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Despite the pain racking my body from being locked in the same position for so long, exhaustion took over, my head hung, and I slept. I woke to a soft zhiiing, zhiiing and light pouring in from the hallway.
I blinked up and learned exactly what Rex had meant by capable hands.
Unable to find my breath, I kicked my feet like I might be able to get away as Lynch—the ugliest, most sadistic Ridge rat I’d ever met—stared down at me with his flat, gunmetal-gray eyes. One side of his mouth lifted in a grin that said he was ready to flay someone. I opened my mouth and screamed, electricity jolting through my body as I got a good look at the hunting knife he held in his hand.
My scream ripped Celt from sleep. He thrashed.
“What the . . .” His voice strained groggy before it sounded, then high alert. “Bou?”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the gleaming curved blade with a hook on the back side for ripping flesh, tendon, and bone. My entire body shook, hard shivers racking up and down my spine. I could handle Rex. Hell, I could handle another rape—even what Celt had been through. But that man holding that fucking knife made my blood freeze in my veins and my teeth chatter.
Lynch didn’t say a word, rarely ever did. He just kept honing that nasty blade against the whetstone. My addled brain managed to wonder what he’d done to that whore at the fire.
Celt gnashed his teeth, bellowed a lion’s roar, and pulled against his bonds. “Get the fuck away from her, Lynch!”
Maybe my hopeful imagination, but did the bed give? Was that a creak I heard in the wood?
My brother still thrashed. “Me. If you gotta cut, fucking cut me!”
Lynch never flinched, never looked away from me, never stopped swiping the knife in long slow motions. His voice low and cool, he said, “Rex said your asshole belongs to him, but I can have fun with the rest.” He tilted his head sideways.
“Fucking NOOOOooooo!” Celt roared, the bed bumping the wall behind him.
I tried to curl into myself, still shaking so violently that the ropes around my ankles and wrists chafed. Tears rolled down my face as I felt myself trying helplessly to shrink away from the terror that pressed down on me.
Still, as if the room were as peaceful as a spa, Lynch said, “Give me a minute, love, while I tend to your brother.”
He seemed to move in slow motion as he turned toward the dresser and placed the knife onto its surface. He ran his hand over the blood-crusted baton Rex had used on Celt.
“No, no, no, fuck-ing, NO!” I yelled, railing against the ropes, the chair underneath me hopping forward and backward across the floor but not making progress. The trembling was gone, and I flushed with heat. Desperation pumped through my body with the need to keep my brother from more harm. “You goddamn bastard! Leave him the fuck alone! Leave us the fuck alone!”
I pushed upward. To my surprise, the chair lifted. Lynch flew back to me and pushed me down. The chair scooted backward, causing a wicked groan across the hard floor as it slammed up against the far wall and knocked the breath from my lungs.
“Now . . .” Lynch said, slowly stood, and straightened his shirt like he was preparing to go into the office for the day. Then he looked down at it as if remembering something he’d forgotten. His brows pulled together as he nodded. “Thanks for the little distraction, love. You reminded me that I should remove this before I ruin another shirt.”
I trembled so much the scene in the room quaked before my eyes. My reaction now, though, was more in reaction to the calm control in his voice than his physical presence. Lynch was a huge man with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. And though he wore jeans like the other riders, he always wore a crisp, tailored dress shirt. He started unbuttoning it.
“That wall should hold you while I wrap things up over here,” he said as he returned to the dresser.
Sliding out of his shirt, he hung it over the corner of the mirror on the dresser. White scarification covered his back. Lines and lines of intricate designs across his back, chest, and huge biceps showed that he could take just as much pain as he dished out. The inside of my mouth thickened to cotton, and I had to work my throat several times to gather enough saliva to get out more words. I hollered shit at him until my throat was raw. I tried again and again to get the chair’s legs off the floor, but with it wedged up against the wall, I couldn’t manage. Celt yelled too, but none of our words seemed to faze Lynch. No matter how much noise we made, none of the fuckers downstairs came to our rescue. If the people hadn’t left, it meant they just didn’t fucking care. For the AX3, I could see that, but I’d have thought that some of the Ridge rats might give two shits. Maybe I shouldn’t have expected so much, given how Cook turned on us without blinking twice.
That stung all over again, but it didn’t matter, couldn’t in that moment. I kept up a stream of pleas and threats, anything to try to get Lynch to back the fuck off. My protests only intensified as he brought the baton down on Celt’s already battered ribs.
Celt wailed in pain, and I echoed, hot tears rolling down my face. My screams grew hoarser and hoarser by the second.
With Celt incapacitated, Lynch untied his hands.
My brother curled into himself, groaning.
Lynch untied his feet. “I kinda like it when my opponent has a fighting chance,” he said.
“Bullshit!” I spat. “If that was true, you’d have untied him before you landed that goddamn blow to his ribs!”
Lynch moved backward slowly, almost prowling, as he waited for Celt to recover. Behind him, morning poured light through the window. Lynch’s flat eyes looked over at me. He shook his head with his mouth pressed tightly together as if he were disappointed in my words and tsked. “I do like them to fight back, love, but I’m not stupid. Had I untied him first, he would have had me at a disadvantage. He can recover now. Then I’ll take him down.”
Lynch cocked that half smile at me again. He was drooling for this fight. His particular perversion was the knife, as evidenced by the marks all over his body, but what he did to Celt? That was fucking foreplay.
Celt struggled out of bed and to his feet. I tensed just to watch how hard it was for him to move, his body still curled over. He gasped, trying to get his lungs to expand against the pain.
