Shadow was touching me, though his hands never slipped to my breasts or between my thighs, he was soothing me, calming me, allowing me to feel him for what he was, not for what my memories wanted me to believe he might be. I could feel the rigid press of his cock on my lower back, but he didn’t remove his clothes or force me, and with each gentle sweep of his hand, the tension left my body.
“I’m gonna make you feel good, baby, just like this. As much as I wanna rip open my zipper and sink into your hot, wet pussy, you’re not ready for me.”
I begged to differ. The fire he was stoking with his hands, making my already adrenaline fueled high fly me even higher, had guided me from panicked to needy in a heartbeat.
“You gonna let me take care of you, Nada?” Shadow never asked for anything; he always took what he wanted. His question was filled with such desperation I couldn’t ignore it.
My head fell back onto his shoulder. “Take care of me, Shadow.”
I thought he’d grab at me with greedy hands; such a strong, forceful man surely would. Instead, his fingertips coasted down my sides and around my hips, gently cupping the globes of my ass before returning up my sides once more. Inch by inch, he moved them around my body until he swept his calloused palms up my stomach and finally cupped my breasts. His fingers gently rolled and played with my nipples like a musician might pluck a guitar. Then he squeezed before bending his knees and rubbing his jean clad cock against the cleft of my ass. One hand remained possessively cupped around my breast, while the other dropped to the juncture between my thighs, where his finger delved between the trimmed curls there, tracing the crease between my feminine lips. Thrusting forward, my body begged for more, and Shadow didn’t make me wait. He slipped a finger into my slit, rubbing gently over my clit before dipping into my wet heat and dragging the moisture back up to the place I needed him most. My hands left the wall and gripped the hair on either side of this head.
“That’s it, baby. Let me take care of you.”
His finger moved with expertise, teasing and giving, just enough to slowly push me towards the edge of a cliff I rarely tumbled over. I didn’t always orgasm, and that was okay. The act itself drained the energy from my body, whether I found true release or not.
Shadow’s breathing was ragged as he continued to rub his length against my ass while his hand worked me intimately. My own breath grew labored, and my hips thrust in time with his hand until I threw my head back and groaned out a long, guttural cry as I fell over that edge, my limbs quivering and only Shadow’s sturdy embrace keeping me upright.
As my erratic breathing eased, the grip on Shadow’s hair loosened, and my hands fell against the stone wall in front of me. Pushing back, I felt Shadow’s rock hard cock, but he pulled away, leaving a sliver of space between our trembling bodies.
“Fuck me, Shadow,” I whispered, trying to push my body toward his to find the warmth he was denying me.
“I’m not gonna to fuck you, baby.”
The words landed with more brutal precision than any hit I had taken in the cage. Of course he wouldn’t want to take things further. I was nothing, and he was my father’s second, his golden boy. He could have anyone and took women regularly. I was just a play-thing, something that intrigued him until he grew bored.
“You’re not ready for this, Nada, but you will be, and when you are, I’m gonna fuck you so long and hard you’ll never feel like nobody again . . . you’ll feel like mine.”
I stood silent and still as I let his words sink in, and for the first time in my existence, I wasn’t scared of belonging to someone.
Shadow’s hard, calloused hand wrapped around my neck, holding me, collaring me. My heart fluttered with a mixture of panic and expectation as he pressed himself against my back once more. “If I ever hear of or see another man touchin’ you again, I’ll kill him, Nada. I will slit his throat and watch him bleed out, then I’ll chain you to your bed and remind you of who you belong to. You feelin’ me, tough girl?”
The command in his voice pissed me off, but before Kye had even managed to lay a finger on me, I knew I didn’t want him. I’d been stalling, needing help to come down, yet knowing it wasn’t Kye I wanted the help from. Kye was convenient, he kept his hands to himself, he wasn’t clingy, he let me control every aspect of our dysfunctional arrangement, and up until now, it had worked. Seeing him waiting for me in the gym tonight had sent a jarring bolt of disappointment through my body, because on the long trip from the arena to the grimy depths of my gym, it wasn’t Kye who I envisioned greeting me there. It was a hard, dark man with a beautifully dangerous face and a body made for death and sin I dreamed waiting for me. I managed a subtle nod, my pride not wanting to submit to Shadow, but my heart and soul were reaching out for him, frantic for his possession of me.
