Jarod falls, pulling her to the ground on top of him, and a feral snarl rumbles up from her throat as she pulls her blade free, then rams it into his left side, over and over.
Satisfied that she’s okay, at least physically, I grab goon number three from behind and apply enough pressure to his neck to close his windpipe. While he slowly suffocates, clawing at my arm and trying to elbow my injured ribs, Sylvie pushes herself to her feet. She exhales, staring down at Jarod’s bloody corpse. Then she turns to goon number two, whose hands still hover over the pen protruding from his neck, trying to decide whether or not to pull it from the wound. Sylvie drops onto him with another wild cry and shoves her knife through the other side of his throat.
Goon number three stops breathing. I drop his corpse and stand just as Sylvie pulls both weapons from number two’s neck. She tosses me the pen.
Jarod and his buddies are dead. Roth sits on the ground, deathly pale, trying to hold blood inside his body with both hands. But I can see it in his eyes. He knows as well as I do that he’s done. Not just done fighting.
Done breathing.
For a second, I consider putting him out of his misery. But he doesn’t deserve that mercy.
Instead, while Sylvie kneels in front of him and wipes her blade on his pants, her gaze as wild as her hair, I haul Hardy up. He’s still coughing and choking from the bruised windpipe. He’s not going to fight. He knows this is over.
“Why?” I push him against the wall, ballpoint held at the ready. “Just tell me why.”
“I was just trying to survive, man. Same as you. You were going to kill me anyway, so I went to Roth and made a deal.”
“You sold us out,” Sylvie spits, as her shadow falls over us both. “You fucking sold us out.”
“Why would I kill you, Hardy? You did your best that day. What happened to her wasn’t your fault.”
He only shakes his head. Then his focus slides toward Sylvie over my shoulder. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean it. I just wanted to feel something soft and good. Same as you.”
“You…?” I slam him against the wall. His skull bounces off the concrete surface, but still he doesn’t fight. “I trusted you. She fucking trusted you.”
“I’m sorry, man. Just make it quick. That’s all I ask.”
“Sylvie, give me the knife.”
“No.” Her shadow shakes its head from the wall next to Hardy. “He’s learned his lesson.”
“Sylvie…”
“No, Graham. He’s learned his lesson, and we need him,” she whispers. “And if I can forgive him, you can.”
“He set you up to be raped, Sylvie.”
I can practically feel her indecision. How is it possible that she’s killed six men since she got here, yet she’s still too fucking soft for this place? Too good for it.
“We can’t trust him, and that makes him dangerous. I have to kill him either way,” I tell her, without taking my focus from Hardy. “The knife will be a mercy.”
“Give him the knife, Sil,” Hardy says. “I’m done. I’m ready to go home.”
Sylvie exhales, long and slow. Then, finally, she steps into sight and hands me the knife.
I pull Hardy forward, and he drops onto his knees. I grab a handful of his hair and pull his head back, then I cut deep and fast, right across his throat.
He gurgles for a minute, coughing. Sputtering. His hands fly to his throat, trying to hold his flesh closed because even if his mind is ready to die, his body isn’t.
But it’s over pretty quickly. When his weight pulls against my hand, I let him go and step back. I wipe the knife clean and hand it to Sylvie. She folds up the blade and slips it into her pocket, then she throws her arms around my neck, clinging to me.
“I don’t want to do this anymore, Graham.” She’s not crying. In fact, she’s speaking through clenched teeth. But I can feel her pain.
She may be good at killing, but that doesn’t mean she was made for this. Or that it won’t kill her, in the end.
“I know. Me neither.” I wrap my arms around her, grateful beyond words that she’s still here. Unscathed, at least physically. “So, let’s go make a statement.”
“Prevention is the best cure,” she says, and I nod.
