I head towards the stairs but as two men close in on her, I’m thrown. She reaches up to the hand on her shoulder and forces it away from her skin by the pinky. The man screams as she breaks it. The second guy barring her path raises a fist that could impale her, but Mer kicks the guy in the stomach and as he folds over, she kicks him again in the face. He topples backwards down the stairs, but she doesn’t watch to admire her work. Instead, she turns back to face the first guy and drives her fist across his cheek again and again until his whole face is bloodied.
“Ho-ly-shit,” Charlie says, and I turn to see that all my brothers are on their feet. All but Aiden. His face is passive and nonplussed.
Some of the spectators watching the current fight are distracted by the commotion and when Mer steps over the writhing body at the base of the steps, a group of them cheer. Ignoring them, she heads to the bar and as the next fight takes the ring, she revisits our table. “You boys need anything else?” she asks, making a face as she glances from my steel-toed shit kickers to my face. Probably wondering why I’m still standing. I’d have thought it obvious: I’m standing because I’m floored by her.
“Another round,” I say, though the words don’t come easily. I want to ask her something else.
She nods once and turns, but my feet are moving before I can control them. I catch her on the stairs and slip my hand around her upper arm though, the moment I so much as touch her, she rips away from me and puts another few stairs between us. I have to look almost straight down to see her face as she tilts it up. Staggered as we are then, the top of her head comes up to my belly button.
“Don’t,” she says and her cheeks redden. “You can’t just go around grabbing people…”
“Are you okay?” I let her anger go unacknowledged for now. “Those guys give you any trouble I’m happy to handle them.”
She runs her fingers back through her hair, pushing it over her shoulder so that it falls in thick raven waves down to her lower back. She’s got a thin layer of bangs that cut across her forehead and sweeps them to the side now, albeit unsuccessfully. “Okay?” Her voice doesn’t waver, though her glossy brown gaze dodges mine.
“Slater’s friends.”
“Those guys?” She rolls her eyes. “They’re college kids. Harmless.”
I smirk, though anger or something like it tickles the base of my spine and I’m reminded again of the red. The Red. “Tough guy, huh?”
“Who? Them?”
“No. You.”
Her mouth. Her full, blood red, fucking mouth. It manages to be sexy even when it’s this severe. “I don’t need you looking out for me. I can handle myself.”
“Fuck me for asking.” My fists tighten around the railing.
She pivots from me, though I’d meant to turn away first, but damn if she isn’t the kind of woman that holds your attention and doesn’t let go. Like a noose. “Thanks but I’ll pass on the offer,” she sneers. Over her shoulder, she adds, “Oh. And if I did ever want help, you can be damn sure that you’re the last person I’d ask.”
There it is again. My new friend. Or perhaps my constant companion, resurfaced. Just a pinprick this time, but it’s still dangerously scarlet. The Red. “Jesus fucking Christ, you’re a real piece of work, aren’t you?”
“You have no idea.”
She makes it to the base of the stairs, ass filling out those frayed jean shorts in a way that makes my gut throb. Not my gut. My cock. I rearrange it quickly in my jeans, hoping that the black material hides the stretching. She comes to serve us anymore drinks I’m going to end the night with a lethal case of blue balls. “Can I ask why I’m somehow not good enough to help you wail on some assholes, or did you not see my fight earlier?” Damn. Am I feeling wounded or what?
“That’s why,” she says blandly, as if she doesn’t give a rat’s ass about me or anyone. “Next week you’re fighting my brother.”
Shock hits me. Padre’s daughter. Mario’s sister.
“Well fuck.”
Mer
I remind myself again why I’m in this city that god forsook, why I walked into this barn house de mierda and begged the shrimpy brown-eyed bartender for this shitty job. Why I’m standing halfway up the staircase that leads to the guest team’s landing with my back pressed against the wall, arms crossed, gut tense. It’s all for him. It’s always only ever been for him and for me and for our collective survival. My no good, dumb ass brother.
