Not the angel that keeps fucking showing up at my darkest hour and demanding that I live in this fucking hell...I hate that I love her.

I hate that she showed up too late and left too fast. I hate not knowing where she is. Who’s touching her. I hate knowing my grave has already been dug, and some lucky asshole is going to hold her when she’s old and gray. I hate the temptation she is.

When I make it back to this shithole of a room and turn the music up to hear it and not the screams from the other rooms, I lay there and stare into my memories of her. Recount how I got here. If it was right or wrong for me to be there.

As soon as I left the hospital months ago, Channing and six other guys were waiting on me. I would have never made it out of there with Ember. Knowing she was safe, taken care of, and oblivious inside was the last time I remember feeling relieved. Like I’d won.

I was hauled here, thrown in a room half the size of the one I have now for five days. No food. No water. No bathroom. Then I was pulled out, put in the middle of a ring with hundreds of assholes all around me screaming. In the ring with me was a scared shitless kid.

I glanced up to the glass box. I knew what this was—a test. But I wasn’t so sure I wanted to take it. Which was the easier way to die. Malcolm’s expression was placid. He was pissed at me and had lost what little trust he had before I decided to lie to him about Ember. Most of the guys with him had the same expression, each ready to act on any order that came their way.

Channing’s expression was fierce, scolding. When it was all said and done, I’d made a fool of him. Never acted the way I’m sure he promised Malcolm I would. To beat it all, Channing was not an idiot, he knew I was running when he found me at the hospital. He sent the other guys on with me and waited outside. He was waiting for Ember to step out right behind me. I knew she wouldn’t. Father Donnelly knew the kind of men who had their grips on me. When he left with Ember, no one would know it was her, or would even think to follow a priest and a nun.

What I didn’t know was how far Ember had gotten before my crew figured out she was gone. If they even cared to follow her. For all I knew, if I failed that first test they set before me, they would hunt her. They’d rip her apart and make me watch. Right as the gut-wrenching thought crossed my mind, Channing gave me one nod, like he was reading my thoughts and was telling me I already knew the playbook.

I slowly drew my stare back to the kid before me. There wasn’t a fighting bone in his body. I was betting he was an addict, and a piss poor gambler. He’d been sentenced to die. I was appointed the executioner.

Either I took his life, or they’d take mine. Once he was down, gone from the fucked up life he’d lived I’d be in my new prison. If I ever made it out, every crooked cop on the payroll would pull a bullshit witness that would claim they watched me kill this boy in some random alley. Before I even made it to trial, someone would take me down in jail.

I don’t care who you are. How desensitized you think you may be, no one can kill without feeling a part of them fade away. No one with any kind of humanity could.

I wanted that kid to fight back.

When it was over, and the sick fucks cheered, Malcolm cracked a grin. But I wasn’t back in the fold yet. They took me back to my cell. Three more times I was pulled out and faced the same test. Three times I doubted my choice, and felt a piece of me die.

Then one day, the cell door opened. Channing was there with the guards. He glared me down as I was taken to the other side of the warehouse. I cleaned up the way I was told, ate until I was sick. They let me sleep that night. I dreamed so deeply that I was sure it was my life, that where I was had been a nightmare that I’d lived beyond. Ember was there in my dreams, snow was falling from a dark sky, and I marveled at how clear and happy her gaze was. How safe she was.

I took it as a sign she was. Used it as my courage when I fell short on finding my own. For the next week I was at Malcolm’s side, watching the fights. The first time he pushed a girl on me, I nearly threw her into the wall, my hands were gripped tight enough on her arms for real fear to flash in her eyes. I caught Channing’s glare from the corner, a warning that I was still on shaky ground.

I almost gave in. But fuck no. I hated those whores before Ember came into my life. Giving in now would have made it seem like I was playing them all. “Leave me the fuck alone,” I gritted through my teeth. Malcolm sneered but never stopped his business conversation to give me shit about it.

That night he sent the biggest fucker I’d ever seen to rape my ass. I didn’t feel so guilty about killing that asshole...

By the next week, they were feeding me right, pushing me to condition. I’d gone from the bastard of the gang to a prized possession. The first fights were like the ones before—I was the executioner. Then real opponents came, men like me who had landed on the wrong side of their boss or managed to show a talent to the devil himself without knowing he did.

I hated those fights the most. Sometimes I was sure I was fighting myself, and I didn’t know who I wanted to win. Every night ended the same. More blood. More girls. More booze. Every once in a while, I’d get caught in some fucked mind warp and look down and realize a whore had her lips on me, that I was getting off. Then my mind would flash to Ember’s eyes, and I’d be useless to that whore in the next beat of my heart. Hearing the laughter at my back, the taunts.

She was slipping from me. I was slipping from me. It was getting harder to remember anything beyond her eyes. To remember being normal. Last week, I went down in a fight. I was just tired. I almost didn’t come ‘round in time. I wavered earlier this week, too. It was getting bad enough that Channing got in my face. Of course, the fuck was armed, because he knew I’d kill him the first chance I had. That’s where my mind was. He put me here. He took
everything
from me.

In his bullshit speech to me he told me Malcolm was cool with me fighting like a puss lately because it was changing up the bets, but it was time to stop playing fucking games. “What the fuck do I have to lose?” was what I shouted at him. “You gonna tell me to fight or you’re gonna kill me? Put me in jail then do the deed? What? Tell me what
fucking
threat you got that will make me give a damn!”

