Riot (Bad Boy Escorts #1) Read online

  He starts sharpening his claws on my pants. I let him. Why should only humans abuse me? Let cats have their time of day, too.

  And what do you know, pain lulls me to sleep, apparently. What does that tell you about me? Next thing I know, Pax is sitting beside me, stroking hair out of my face and Dex is gone.

  Was he even here?

  “Kitty’s in the kitchen, eating,” Pax tells me with a grin, and I frown as the words sink in.

  “Traitor,” I mutter, my voice rusty. “He was bought with food.”

  “I think he likes me.”

  “Then he has good taste.” I smile back at her, my head a little clearer now.

  “Speaking of food…” She nods toward the kitchen. “Would you like to eat something?”

  My stomach does that growling thing again, and despite everything, heat rises up my neck. “Sure. Though I have no fucking clue what you found to cook in there.”

  “Oh, you had a few things. Rice and mushroom sauce and jalapenos and canned sausages.” She scrunches up her nose. “Corey would be horrified, but he’s a purist. I’d go out and get you some fresh food, though.”

  “No.” I grab her hand. “You don’t walk out of here in the night. Told you, it could be dangerous.”

  She nods. “Then you’ll be subjected to my culinary experiment of the day. No choice. You may regret it.”

  “I’ll never regret any of this. Or you. Never.” Her eyes widen, and I’d have beaten myself over the head for stupidly spilling all that’s been knocking around inside my head these past few weeks, but hey. I’m already beaten to hell and back. Plus, I’m drunk, so here goes. “I love you, Pax.”

  With all my selfish, stupid heart. For as long as you stay.

  ***

  The soup is so good I almost choke on it, I’m swallowing it down so fast. Didn’t realize I was so hungry. When she ladles more into my bowl, I make quick work of it, and then lean back in my chair, full and half-asleep already.

  “Sorry,” I mumble, rubbing at my eyes, then groaning when pain jolts through one side of my face.

  “Why sorry? Let me help you get clean and into bed.”

  As if I’m a little kid, or...or her boyfriend.

  She didn’t say a word when I told her I loved her. Not a fucking word. I guess there’s my answer.

  What did you expect, Riot? She knows so little about you and already she can’t love you back. Not with your past. Not with the job you’re doing.

  Fuck.

  “What’s wrong?” She’s standing in front of me and I jerk back.

  Jesus. This goddamn time-jumping has to stop. “Nothing. Really. Let’s go.”

  I have to steady myself on the table to get up because the bruises on my back somehow make my leg ache—an old injury, from my fighting days. Plus, my eye is swollen almost shut and that throws off my balance.

  She’s patient. Sweet. Wraps her arm around my waist, steadies me, and leads me to the bathroom.

  “Sorry, no tub here.” I let her put me down on the closed toilet lid like a déjà vu and sniff at myself.

  Fuck, I stink. I’m still in the clothes I wore when I was attacked, and my T-shirt is stained with the blood that dripped from my split lip.

  She comes back, kneels between my legs, and starts undressing me. Gently she tugs the T-shirt over my head, and I hiss when the act of lifting my arms sends pain slicing through my side. She tugs down my pants and briefs, tosses them into a corner.

  Then she straightens and pulls off her sweater, her tank top, her bra. Her skirt, her panties, her boots and socks. I watch it all, my mouth dry with want. Her touch, the sight of her naked body should have me hard by now but I’m too wiped out and in pain for that.

  In fact, it feels a little dream-like when she pulls on my hands, trying to get me on my feet, and I end up planting a hand on the wall to push myself up. She turns on the shower and leads me under the spray, and there’s a halo around her head.

  I blink, trying to clear my eyes.

  “Here.” She makes me turn toward the wall and put my hands on the tiles. “Stay like this.”

  “Pax—”

  She plants a kiss between my shoulder blades, sending a shudder through my body. “Trust me?”

  “Fuck, I do. Always.”

  She makes a small sound I can’t decipher, not without seeing her face, then she moves the showerhead and the spray beats on us, warm.

  When it hits the bruises in my back and others I didn’t realize I had on my shoulders and arms, I moan between my teeth.

  “Stop fighting back,” I hear Elliot’s voice in my head right before his boot connects with my ribs where I’m lying in the street, Oliver holding me down. “Learn to take it like a good little bitch. That’s how I want you to take it when you fight the Crusher. Let him beat the shit out of you, fuck you up, like he did to—”

  “Is it too hot?” Pax asks. She glides her hand over my back. “Riot?”

  I fold one arm against the tiles, rest my forehead on it. “’S fine.”

  No matter how hot the water is, I doubt it’ll seep deep enough into me to thaw the ice in my bones. I have five days. Five days before they come for me again and demand I fight.

  Or rather that I lie down and take it until I’m as surely dead as Markus is.

  Shit.

  “Tell me if I press too hard,” she says, swiping her hands over my back. I don’t own sponges, or a bathtub, or a fancy apartment.

  As if I need to remember any more differences between us, any more reasons for which we could never be together.

  Her hands move in light circles over my back and up my neck. They vanish, then return, massaging shampoo into my hair. She must be standing on tiptoe to be able to do that, and I risk a glance under my arm.

  Can’t see a thing, and the shampoo gets in my eyes, stinging. Then the water washes the shampoo off and God, it feels good.

