Beat (The Beat and The Pulse #1)

by Amity Cross

  “Well, then leave whatever this is,” I held a hand over his heart, “to the cage. Okay?”

  Ash searched my gaze for a moment, the noise around us falling away. After a moment of silent deliberation, he nodded.

  Sometimes the thought of what was going through Maverick’s head scared me.

  “Promise me,” I said.

  Grinding his jaw, he leaned his forehead against mine. “I promise.”

  I was nervous every time Ash went into the ring, but tonight, I was more than that. I was afraid.

  I sat on the sidelines as my Maverick entered the cage for his last fight of the night. To add insult to injury, it was the douche bag who’d tried to force himself on me in the locker room only thirty minutes before.

  As Ash turned around in the ring, eyeing the crowd, he looked ready to snap. He sure as hell was saving it for the cage and who knew how this bout would end. The two men said something to one another and from the tight expressions on both their faces, it wasn’t anything good.

  I’d seen Ash fight so many times now, and each and every one saw him raw and powerful, totally dominating all of his opponents. He had a control and precision that was still present even when he gave himself over to the beast within. This time, even I could see something was different. If I hadn’t witnessed his wrath before, I would’ve said he was amped up for the fight, but that wasn’t the right way to describe it. Ash was a ball of fury and he was just waiting for the chance to pay it back a million fold.

  As the bout began and the crowd roared, they didn’t waste any time going for each other. The other guy lunged, his fist going for Ash’s jaw, but at the last moment, Ash ducked and rammed a shoulder into the guy’s stomach. With a cry, Ash shoved him back into the cage, making the whole structure rattle. Maverick kneed the other guy in the groin and then in the face, blood starting to drip from the fighter’s nose.

  The crowd started to work themselves into a frenzy and I had to stand up on the bleacher to get a better look. Bodies surged in front of me, my usual clear vantage point obscured by heads and arms and my heart pounded. I couldn’t see what was going on.

  I could hear the smacks of flesh hitting flesh and male grunting, but who was hitting who, I didn’t have a fucking clue. Shoving through the mass of people, I tried to get to the edge of the cage, elbowing anyone who didn’t move.

  It was utter chaos. People crowded the walkways, the few security guards that were there were trying to shove people back, but nobody was budging. I sandwiched myself through any space I could shimmy into and it felt like an age before I felt wire around my fingers.

  The moment I reached the chain link was the moment I saw Ash straddling the other fighter on the ground, a feral look on his face, his fists pounding into the guy over and over, the wet smacking sound of flesh hitting something wet piercing through the roar around me. Something wet…blood. There was so much fucking blood.

  The cage door was hauled open and three heavy security guards and all the referees in the ring piled on top of Ash, pulling him out of his frenzy and away from the other fighter.

  He’d snapped. Ash’d fucking snapped. Totally and completely.

  The crowd fell silent as they pulled my Maverick off the guy’s inert body. He wasn’t moving.

  Ash shoved the referees away and circled the cage like a hungry lion, his torso and hands splattered with blood. He did this for me. He did it for me. Realizing for the first time the real lengths he would go to protect me, my heart thumped painfully in my chest. I was going to pass out. Fuck, what if he’d fucking killed the guy… When I said sort it out in the cage, I didn’t mean…

  The full extent of what The Underground really was started to hit home.

  When Ash came around, he saw me pressed against the cage and stopped in front of me. Breathing heavily, I curled my fingers through the chain link, staring at him and falling inch by inch into shock.

  He brought his hands up and curled his fingers over mine, making the people around me sink back, finally giving me some breathing space. I fought the urge to do the same, and stared into Ash’s eyes, willing him to come back.

  He’d gone too far. Way too far.

  The head referee came up behind Ash and put a hand on his shoulder, breaking the spell between us. He blinked hard and turned and I did the same.

  Fuck. Just…fuck.

