Page 46 of Carnal Wagers

Hands tugged at my neck and helmet. It was the best stretch of my life, clicking my vertebrae back into place. Until the bastards raised my head and smashed it down. The helmet scratched and cracked, and my brain rattled around in my skull. With one more forceful tug, the clip snapped, and the helmet slipped off.

“Arrêtez.” The foreign yell penetrated the fog and dragged me out of my frolicking stupor. A car door slammed.

Beyond the stained jean-clad legs and sneakers of Sosa’s dealers, a pair of long legs, sheathed in leggings that might as well have been painted on, wearing heels spiked to pierce a man’s throat, dashed across the road.

“Leave him be.”

Her voice, that accent, shuddered through every ache and tear in my body and shut down their fussing. A thrill rushed through my tired limbs, edged with a clenching of my chest that knotted into a ball. Warmth and strength infused where they’d been on the verge of collapse. I gripped my knife with renewed vigor.

My fairy had come to watch. She deserved a show, and I planned to deliver. It would be a little demonstration of sorts: Let her see the monster within and run for the hills before I gave chase.

Except she didn’t stay on the sidelines. She sashayed forward, feet crossing one in front of the other, in a soft clicking tempo. A pair of jean-clad legs twisted her way. Sickly words drifted between the press of bodies. They taunted, mocked, and insulted her. Each one bit at my bruised skin and open wounds, lashing in accusations that I was here and she was there. Vulnerable and on her own. At risk.

All it took was one asshole taking one step in her direction. A sudden frenzy savaged through my limbs and took control. I volleyed the one holding me down aside and jumped to my feet. I wrestled with a second and smacked his head against the broken leg of a discarded chair. His neck bent and cracked. Another down.

A pallet broke against my back and lurched me over a corpse. One side kick to another’s shins, and the guy tripped. Another to his knee, and his body gave out, crumbling shoulder-first to the cement. That left two more to go.

Strangled French tickled my ears. My head snapped her way. A man lay at her feet, his mouth foaming. In heels and barely a hair out of place, she grappled another and vaulted him over her shoulder. Fuck, that was hot.

She hunched over her prize, twisting his arm, and delivered a solid punch like a warrior goddess in the flesh.

Lightning flashed in the distance.

I wiped my face in the crook of my elbow, and the smell of copper and salt blended together. My brass knuckles dripped viscous red as sweat drenched my sweater collar. I swiped up my helmet and dragged a finger through the crack, the foam exposed underneath. This was going to be a problem.

Thunder grumbled and roared.

Too quickly, the fast, punctuated inhales of my excitement dulled. The visible throb of my pulsing veins disappeared. Sounds of the street returned—car alarms, dogs barking, the squeal of tires—suddenly clear and crisp instead of drowned beneath the adrenaline of the fight. All my aggression went to bed, leaving behind a pleasant thrum and a stirring aftermath of pain. It wasn’t the pain I was after, but pain lasted longer than adrenaline.

“You always get into fights unprovoked?” She sauntered toward me, hips swaying, heels clicking. Her confidence turned this strip of concrete into her personal runway just as the first droplets of rain fell.

“What are you doing here?”

“What do you think? I always know where you are.”

I slid my jaw back and forth. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Her hand fell to her cocked hip. “Why not? You’re here. I’m here. It’s a little reunion.” She glanced at her phone and wiped at the droplets sticking to the screen. “Still time to grab a drink if you want.”

Behind her, a bruised cartel man shifted upright like a bloody specter, his body wobbly and slanted against an old metal pipe grinding against concrete. A ragged grunt scraped out of him, and he swirled the pipe over his head. Directly at her.

All my calm vanished under the sudden tightness of my skin. My inner beast charged, hot-blooded, slobbering, and thirsty for blood. I tackled him to the wet ground and pummeled his face. Quickly I lost count of the number of punches. There was only the release of watching his nose cave in. Of feeling his eye sockets burst. Of the hot liquid coating my burning fists.

Fingers dug into my shoulders. They pried and tugged, but I didn’t stop. Through the garbled moans. The wet, hissed inhales. The flop of his hands as they fell to his sides like an open-ended plea.

A shadow blocked out the fragile yellow light, and my mystery woman stooped down. Her face so close to mine that her perfume cloyed my nose. It was too sweet and too gentle against the grotesque shape of the smashed-in face beneath me. My fist rose, poised to deliver another blow.

“Enough. He’s dead.”

She slapped me. Her entire body twisted with the force of it. The sting warmed and pulsed like a light bulb on its last leg, flickering on and off and whirring before it shattered.

“Do you hear me?”

I didn’t answer. Didn’t even move. No one had slapped me since I outgrew my father’s discipline. No one dared, except this sylphlike woman.

A hand wrapped into my sweater and jerked me forward with strength her figure shouldn’t have allowed.

“Snap out of it.”