by Eli Constant
They were still staring at one another when Nathan’s radio crackled to life.
“Nathan, we got visitors…”
Nathan held Destiny’s gaze for a moment longer before finally releasing her and pulling out his radio. He pressed the button on top and put it to his mouth, his expression enigmatic again.
“Nathan here, what the fuck has this got to do with me?”
“Charlie said you need to get yourself down here now…”
Nathan’s face stayed calm, but I saw a small tick around his jaw that showed how irritated he was. “All right, I’ll meet you there.”
He put the radio away and looked at me with what I assumed was his caring smile. “My girls here will get you something to eat and get you some clothes to wear.” He came closer, and I flinched when his hand reached out to finger the buttonholes of his shirt. “Though I think you look pretty good wearing my shirt.”
His fingers brushed my skin and I shivered involuntarily. I bit down on my lower lip to hold in the barrage of anger that I wanted to unleash on him. That would only get me locked back in the cage, or worse.
“All right, ladies, help make Rose here feel at home and I’ll be back in a little while.” He leaned over and kissed Destiny and Sandra on the cheek. As he passed me, he leaned over and did the same. His full lips pressed against my cheek almost delicately, like he was treating me like something precious and sacred. My stomach clenched with the need to vomit from his touch. I wanted to pull away from him so badly. I wanted to go for the gun and blow his brains out, even if it meant a death sentence for me too. But I stayed frozen and compliant.
I stayed alive.
He left and all eyes fell on me. Destiny’s cheek was still red, Nathan’s handprint still visible. She took a step towards me, her chin jutting out and a cold look in her eye.
“Don’t get any ideas, little Rose,” she said with disdain. “Nathan is mine.”
She turned and walked away and I stared after her, dumbfounded.
Did she really just say that Nathan is hers?
As in Nathan.
Nathan Nathan.
The whore-loving pimp.
The sadistic, kidnapping, abusive creep?
I shook my head, because damn, I’d thought I was screwed up.
Chapter Three.
Sam
No.
That one word from Barrett was still running through my mind, keeping me from succumbing to sleep, even though I needed to sleep so badly. A nap had sounded like a great idea when Barrett had suggested it.
His warning about Stash hadn’t helped my anxiety either. There was no one I could trust. Not now with Rose gone. Barrett was my protector, but again I wondered how long that would last. Here, with the Sins, would he turn on me? If it came to a point of choosing a side, I doubted the lifetime criminal would pick the woman he’d just met over his brothers-in-arms.
I sat up, the soup in my belly sloshing around uncomfortably. I’d been so hungry, but the chicken and noodles had soured inside me. That’s how everything was nowadays—rotting and going bad, nothing sacred anymore. Nowhere safe to rest and seek comfort.
Barrett stirred across the room. He was sitting up in a tattered recliner, long, muscled legs stretched out in front of him. He looked nearly peaceful there, a dark cowboy hat tipped over his face to shadow most of his features, save for his thick, hard-lined lips that were both kissable and too fierce. Stash had brought the hat and a change of clothes for Barrett back an hour or so after he’d played twenty questions with me. A peace offering, maybe. Barrett had joked, clapping the old man on the back, but I was beginning to understand Barrett a little bit better. He trusted no one, even if he appeared to be friends with them. I wondered how much he trusted me…and if I could truly trust him.
God, I missed Rose. Things felt easy with her. Felt honest. We’d only known each other a short time, but she’d quickly become the sister I didn’t know I needed.
And then she was gone from me as quickly as she’d arrived on that bloody, awful red-eye flight.
Standing now, bare feet cold against the hard floor. I shivered, though the room itself wasn’t cool, but I didn’t look down. I didn’t want to see my own feet. I hated not having shoes to cover my warped toes, and my soles were dirty from having walked against the hot Vegas earth with no protection earlier.
I moved quietly to the door of the room Stash had graciously let us borrow. The bathroom was down the hall near the breakroom, almost at the end of the building.
I’d opened the door and was about to shut it, when Barrett’s deep voice gave me pause. “Bathroom?”