  I watched wide eyed as they hauled the other guy out on a stretcher, the crowd craning their necks to get a better look. I was desperate to know if he was still alive, if he was going to make it, but I couldn’t tell. He wasn’t moving and the paramedics were stony faced.

  The crowd parted with a hushed gasp as the cage door was kicked open yet again and Ash strode through, being led off to the change rooms out back. Not heeding the whispers and stares around me, I followed, pushing people out of the way.

  He was going to get kicked out, wasn’t he? Kicked out of a Championship again. And that guy. What the fuck would happen if he died?

  As I barged into the change room, weaving my way through the legs of several bouncers, a referee grabbed my arm and I spun to give him a serve.

  “Calm down, Reign,” he said.

  It was the guy from my first night. The guy who’d given me my stupid fighter name.

  “I can’t calm down,” I replied. “Did you see what just happened?”

  “I saw it, alright.” He worried his jaw. “Never in my life…”

  “Is he- The other guy-” I began and the referee shrugged.

  “He’s going to live, but it might not be pretty.”

  Fuck. I sunk down onto the bench and took heaving gulps of air.

  “Fuller,” the head referee roared, crashing through the line of security at the door.

  Ash spun on his heel, looking like a beast covered in another man’s blood. “What.”

  “Accidents happen, but you do not go into that ring with the intent to murder, Fuller. You got me?”

  Murder. The word slammed home and for the first time I wondered if he could actually be capable of… No, not Ash. I couldn’t believe it.

  Ash shoved the ref off him, clearly still agitated. “I got it.”

  “Step out of line again and you’re out. No second chances.” The referee glanced at me with a warning glare and strode out of the room to help calm the chaos outside.

  Two strides took me within hitting distance and I raised my had to slap some sense into the stupid meathead that was my boyfriend. Boyfriend. That seemed like a stupid way to describe what we were.

  Ash caught my wrist before my palm could connect with his cheek.

  “I protect what is mine, Ren, and you are mine.”

  I shoved him off me. “To the point of beating the guy to death?”

  He nodded. “If that’s what it takes.”

  “Are you hearing yourself right now?” I exclaimed. “There’s a line, Ash. You fucking crossed it.”

  “I warned them,” he roared, turning his anger onto me. “I warned them and they didn’t listen. This is what happens when you push me, Ren.”

  “You’re not fucking god,” I yelled. “You don’t have final say to who lives or dies.”

  “You wanted him to fuck you? You wanted him to hurt you, Ren, because that’s what he would’ve done.” I flinched, but he wasn’t anywhere close to being done. “They know the price for fucking with what’s mine. They know I will kill them if they try. That was me delivering on my promise.”

  What the hell had I gotten myself into? I was falling in love with a beast…a monster.

  I stared at him, not knowing what to do. That day at Beat when he lost it the first time was mild, it was easy to calm him down, but now? It was my fault, wasn’t it? If I didn’t come to The Underground, if I didn’t give into my lust, then we wouldn’t be here right now. Even as I thought it, I knew it wouldn’t matter one way or the other. Ash was a ticking time bomb. He would’ve gone off with or without me in his life.

  “Don’t,” I whispered. “Don’t sa
y those things.”

  “What things? The truth?”

  I stumbled back a step, confused. Should I be afraid? Angry? I was caught in a web of I don’t know fucking what.

  “Fuck, Ren.” He ran a hand over his face, his expression beginning to soften. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Fuck.” He let out an awful wail and banged his head into the lockers.

  “You can’t go around and just beat people up because they did something fucked up,” I said. “It doesn’t make it right.”

  “I can’t control it,” he whispered. “It’s there, inside me, and I don’t know how to stop it.”

  I frowned, my limbs starting to lose some of their tension. I didn’t know how to control it either. He seemed to understand what he was doing was wrong, he’d given me enough advice, but when it came to a solution? I didn’t fucking know either.

  Reaching out for him, I ran my fingers down the muscles of his arm before tangling my fingers with his. “I don’t know either,” I murmured. “But let’s start with a shower, huh?”