Roth has slumped over, staring sightlessly at the rust-colored grass between his knees. I swing my bag over my shoulder, then grab his wrist in my right hand and Jarod’s in my left. Sylvie reclaims her bag and takes the largest of the goons by both hands. Together, we drag them around the blind corner into the yard, where all activity has ceased.
The weight machines are unoccupied. The tables are empty. Everyone is standing. Staring.
As we get closer, someone recognizes Roth, even though his body is trailing behind me. That’s when the talking starts. Low-pitched murmurs.
I drop the bodies at the edge of the concrete. Sylvie drags her corpse into line with mine. Together, we stand tall, facing down everyone on the yard.
“This ends today,” I shout. “Roth is dead. Everyone who’s laid a hand on Sylvie is dead. If you still think you have a shot, take a good look, because this is your future. Come near either of us with so much as an angry look on your face, and we will fucking end you.”
Silence echoes across the yard for the span of several heartbeats.
“Who’s the champ now?” someone shouts from the crowd. “How will the final bracket work?”
“Graham’s the fucking champion, you moron,” someone else calls. “He killed Roth.”
“No, I didn’t.” I grab Sylvie’s hand and lift it into the air. “This is your new champion.”
17
SYLVIE
“Out,” Graham orders as we step into the showers. There are only three men in here, and they’re all loners who lack both the experience and the backup to take us on. They’re also rookies, and other than Graham and me, they’re among very few people left in the bullpen.
Most of the inmates went to watch the fight. Live in the arena.
The rookies shuffle past us, nude, clutching bars of soap and soggy pairs of shorts on their way into the main area of the large bathroom to get dressed.
One of them doesn’t even bother to rinse his hair.
“Okay.” Graham takes my backpack and sets it against the wall next to his, where they won’t get wet. “It’s not a hot bath with bubbles, but surely this is better than another sponge bath in our cell.
“Anything is better than another sponge bath in our cell.”
After Graham and I killed Roth and his goons, the rest of the week went so smoothly that I was almost disappointed, this morning, to see neither of our names on the bracket. Not because I want to fight. After killing Link, I don’t care if I never have to step on the sand again.
But I really want another bubble bath.
This is the next best thing.
I dig my shampoo and body scrub from my bag, then, still in my prison uniform, I step under a shower head halfway into the room. I’m hoping to keep water off of our stuff, yet be close enough to defend it, should anyone come in and try to rob us while we’re naked and vulnerable.
Eventually, someone will be big and stupid enough to decide he can take us. Or another alliance will form. So we remain on guard.
I set my bottles down, then tilt my head back to let water run over my face. It’s ice-cold, despite the heat of the day, but after my run, it feels kind of amazing on my overheated skin.
Graham laughs as he lifts the hem of my soggy shirt. “Showering is traditionally done in the nude, you know.”
“I’m doing laundry. Two birds, one stone.”
“Not gonna lie; this is a disappointing development.”
I laugh. “Spoiler alert: I’ll get naked in a minute.”
This is the most privacy we’ve ever had in the bullpen, both from the inmates and from the security cameras—we’ve recently discovered there aren’t any in the showers. That doesn’t make it any easier for me to think about the men we’ve killed, even if
they were killers. Even if they were rapists.
Even if they deserved everything they got.
But if being scary is the only way Graham and I are going to be able to survive in here—if killing a few this week means we don’t have to kill even more next week, or waste every day fending off attacks—then I guess it was worth it.
Either way, it was necessary.
Though I’m not sure people actually believe I killed Cohen Roth. They still don’t look as scared of me as they do of Graham. That may have something to do with the fact that he’s a head taller than I am and outweighs me by half.
Graham watches me wash my hair while he lathers up, and I have to admit, I have the better end of this deal. He’s entirely naked. And…slick. But once my prison uniform is soaked and clinging to me, he doesn’t seem to mind the inequity.
“Miss Wolfe, your laundry appears to be getting in the way of your shower.” He grabs my hips and pulls me close, beneath the cold water. “Maybe you need some help?”