“Yeah,” I whispered, feeling awkward in the doorway and lifting my right foot to scratch up and down against my left. I wasn’t even itchy, just a nervous gesture.
“Don’t make any detours.” He wasn’t even looking at me, the entitled dickhead. Just ordering me around. For my own good, per usual. At least so he said.
“Detours? Detours to where, Barrett? Timbuktu? I’m literally going down the hallway and back. No map required.”
“No detours,” he said again.
“I’ll be right back,” I muttered. There was something in his voice that made me want to ignore the ache in my bladder and head out of the security building instead to find whatever it was he didn’t want me detouring toward. But like the scared little girl I was, I nodded and went toward the restroom. More likely than not, he was trying to keep me out of trouble. I’d seen the faces of other Sins, seen how a few of them had looked at me when I arrived. If I was caught in the dark without the lone wolf by my side, it was obvious what would happen to me. Yet the feminist in me wanted to do it anyway.
I resisted my own urges and navigated the dim hallway, no deviations from point A to point B. I relieved myself and washed my hands, wishing there was a shower or a bathtub also—though that would be odd given the building’s original purpose. There was no original need for the trifecta of toilet, sink, and shower stall. Those who once worked here came to keep things secure.
The waterpark full of people. Friends. Families. Lovers.
Living, breathing humans enjoying the big blue sky and the feel of cool wetness against their bodies, chlorinated water soaking into their bathing suits. Their biggest concern would have been the possibility of a sunburn, or a too-long wait to tube down the tallest slide.
I didn’t leave the bathroom immediately after drying my hands on my clothes. It was a fact that most men couldn’t be bothered with hand towels. I was surprised to find antibacterial soap. I could live with dampening my clothes if I could actually wash my hands with more than lukewarm water.
The medicine cabinet mirror was hazy with age, cracks fingering through the glass. Despite having showered during the brief motel stop, my hair was stringy and dull, hanging around my face in wild disarray. What I’d give for a scalp massage at the salon and the way my hairdresser could blow-dry my hair into a sleek golden waterfall. Even when it wasn’t the end of the world, I couldn’t do it at home as well. I’d put the exact same products in, blow-dry it the way she showed me, and I’d still be a frizzy mess. I always teased her about it: “keep your secrets and make your money, greedy pants.” She’d laugh.
I wondered if she was dead now.
On that painful thought, I walked back to the room. Barrett was in the same position, though I was sure now that he wasn’t actually dozing. The nap suggestion had been for my benefit.
“Barrett?”
“What?” He lifted his hat, this time looking at me with such intensity that I flinched.
“I can’t sleep.” I bit my lower lip. “This place is suffocating.”
“I’m comfortable,” he countered, mouth a hard line.
“Great. You’re comfortable.” I turned around, tossing my hands in the air. “That’s all that matters, I guess. Your comfort. Their comfort. Everyone’s comfort but mine.” I felt a sudden bitterness flood my mouth, but it was more than my personal distress now. It was something s
our and sickening when added to the taint of chicken soup. “I’m going to throw up.” I clapped a hand over my mouth and ran back to the bathroom, tossing up the soup violently. When it was over, I rocked back on my ass and leaned against the wall with its peeling ocean wallpaper.
“Fuck,” I breathed out, tugging the sleeve of my shirt up to wipe my spittle-flecked mouth. “I will never eat that again. Even if I’m starving.”
“Say that again when you’re actually starving.”
I glanced over to find Barrett standing in the doorway, his broad shoulder pressed into the doorframe, his large hands shoved into his pants pockets. He loomed over me, a mixture of promises and threats and condescending maleness.
“Screw you.” Even to me, the rebuke was half-hearted. I pulled my legs beneath me to lift into a kneeling position. Before I could stand, I felt a fluttering of air. Hands pushed beneath my arms seconds later. I gasped as Barrett lifted me quickly, causing me to lose my footing and fall against his hard chest. “Maybe not so wise to manhandle someone who just threw up.” Instinctively, I tried to shield my mouth.
Close quarters.
Sexy-as-hell Barrett.
Vomit breath.
“If there’s any food left in that tiny body of yours, I’d be amazed.”
