Page 9

Clay spits blood onto the floor and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He lunges first, fast but sloppy, fueled by whatever anger has built inside him.

I step to the side, and his fist glides off my shoulder instead of my jaw. The impact burns just the way I like.

He swings again, but I duck and drive my shoulder into his ribs, slamming him back against the cage. The metal rattles behind him, and everyone goes nuts. I’m not sure if they are screaming for him or me, and I don’t care. All I care about is that his cock will never be near Vero’s ass. That ass is only mine.

Vero’s voice cuts through the screams. I can always hear him. “Break him!”

Clay laughs and brings his knee up hard into my thigh. I grin and drive my fist into his stomach—once, twice—before I grab him and slam his head into the cage. The sound is music to my ears. Skull against metal. He staggers but doesn’t drop.

He swings blindly, and it clips my cheek. I taste blood, and it sends something feral pulsing through my veins.

Violence isn’t chaos to me; it’s clarity.

I hook my arm around his neck and pivot, driving him down. His back hits the concrete hard, and I don’t hesitate. I straddle him and land one clean punch to his jaw.

His head snaps to the side, then he goes still.

The crowd thunders, and I stand slowly. My chest heaves as blood drips from my knuckles.

Clay doesn’t move. He’s still breathing, as I wouldn’t actually kill him, not on purpose—not unless he touched what’s mine. The thought alone has my bloody fingers balling into fists, ready to hurt him even more, when the rattle of the cage pulls at my attention.

I look up just in time to see Vero swinging himself over the top, and his beaming smile brings me back to reality. He hits the ground, then launches himself at me with a laugh, and I catch him, bracing my stance as his body collides with mine. His legs lock around my waist and his arms snake over my shoulders as I wrap a hand around his throat.

“Mine,” I growl.

Vero’s grin widens. “As pretty as Clay is, there is only one cock I want.”

I carry him out of the cage, through the now open gate, needing to keep him close. Ares and Nixie rush inside to check on Clay.

“He better not be dead, or so help me, Brawley,” she snaps on her way past.

“Cry me a fucking river, Nix, he wanted this. Maybe find out why his head is fucked up and fix it.”

“Now why would I do that? I like you all a little fucked up—your crazy pays the bills,” she says to me, before she yells louder. “Everyone fuck off and get ready. People will start arriving any minute now, and you are all in here. You are not paid to stand around.”

Vero grasps my face between his hands, then leans in and licks my cheek. “You taste like violence and I’m fucking addicted. I would let you break every bone in my body and ask for more. That’s not normal, right? That’s not what normal people do. But I don’t care—I’m far from normal. I care only about you. Fuck, we didn’t make sure Clay woke up.”

“Don’t fucking care, he shouldn’t have baited me.”

Vero laughs as I kick the door open to the side entrance of the asylum, still carrying him wrapped around me like a fucking octopus. The hallway is dark, narrow, and exactly what the tourists pay to experience during the day. Yet at night, this place gives even me the creeps.

The door to his room is easy to miss if you don’t know where to look. I shoulder it open and step inside. The space is small and claustrophobic; I don’t know how he sits here at night waiting for people to run past. The walls are a sickly off-white, the paint peeling in long strips like dead skin, revealing the darker plaster underneath.

A single light bulb hangs from a chain, revealing a single metal chair. When someone opens the door, Vero can pull the chain and reveal himself.

I set him down on the chair and his legs finally unwrap from my waist, then he reaches up to grab the chain. The light flickers on, lighting up his face, his wild puppy dog eyes not matching the crazy that is Vero.

“What did Nixie say about your paper-cut princess?” I ask.

He has done nothing but talk about her today. I have zero issues sharing him with a woman for the night, but something tells me he may want this one around for a while. So long as she doesn’t take him away from me, there will be no issues—or at least no life-and-death issues.

Vero grabs my hips, hooking his fingers into the waistband of my shorts and sliding them down until my cock is out. I’m still covered in Clay’s blood, a reminder of the violence, and Vero is starving for it.

People don’t understand this about him. When he watches me fight, sees me covered in someone else’s blood, something in him snaps. He gets obsessive, manic, filled with this unhinged need.

I can tell he is talking fast in his head. I know him so well that it will be something like, “That was so fucking hot, you’re so strong, so powerful, so fucking violent, all mine.” He claims me as obsessively as I claim him.

Vero doesn’t do anything halfway; he loves with the intensity of a fucking hurricane. When he gets jealous, he will fight like an army of men, and his mania is all-consuming. But right now, he is consuming me.