  “Ren,” he whispered hoarsely. “I’m sorry.”

  “I know.”

  “When I saw him-”

  “I know.”

  “It fucking kills me watching you fight,” he murmured, stroking his fingers through my hair. “Watching you take punches.”

  “Now you know how I feel.”

  He laughed, a deep rumble blooming in his chest.

  I cocked my head to the side.

  He moved to take my mouth with his. “Shower.”

  “But-” I began to protest.

  “They won’t let anyone back here,” he said, walking me back towards the stall at the rear.

  I didn’t really have a choice as he dumped me in the shower and turned the water on. We washed together, this time I took care of him, cleansing his skin of his display of fury in the cage. Then I took care of his cock, relieving another kind of tension.

  Shit, we had a lot to talk about, but I didn’t even know how I was going to broach the subject.

  Ash couldn’t go on like this…and neither could I.

  Chapter 33

  Ren

  The next day, Ash prowled around Beat, his shoulders heavy with something I didn’t understand.

  I didn’t understand because he wouldn’t talk to me about what happened in the cage. He’d had his way with me in the shower at The Underground, then we’d come back to Beat and fucked some more, then fell asleep in my closet. There was no time for talking other than the dirty things he whispered into my ear that got him off. He was using sex as a distraction again and this time I let him. I didn’t want to admit it, but I welcomed the change of thought patterns.

  Seeing Ash like that…I never wanted to see him break again. I made myself a promise the moment I woke up in his arms that morning. I wouldn’t give up on him. I’d do whatever I could to help him come to terms with whatever made him so angry. That was a promise I kept to myself and would bring up at another time. Right now though, Ash was still in his dark place.

  We hadn’t heard from anyone at The Underground. I made the head referee take our numbers to call and let us know about the other guy. If he was going to live…or die. He’d been hurt pretty bad and sometimes people didn’t wake up after a beating like that. They just pulled the plug.

  “What’s up with Fuller?” Dean asked, sitting beside me on the bench. “Did something happen?”

  “It’s complicated,” I replied. He didn’t need to know. I couldn’t come clean about what we were going through, not without revealing what we did practically every night.

  “If he’s hurt you, Ren-”

  I held up a hand to stop him. “It’s complicated, but he hasn’t hurt me.” My subconscious was about to add, yet, but I stopped my lips from following through. That was the risk I ran by standing beside Ash, wasn’t it? That he might accidentally hurt me? Thinking about the way I felt about him, it was glaringly obvious what I should do. I’d made a promise and I was sticking to it.

  He wouldn’t abandon me and I wouldn’t abandon him. We were in tune. We belonged together.

  There was a muffled ringing and Ash snapped to attention, totally oblivious that I was sitting there with Dean. He rustled through his gym bag and snatched out his mobile phone, pressing a big thumb against the screen.

  “Yeah?” he barked into it. He saw me staring and turned his back, walking across the mats to the empty gym.

  Snorting, I leaned my elbows against my knees and rubbed my eyes.

  “Are you sure, Ren? It looks like something big is going down.”

  “It’s fine, Dean. It’s not my place to discuss Ash’s business.” It was mine as well, but something like this becoming public knowledge…the life of a man he may or may not have taken…Dean didn’t need to know about that.

  “Okay,” he said with a sigh. “You know we’re-”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I waved him off. “I appreciate it.”

  He put his hand on my back and rubbed before standing and going back to pick up his set on the bags.

  I glanced up and watched Ash talking on his phone through the window. He was waving his hand, clearly worked up about something. I hoped it was good news and he was just getting a tongue lashing from the referees. If he got kicked out of a championship again…I wasn’t sure how that would go down. I wasn’t sure how it went the first time. There were so many things that Ash hadn’t confided in me.

  He hung up the call and stared at his phone for a full minute before coming back out into the studio. Standing, I went to meet him halfway, desperate to find out if the news was good or fucking terrible.

  “Was that?” I asked, coming up beside him.