I roll my eyes when he takes a hit, blood spraying from his mouth as the one they call Knuckles lays into him. Knuckles is the same height as my brother but fuller in the chest. He’s faster too and he cuts clean, with the precision and calm of a much older man though I don’t imagine he’s over thirty. Blood on his chest catches the gleam from the lights dangling like dice from the cross-beams that cut across the roof. His fists are huge, pale hands carving chunks out of Mario’s stamina. Watching him dance around my brother on light feet does something to me. Something animalistic and dark. I’m hungry in ways I haven’t been in months and though I know I should be rooting for my brother, I’m not.
Mario pulls a move I’ve seen him make several times before – a feint to the left before jabbing once with his left hand, twice more with his right. Knuckles dodges the first two strikes easily, but takes the second to the cheek at the same time that he brings his knee up into Mario’s stomach. Mario bowls over, arms flailing out and leaving his torso entirely unprotected. Knuckles doesn’t hesitate. He hits Mario in the chest with force. I bet he fractures my brother’s sternum. El idiota.
Mario gasps and tries to recover, but I see him sag, even from all the way over here. I roll my eyes and am about to head down the stairs when the floorboards on the landing above groan. I glance up. My father walks to the railing and stares down at his only son with a fixed expression that I know well. Carajo. I wonder how much he put on Mario to win, though judging by the expression on his face, it’s probably in the realm of five figures. He already owes Loredo so much, I wonder if this won’t finally be the time that Loredo decides to close the register and cash him out. Indefinitely.
A bell dings and I push forward into the crowd as it loosens. Some boys head into the darkness outside the open barn doors, but most flock to the bar. Mario’s on his knees in the dirt and Knuckles is clapping hands with the man I came for. The one with the dark skin they call Dixon looks directly at me as if called by something divine and though I can’t hear him with all of the sweating, breathing bodies so close to me, I see his lips mouth, “Just a second.”
Knuckles shifts around Dixon’s body and spots me through the layered frat bros between us. The expression he wears morphs from surprise to a shocking shade of darkness. He glances between Dixon and I. Heat crawls from the back of my neck and inches down my spine until my pussy lips are flaming and it has nothing at all to do with the sweaty male bodies glancing my arms. I shift my weight between my hips and use Dixon’s broad body to block the sight of his friend who looks pissed for absolutely no reason I can think of. Still, it’s a good look for him.
“Tell your friend he fought a good fight tonight,” I say, holding out my hand.
Dixon takes it and the rough weight of his palm is interrupted by something smooth and feathery as money passes between us. I am careful as I slide my hand over the front of my shirt, and hope that the well-rehearsed move is as discreet as it has been in the past. Mario normally doesn’t notice, but nothing escapes the man who created us and I can imagine that his eagle eyes are pinned on me now that I’m speaking with the enemy.
Dixon nods and the smell of citrus and ginger wafts from his skin, even in this hot room that smells of horseshit, beer, and sweat. “Your brother stood his ground well…for a while.”
“Not for long enough.”
“All the better for you.” Dixon lifts a brow and glances directly at my tits, though he doesn’t seem to be the least bit impressed by them. I respect that he’s got eyes only for his money. “Th
e pot had him lasting thirty six minutes against my brother.”
I grin carnivorously, but say nothing. We both know that when I put in my bet, I had Mario clocking out at minute twenty three and I was right on the dot. On the money. “I saw your boy fight last week and Mario’s only gotten ballsier since prison – not better. Wasn’t a hard calculation.”
“Not for someone with a little street experience herself.” He gives me an appraising look and for some reason, I feel pride when I inhale my next breath.
Trying not to let it show, I run my hand back through my hair and shrug. “Enough to keep me alive in a room full of thugs.”
Dixon smiles at me though there is a guarded air to his expression, as if he’s wearing a mask that won’t budge. It gives me the chills and I’m grateful for Mario’s distraction when he calls my name. He’s crouched on the ground and some skinny ginger is standing over him dripping spittle onto my brother’s back and kicking dirt up onto Mario’s face.
