by Angel Payne
She wasn’t going back to that. She wouldn’t. She’d make them kill her first.
With that resolve locked into her mind, she glared up at Round Face. “Guess you got the little part right, asshole.”
The guard’s nostrils flared. “Don’t tempt me to show you otherwise, baby.”
“Gee, I’d love that. But I don’t think there’s a microscope handy.”
She had at least three more zingers lined up, but Round Face erased them with a backhand that thrashed her head to the side. Rayna grunted with the explosion of pain. Stars cavorted in her vision.
“Idiot!” Mua’s shout was a razor file of fury. “I said no marks on the merchandise!”
“What’re you so pissy about? Nobody’s gonna look at the bitch from the waist up.”
The bastard was making this too easy. Rayna rolled her face center again, cocked a weak smile, and muttered, “Well, nobody’s looking at you below the belt, buddy.”
Being prepared for his next blow made no difference on the impact of it. As the agony radiated up from her cheek, the stars in her vision mutated into cartoon-style birds. She was stopped from laughing by the creatures’ bloodred eyes. They told her conscious mind what her gut already knew. If she kept goading the goon on, her death wasn’t going to be pretty or painless.
Maybe if she scraped up the strength for one scream, it would reach down the alley and—
What? Zeke was ready to go back into the club as she left the patio. He was on his way back to Luna now, if not tucked at her side already. He wouldn’t be listening for her any more than he’d heed a flushing toilet.
Mua’s roar thickened her hopelessness. “Barbarian!” he shouted at the henchman. “Were you raised in a puddle of shit? When you are on my time, you are not an animal!”
“Well said, cocksucker.” The words cut into the air like a sword of black steel. Very sharp, very pissed off black steel. “Good thing I’m not on your payroll, then.”
Rayna craned her neck and tried to focus her vision. “Z-Zeke?”
Her sob was diluted by a bestial snarl that seemed to come from everywhere at once. The next second, Round Face’s weight was yanked from atop her. Before the bastard got out half an oath, he was cut short by a punch she’d only heard in movies as a sound effect. The real thing made the air shudder and vibrated down to the pit of her stomach, too. When Round Face blew out a rickety moan, she decided the nausea was worth it.
Until the next moment.
She finally raised her head enough to recognize that the incredible had come true. Zeke really stood there, his wrath so palpable that the mist itself followed suit, turning into violent rain. Round Face still lay on the asphalt, clutching his gut and his groin at the same time, but the larger henchman clearly hadn’t gotten the “back off” memo. The guy came at Zeke with single-minded purpose, eyes slitted black, teeth bared white. He was surrounded by the night’s heavy tears—which made a perfect camouflage for the thick silver chain he swung in one hand.
“Zeke!” she screamed. “Watch—”
Her breath clutched as the bastard whipped the weapon with a vicious underhand. Zeke caught the chain with stunning reflexes, but not before a half-foot of it whipped around his forearm with a sickening chink.
“Oh my God!” The words tumbled out as she scrambled off the car and started toward him. Two steps later, she froze in her tracks from the force of his fiery glower.
“Run!” he ordered. “Now, Rayna. You know what to do!”
Her sobs stuttered then stopped in her throat. The boom of his voice was a reset button on her instincts. He was right. She did know what to do and standing here like a melodrama damsel wasn’t it. The only way to help him was to get help. Lots of it.
Despite the anguish of doing so, she spun from him and ran back toward the Bastille’s entrance door. She half expected to fight Mua himself on the way, but the cockroach seemed to have disappeared, a fact that disturbed more than comforted. She doubled her speed to Max’s black portal.
The cold made her hands sting as she beat frantically on the steel. She barely noticed, not letting up until it was opened. Her breath of relief was cut short. Max’s hulking form didn’t fill the doorway. A curvy woman, looking like Rihanna’s doppelganger complete with gold boots and a matching fetish mini, flashed a friendly smile.
“Hi. Can I help—oh hell, sweetie, what happened to your face?”
“Where’s Max?”
