Violent Things Read online

  After a long time, he rolls his head across his pillow so he can lay a kiss on my shoulder. “Merry Christmas, Dr. Romera,” he tells me, his voice husky from sleep.

  “Merry Christmas to you, too.” I wriggle backward, butt first, nestling into the curve of his body, and he lets out a sleep-filled groan.

  “You keep doing that and you’ll be having problems walking for the rest of the holidays.”

  “I have a few days off.” I bite my lip, trying to hide the smile from my voice. “Walking’s overrated anyway.”

  “Is that so?” He leans down and kisses me on my shoulder again, but this time he teases his teeth across my skin, biting me lightly. His arm snakes around my waist, taking hold of me. “Michael’s coming over this morning. I’m gonna call and tell him not to bother.”

  “Don’t you dare. It’s Christmas day and he stayed back in Seattle to help you with the gym. We’re his family here. He’s spending Christmas day with us.”

  Zeth grumbles inarticulate things into my neck. I think some of it might have something to do with Rebel being an asshole and not looking after his family. As Zeth’s hot breath skims over my skin, his hands are skimming other parts of my body. Quick, sure fingers travel down my stomach, over my hip, where he lightly teases them over my thigh and up in between my legs.

  “Spread them for me,” he growls, deep and low into my ear. I have no problem hearing him this time. I open my legs at his first request, not needing to be told more than once. Zeth makes a pleased sound of approval at the back of his throat. His hands continue on their journey around my body, this time taking a detour in between my thighs, upward, so his fingertips graze against the fine material of my panties. “Are you ready for your Christmas present, Sloane?”

  As if he needs to ask. My breathing’s already quickened, my pulse rate speeding away from me. I nod quickly, wrapping my hand around his forearm, willing him to just do it—to touch the hypersensitive point between my legs, where it feels like every single nerve ending in my body originates. “Depends what you’ve got for me,” I say. “And if you’re planning on making me beg for it.”

  Zeth is fully awake now. I can tell by the way his muscles have tensed, his body hardening against mine. All of it. I can feel the rigid pressure of his hard-on pressing up against my ass. “You’ll never have to beg me for what I’m about to give you, angry girl. Misbehave badly enough and you can have it whenever you want it. Wait here.”

  He springs out of bed, throwing the covers aside so that a blast of cold air hits my back. It’s chilly outside of our little cocoon of blankets, and I immediate miss his hot skin on me. He pads barefoot across the room, the muscles in his back shifting beautifully as he walks. His naked ass—he refuses to sleep in clothes, even though it’s the dead of winter—is the very definition of perfection. He laughs a wicked laugh as he pulls…as he pulls out his black duffel bag from the bottom of the wardrobe. My heart starts knocking against my ribcage like it’s trying to get out.

  “What are you doing?” I ask warily.

  When he turns around, Zeth is working his fist up and down his hard-on, grinning darkly. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  I don’t bother answering him. I push myself up in the bed, half considering leaping out of bed and making a break for it. I get like this—a thrill of adrenalin zips through my body every time I see that damn bag sitting there in the bottom of our wardrobe. I’m always either stopping myself from opening it up or stopping myself from running away.

  “Have you been a good girl this year, Sloane?” Zeth rumbles, stalking his way toward the bed. Toward me. “Or have you been…bad?”

  I cover my mouth with my fingers, holding my breath. “What’s the right answer here? I get the feeling there isn’t one.”

  A moderately sinister smile spreads across my boyfriend’s face. He’s reached the bed now. He’s lowering the bag down onto the foot of it, moving with calculated caution as he takes hold of the handle and slowly begins to unzip…

  “It doesn’t really matter,” he says. “You’re getting the same treatment either way. Close your eyes.”

  We play this game of chicken, where I pretend I’m braver than he thinks I am, and I do everything he asks me to first time. Today it’s much harder to comply, though. I’m a little perturbed by whatever he might be pulling out of that duffel this morning.

  “Sloane?” Zeth tips his head to one side, lifting an eyebrow. I close my eyes, my pulse throbbing in every part of my body as the bed dips and he climbs up onto it. “Open your mouth, angry girl,” he whispers.

