“Shhhhh, let me give you what you need, tough girl.”
Quickly divesting himself of the wet fabric, he then unzipped his jeans and pushed them to the wet floor. He was already hard; his cock jutted out from a dark thatch of curls and bowed back towards his stomach. Grabbing my wrist, Shadow dragged me away from the direct fall of water and lowered himself to the small, wooden bench, tossing my dry clothes aside. He pulled me toward him, and I climbed onto his lap, positioning my knees on either side of his thighs. Then I was kissing him once more, my hands roaming, touching every inch of skin I could reach.
“Take what you need from me,” he gasped as I reached down and stroked his cock. Positioning his rigid length at my entrance, I lowered myself onto him, taking him deep and feeling every inch of his glorious warmth. Shadow’s hands remained on my hips as I set a fast, furious pace. He was letting me gain back the control I’d lost when Timber and Solo had attacked me, and I was grateful for it, right up until I could no longer bear not to have his touch. I had missed those strong, possessive hands on me, and right now I needed them more than ever.
Encouraging him to touch me didn’t take much. I grabbed his wrist and dragged that big hand to my breast. Shadow squeezed gently before leaning forward and taking my nipple between his lips. My orgasm slammed into me so fast and furious I actually tried to climb away from it. Shadow wouldn’t have it, though; he held me in place with a brutal grip on my hips and demanded I felt everything. And when he finally emptied himself inside me, I collapsed on his chest and closed my eyes. There was no languid fall into sleep; I was merely out, unconscious, my body no longer able to fight the exhaustion and shock.
*
“What do you mean you haven’t seen her?” I gaped at George as he shrugged.
“I just assumed she found someone to spend the night with.”
“When was the last time you saw her?” I snapped.
“Yesterday, she left here before dinner and didn’t come home. It’s not like she’s been gone long.”
I growled, a low rumble that started at the bottom of my chest and spilled from my mouth, the sound more animal than human. That gave George pause for consideration.
“In the short time you’ve been living with her, is it normal for her to stay out all night?”
George shifted nervously and raked a hand through this thinning grey hair.
“Well, no. But she is a grown woman, and I assume, like the rest of us, she has needs.”
Screaming, I turned and slammed a fist through the thin wooden door that led from the small storage area we were standing in, to the arena beyond. It was trade day, and it was busy. The small stalls filled with inmates’ worldly possessions were set up, ready for bartering. At my outburst, the silence that ensued was tangible, and I glared at the people who dared to openly stare in my direction. Their gazes were quickly diverted by whatever they saw on my face.
“If anything has happened to her, I’ll have that fucker put you in the cage, George. I’ll let everyone watch as I knock some fucking common sense into you.”
Storming away, people stepped aside, moving out of my way as if I were afflicted with a contagious disease. And I sure as shit had something itching away at my skin: a feeling, a gnawing sensation that I was missing something. The more I thought about Regan and the fact I hadn’t seen her in twenty-four hours, the more that itching feeling grew, until I was a twitching mess of irritation with no outlet.
“Nada!”
The high pitched scream had me reaching for the knife on my thigh. Turning around, I watched as the small, blonde innocent, Melanie, followed closely behind by Grace, pushed their way through the crowd. The alarm and horror on Melanie’s face had me glancing around the marketplace, searching for a threat. When the girls finally reached me, Melanie almost fell into my arms, but held herself steady at the last minute, as if realizing who she was trying to seek comfort from. Grace had no such inhibitions and wrapped her thin arms around me. I awkwardly tried to comfort her with a hand on her trembling back, my knife still clutched in my opposite hand.
“What happened, Grace?”
“They killed Paul,” Melanie blurted out.
My fist clenched around the hilt of my knife in frustration. I knew Kingsley would find out about their ridiculous uprising sooner or later.
“I told you . . .”
“Nada, they have Regan,” Grace sobbed. “You have to get her back!”
Grace’s words brought me up short, and I just stared at her. The horror in her terrified tear filled eyes spurred me into action. Gently, I pushed Grace back into Melanie’s arms.
“Take Grace back to the innocent sector with you, and let Claire and Rocket know what’s happening. Don’t step out of your sector until I come for you.”
Turning, I sprinted out of the marketplace, pushing people, who were too slow to move, aside. I ran around corners and jumped over blissed out NIM addicts in corridors until I reached the secured entrance that led to the dungeon. This was an area saved for torture and death, an area where we took the child molesters and ended their pathetic existence. A place where Kingsley disposed of those who dared to oppose him. Two soldiers stood guard, but they didn’t stand a chance against my frantic need to reach my one and only friend. I leapt and punched one soldier before he even had a chance to reach for a weapon, his body falling to the ground with a heavy thud. The second soldier took a step away when he saw my baby clenched in my fist. I had no idea if it was the long, dark blade that scared him, or the fact he knew how well I could use it. He simply raised his hands and shook his head, trying to force words out of his gaping mouth. I didn’t pause to wait and hear what he had to say; instead, I descended the stairs two at a time, heading towards the bowels of hell.