Rihanna frowned. “He’s at the back bar. Who are—”
“I need Max. And Garrett Hawkins. And the police.” She was shocked at the control in her voice. Her heart hammered and her nerves were strung tight as live electric wires. As she stalked past the counter, she scooped up the phone on the counter and thrust it at the woman. “Call them. We need them out front, five minutes ago. Do it!”
By the grace of the Universe, Sage appeared again. “Ray, how did you get back—ohmigod, your face! What’s going on? I thought you and Zeke were in the—”
“We were. Now we’re not. Sage, I need Garrett. Z’s in trouble.”
“Z’s what?” Her friend blinked. “I don’t understand. How can—”
“Get. Garrett. Now.” Dread trumped calm again. Round Face was probably getting his second wind by now. The image of him and Chain Man going at Zeke together charged her like a Pamplona bull. “They’re going to kill him!”
“What?” The exclamation came with the Midwest inflection for which she’d been praying. Garrett. Fate had smiled and hauled Max with him. “Who’s getting killed? Holy fuck, what happened to your face? What’s going on?”
“Thank God,” Rayna blurted. “Zeke. He—”
It was all she had to say. The two men raced out the door in a cloud of gritted oaths. Rayna was right behind them, with that bull pummeling every one of her heartbeats. Had she moved fast enough? Were Garrett and Max in time to help Z from getting pulverized or would they find him sprawled in the street, bloodied and beaten? Her mouth was dry. Her head careened. Her imagination screamed.
None of it was ample preparation for the real scene they encountered.
There was blood, all right. Lots of it. Impossible to miss across his bare torso, even in the rain. Rayna’s stomach turned as she forced herself to look. But after a frantic scan of him from head to toe, she couldn’t figure out where the goons had gotten him aside from one nasty nick between his shoulders. His legs formed a hard, long, leather-clad triangle with the pavement. He held his torso in a proud inversion of that shape, arms braced at forty-five degree angles, shoulders so rigid, the rain formed dark puddles atop his muscles. Breaths ripped in and out of him, making the chain in his fists clank a little despite how taut it was pulled. The goon who’d just been wielding it was curled in the gutter nearby, groaning softly. Round Face had disappeared, along with Mua.
Confusion struck again. Rayna didn’t know whether to hang on to her terror or surrender to a wash of lust. He looked movie-god good. Maybe that meant the rest had also been pretend. Maybe the stress of this whole night had finally sent her over the edge and she’d wake up inside the club somewhere, realizing she’d dreamt everything and—
Round Face took care of that delusion the next second. He reappeared from the same shadows that had first spawned him, stalking at Zeke with the same determined pace, though the reason for the guy’s disappearance was clear. He’d gotten a wardrobe change. His tight black Henley was now covered by the gear of a Seattle cop, complete with badge, shoulder radio and fully-stocked weapons belt.
Like Z even saw all that. Or cared.
He crouched low and spread the chain wider, half a smile sliding across his full lips. “Aww, baby, you came back for more. I’m so happy.”
Round Face grinned past his huge shiner with entirely too much ease. “Enjoy it while it lasts, motherfucker.”
Forget the lust. Rayna grabbed Sage, clutching her friend desperately to avoid letting her knees buckle. “What the hell is he doing?”
“My questi
on exactly.” The utterance came from Garrett. “If that asswipe is a badge, I’m Kim Jong-un.”
“You’re not and he’s not.”
Max’s interjection was far from reassuring. Rayna flashed him only a second’s glance before looking back to Z, but she made the glare count. “I can back that up, but what are you talking about?”
Max strung out a dark growl. “He’s one of Mua’s guys.”
Sage gasped. Garrett’s whoosh of shock came right after it. “Mua?” he fired. “How the hell does he have guys? And how do you know him?”
“How do you?”
Their astonishment got put on hold as the darkness across the street gained human form again. Rayna’s heart froze but the figure wasn’t Mua. It was a new stranger, again garbed in black, only this guy wore a rain jacket emblazoned with the KOMO 4 NEWS logo. A plastic-covered TV location camera was planted on his shoulder. As Round Face rushed Zeke and got himself a gut full of chain for it, the camera’s recording light flashed on.
“Shit.” Rayna sputtered it at the same time as Sage.