  I do it. I can taste the saltiness of him as he teases the very tip of his cock over my lips. Over the tip of my tongue. This…this is something I can handle quite happily. I duck my head forward, ready to take all of him into my mouth, but Zeth grabs a handful of my hair and jerks me back.

  “Ah ah ah. You haven’t earned that yet.”

  “Fucking—” I bite back the urge to call him something bad.

  Zeth stoops down over me, pulling at my lower lip with his teeth. “Such a dirty mouth.”

  There are a million comments I could come back with here, but I know him. He’s in a playful mood and I don’t want to rile him. I gasp, flinching against the delicious pain of his teeth pulling at my flesh, his hand pulling at my hair.

  He draws back a second later, and then I feel the cold, hard sting of steel against the skin of my wrists. Handcuffs. Zeth cuffs my hands over my head, making appreciative noises as the covers fall away from my body to reveal my naked breasts. The cold doesn’t seem to matter anymore. All that matters is what Zeth pulls out of that bag next.

  He doesn’t make me wait long. The rest of the covers are ripped from the bed, and then it’s just me cuffed to the headboard, vulnerable and on show, while he positions himself over me. “You want this, angry girl?” he whispers, his breath hot and fast against my cheek.

  I nod, my head swimming with the need to open my eyes. That’s part of the game, though. If I open them, I’ve disobeyed him. If I resist and keep them closed, I’ve done as I’m told.

  These days, half the game is waiting to find out whether I’m going to be receiving pain or pleasure. I’ve given up pretending that I prefer the later. I’m always torn between the two, wanting the delirium of the pleasure washing over me, but also the furious sting of the pain lighting my body up and making me come alive. It’s almost as though I can’t have one without the other these days.

  I nearly jump out of my skin when Zeth presses something cool and hard against the inside of my leg. “I need you on your front,” he tells me. “Be a good girl and get up onto your knees. Now.”

  I spin over, my wrists twinging a little as the cuffs dig into my skin.

  “Good. Now spread those legs for me. And bend over.”

  Heat flushes up through me, half embarrassment, half anticipation. I have absolutely no reason to be embarrassed anymore. Zeth’s explored every single part of my body from every single angle possible, but exposing myself to him like this is always a little confronting. He hums as he places his hands on my ass and lowers himself, ducking down so he can run his tongue over the very center of me, licking my pussy.

  “So. Fucking. Sweet,” he growls.

  He loves going down on me, has done since our very first encounter. My body is shaking with the tense pleasure of his tongue working over me by the time he decides I’ve had enough. He straightens himself up and leans into me, resting his cock against my ass cheeks.

  “Still got those eyes closed, angry girl?” he rumbles into my ear.

  “Yes,” I pant.

  “Good girl. Such a good girl.” He’s moving, then, sliding something chilled and solid up the inside of my leg again. It starts to vibrate as he pushes it against the entrance of my pussy. “Get ready,” he tells me. “This is gonna feel very…full.”

  He slides whatever he has in his hand—a vibrator, must be—further, further, further inside me until the hilt of it is pressing up a
gainst my clit. The intensity of the vibrations increases, sending a shockwave of pleasure rippling over my skin.

  “Oh…my…god.”

  “We’re not finished yet,” Zeth says. I understand immediately after what he has planned. He thrusts his hips against my ass, the tip of his cock sliding down between my ass cheeks, and I draw in a sharp, nervous breath. I haven’t done this before. Not with something already inside me.

  “Trust me?” Zeth asks, pushing a little harder.

  I try to slow the thunder of my heart, utterly conflicted by the rolling beginnings of the orgasm building low inside me, and the prospect of how I will cope with what he’s about to do. “Yeah. Yes, I trust you.” I exhale, trying to prepare myself.

  A deep breath is not enough, though. The burning heat of the pain that lances through me when Zeth pushes slowly into my ass is overwhelming. I grab onto the headboard, handcuffs digging deep into my skin, and I brace myself against the all-consuming sensation. He’s not even close to being all the way inside me when he stops, leaning around my body to work the vibrator inside my pussy, his other hand working my clit.