I would have never said that months before when Ember was close, but I knew by now she was not only gone, but a vague memory to the fucks in Malcolm’s outfit.

“Don’t test me, fucker,” he said before he left.

Tonight was like any other night. Two more fights, then I was done with this shithole. I didn’t know where I was heading, but I was sick of these four walls and the smell of piss and blood. The same fucking whores trying to get a bite out of me. Done. So done.

I had never really cared to fight before, never pumped up my hate and craved to give someone pain. But it was different when it came to Red. I had speed, and he had rage. There was no doubt about it, when it came to the last fight it would be him and me. The part of me that still wanted to live had been watching him advance right alongside me. Watching how savage he became. I knew half the fight was outside the ring; intimidation. Getting in his fucking head. So I’d been working on that for days. I was still the favorite in the ring, but he was gaining on me. Our final showdown would bring in more money than the cage fights had all year.

I worked myself up so much that just the sight of him would have my blood boiling. Tonight, I took that girl that was given to me when I first came in. I was determined to fuck her and make Red watch. It was his handler, the bastard that gave the whore to me when I walked in. I knew Red would want her. I kept telling myself I could do this. That I needed to if I wanted to get in Red’s head before I faced him tomorrow.

The adrenaline from the fight I’d just fought helped me see that girl as who I wanted her to be. Or, at least, it tried. I kept telling myself I had to. No choice. Then...I could’ve sworn I felt Embers eyes on me. I felt the shame slam into me. Thinking back now, I might have heard Channing say my name, or something made me look his way.

There they were, those innocent angelic eyes staring up at me. I looked away as fast as I could, sure she was an illusion. It didn’t matter that she had a mask on and was dressed like Malcolm’s high dollar whores—I still knew her eyes.

I prowled, glaring at Channing, taking double takes on the other girls, checking my sanity. What the fuck did he do? Had I not paid for my sins? Had I not been through enough hell for killing that fucking bastard Vinnie? What was so wrong about defending Ember back then? Why was I punished for the one right thing I did in my fucked life?

I didn’t know. Just like I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing when I pulled Ember up and slammed her to the wall. Maybe I did. Maybe I knew in some fucked up way that I had to stain her, fuck her mind for the rest of her life just to get her out of that room. What would happen next I had no idea.

I was going minute-to-minute right about now...and not liking the clicking clock I could hear over both our heads.

We were fucked. Beyond fucked.

I couldn’t even think straight knowing she was feet from me—nude, wet—it was destroying me. Bringing out every primal instinct that I had been primed to feel to the forefront of my mind.

It didn’t matter how many times I hit that bag I could not shut down the few rational thoughts I had. The ones that said she did not just walk in here and wait for me to scar her for life. She’d been here—or somewhere. This whole time, I thought she was safe.

If there was one soul on this planet I wanted to kill with my bare hands, it was her father. The selfish bastard should have never brought her into Malcolm’s city. She loved him anyway. Chose him anyway. None of it clicked with me. I didn’t understand unconditional love because I’d never felt it. And that is the God’s honest truth.

Slowly I lowered my aching, bleeding hands from the bag I’d been pounding...I realized I’d never felt unconditional love until I laid eyes on her. Is that what this pain was in my chest? The ball of every emotion there was pounding away—grasping for her?

I knew Malcolm had cameras in these rooms, that he got off on watching his gladiators go mad in their cells. He didn’t care too much to watch us jack off or take a shit, though. Which meant I had to get her into the bathroom—make them assume all was right as rain in this cell.

My glacial stare raked over Ember. She was at least fifteen pounds lighter. I could see her ribs, her pelvic bones. It made me sick. There were no track marks on her arms, but she was pale as fuck. I’d told her to eat thinking that magically when I turned around, she’d be my Ember again, whole. She’d only pushed the food ‘round, but that was all.

When I held her stare, I prayed to the God that had stopped listening to me long ago that she could read me—knew what I had to do. Her tremble didn’t answer my question at all. Only made me feel like more of an ass as I stormed over to her and pulled her up. She flinched, which broke me, but gave me some hope she was still in there.

My calloused, bloody hands rushed all over her pinching her nipples, sliding down her ass, between her thighs but never inside, never near the pulsing heat I could hear beckoning my demons. It may have sounded innocent, but it didn’t look that way if anyone was watching. She was stiff and when I pressed into her. She cried out, even pushed against me. She looked at me like the animal I was. She fought even harder when I pushed her against the wall, which was good, the guards needed to hear her struggle and the camera’s needed a show.

I thought about saying something, hissing a command in her ear, but she was flailing too much, fighting me with all she had, which wasn’t much.

I called it a bathroom but it wasn’t really. There was a toilet, and a sink, but the showerhead came from the wall, and the entire four by four room had one drain in the center. When I worked for Malcolm, I’d seen the camera rooms I knew they could see ‘bout two feet in. I stopped Ember at the door and picked her legs up and forced them around me. I told my body not to react, to not get hard for this girl, but just looking at her affected me. So there it was, right between us again, a steel rod of my never dying want for this girl.

It was the same as when we were in the box. I pushed us so close that no one would know I wasn’t inside her unless they were right fucking there staring at us. She screamed and cried like she did before, but I felt some of the tension fading in her body the second she realized this was a repeat of before.

She tried to stare into my eyes, but I couldn’t go there yet. I knew I’d never once looked at another soul the way I looked at her. Channing called me out on it back when I met her. He said something changed in me when she was close. And that something was going to get us both fucking killed because it told the world we had something to lose.