When Shadow finally moved away, I stooped to drag the leather cat suit Regan had made for my fight back up my legs, allowing it to sit at my waist. With my chest still bare, I turned to face Shadow who now stood in the doorway. His eyes dropped to my breasts, and he palmed his hard dick that pressed at the zipper to his jeans as he backed away.
“You want me to take care of that?” I whispered, nodding to his insistent hard-on.
“Baby, I couldn’t think of anythin’ better than your beautiful lips around my cock, but not tonight. I got shit to do.”
Like a roar of thunder, anger lashed my insides like a relentless whip, my gaze narrowing on Shadow as he continued to devour my half-dressed state.
“Shadow?” I murmured through gritted teeth. His eyes finally left my tits and settled on my face. “If I hear of or see you with another woman, I’ll kill her, and then I’ll slide my knife into your chest and dig out your black heart so it never beats again. You feeling me?”
He grinned. The fucking bastard grinned. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, tough girl.”
With a wink that brought me up short, he turned and left.
Clutching my suit to my waist, I shook my head and glanced around the gym. Slowly, the cognitive part of my brain began to function again, and I felt every one of my injuries crash down on me, each with its own painful pulse. Feeling the swelling at the corner of my mouth, I pulled my suit back over my shoulders, gathered my knives, which Dejohn had left sitting neatly on the bench, and left the gym. I needed a shower, I needed water, I needed food, and I desperately needed those happy little pills Dejohn had stashed away in his room that would make me feel numb.
*
“Regan, I’m on bathroom clean up duty. I don’t have time for this!”
One week since my fight with Timber, and my body was slowly healing. Bruises fading from an angry dark black, to a pale purple, and finally, an ugly shade of yellow. My ribs still ached, but the fact they were healing so fast suggested they had been merely bruised rather than cracked or broken. The week had passed slowly: a day spent lying in bed, my body numb from the blessed pills Dejohn only brought out for special occasions; another day of moving through a slow, quiet training session with Dejohn while my body protested vehemently; another checking on the Whore Pit, cleaning vomit out of the Wild Zone, and visiting Grace; and today . . . following Regan through the maze of corridors which led deeper into the innocents’ sector. All week, my mood had sunk from sullen to downright bitter. The reason was obvious, though I tried hard to ignore it—Shadow had been absent the entire week. From practically living in my back pocket to nothing, and after the night in the gym, and his promise to claim me for his own, I had conjured up my own reasoning for his non-existent presence—he had changed his mind. I’d also heard rumors that he’d been seen at the Whore Pit, and that sent my foul mood to a whole other level. The first chance I got I was going to hunt him down and destroy him. He had created a need within me that I had allowed to blossom, then he had stolen it away. Thumbing the hilt of my knife sheathed at my thigh, I grinned as I thought of all the ways I could make the man scream out in pain.
“Perhaps it would be best if you didn’t smile. You
’ll scare them.”
My grin disappeared in a heartbeat as I glanced at Regan who walked beside me with a furrow between her brows that signified her frustration.
“Who is ‘them’?” I snapped.
Regan came to a stop, sighed, then pushed open a door which led to a storage room, only when I followed her through, it was much smaller than I remembered, more like a closet. I studied the small, cramped space, my memory clearly baffled as I raked through my recollection of rooms in the Underworld, only this one I didn’t recognize. Regan clumsily pushed aside a large empty drum, then began moving bricks from the wall until she had left a large gaping hole big enough to crawl through the stone wall.
I watched her crawl through, then, with a shrug, followed.
The bright room on the other side caught me by surprise, and I reached for my knife as I noticed movement to my left.
“It’s okay, Nada,” Regan murmured from in front of me. “This is ‘them’.”
