“You sing like angel,” he told her when she was done.
“Oh, I didn’t know you was up,” she said, startling at the window. A sultry smile lifted her lips, and to him it sounded like she was still singing when she said, “Thank you for that nice compliment, Beast.”
He sneered as he looked around the cold room. She was the only pretty thing in the small, gray place with a solitary mattress, a cheap dresser drawer, and a sink for washing up. It reminded him of home. The one he’d shared with his grandmother in Siberia. And he hated it.
“It is fact not compliment,” he told her, tone harsh as the gray winter morning outside the window.
“Oh, even better then,” she answered, laughing. “A fact from you feels exactly like a present come early on Christmas Eve.”
And he once again found himself squinting hard at her. She was still not scared of him.
Even after last night.
“The last ring girl must have had a real steady clientele,” Sirena had joked, pointing to the basket of condoms on top of the dresser drawer as he carried her to the bed.
He didn’t laugh as he plucked one foil package out of the basket. Couldn’t laugh at the thought of Sirena eventually becoming like the last girl and pointing other men to the basket.
The Darkness threatened and he had to blank his mind in order to deal with this silly girl who didn’t know any better than to be scared of him in her tiny room.
He’d taken her hard the first few times. Brutal, his desire for her not allowing for any of the prettiness women liked. But she’d received him each time. Her lush curves pillowing his heavy body, making him think of that place in which he didn’t believe as he spilled into one condom after another.
But it was never enough. He kept pulling out, only to have himself immediately rise again. Wanting her. Needing her back beneath him…
They’d spent nearly the entire night fucking. Him unable to stop rising for her. Her murmuring English words in his ears as he pushed his big body into hers.
“Yes, baby. Fuck yes. Just like that. So good…I ain’t never…oh…make me feel…make me feel.”
“How old are you?” he’d asked her at one point, beginning to wonder if her many “I ain’t nevers” were a joke.
“Nineteen. No, wait…twenty,” she answered with a smile. “My birthday was in August, but I don’t like that month so I keep on forgetting.”
Twenty. Not even old enough to drink in her home country. That explained her eagerness and wonder with him, if not his own desire at the relatively hardened age of twenty-one to keep possessing her again and again. Never sated. Satisfied for long, pleasure-strung moments, but never full.
He’d fallen asleep inside her, cock still jerking for more.
He hadn’t understood then in the dark of night, and he still didn’t understand now in the dim gray light of day. He never stayed overnight. Especially with whores. The Fight or The Fuck—those were his two options when the Darkness was riding him. And he was always out the door as soon as either was done.
But here he was waking up in this strange American woman’s bedroom. And here she was, smiling down at him, like he’d pleased her beyond belief just by opening his eyes.
“Want some Greek coffee?” she asked. “I can get you some. I also waitress at the restaurant upstairs.”
Four jobs. Four fucking jobs, yet she lived like a dog.
He came to his feet, not knowing what to do with the emotions riling inside of him, feeling the need to fight even though there was nothing in this room to punch. Not even a pillow.
This wasn’t the usual Darkness, he realized. But some other unnamable thing. It made him want to say things to her, do things to her. Do things for her.
“I will go now,” he told her, rejecting the weird compulsions inside of him. “Good-bye.”
“Okay, kinda abrupt,” she said with a soft laugh. “But you’ve got to go. I get it.”
Good. She got it. At least one of them did, he thought. He looked around. Where was his bag?
“Your gym bag’s right there.” She pointed to the wooden chair. “I went out and got it from Cyrus after you fell asleep. I had to get up early to clean the basement anyway.”
He was glad she got his things, but unprepared for what the thought of her cleaning out there while he slept in here did to him. He stalked over to the chair and snatched up the bag. He didn’t even bother to go through it to make sure his wallet was still there. Cyrus knew his last name. He wouldn’t dare.
Shouldering the bag, he started toward the door, refusing to look at her. He didn’t trust himself not to take her back to bed if he did.
But she once more got in front of him, splaying her hands against his chest. “Wait, before you go…”
She curved a hand around the back of his neck and brought him down for another kiss. This one chaste, just a tender press of her lips to his as she rose up on her tiptoes.
Yet it made his heart roar the same as if she’d used her tongue.
“Thank you,” she said against his lips. Swaying with the effort to stay on her toes.
“For what?” he asked with the strange feeling that he should be the one thanking her.
“I heard that song out on a walk a few weeks ago, just spilling out of somebody’s open window. It’s been stuck inside my chest this whole time. Chewing on me. But I couldn’t…I couldn’t figure out how to sing it. And then this morning it was just there. Cuz of you, I think. So thank you for that, Beast. I do appreciate it.”
She pressed her lips to his once more, and then she stepped back, grinning. He didn’t know her, but he felt like he did in that moment. She was that girl, he realized. Pretty, popular, so utterly confident in her every move. Back in Siberia he’d seen girls like her, but never spoken to them, and they, in turn, hadn’t so much as attempted to speak to the wild half-Russian boy who even the teachers treated like a feral animal.
But this girl continued to grin up at him, her sparkly champagne eyes twinkling. “See you later maybe?”
