Husband.
She’s got balls, I’ll give her that.
I change tactics and step toward her. I stink to high heaven. My mouth tastes of garbage, and blood is leaking from my hand like a sieve. Oh well, too bad for her. Herhusbandcreated this mess. My disgusting condition is her new problem.
But this is Gomorrah, and here, womenwantto slum it with trash. To get dirty with an animal. Jamie came for a monster, and that’s what I’ll give her.
Before she can stop me, I unravel her tidy hair and bury my undamaged hand in the silky brown strands. I try not to notice it softness or how good it smells, but I’m only human, and this is friggin’ Jamie. She hisses in a breath between clenched teeth when I grind against her and tries to look away, but I clench my fist and force her to meet my eyes.
“I’ve tasted your kiss for years. Thought of all the filthy things I would do to your body when you came home. I wanted to be the first guy to fuck you. The first one to make you happy. We would have been good together, Jamie. But you never came back. Nah, you trashed it down here in Florida.” I lean in close to her ear and flick my tongue over the delicate shell. Inhale the honeysuckle aroma clinging to her creamy skin. “Too bad you turned out to be an epic disappointment.”
She tries to shove me away, but that’s not happening. “Wraith, please don’t do this.”
I run the first knuckle of one of my busted fingers down her smooth cheek, leaving a line of blood in its wake. “No worries, you cold bitch. I wouldn’t fuck you now if I were dying and your pussy could save my life.” And then I think of an ideal way to crack her composure. “Doesn’t mean I won’t take a blow job. A mouth’s a mouth.”
Christ, I’ve never been more wrong about anything,ever.
Jamie’s so light, all it takes is one hand to push her to her knees. When I line up her face with my crotch, that’s as far as this fiasco goes. Her fist…elbow, who the fuck knows…connects with my balls and sends me reeling backward. I cup my nuts and cradle my ruined hand to my chest as a river of bile flows up my throat. Waves of agony ripple out from my groin, and I double over, choking down the vomit. Not sure if ket’s amplifying the pain, or if she just managed a prime shot. Doesn’t matter, really, because pain is pain, and currently, I’m feeling a whole lot of it.
I let out a crazy laugh and wag my finger at her as I gasp for air. “Got the boys good, runt.”
“Don’t you dare call me that.” She’s hellfire and brimstone as she wipes my blood off her cheek. “You’re lucky I didn’t bite it off.”
There’s a lesson to be learned. Don’t underestimate Jamie Ellis—yeah, no,I’ll cut off my tongue before I call her Jamie Crane.
Once I’m able to breathe, I straighten and swipe my hair out of my eyes. “Why him, Jamie?”
I can’t stop the question when it tumbles out of my mouth.
Chilling composure extinguishes her fire. “Because I was homeless and hungry, and David offered me a chance at a better life.”
His name on her lips kills me.
“You should have come home.” Desperation, I understand. Shit, I’m there now. Desperate for freedom and revenge. Doesn’t mean I’m willing to be diplomatic. Not when she’s wearing Crane’s fucking wedding band on her finger.
Her constrained anger is there in the flare of her nostrils and the clench of her jaw. “Mayhem was never my home.”
“It’s where you belonged.”
“No, it’s whereyoubelong.” She glances at the steel door. “What’s done is done, Eri…Wraith. I can’t turn back the clock and make different choices. And honestly? We have a more pressing issue than the mistakes I made as a teenager.”
“What about the mistake you made when you married that piece of shit?”
“I didn’t know he was a piece of shit when I married him.” After a glance at the rock of an engagement ring, she spins it around, as if hiding it makes her marriage less real. “We met once while I was living with my aunt. I was surprised he even remembered me when he saw me years later in Orlando.”
“You make an impression.” I hear the bitterness in my voice, but I don’t give a shit.
“He got me off the street and gave me a new life. You’d have done the same thing if you’d been in my position.”
I lift a brow at her remark even though the action pulls at the cut on my forehead. “Hate to break it to you, but Crane could have offered me the moon, and I wouldn’t have married him.”
“Not funny.” Do I see the ghost of a smile lift her pretty lips? If I did, they flatten back into a humorless line real fast. “He told me the fighters are here by choice.”
Can’t help my bitter laugh at that bit of bullshit. “And you believed him because Crane’s such a fine, upstanding citizen.”
“I believed him because he never gave me a reason not to. And given what goes on in Mayhem, is it such a stretch for me to accept that people willingly put themselves in the cage?” She gestures to me. “Take you, for example. You’re brutal in the ring. So, you can hate me all you want, but I genuinely thought the men are here on their own volition.”
I reluctantly concede she has a legit argument. We go hard in Mayhem, but it’s consensual. And yeah, when Crane grabbed me, I was making a name for myself in the local underground mixed martial arts circuit where pretty much anything goes. It’s why he targeted me, or so he said. Who the hell knows if that’s even his true motive.