“Maybe I do,” I admit as his lips trail down my neck.
Graham lifts the hem of my soaked shirt, and I laugh while he pulls it over my head. The collar snags on my ears, still covering my eyes, but rather than pull it free, he gathers my shirt and my hair over my head and presses me against the shower wall. Essentially blindfolded.
I groan when he lifts my breast, teasing my nipple into a hard point. He kisses me, leaving me breathless, then his mouth begins to wander, and since I can’t see him, I can’t tell where he’ll land next.
Every touch is a sensual mystery. Every kiss an erotic revelation.
I gasp when his mouth closes over my nipple, a hot counterpoint to the frigid flow of water, and suddenly the moisture between my legs has nothing to do with the shower.
Despite the chilly downpour, I suddenly feel…flushed.
Graham slips his hands beneath the waistband of my shorts and pushes them down, with my underwear still inside. They land in a cold, soggy pile on top of my feet, and I step out of them, then kick them away.
“Don’t move,” he whispers. Then his hands disappear, and for a second, I’m alone behind my blindfold, beneath the brisk assault of the shower. Then I hear the click of a plastic spout and smell my apricot-scented body scrub.
His hands land on my shoulders, slick with the scented soap, and he runs them slowly up my neck, then back down and over my arms. Next, he spreads the soap across my stomach, then over my ribs in slow symmetrical strokes, and when his fingers brush the lower curves of my breasts, I hold my breath, anticipating a bolder touch. Aching for it. But he only moves lower, working the soap over my hips, then around to my lower back. And while he may be cleaning my body, my thoughts grow dirtier and dirtier with every slippery stroke.
He moves in closer to reach my upper back, pressing his chest against mine, and finally I can feel his erection against my stomach, hot and hard. I groan and grasp for it, but he steps out of reach, deep, masculine laughter rumbling up from his throat.
“Not yet,” he whispers. Then, finally, his slick, warm palms find my nipples, rubbing in light circles as the peaks pebble beneath his touch. Stimulated by tiny, rough exfoliant beads in the soap. Aching for more, I arch forward, pressing my breasts into his hands, but he only pulls back to maintain the light contact. The erotic torture.
“Graham…” I moan.
“Yes, Sylvie?” His breath brushes my ear. He’s so close, yet his lips don’t touch me.
“I need more.”
“Tell me what you need.”
“I need you inside me.”
Holding my head against the shower wall with his grip on my shirt-wrapped hair, Graham nudges my legs apart with his knee. His cock twitches against my stomach again, and his free hand finally closes around my breast. Kneading. Working my nipple between his slick thumb and forefinger.
Then he steps back and runs his hand down my abdomen, slowly moving lower and lower. His fingers slide into my folds, drawing a couple of lazy circles around my clit while I practically pant, desperate for more. Then they sink deep inside me. “Like this?”
“Noooo…” I groan. “I mean yes, but—”
His thumb finds my clit, and I bite off my objection as a spike of pleasure shoots through me, echoed in the light pinch of my nipple between his teeth. I gasp, and Graham swallows the sound in a kiss that starts off sweet, then evolves into a conquest of my mouth by his tongue, echoing the rhythm of his fingers plunging in and out of me.
That blistering pressure builds rapidly inside me until I’m groaning into his mouth, clutching his arms while I writhe against his hand. Lost in the throes of my orgasm. More satisfied than I’ve ever been in my fucking life, despite the prison, and the violence, and the ever-present live audience.
Because what’s the point of living a long life of safety, security, and comfort, if you’re never, ever going to feel like this? If no one’s ever going to touch you like you’re the most precious thing in the universe?
“Oh my god,” I murmur as Graham pulls the shirt off my head. My gaze meets his hazel eyes, dilated with his own need, and he pulls my left leg up, wrapping it around his hip. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Too bad I had to earn a death sentence to find you.”