She stepped aside, and my gaze wandered over the hidden room, approximately twenty feet wide by the same long. In the center was a long wooden table with handmade stools pushed up to it. Five men and one woman sat around the table, and a few others lingered around them. They were all innocents, except for the woman seated at the table. Tatiana, a woman found guilty of killing her husband though she always claimed it was in self-defense, was a red.
“Nada,” Tatiana said with a clear, strong voice. “We are glad you could make it.”
“Make it to what?” I asked, my anxious fingers still poised over the hilt of my knife.
“This is the start, Nada,” Regan said in a small voice. “This is where the revolution begins. Here, in this room, is where a leader will be born.”
I’m pretty sure the look I gave her was one of pure disbelief.
“There is already a rebellion outside these stone walls. Are you saying you are all a part of it?” I had played with the idea of Regan as a mole, and dismissed it almost as quickly as the fleeting thought had come. Had I been wrong?
Regan shook her head. “No, the rebels in the outside world don’t really care about us; they only care about power. They ultimate goal is to take Kingsley down. We need to fight for ourselves. We needed to create our own rebellion.”
I practically scoffed at the absurdity of it. These thirteen men and women expected to take down Kingsley and take over the Underworld? They didn’t stand a chance in hell.
“I told you she wouldn’t go for it. She’s daddy’s little girl, and she has it too good to want to upset the system.”
My eyes zeroed in on Paul, the lanky, pale innocent who had recently become the voice for his ‘people’. The blond waif recoiled at whatever he saw in my expression.
“Paul, you know Nada’s father doesn’t care about her; he uses her for profit and gain. If anyone would want to see an end to his tyranny, it would be her.”
Regan’s quietly spoken voice seemed to hold weight in this room. I shook my head from side to side as I took them all in, noting each and every one of them. If only they knew how dangerous this path they were traveling down really was. In two months, they would all be free, and here they were jeopardizing the entire plan, years’ worth of intel and scheming would go down the drain if they stayed on this path. Shaking my head with a solemn expression, I turned to Regan.
“This is dangerous, Regan. Kingsley has ears and eyes everywhere; he will find out, and you will all be killed. It won’t matter that you’re innocent.” I glanced over the small assembly. “He will make you bleed; he will make you beg.” I looked hard at Melanie, the tiny, blonde innocent with big blue eyes and soft skin. “He will use you, then he will let his soldiers use you; you will be violated in ways you can’t begin to imagine before he ends your suffering. You’ll be in so much pain you will beg for death before he finally grants it.”
Melanie cringed at my words, and rightly so. They weren’t pretty but they weren’t meant to be; they were simply the truth, however harsh and ugly that truth might be.
“You’re just scared,” Paul spat out.
“To have fear is a good thing, it keeps you alive. Without fear you are cocky and brash and you make mistakes . . . like this.” I waved my hand around the room. “Yeah, I’m fucking scared, and it’s warranted. I’ve seen things you couldn’t even dream up in your wildest nightmares, and this . . .” I stepped forward and slammed my hand down on the wooden table, all my pent up anger pouring out as I glared at each and every one of them. “This will end badly, for all of you.”
Turning, I scurried out the hole in the wall, my hand reaching for the doorknob to the new, much smaller supply closet before Regan’s soft hand grabbed my wrist. When she would have spoken, I silenced her with a violent shake of my head.
“No, Regan, there is nothing you can say to make me change my mind. You promised,” I reminded her. It left a bad taste in my mouth to speak to her like this. I understood her desire for change, nobody wanted to live in this hell, and those unfortunate enough to be born in it were merely casualties of war. “This is madness, and it has to end now. I am no leader, and furthermore, your timing couldn’t be more shitty. Whatever you have planned, stop it, now!”
I didn’t give her a chance to speak; I simply left the room, my heart hammering fast with panic. They had to stop now, or they would ruin everything. Regan would be hurt before I had a chance to save her. I hated the cold, spiteful words that I had spewed to Regan and the other people in that room, but they had to hear it. They needed doubt, they needed fear, and they needed to fucking live.