I brush past Dixon, walk right up to the kid and shatter his nose with my fist. I can’t help but revel in the sensation of his bones meeting mine. The slight crunch that reverberates loudly through the shouting and laughing around me says that something’s given way – something of his, not mine.
“Fuck off, puto. You so much as look at my brother again and I’ll meet you in the ring myself.”
The kid’s friends grab his arms and pull him out from under me. I mirror the gesture with my own brother, but not before kicking his boot, bending down and whispering to him in Spanish, “Get up. Padre’s watching.”
That seems to strike some fear into him because he manages to stagger up into a vertical position and loop his right arm over my shoulders. The left he cradles to his chest and, like his sternum, I gather it’s also broken courtesy of the big guy barring our path.
“Do you mind?” I say and I meet his gaze when really all I want to do is look anywhere else.
His face is sculpted out of hardened bone, dark hair cropped short against his scalp. He isn’t handsome in the way most girls might find men handsome in an ad for cologne or a fancy watch. He’s way past rugged for that. Instead, he looks like some kind of Roman mercenary who’s come to take me by force unless I fight him to the death. Jesus, how I’d love that fight. Reaching Elysium with those deadly, emerald eyes staring down at me.
“Are you deaf?” My panties are damp and my brother’s weight is porcine. The scent of moonshine and weed wafts from Mario’s skin and I know my brother was halfway faded when he stepped into the ring. He’s a fool to think he could have come into this game anything less than prepared when Knuckles was his opponent.
Knuckles – Knox – grunts in a brutish way and rubs his hand across a stomach so ribbed it looks like he swallowed paint rollers. His palm streaks burgundy from breast to abdomen, and his hip bones are visible above the sagging waist of his pants. No belts in the arena. And I don’t see boxers either. Fuck. When he steps out of my way I nearly burst forward, lugging my brother’s weight to and up the stairs.
Spade meets me halfway and I wonder if he doesn’t use the opportunity to his advantage when his hand ‘accidentally’ paws across my breasts. I wrench away, but don’t dare raise my hand to the pinche pedejo. He’s a nasty fucker with a proclivity for torture. I can’t deny that he’s a good fighter though. Far better than Mario. Probably even better than Knuckles, not that he’d ever be able to prove it. Spade’s been banned from fighting in every pink slip pit in the South because his opponents only leave in body bags or in comas. I’d say it’s because he’s Russian and doesn’t know any better, but I’ve seen the look he gets when he hovers over a dead body. The bastard gets off on it and my dad doesn’t care because it was Loredo who hired Spade from the Russian mob in the first place.
Padre’s still convinced the man is a body guard, but anyone with half a brain or eyes to see would know better. No cartel leader hires a mercenary from the Russian mob to take care of one of their low level employees. And no bodyguard takes orders as poorly as Spade does. In fact, I often catch Spade looking at dear ole’ daddy in the same way a hound looks at its prey rather than its master.
“Plumeria,” a cool voice calls.
Gritting my teeth, I take the steps one at a time until I’ve got both feet planted on the landing and am standing directly in front of him. “Padre?”
He’s seated on a wicker chair watching Mario writhe in pain on the sofa, thin face drawn in disgust and something lethal. In an effort to distract him, I clear my throat. It works and he flicks his gaze to me. The same chocolate brown eyes I have, though everything else I am is my mother’s. The eyes are the only things I will concede.
“Plumeria, who was that man you were speaking with?” He says, switching to Spanish. He speaks in a rough brogue that betrays his poor, rural roots. Just a farmer’s son trying to make it in the big city. I wish it gave me more sympathy for the man, but the bastard deserves nothing from me.
“Dixon,” I answer blandly, “He’s Knox’s manager. I was congratulating them on the fight.”
“Not manager. Brother.”
“Brother?” I say. Padre nods, opening his mouth to elaborate, but I shake my head. “And why did you bother asking if you already knew?”
“There is evidently a lot I do not know and that I have left to the secondhand information of others.” He shoots an icy glare at Mario, curses, and lurches forward to smack my brother in the ear. He hits him so hard, he bleeds. “You said you could beat him. That there was no chance of a loss.”