  “Relax. Breathe, Sloane.” He kisses my shoulder, licking at my skin, growling as I tighten and tense around him. “You say when. You’re in control.”

  I don’t feel very in control in my current position, tied to the bed and impaled on his cock, but I know he’s not lying to me. I may not feel in control, but I can make this stop at any moment. I can just say the word and it will be over. But…but I don’t want it to be over.

  Because underneath the pain and the burning heat…it feels good.

  “Slowly,” I whisper. “Just…go slow.”

  So he does. Millimeter by millimeter, Zeth carefully begins to rock against me, easing himself inside. With each and every minute movement of his body against mine, my muscles lose their tension. It’s not long before I’m moving with him, tilting my hips back, testing out the boundaries of what I can take here.

  “Fuck. You’re so fucking perfect,” Zeth groans. “This is killing me. I just wanna fuck you so hard. Bury my dick inside you ’til my balls are slapping that tight ass of yours.”

  “Then…then do it.” I know I’m going to be living on a knife-edge, regretting and glorying in those words as soon as they’ve left my mouth, but I still say them.

  Zeth lets out a carnal, inarticulate sound as he draws himself out of me and then thrusts back inside. He’s shaking, his body vibrating against me as he fucks me. I never thought it would be possible to come like this, but I can feel it building inside me even now. The small pulses of pleasure shooting through me because of the vibrator are intensified a hundredfold by the sound of Zeth’s own pleasure firing through him. It pushes me over the edge.

  My arms and legs pull in as my orgasm rips through me like a bullet out of a gun. Zeth’s fingers dig into my ass, fingernails breaking the skin, as he climaxes at the same time. I can feel him pulsing inside me, filling me, claiming me as his.

  Neither of us can breathe, speak, move when it’s over. Zeth presses his forehead into my back, fighting to fill his lungs, until I can’t bear him inside me anymore and I twist away. I slump down onto the bed, my hands still held up over my head, and Zeth works to free me.

  “You think the neighbors heard?” he asks breathlessly.

  “Buddy, if I had any neighbors, they’d have called the police on your ass a long time ago.” My body feels thoroughly stretched and sore in the best kind of way. I collapse on top of him, my head on his chest, my hand over his heart—it’s still galloping inside his ribcage.

  “You’re gonna have a heart attack one of these days,” I muse.

  Zeth laughs, stroking one hand up and down my sweat-slick back. “If I do, don’t resuscitate me, angry girl. That would be the best fucking way to die.”

  Chapter Three

  Zeth

  Three Weeks Later

  For the first time in my living memory, Christmas didn’t suck major ass this year. And now that New Years’ is long gone and everyone’s quit singing Silent Night, things are finally getting into a routine. A fucking routine. Sounds so stupid, and yet here I am. My favorite part of this routine, after hanging out with Sloane and all that entails, is working at the gym.

  If there’s one thing I know how to do in this life, it’s how to knock someone the fuck out. Michael reels backward as I hammer my fist into his face, blood exploding from his mouth. Pain sings out in my right hand—my knuckles were split open about seven minutes ago. Now they’re a royal fucking mess.

  My boy rights himself, swiping his blood from his lips, giving me the kind of dark, shitty look I normally reserve for the spineless motherfuckers who come in here trying to spar with me on a Friday night. The t-shirt fillers, wanting to bulk up before they go out on the weekend to impress the women. Wanting to feel like proper badasses by taking down the owner of the gym.

  Pity for them I don’t go down easy. Or ever, really. I’m betting it’s hard for them to feel very masculine with the busted-up noses and the black eyes I hand out, either. Serves them right.

  “You call that a hook?” Michael spits blood onto the ground, flexing out his own hands. His white wife beater is stained with his blood and mine, kind of like some weird hippy Rorschach tie-dye. All I see in the patterns our blood makes is guns and explosions. Make of that what you will.