The dungeons were a maze of dark, icy corridors, lit with sconces that were spaced evenly apart, thick with the stench of blood and death. I navigated the first wide corridor, carefully checking each gated cell. Dejohn explained that this place was much like the prisons of old, each cell big enough to temporarily hold no more than one inmate. Two were empty, the other two contained males who by the smell had died many days prior. Turning into a second wide corridor, I stilled at the sound of heated voices coming from a cell near the far end. My feet quickly swept into action, long before my mind caught up, and I was running down that corridor, which seemed twice as long as the last. I practically threw my body through the doorway, a heavy steel gate hanging wide open. I came to a standstill as someone reached around my waist and pulled me into a hard chest. I didn’t think, I simply acted, using my knife to slice the arm that tried to hold me in place. Whoever had been holding me roared with pain and immediately released me.
As I scrambled further into the room, I noticed several things at once. Shadow being held against a wall in the back of the room, a seething look of fury set on his handsome face as two soldiers subdued him. Kingsley stood on one side, his arms crossed over his chest, wearing a wide smile that caught me completely by surprise. Locky stood to his right, a gun in one hand and an arrogant look of satisfaction on his heavily pitted face. Turning my head to take in the other side of the room, I gasped.
There she hung, like a limp rag doll, from steel manacles around her wrists against the stone wall. There was nothing left of Regan to give away that it was her who hung there, but I knew. Her long blonde braids had been cut off and flung on the floor. Her naked body was coated in blood; it dripped down her arms, torso, and legs, falling into a thick red puddle beneath her. I knew she had also been violated, apparent by the blood dripping from the inside of her thighs. There wasn’t an inch of her left untouched.
“Regan,” I whispered, my voice wavering with fear and heartbreak.
A soldier to her right pulled on what little hair she had left and lifted her face. Through heavily swollen eyes, Regan blinked. I saw the recognition in her face, the sorrow, regret, and love. When a knife was drawn across her neck and dragged through the exposed flesh, I screamed. I screamed
until my throat was raw and my body burned with hatred. I screamed as I watched the blood roll down her chest and the life drained from her beautiful face. I screamed as I attacked, only one thing on my mind: vengeance.
The first to go down would be the man who still held Regan’s head in place. Thomas, a thirty-three-year-old male found guilty of rape, and from the state of his open fly, he’d been practicing his evil craft today. He was first to go. While the room behind me seemed to fall into a distant cacophony of chaos, I set my sights on Thomas. I leapt and kicked, taking the breath from his lungs. As he bowed forward, I wrenched my hand up and dug my knife into this neck, pushing it through flesh and tendons then twisting it, just to be sure the job was done right. Letting out a gurgling gasp, Thomas fell to the stone floor, his body sliding into the puddle of blood, and what I suspected was urine, at Regan’s feet.
Strong hands tried to grab me from behind, but I slammed my head back, feeling a deep satisfaction at the crunch and groan as my head connected with someone’s nose. Turning, I took in my next victim. Matias, a forty-two-year-old Hispanic male arrested on one count of murder and two counts of NIM manufacturing and distribution. His fists flew fast, with deadly accuracy. Too bad he didn’t have my skill or driving need to kill. I ducked and jabbed a fist into his balls, then swung my knife in an arc, relishing the sensation as it sunk into his side, just below his ribs. Matias grunted in pain and sunk to his knees on the stone floor, a hand clutching at the knife wound. When I raised my knife to bring down the punishing final blow, a strong hand gripped my wrist and pulled me against a wide, hard, unforgiving body.
“Calm, Nada,” Shadow whispered in my ear. Calm wouldn’t find me, though; I was too far gone. I fought him, my body bucking against his hold, my knife hand swinging wildly trying to find purchase. “You gotta calm down, tough girl, or you’ll be strung up next.”
I didn’t care; right now, I embraced the thought of death, I fucking stroked that bitch like a lover’s caress. Death was mine—I fucking earned it—and I would take as many of these murdering, raping bastards as I could with me. When my father’s livid eyes found mine, I finally stilled, then smiled. I didn’t feel happy, though. I felt nothing but hate, and I knew he could see that detest in my grim smile.
“You know I’m going to kill you, right? There isn’t a fucking hole deep enough for you to climb down that I won’t find you in. I’m going to chain you up, just like you did to Regan, and then I’m going to slide my knife into your evil, black heart.”
He grinned, and much like my own smile, it was completely without humor. “You are ambitious, I’ll give you that. I should have sent you to the Whore Pit and had your mouth busy being filled just to keep you quiet . . . and I will. You’ve got one fight left, then you’ll beg for me to kill you.”