Mario cries out and a flutter of nerves flurries through me. I don’t like the kid, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s my brother, the last sibling I’ve got left and the only one to ever stand in my corner against the cartel.
“It’s your own fault,” I shout, switching back to English automatically.
Padre twists to look at me and passes a hand over his oily hair, bares his teeth. “What did you say to me? Your own father…”
“Don’t give me that. If you believed I was your kid too, you’d have asked me what I thought the odds would be. I saw Knox fight last week and I knew he was good…”
“Is that why you bet against your own brother?”
My jaw goes slack and so do most of my muscles. My hand twitches, reaching for the wall to my right. It’s dry as bone beneath my fingers and just as brittle. “How…” I cough into my fist and try to recover – failingly. “I didn’t…”
Padre glances over my shoulder as Spade saunters around my body. He takes the seat to the right of my father and pulls a crumpled stack of folded bills from his inside jacket pocket. I cup my right tit, shocked to no longer feel the cash’s hard edge between my nipple and my bra and while my brother curses me to hell’s lowest chamber, a jolt of rage sweeps me. I’m pissed. I sidestep my dad and advance on Spade who does nothing but splay his cheek for me to hit, so I do. Then I grab for his hand. The rest happens too quickly.
Like a boomerang, my hand hits him and he retaliates by slapping me in the face hard enough to whip my head around. As I stumble towards the railing, Spade shoves me from behind. The cool wood cuts into my belly and the whole railing shakes like the legs on a startled colt while, at the same time, knocking the breath clean out of me. Spade comes up against my spine.
He overpowers me, spinning me into the shadows of the back wall and wrenching my shorts down over my ass. He’s fumbling with his belt and for a second, I don’t know if he’s just reminding me how much bigger he is than I am and that he holds power over me in every way imaginable or if he really does mean to rape me right here, right now.
Behind me, my father is shouting, Mario is coughing and much closer than that, Spade drags my hair over my shoulder and shoves his tongue deep into my ear.
“You are mine,” he breathes and the scent of his breath – rot and moonshine and the dip he chews – makes my gag reflex kick. He presses himself closer and closer to me. I can’t breathe with my
injured cheek wedged against the dusty planks and his whole body surrounding mine. Like an eclipse, the whole world is gone in seconds and the hot flesh of his hand on my ass is all I can feel.
Betraying my fear, I yelp, like the little girl that I am. I close my eyes and clench my fists and though I don’t stop struggling, I do mentally prepare to take a very short trip to a very faraway place. I can feel my father close by, pushing or pulling on Spade’s shirt, though I doubt it makes much of a difference and I’m reminded again that Spade is the one who has the upper hand.
A voice cuts through the chaos like a cleaver. “You’ve got to the count of three, big man.”
The voice is familiar and I struggle to place it in the haze of my confusion. Then I hear the cock of a hammer and when I blink my eyes open, I glance past my father’s pathetic, quivering form towards the men on the stairs. All five of them. It isn’t Dixon that stands in the front of the pack however, though I thought he was the one in charge, but Knox, and the strangest settling of relief stops the muscles trembling in my arms and legs.
“Thought there was a no carry policy in here,” Spade crows, without releasing me. In fact, his hand snakes down to spread my ass cheeks and when Knox’s gaze flashes to mine, I look away. I’m embarrassed and I feel like crying, cutting something, someone, me. I fucking hate this. I hate being a girl. I hate crying. I hate Spade. I hate my father, my brother, this man stepping up for me.
“We own the place. We decide who carries.” He keeps his pitch low, but the sinister chords carry. “You want to die tonight? We’re out in the middle of nowhere. Plenty of places to bury a body.”
Spade sneers and I throw my elbow back into his stomach, but only because he lets me. He catches it and the pressure of his chest eases up on my spine. He bends in close and in heavily accented English whispers, “You will be mine very soon, moya lubov.”
The Hunting Town (Brothers Book 1) Page 2