  “He’s going to be fine,” Ash said, shoving his phone into his bag.

  I let out a whoosh of air, the relief almost overwhelming me.

  Ash grunted and picked up his bag and went to stalk off to the showers.

  “Ash,” I called after him.

  He didn’t reply as he kept walking, disappearing into the back. I got that he was worked up about it, but did he even feel remorseful? That’s what set apart the monsters from the humans, wasn’t it? Ash wasn’t a monster. He had his issues, but I’d help him. I’d-

  “Trouble in paradise?”

  My head snapped up as Monica sauntered past me in a waft of some disgusting flowery perfume.

  I glared at her. “You’d fucking love that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course,” she declared, smiling sweetly.

  “Keep your filthy fucking hands off of him,” I snarled, anger rising hot and hard in my chest. Maybe I understood more about what Ash went through last night more than I wanted to believe.

  “I’d like to see you try, Ren,” Monica said, flicking her hair over her shoulder. “One day Ash won’t be here to save you and then where will you be? Fucked.”

  I stepped forward, my fists balled against my side and a thick arm wound around my waist.

  “It’s not worth it, Ren,” Lincoln said into my ear. “She’s just trying to piss you off.”

  Monica laughed. “And it’s working, too.”

  “Bitch,” I spat. “What the fuck did I ever do to you? You can’t make someone love you. Fuck, you can’t even pay someone enough to love you.”

  Her eyes darkened and her smug smile fell from her ugly-beautiful face. “What did you do to me?” she scoffed. “You really want to know?”

  “Ren, don’t feed the beast,” Lincoln said, trying to haul me away.

  Monica wasn’t even close to finishing. “You took everything that was mine. You want me to make a list for you, Ren?”

  I took everything from her? No fucking way. She had a family who wanted her, a family who didn’t stuff her in the closet like a dirty little secret. She was doted on and loved. She was loved by everyone…just not by the man she wanted to give herself to. Ash. This was about Ash.

  “He’s mine,” I snarled. “Lay one finger on me or him and I will fucking cut you.”
r />   “You think I’m scared of you?” she asked, looking me up and down. “You’re a fucking animal.”

  I struggled against Lincoln’s arms, letting out a roar.

  “Fuck, leave it, Ren!” Lincoln exclaimed, using his entire strength against me.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Ash exclaimed, coming out to see what all the noise was about.

  “Your girl’s got some strength in her, Fuller,” Lincoln said as Ash took me from him.

  “Fucking psycho,” Monica drawled, stalking off.

  Ash glanced down at me as I seethed, the question plain in his eyes. “What was that about?”

  “The fucking usual,” I hissed, wriggling out of his grasp.

  “You got her, man?” Lincoln asked and Ash nodded.

  As he wandered off to join his startled looking brother, I ran my hands over my face.

  “You think I’m over protective?” Ash murmured into my hair.

  “Don’t say it, Maverick.”

  “Say what?”

  “I told you so.”

  “Didn’t say a fuckin’ thing, Spitfire.”

  Grunting, I pushed away, shaking out my trembling limbs. I needed a bloody cold shower, is what I needed.

  “It turns me on,” Ash said with a grin.

  “What?”

  “You, protecting me like a fuckin’ lioness.”

  “You and your fucking animal references,” I groaned.

  “I like animal sex.”

  “Who said anything about sex?” I asked, staring to get worked up for another reason.

  “It’s all you think about.”

  I slapped his chest. “Is not.” My lips started to curl into a smile. It had been such a fucked up day on so many levels. It was going to be okay. Everything was going to work out fine.

  “I have to go do something after we finish today,” Ash said suddenly.

  My ears pricked up in interest. “What?”

  He shrugged. “Just some stuff I’ve gotta take care of.”

  “What about tonight? I don’t think we should-”

  He pressed his body against mine, placing a thick finger over my lips. “We can stay here tonight and train, fuck, talk, whatever you want to do. Just us.”