This time he didn’t answer. Just left with the answer ringing firm inside his dark mind.
No. She’d unsettled him so much, he knew even before the door closed behind him that he’d never let himself see her again. The one who’d named herself after a creature who lured men to their deaths.
4
HER mama Marian had been telling her for as long as she could remember that her daddy—the guy who’d knocked Marian up less than three months after her arrival at college in North Carolina—was the son of a siren.
“You see, dear oldest daughter, he’d been sent by his mother to repopulate the world with siren singers. This is why so many of the true singers come from single parent homes,” Marian told her a few days after she got her first period. “But anyroad, three things are guaranteed for you in this life, my dear. You’ll always be able to swim, sing, and seduce. Do with that what you will.”
This had been her mother’s idea of the “you’re a woman now” speech. But okay, whatever. Everybody back in her small town knew Marian was crazy, and now she herself was becoming pretty sure her mother had overstated the power of her mythological DNA.
Yes, she could swim like a fish, even though she never recalled learning how. And yes, she could sing pretty good—copying any song she heard, note for note, no matter the language, and often doing the singer one better. Though that usually felt less like a blessing than a curse. For as long as she could remember, if she went more than five days without singing, it began to feel like something was chewing on her, inside her chest. That’s one thing the books never tell you about having singing talent. The songs can be brutal, threatening to eat a girl alive if she don’t let them out.
Which was one of the reasons she’d taken the ring girl-waitress-nurse-maid job in the first place. Sure it was a lot of work, but she got to sing the Greek national anthem on fight nights. Her father’s song, as she’d come to think of it. So it meant all the songs she hadn’t wanted to
sing since Trevor died didn’t hurt quite so bad inside her chest.
However, it looked like Marian had grossly miscalculated her powers of seduction. Boys had come easy in high school. Doing most anything for as little as a kiss, even though she was other, in more ways than one—her sister Willa and her being the only two brown kids at Greenlee High School.
The only reason she didn’t have boys swarming all over her now in Greece was because after what happened with Trevor, she’d stopped wanting anything to do with them. So she’d flipped off her siren switch. Learned how to talk and act in ways that didn’t make men want to do things for her.
In fact, it had been so long now since she’d flirted, she’d been halfway wondering if she was doing it right with The Russian Beast. But then he’d pulled her to him. Practically told her she either needed to let him fuck her or let him fight.
She’d surprised herself by opting for the former, but she certainly hadn’t regretted it. In fact she’d spent all day happily tired and sore, but looking forward to the next time with him. Had put her ring girl outfit on over what felt like a new body and strode into the basement crowd to sing her anthem along with a cheery Greek Christmas song she’d heard in a department store.
You’d think the fact that it was literally the night before Christmas would have thinned out the crowd, but there seemed to be even more men gathered in the basement that night. Cheering for the blood of the fighters on the eve of their savior’s birth.
But he wasn’t there. She scanned the crowd for him throughout the night, but never saw him. And when Cyrus came over and told her to announce that the last fight was coming up, she released a disappointed breath.
“That’s how that one goes,” Cyrus told her as if reading her mind. Or her body, which felt like an open outlet, just waiting for her new lover to plug himself back in. “He comes in for one night, then we don’t see him again for awhile. Weeks…last time, months.”
So he was gone and most likely wouldn’t be coming back for some time. So much for the power of her siren grandmother, she thought to herself. The one time she’d truly wanted a boy, the supposed power had completely failed her. He’d given her all the feelings she’d been missing over the past year and then disappeared back into the ether.
Maybe he was descended from some sort of mythological creature, too, she thought with a grimace. Like an incubus. If the delicious soreness between her thighs from last night was anything to go by, that really might be it.
“You given any more thought to my offer?” Cyrus asked. “It’s Christmas Eve, and the men are happy but lonely tonight. They will line up at your door to have you. Sixty percent for me, forty for you. I give you good deal. Could be very profitable night if you say yes.”
She shook her head. This again. Cyrus had been asking her this question every night since she started working here. And every time, she’d just looked away and told him to let her think about it.
Up until last night, she’d thought all she’d needed was more time. More time to go deader inside, until she truly no longer cared who fucked her.
It’s just a body, she’d told herself. One that belonged to someone she could barely stand after Trevor’s death. Why shouldn’t she use it to make some more money?
But then he had happened. A night of pleasure so intense, she’d found herself doing something she hadn’t done in the year since she ran away from home. Feel. Feel something other than numbness or when she let that numbness slip even a little, the wild grief that made her know she either had to stop feeling or jump off the Acropolis’s high rocky outcrop. For what she did. For what she let happen. Sometimes it felt like the only thing keeping her alive was the numbness and knowing Trevor wouldn’t want her story to end that way.
The weeks she’d been working here, she’d truly thought it would be just a matter of time before she took Cyrus up on his offer. But after last night…
“No,” she answered the small Greek man with a firm shake of her head. “I don’t want to do that.”
Cyrus, who was usually such an affable guy, actually looked surprised. “Why not? Because of The Russian Beast? Was he too much for you? He hurt you?”