Garrett spoke again, his voice lined with gravel. “I helped take down his snake of a twin brother, three months ago.”
Max flashed him an awed glance. “That was you?” He shook his head. “Motherfucker of awesome. The hero who took down King is one of my club Doms.”
Garrett snorted. “I said I helped. You’ve got Rayna to thank for the ‘awesome’ trigger-pulling part of it.”
“Holy hell. Serious?”
“Head up her fan club later, Max. I need to know why you turned three shades of white when you said Mua’s name, and how—”
“Hell.” Max’s interruption coincided with the first wail of a police siren. “I’m gonna be three shades whiter than that if all those police get here and find Z doing this. Goddamnit, Hawk, go give him a verbal Quaalude. He’s gonna kill that jerk. Not that I wouldn’t mind, under any other circumstances.”
“How do they even know?” Sage asked. “If that asshole is a fake officer, then who called them?”
Rayna winced. It wasn’t just from her bleeding cheek or her friend’s question. Max’s tension went beyond the aspect of a guy concerned about half the Seattle PD swarming the street in front of his kink club, not to mention its discretion-centric members. She sensed that he knew why a one-man news crew had showed up before the cops, as well. The only way she’d find out for certain was to come clean.
“It was me.” She grimaced as they all peered at her in confusion. Damn, her face hurt. “You can resign from the fan club now, Max. I told your receptionist to call them, just now when I went to find you guys.”
“No.” It was more a command from Max than a negation.
“Yes,” she insisted. “Great legs, pretty eyes? Getting ready to belt out We Found Love in a Kinky Place? I practically taped the phone to her face.”
“And I guarantee you she peeled it right off. Mira knows better. My whole staff knows better. We don’t call the cops for help, Rayna.”
A violent oath burst from him as Zeke took another rush from Round Face, who got a hand around to his back and twisted a screwdriver into the existing wound there. Rayna screamed as fresh blood rushed down his spine, but the asshole might as well have thrown gasoline on the weapon and tossed it into Zeke’s brain for all the stopping power it yielded. Like a gargoyle broken out of its stone shell, Z let out a gothic bellow before twisting the chain around the guy. He used that leverage to flip Round Face into the gutter next to his friend.
“Hell,” Max spat. “This isn’t good. Not at all.”
“Wait,” Garrett interceded. “What the hell? Why not the cops? You running something illegal out the back door, Brick?”
“No, goddamnit,” Max growled. “When we call the police, there’s a price, okay?” He grunted. “And it’s not always money.”
Sage stepped forward. “What do you mean?”
Max prefaced his reply by peering around, looking like the raindrops themselves might have tapping devices on his utterance. “I mean that King had at least half the police on his leash, whether it was bribes, extortion or both. And now that he’s gone—”
“Mua’s moved into that throne.” The certainty of it permeated Rayna’s words, just like the new layer of bile coating her stomach.
“Fuck. Me.”
The moment Garrett finished gritting the words, red and blue lights flashed between the buildings, turning the street into a soaked, surreal disco. The police sirens howled closer, threatening to drown even the din of the rain.
Max ran to where Zeke was booting the two goons’ guts a few more times for good measure. “Z, you need to get out of here. Now!”
Zeke glared back at Max but didn’t see him, lost behind eyes that were so afire with violence, Rayna could see their glow from where she stood.
“Damn it.” Max pointed down at Round Face. The badge on the guy’s chest was shiny and obvious. “Those bastards will be here any minute. Even if they don’t belong to Mua, you know the shit that’s going to fly, right?”
Garrett raced to his friend. “Zeke. Ezekiel. Listen to me. Listen to Brick. He’s right, man. You’ve been set up. They’ll arrest you then use that footage to convict you.”
Zeke didn’t move. The sirens got louder. The nausea in Rayna’s core turned to aching dread. She forced herself forward by a few steps, close enough to hear how he answered Garrett.
“Is Rayna safe?”
She closed the distance to him. “I’m right here, Z. I’m fine.”