  “I nearly put you on your ass, motherfucker,” I growl at him. If he’s trying to bait me, he won’t need to do much to succeed tonight. I haven’t fucked Sloane in two days. She’s been working nights at the hospital and I’ve been training early. It’s left zero time for me to drive her crazy, or for me to expel some of my pent-up tension. Since I’m no longer working for a gang lord, the extra energy that would have been burned up by the adrenalin firing through my veins as I sped through the streets of Seattle on whatever dark and dangerous mission I’d been commissioned with now sits dormant in the pit of my stomach, gathering momentum. It explodes out of me in these matches I hold with Michael, or any other asshole dumb enough to verse me. Owning a fighting gym, I’m not exactly in short supply of those.

  “You look tired. You wanna call it quits?” Michael asks, and even as he says this he’s laughing. He knows what his words will do to me.

  “Tired?” I clench my hands into fists, lowering my cantering of gravity before putting my guard up and stalking forward. “I don’t get tired when it counts, Michael.”

  “And when does it count?” he laughs, putting up his own fists, rocking from side to side on the balls of his feet. Michael may not be able to hit quite as hard as me, but the guy’s quick on his feet. He snaps out punches faster than lightning.

  “When I’m fighting and when I’m fucking, of course,” I tell him. “Not that you’d know anything about the last part. When was the last time you got laid again?” I feint to the left, bringing home a nasty uppercut with my right hand. It connects with his side, right in the ribcage. His breath wheezes out of him, but his guard stays up. Whoever taught him to fight taught him well.

  Yeah, that would be me.

  “I got laid last night, boss.” Out comes his left fist in a jab. It makes contact with my jaw, snapping my head around. Fucking hurts, but I grin at him. I know my teeth are stained red with blood—I can taste it on my tongue, the copper lighting up my senses. I’m vaguely aware that I must look like some kind of monster.

  “Bullshit,” I say. “If you used your dick last night, you wouldn’t be fighting like such a fucking pussy.”

  We circle one another, both looking for an in.

  “If I’m fighting like a pussy, then I dread to think what kind of pussy you’ve been getting.”

  I immediately stop, freezing to the spot. I straighten up, letting my hands drop to my side out of guard. Tipping my head to one side, I shake it at the same time, pinning him in my unblinking gaze. My boy stills himself too, realization dawning on his face. He knows what he’s said. And I can clearly see that he wishes he could take i
t back.

  “Fuck, man, I’m sorry. I guess I’m just not used to you having a partner.”

  I give him a dark look.

  A girlfriend?”

  I growl, low and deep in my throat.

  “A mistress? Fuck, man, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. You know I love Sloane.”

  “You’re not helping.”

  Michael holds up his hands. I can see the smile begging to spread across his face, but he’s smart enough not to let it happen. “You know what I mean, Zee. I love her like a sister. A white, super tall, ridiculously attractive sister.”

  I go for him, charging across the ring, ready to pick his ass up and slam it down onto the boards. Michael barks out a single ha! of laughter before my body slams into his, driving him backward. We’re on the ropes then, and I’m raining down strikes to his torso while he shields his head with his arms. I can still hear him laughing. The bastard is as crazy as me.

  “You wanna take that back?”

  “Yes! Yeah—ah—fuck!” Michael gasps in between his laughter. “Jesus, man!”

  I stop, stepping back, my chest hitching, my breathing fast as I playfully thump him on the arm. “No one gets to talk shit about my girl, Michael. Not even you.”

  “I think I’ve got three broken ribs that will attest to that,” he says, pulling himself upright. He knows I’m mostly joking. Mostly. I wasn’t hitting him anywhere near as hard as I could have, but I know a few of those punches must have rung his bell a little. I smirk at him, assessing how fucked he looks. I’m too busy admiring my handiwork to see the intent in his eyes, before he launches at me with a barrage of his own punches. I can do nothing but duck and shield while he lands a succession of powerful hits to my arms, shoulders, ribcage and the side of my head.

  It’s not long before I’m laughing, too. The sound must throw Michael—laughter is a relatively new development for me, after all—because he eases back a little. Big mistake. I take the opportunity to go for him again, this time for his legs. I land a solid front kick, right in his stomach. He goes down with a strangled ufff, and then I’m straddling him in mount, smashing my fists into him again.