She shook her head. No, it’d been quite the opposite. He’d made her feel. Made her want things for herself. Which was why she couldn’t imagine sleeping with another man tonight, much less several, and then passing on the majority of the cut to Cyrus.
“How about 50/50 then? You are friend. I give you this deal.”
“Seriously, that side hustle’s not for me,” she answered, letting her voice go hard. “Find somebody else, because it ain’t going to be me, Cyrus.”
Cyrus didn’t answer, but a terrible look came over his face, red and furious…. She could tell he wasn’t pleased, and she welcomed the roar of the crowd that came with the latest knockout.
Using the downed fighter as an excuse to rush away, she decided she’d need to gather her things and get out of here. Not at some future date when she’d saved up enough money for an apartment. But first thing in the morning.
Luckily she didn’t have much stuff to take with her. After her bags were stolen last month, she’d been left with just the clothes on her back. So she had some toiletries and a few outfits—one of which she was wearing and technically belonged to Cyrus.
Whatever. She was more than happy to leave that one here, she thought as she rushed to her bedroom door. She’d just finished mopping down the venue and putting everything in the basement back in pre-fight condition. So, you know, still grimy but not so bloody and cluttered.
But just as she put her hand on the knob of the door, a voice behind her said, “So you think you can take advantage of my hospitality, American girl?”
She turned around to see Cyrus, which wouldn’t have been so bad. He was slimy but small. She maybe could have taken him. But he had the large men she privately referred to as Goon 1 and Goon 2 flanking his back. Two former fighters who exclusively wore turtlenecks overlaid with thick silver chains. They were too old to participate in the fights anymore, but still tough enough to handle anyone Cyrus felt was getting out of hand.
And apparently Cyrus felt she’d gotten out of hand. They stood behind Cyrus, hands to fists, as if daring her to run.
Fuck.
She clamped her lips and pasted on a conciliatory look. The kind she used with women who couldn’t be swayed by her siren. And she already knew she couldn’t use the siren here. It would only make an already volatile situation worse.
“Cyrus, you’re mad. I get it. I tell you what. I’m going to pack a bag and get out of here right now. If you don’t want me in your room no more, that’s fine. I’m gone.”
“You think you can leave here without paying me what you owe?”
She blinked because, “What do you think I owe you, Cyrus? Last I checked, I’ve been working my fingers to the bone here for not a lot of money.”
Cyrus’s lips twisted in a contemptuous smirk. “It would have been less if I’d known you weren’t going to come through.”
Her brain boggled at the thought of anyone getting paid less than she did to do what essentially amounted to four jobs. But she had nothing but the little ring girl outfit on her back and he had two goons at his.
“Okay, how much do you think I owe you? We’ll work out a deal.”
He moved so fast, she didn’t have a chance to defend herself. The next thing she knew, a fist was coming at her. Then a burning hot pain radiating across her face. Cyrus had just punched her, she realized as she fell to the ground. Straight punched her like she’d been watching men punch each other in the ring for weeks now.
But they weren’t in the ring. And Cyrus wasn’t backing off like a fighter was supposed to after he’d knocked his opponent to the ground.
Instead he stood over her, wheezing hard, looking like he was pissed because she’d made him exert even that much energy.
“Give me the needle…” he said, holding out his hand.
Goon 2 passed
him a syringe, already filled. Like he was a nurse and this was Cyrus’s version of the E.R.
Drugs, she realized through the ringing in her ears. He was going to drug her. “No…” she mumbled, trying to get up. Trying to fend him off. “No…”
“Shut up, bitch!” Cyrus answered, fisting the syringe. “You brought this on yourself.”
He bent down, and she started to crawl backwards, frantic to get away from him. But then she didn’t have to, because Cyrus suddenly disappeared from her line of sight, taken out by a large blur.
“Ohhee! Ohhee! Ohhee!” she heard one of the goons call out. Greek for “no.”
Then came two muffled popping sounds. She jumped when both of Cyrus’s goons landed in front of her. Wide-eyed with small holes in the middle of each forehead.
What the…?
She sat up fully. Just in time to see Cyrus on his knees, the large man now looming over her boss like he’d been looming over her. Though it was hard to see anything in the dimly lit room, she knew it was The Russian Beast. By his hulking form, by the stillness of his body, by the absolute cold front coming off of him as he stared down at the sobbing man. He was holding something in his hand. A gun, she realized with a wide-eyed gasp.
“Please! Please! I didn’t know she was yours! I’ll make it right. Whatever you want. I’ll give her to you. Promise. I’ll make it ri—”
An orange spark lit up the room along with the sound of a muffled pop.
Cyrus’s body flew back with the force of the bullet hitting his forehead, then The Russian Beast came to stand over him.
She could see his face clearly now, cast in partial light. Hard as a statue’s as he squeezed three more orange sparks out of his gun. Three more bullets made their way into Cyrus’s chest, making his dead body jerk with the violence of their impact.
HAN: Her Ruthless Mistake: 50 Loving States, Delaware (Ruthless Triad Book 4) Page 28