16
SHADOW
I watched the latest inmate roar and fight as four soldiers tried to subdue him. He was a big motherfucker, scarred, and ugly as sin. How he had lived so long in the above world I had no idea; the man looked like the devil himself, and as I read his dossier, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was Satan, in all his evil glory, reincarnated. Jerome Hinkley Junior, twenty-nine-years-old, Caucasian male, found guilty of multiple murders, including the death of his own mother and sister, whom he skinned, like one might skin a buck, and ate their liver and heart . . . yeah, this fucker was clearly insane.
My gaze rose to the commotion before me. Solo had stepped forward to help, and now five soldiers were gradually subduing the massive, seething beast. He was completely naked; the only part of his body that appeared untouched by ink was his cock, which was hard. The fucker was getting off on the violence. It had taken us nearly two hours to remove him from the cage and another hour to get him down the corridor and into the room where he was currently being checked in. Dejohn sat at the computer, his dark face pale as he watched the soldiers beat Jerome until he was finally still.
“Hmmmm,” Kingsley murmured from my side, “this one has a bit of fire.” I nodded in agreement¸ wondering if this one had been born in fire. “Take him to the dungeon.”
I watched as Solo, Ginger, and Dom picked up the now unconscious man and dragged him from the stark, white room.
“Go with them in case the fucker wakes up,” I ordered the remaining two soldiers who were leaning against the wall nursing bruised, battered limbs. Obediently, they followed the concussed inmate out of the room, and Dejohn leaned back in his chair, watching in disbelief.
“How da hell did him survive as long as him did above?” Dejohn wondered out loud.
“You want me to put him down?” I asked Kingsley.
“I don’t want anyone to put him down,” Kingsley murmured, which drew the attention of both Dejohn and me. Kingsley raised an incredulous brow. “Why would I want him put down? He’s magnificent.”
“He has too much fire; he’ll turn on you the moment he can. He’s no more than a rabid animal.” My reasons could go on, but those three seemed the most noteworthy.
“He’s like a caged lion,” Kingsley said with a smile. “Caged being the principal word.” My stomach dropped, and from the look of Dejohn, his did, too. “Imagine him in the cage with the girl.”
“He’d kill her.”
“Maybe, but it would be quite the spectacle. We could build it up, bring him out, and put him in the cage for viewing, give the fight plenty of momentum.”
“And he would kill her,” I growled out again.
Kingsley sighed. “She’s growing out her usefulness anyway, getting too cocky. If she dies, then it is one less thing for me to worry about.” Kingsley slapped me on the back and grinned. “Better get your cock wet in her while you can.” With that, he left.
“Son of a bitch!” I spat out. “Fuckin’ cock suckin’ son of a whore.”
“Calm down, Shadow.” I turned my incredulous wrath on Dejohn.
“Calm down? Calm the fuck down? Are you serious? That fuckin’ animal is gonna to kill her, and it won’t be pretty!”
Dejohn shot me an angry look. “Is any death priti?”
“Fuck me!” I roared as I leaned heavily against the wall.
“She can take ’im.”
“What?” I glared at Dejohn, not sure if I had heard him clearly.
“Everyting’s gonna be alright.” He stood from behind the computer, his face, which had been a picture of frantic worry moments ago, was now a calm façade that seemed a little too forced, if you asked me. “She can take im’. He’s big an’ fulla rage, but untrained. She can take ’im . . .” Dejohn stopped in front of me. “And, Shadow? If yuh hurt Nada, mi kill yuh miself.” I looked up into his cloudy brown eyes. “Unless she kills yuh first.” Grinning, he left.
*
Panic bubbled inside me like a geyser ready to erupt. I hadn’t seen Nada in a week; Kingsley had us working twice as hard to find the rebel informants. Glancing at my shaking hands, I thought of the blood that had coated them just this week alone. I had extracted screams and flesh from a number of Underworld inmates, but I had yet to extract a single, useful grain of information. Either the rebel spies were immersed so deeply no one knew who they were, or they were being protected so fiercely that people were prepared to die for them. I didn’t know which was worse.
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