“I’m not tiny,” I stumbled back, trying to be free of him, but he wouldn’t release me.
“You’re tall, Sam, but you’re tiny.” His grip moved to curve around my waist. His hands were so big that his fingers and thumbs could touch one another as he circled my body. He titled his head down, mouth at my ear. “So little I could break you in a second if I wanted.” He pushed me against the wall, the scent of him overwhelming my senses. Sweat. Blood. His own natural musk. He needed a shower, badly, but there was something magnetic about the smells mingling against his skin and clothes. “You’re not weak though,” he rumbled.
“You’re right.” I pushed against him hard, wishing dance had strengthened my arms as much as my legs. Too much muscle meant more weight. More weight meant riskier lifts. Strong, yet light. I’d grown used to conforming to the body standards, used to hiding the pain of blistered and broken toes. Throwing up one meal? That was nothing compared to what I‘d done in the past to keep the weight scale hovering where it needed to be. “I’m not weak, Barrett.”
Heat was coursing through my veins, warming my limbs, causing a fire in my brain.
“Someday, I’m going to let you really prove it to me,” he growled, pressing with force against my palms. “Let those eyes of yours go red and see who wins.”
“Stop it,” I breathed out, feeling my heart racing erratically and beginning to see the first touches of pink in my vision. “This isn’t funny.”
The thought of letting go like that was terrifying, but there was also something appealing about not fighting the thing inside of me anymore. Of letting it go and seeing who I really was now.
A dancer.
A survivor.
A monster beneath the skin.
“I told you. I don’t joke.” His eyes were dark pools, staring into my soul, and I shuddered. As quickly as the intensity had arrived, it faded from him and I was faced with the mask Barrett wore so often: indifference. “There’s mouthwash in the medicine cabinet.” He smirked, releasing me.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, one hand still hovering over my mouth. The reminder of my breath cooled the anger enough that my heartbeat began to slow.
“I’ll be outside waiting, if you’re still finding this place suffocating. Could use a shower anyways.” He strode off casually, cowboy hat fitted over the braid that swished against his back.
“You are such a fucking asshole,” I sniped at his back, not bothering to raise my voice because I knew, I just knew, that Barrett would hear a whisper as well as he did a scream. It was who he was. It was in his blood. Hunter blood. Bad blood. Didn’t-give-a-shit-about-the-world blood.
“You better believe it,” he threw over his shoulder.
After he was gone, I stood for a while with my hands gripping the pedestal sink. I hated the world. I hated the way the sunlight looked as it filtered in through the dirty-as-hell windowpanes. Everything was filthy now, wasn’t it? Would things ever be truly clean again?
I hated the man who was my new companion too...yet, I was attracted to him also. Two sides of the same passion-fueled situation. Love. Hate. Bedfellows of the apocalypse in so many ways.
I found mouthwash in the cabinet, just as Barrett said I would. Rinsing my mouth out with the minty astringent burned, but felt so damn good. What I really wanted was to brush my teeth vigorously, over and over again, use a mountain of toothpaste and be exceedingly wasteful, but I knew I was lucky to at least have the rinse. Luckier than many.
Pulling my hair back into a loose braid, I splashed cool water against my face. Outside would be hot and I’d start sweating in no time. The memory of the wetness on my face would help.
As I walked down the hallway to the exit, the unsecured plait loosened and my dirty hair escaped completely before I even stepped out into the sunshine.
“My kingdom for shoes and a hair tie,” I sighed, letting the door whine closed behind me on its own.
“What’s that?” Barrett had his foot cocked back against the building, back against the stucco-covered wall, arms crossed and cowboy hat still firmly in place. I noticed he had his backpack, the one once filled with drugs that he’d been so protective over. It was slung over his shoulder, zipper not quite secured so that I could see a peek of the fresh clothes Stash had brought him.
I glared at him. “I was just thinking out loud.” I stepped onto the ground and frowned. Hot again. Dirty. “I need shoes.”
“Women’s shoes aren’t going to be easy here. And best leave the thinking to me,” he commented in such a casual way that I wanted to punch his perfect jawline. He was such an arrogant son of a bitch at times.