He whipped his head and lashed his stare to her. Her breath caught for the fiftieth time in the last ten minutes. Water sparkled on his eyelashes, nose, and lips, a weird and beautiful contrast to the violence that etched every plane of his face. Only one instinct outweighed her longing to run her fingers over every noble feature. She grabbed his massive bicep and jerked him around. Though she had to stand on tiptoe to do it, she started assessing his gash as clinically as she could.
“You need stitches.”
“Not gonna happen,” Garrett asserted. “We’re on borrowed time, Ray.”
“Garrett, this wound is deep!”
He grabbed Zeke by the other arm. “You have to get out of here, Z.”
Max rushed forward. “Final jeopardy, boys. Alex Trebeck has to get the fuck out of the building.”
Rayna fumed. “He needs this injury looked at!”
Garrett’s glare was a blue glow against the night. “If he doesn’t cut a chogey now, the prison doc will be the one ‘looking at’ him.” He jerked on Zeke to force their gazes to lock. “You wanna keep her safe, Z? You can’t do that from jail. You think Mua hasn’t twisted all this around to his advantage now? He followed her here tonight. He’ll follow her again, and he’ll probably get her the next time. And you’ll be nowhere nearby, will you? That prison cell is going to give you nice, blank walls to imagine Ray drugged out, trussed up, and tossed into the hold of a plane bound for Bangkok again.”
That got Rayna to drop her hands from Z. A terrified sob spilled before she could hold back. Zeke wrestled from his friend’s grip. He threw the chain down with a vicious jerk. “You’re a harsh asshole sometimes,” he snarled at his friend.
“I love you too, honey. Now you gotta pop smoke, dude.”
Z didn’t waste time on a comeback. He swung his stare back at Rayna. She returned a tremulous smile. The intensity on his face dissolved, giving way to a look of raw anguish. She started backing away, until he pulled her back and raised his hand, gently outlining the bruise on her cheek with his thumb. A crazy, deep part of her was moved by his pang for her. A bigger part overrode it with the reminder that she had no right to tie down his emotions, his fingers, or any more of his time. This insane incident didn’t change a word of what he’d said in his harem den.
She only wished her heart was listening to her brain. Instead, the thing was on a clear channel with her body, which shirked its shivers the second Z tucked her good cheek against his chest. Her
senses gave in to a peaceful softness. Her blood was suffused with the warmth that belonged solely to him. The chaos and rain of the night vanished. If only for one moment, they were reconnected.
One perfect, precious moment…
The first police sedan screeched around the corner. Max pulled at Zeke. “Can we spare the Lifetime movie ending? Z, if you don’t get your ass out of this street in thirty seconds, you’re going to be the lead story for tomorrow morning’s CNN feed. I’ll bet my left nut you’re already being loaded up and edited at KOMO. Anyone want a wild guess at who’s feeding them the news angle?”
“Shit,” Garrett muttered. “Mua’s probably in the control booth writing the script for the anchors.”
Max turned Zeke’s hand over and slammed a set of keys into it. “Get out of here. You’re taking my car.”
Zeke gaped. “Oh, hell no.”
“Don’t argue. They’ll be looking for yours and Hawk’s.” The club owner cocked both brows. “More importantly, nothing’s gonna get you out of town faster than they can get checkpoints up.”
“Good point,” Z muttered. He clapped Max on the shoulder. The guy nodded in silent acknowledgement of the gratitude.
Nearly at the same time, Zeke slipped his hand into hers. He gripped her tight, pulling her across the street and back into the alley behind Bastille at a run that spattered puddles in their wake. Max, Garrett and Sage followed. By the time they got to the little parking lot behind the harem room and its patio, her heart was pumping with two elements: adrenalin and apprehension.
She swallowed hard as Zeke tugged her near a gleaming silver car that really did look fast enough to beat the police. The round Jaguar logo and the initials R-S gleamed on plates embedded into the front grill. Witnessing the way Max gazed at the car like a man about to put his thoroughbred down, she sensed the two men had a relationship way beyond kink club owner and star staff Dom.
Max proved her even more right by literally giving Z the shirt off his own back, too. He shirked his tight gray T-shirt, revealing a physique as beautifully sculpted as his friend, though his shoulders and chest were also defined by a maze of Maori tattoos. Other than that and the slight difference in their hair colors, the men could be brothers.