“We’re not dead yet, Wolfe.” He lifts me by my butt, and I wrap my other leg around him while he slowly lowers me onto his cock. His eyes fall closed for a second and his hips buck beneath me, pressing me against the wall. “And we’re going to live every single fucking second we have left.”
Then he’s thrusting into me, hard and fast, and I can do nothing but ride it out, my back sliding against the wet wall, still slick with soap. Frictions builds hard and fast between us, with me still swollen and sensitive from my orgasm, and I’m close again much too quickly. My legs clench around him. A moan rumbles up from my throat.
“Not yet, baby…” Graham growls into my ear. “Wait for me.” But in chasing his own release, he only increases the delicious friction between us, and my breath hitches as I try to stretch out that brutal peak just before I fall over the edge. To hold it off. To live in the exquisite buildup…
“Now!” he grunts, slamming into me so brutally that the wall bruises my spine. I feel him release into me, and I come so hard the edges of my vision start to darken. I clench around him over and over, riding out each wave as it crashes over me, biting my lip to keep from screaming and drawing an audience from what few inmates are left in the bullpen.
“Holy shit, you’re incredible,” Graham whispers into my ear while I shudder around his cock with a forceful aftershock. “I wish we had forever, so I could stay buried inside you. Just like this.”
I wrap my arms around his neck and smile as I let him in on something I’ve understood since the day he fought to rescue me from Cohen’s cell. “Forever wouldn’t be long enough.”
We make it out of the shower in time to catch the last fight on the screen in the yard, where the stragglers who opted not to watch from the arena are gathered. On our way across the cracked pavement toward our favorite table, I hear Graham’s voice, amplified, and I turn to find us both staring out from the huge screen on the side of the building. We’re standing over three corpses.
On screen, Graham grabs my hand and holds it up. “This is your new champion!” he shouts.
Here in the yard, all stragglers turn to look at us.
And finally, I realize what’s happening. We’ve just missed footage of Hardy’s betrayal and of me killing Roth. Which the UA producers showed as a lead-in to the explanation of the new bracket.
With no reigning champion, the top bracket is essentially in the same position it was in at the beginning of the season—but there are only eight fights left. UA’s algorithm has ranked the top tier fighters and designed a new bracket. Tonight’s final fight will be the first from that bracket.
As the feed changes to show the arena, I do some math and come to a startling conclusion. With only eight weeks left in the se
ason, it is mathematically impossible for me to make it to the top tier this season, unless they fight me every single week. Which, I suspect, my sponsors will never let them do. They’ll want to keep me fighting next season, for the ratings.
However, Graham will be on the new bracket. Which means that in two months’ time, he’ll either be released into the general population as the new champion, or he’ll be dead.
Either way, we now have an answer to the question we’ve been trying not to voice.
Eight weeks.
That’s the best-case scenario for how long we have left together.
Despite the knowledge that I’ll almost certainly be slated on the tier two bracket next week, I find it nearly impossible to concentrate on training in the days following my realization. I’m not sure which of us I’m more worried about. Without Cohen Roth in the running, Graham’s chances of surviving the tournament are much better than they were before—yet nowhere near certain.
And whether he wins or loses, I’ll be in here alone during the hiatus and all next season. Or, as far as I make it into next season, anyway.
That shouldn’t bother me as much as it does. I didn’t even know Graham existed when I demanded my right to fight. I came here assuming I’d be on my own. But now that I’ve had him…
I don’t think I can be here without him. And that has nothing to do with the fact that I’m safer with him at my side. As crazy as it sounds, considering that we only met two weeks ago, I can’t imagine life without him. Not just here in the bullpen, but anywhere...
Graham can see that something’s wrong, but he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t have to. I’m sure he’s done the same math I have.
My third fight day, after a bye round last week, begins much like my first did: in pre-dawn darkness, heavy with dread. Graham and I make our way to the yard with everyone else in total silence. If he weren’t holding my hand, I wouldn’t be entirely sure he was even still with me.
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