22
SHADOW
I’d never seen her so completely unraveled, her sanity shredded, her steely, cold composure gone. From the sickening, gleeful fucking look on Kingsley’s face, he knew this would push her over the edge and fill her mind with madness, and he reveled in her distress. Dejohn and I had been searching for Regan for several hours; our mission was to find her before Kingsley’s men found her, hide her, bury her deep until we could fix this motherfucking problem of epic proportions. Regan didn’t deserve the ending she received. I wanted to protect her, not only for Nada, but because it was the right thing to do, and it had been a long time since I had done the right thing. Dejohn and I knew if Nada caught wind of Kingsley’s plans, it would flip her switch and all-out chaos would ensue. Damage control, Dejohn had called it. Too late. The damage was done now—I held it in my arms with such a hard grip I knew I’d left marks. She was going to try and kill them all, but Kingsley had already commanded Locky to raise his gun and point it right at her head. I couldn’t let that happen, no matter how much she might want to die; I was too selfish to let her go. I’d fought my way free of Franco and Deuce, who had me pinned against the wall, and now, I struggled to hold Nada, the only decent thing that existed in this godforsaken world. As soon as her gaze settled on Kingsley, she stilled. She wasn't calm—her body was rigid with tension, and her breathing was rapid and out of control—but at least she was still.
“You are ambitious, I’ll give you that. I should have sent you to the Whore Pit and had your mouth busy being filled just to keep you quiet . . . and I will. You’ve got one fight left, then you’ll beg for me to kill you.”
Kingsley’s black eyes, so much like his daughter’s it was almost unnerving, looked into mine. No words were spoken, but plenty was said in that one look. It was a reminder that he owned her, that he decided if she lived or died, and he dared me to do something about it. He was going to rip her apart, starting with her heart, then her body, and eventually, her sanity.
“Have Beast transferred to the cage. I want him on display before the fight. Put the girl on lockdown.”
When two soldiers stepped forward to try and take her from me, she tensed, every muscle in her body ready to fight.
“I’ll take her to her room; she’ll kill anyone else who tries to touch her. You can lock her in and put a guard on her door.”
Kingsley nodded. “Franco will accompany you, just in case you have any trouble keeping her contained.”
“Do I need to carry you out of here, tough girl?” I murmured in her ear. An almost imperceptible shake of her head told me she’d heard my words and understood them. Her gaze had never left her father though, and her body was still poised to fight. “You’ll get your chance, but if you go at him now, you’ll end up with a bullet in your skull. That’s not the kind of revenge Regan deserves.” At that, some of the tension left her body. Taking her knife from her loose grip, I shoved it down into the holster strapped to her thigh and grabbed her upper arm to drag her from that room full of blood and despair. She didn’t fight me, instead moving robotically through the doorway, not sparing a second glance at the death and carnage.
A giant, looming mass greeted us, staring from behind the bars of the cell directly across from us. It was Beast Nada was scheduled to fight. He didn’t speak, just stared, his big ugly face a mask of rage.
Shaking my grip loose, Nada took the few short steps between us and the cell, walking right up to the massive animal without a single ounce of fear.
“You’re next,” she simply whispered, before tearing her gaze away and walking without assistance down the long, wide hall.
With her head held high, her shoulders back, she never once faltered as she moved through the Underworld. People watched on, some with faces full of curiosity, but most with fear. When we reached her room, she unlocked the padlock, threw it and the key to Franco, before walking right in. I followed, kicking the door shut with the heel of my boot.
At a bucket in the corner, she methodically washed the blood from her hands and arms, then dragged the bloody clothes from her body. I watched, my cock hardening at the sight of her beautiful, bare skin as she walked without shame around her room, lit by a flickering candle. I wanted to take her right there and then; I wanted to remind her she was alive; I wanted to remind her she had something to fight for; however, I knew she didn’t need any of that right now. Watching her pull on a shirt, I realized it was one of mine, the one I had shoved over her head the night she had been attacked by Solo and Timber. A deep sense of satisfaction filled me knowing she was wearing my clothes. She stilled, her back to me, fists clenched at her side.
“Did you know?”
There was no point in pretending I didn’t know what she was talking about; I didn’t play games like that, anyway.
“Yesterday I found out she was on Kingsley’s radar. After the incident in the gym, I got a little sidetracked; otherwise, I would’ve been out lookin’ for Regan last night. Dejohn and I were gonna hide her until we could talk some sense into Kingsley.”
“Did you honestly think any sense could be talked into that man?”
I shook my head slowly. I knew there would be no talking Ki
ngsley off his path. I honestly had no idea what I was going to do past hiding Regan.
“Then why the fuck would you bother trying? He’s your master, you’re his dog, you obey when he commands. Why would you try to stop him?”
I bristled at her snarky tone. “Firstly, I’m not a fuckin’ dog. I’ve done what I had to, to survive in this fuckin’ hell, and secondly, I have a fuckin’ brain and know how to use it. I knew Regan was no rebel spy. She might have had visions of grandeur that she might instigate some sort of uprisin’ down here, but she was no fuckin’ mole. Timber saw her, sneakin’ into that hidden room, though, and he was in Kingsley’s ear a heartbeat later.”
At that, she slowly turned to face me with a confused frown marring her beautiful face. “If you knew what she was trying to do, why didn’t you go to Kingsley with the information?”
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