“You make it really hard to like you, Barrett.” I meant to ask why getting women’s shoes would be a problem to get, but my tongue was more focused on disliking the controlling asshole in front of me.
“You like me plenty well.” He moved away from the wall, a smile spreading his thick, delicious mouth. He watched me closely, and slowly licked along his lower lip. “Sure is dry in Nevada.”
I couldn’t help myself. My eyes flicked to his damp bottom lip, and I felt a tightening in my stomach. “Physical reaction has nothing to do with liking a person,” I countered angrily.
He dropped the pack to the ground and moved close to me, arms wrapping around me and pinning my arms to my sides. “Here, Sam, you more than like me. You goddamn love me. You fucking worship me. All you can think about is the next time we’re going to fuck. You know why?”
My breath came in painful jerks, my heartbeat racehorse-fast. I stared at him, wanting to hold on to my rage, wanting to fight him, wanting to show him that I didn’t need him. But his eyes weren’t cold, hard steel right now. They were almost…pleading. “Why, Barrett? Why do I need to act like your goddamn slut?”
“Because if you don’t, I can’t keep other Sins from claiming you. If we’re not together, in every way possible, then you’re not mine.”
Mine.
I once wanted to be someone’s “mine.” I wanted to get married. I wanted to have kids. I wanted to have the perfect suburban life. Dance until I passed my prime. And then I’d teach. Because that’s what retired dancers did, the only real route for them after the stage was in the past.
“I don’t belong to anyone, Barrett,” I whimpered as he pulled me roughly against his body. The complete line of him touched the complete line of me. I felt every promise his muscled hardness offered. I felt the size of him as he throbbed beneath his jeans, and the feeling made me gasp in surprise as much as in desire.
“Here, you belong to me, Sam.” He moved quickly, mashing his mouth against mine and pushing his tongue between my lips.
“Now, now. We’ve got walls and roofs for that sort of thing.”
A familiar voice broke into our heated exchange.
Barrett didn’t let me go immediately. He continued to kiss me, making his point. When he allowed our bodies to part, I realized all of this wasn’t for my benefit. It was for the man’s who was staring at us.
Nathan.
With such a hungry look in his eyes that I knew, beyond a shadow, that Barrett was right: if I wasn’t his, then I’d be claimed by someone else. Someone worse.
“Figured I’d give Sam the grand tour.” Barrett smiled at Nathan, arm still around my waist.
“I just did some touring of my own. Let the newest toy out of her cage.” Nathan’s eyes found my face. I automatically shrunk away, pushing closer to Barrett.
“She enjoy the fresh air?” Barrett chuckled. “Nice of you to take the pet for a walk.”
“Well, she can’t work behind bars.” Nathan winked, and for a moment I thought I might vomit all over again. What a sickening human being. How could someone so nice looking be such...such a fucking devil underneath?
I opened my mouth to speak, but Barrett squeezed my waist firmly, making me wince. It was a warning.
“That cage was big enough for two.” Barrett smirked. I stiffened against him. The words were ugly, brutal things. A decent human being couldn’t even say them. They just couldn’t.
“Got a point there.” Nathan laughed, the deep rumble of a man thinking about sex. The radio nestled against his hip crackled before he could continue. It was a good thing...for him. I couldn’t have kept my mouth shut for much longer. Let him keep talking. I’d zomm out right here, right now. Sure, I’d probably die, but it might just have been worth it to kill the bastard first. Nathan ignored the radio, but sighed loudly after it crackled to life yet again. “Always something to do around here. Charlie’s waiting for me, or I’d stick around and help you give the beautiful Sam here the grand tour.”
“Pity.” I smiled and the expression felt sour on my face.
“Name a time, any time, I’ll show you around to your heart’s content.” Nathan looked through me, seeing the body and the potential of that body instead of the person who wore it. I hated him in that moment more than I’d hated anyone before. The feeling was so strong that I felt heady with the hatred. Pink touched at the edges of my vision, my anger bringing me closer to losing control. I turned into Barrett’s chest, hating that I needed him like that, but needing it all the same.