  Even better when she spreads soap down my back, over my ass, down my legs. I chew on my lip not to groan in pleasure when she kneads the muscles in my thighs. Heat is pooling behind my balls.

  Guess I can get hard after all. When it comes to Pax, all bets are off.

  And then she’s tugging on my hip, to make me turn around.

  Oh fuck.

  I turn, because I can’t hide, and why would I want to hide I’m fucking hard for her? Her eyes widen when she takes in the steel pole that is my dick, pointing up at her, the piercings glinting, then she reaches for it and runs her hand up its length, toys with the balls at the ends of the barbells.

  “Goddamn.” My body is a live wire. Just one touch on my cock and I’m ready to go off.

  “Lean against the wall,” she whispers, gives me a light shove until my upper back is pressed to the tiles. I hope she’ll keep touching me, but she squirts more of my cinnamon shower gel into her hands and starts washing my chest and arms. My breath catches when her hands approach my crotch, but she washes around it, moving down my legs, stroking down my shins to my feet.

  Then gets more soap and starts washing my hands, pressing between my fingers, on my palms. And still jolts of pleasure go through me with every small caress. Her tits sway in front of me, and I’m dying to lick her dark nipples, suck on them.

  Press her to the wall and sink inside her, fuck her until we both lose control.

  Christ, she’s touching me everywhere but where I’d kill for her to touch me. My dick bobs, stretched to its full length, aching, diamond-hard. My blood’s on fire.

  Her palms skim down my sides, her hands fasten on my hips. Still not touching my dick.

  “All clean now,” she says, and when she looks up at me, her mouth tips up into a teasing smile.

  “Yeah,” I manage between gritting teeth. Is she doing it on purpose, to show me she’s pissed with me no matter what she says, or is—?

  Her hands are suddenly on my dick, squeezing, and I knock my head back against the wall, gasping her name.

  “Looks like you might need some help wi
th this,” she says, laughter in her voice, as I blink the stars from my eyes.

  “Inside you,” I say hoarsely, and when she nods, I push her until her back meets the shower door. “Fuck, I thought I’d never do this again with you.”

  She starts to say something and I crush my mouth to hers, swallowing her words. My split lip burns but I barely feel it as she opens her lips and lets me in.

  Her taste hits me like a drug, straight to the vein, lighting up every nerve ending I own. Our bodies align, and her leg curls around my calf. I grab it, lift it higher. My cock teases her entrance and she gasps.

  I know I have to touch her first, get her ready. Between the pain flaring in my ribs with every movement and the burning need to come, my brain is a blank.

  Breaking the kiss, I press my forehead to hers, trying to ignore my body and focus. Focus on her, because she comes first, always.

  “What’s the matter?” She runs her hands over my cheeks, my jaw, my neck. “Are you in pain?”

  “It hurts,” I grind out, “how much I fucking want you.”

  She lets out a breathless laugh. “Then what are you waiting for?”

  I pull back, stare into her pretty eyes. “But you...I haven’t even touched you yet.”

  “But I’ve been touching you. What do you think that does to a girl?” She winks, and oh fuck, I think I’m falling in love all over again.

  I kiss her again, taking it slow this time, exploring her mouth, one hand resting beside her on the wall, the other tracing her curves, from the softness of her breast to the dip of her waist and the flare of her hip, her thigh, her pussy.

  She moans when I stroke her, parting her folds, finding her small, hard clit and flicking my finger over it. Her body is trembling where it’s pressed to mine, and when I stroke lower, into her, she’s slick with arousal.

  “It’s true,” I whisper, panting with need. “You’re wet for me.”

  “I’m yours,” she whispers back and fuck, that’s what I’ve been dying to hear from her and now she’s said it I’m sure she doesn’t mean it. Not with my fingers deep inside her clenching pussy, pumping in and out.

  I don’t wanna think anymore. Doubt, fear, worry about tomorrow. She’s with me right here, right now, and I can’t wait a second longer.

  Pulling out my fingers, I grab my cock and guide it into her. I slip into her heat and a buzzing fills my ears. Sparks race up and down my spine. Her hand slips into mine and I lift it, pressing it to the wall over her head as I push deeper into her pussy.

  We both shudder. I nip at her mouth as she mewls her pleasure, her hips rocking in small circles.

  Holy fuck, I’m about to burst, my gut tightening so hard I wheeze.

  “Pax…” I breathe. “Pax…”

  In reply she slips her free hand round my back, lifts her leg higher around my thigh and takes me deeper. Before I can process the ratcheting up of pleasure, of pressure, she grabs a handful of my ass and hauls me against her. Her mouth seeks mine and we kiss, a hungry, desperate clash of tongues and lips and teeth.

  She’s a vise around my cock, pressing in, tightening, rippling. She’s coming, her hand curling into a fist where I’m holding it against the wall.

  The pressure breaks. My balls lift. My dick pulses in huge spasms that never seem to end, and I spill inside her, my hips jerking. Feels like every orgasm I’ve had in my life before her was a ghost, a pale reflection of this. As if I wasn’t living before. As if I’m dissolving into her, melding with her.

  I have to tell her. Everything. Come what may.

  How can I not when she’s a part of me?

  ***

  Our limbs tangled together on my bed, her head on my shoulder and my arms around her, I tell her.

  “I fought for the Hellfire Fighters since I turned sixteen. I was in local fights at first, and my cut when I won helped pay the bills after my foster mom got diagnosed with cancer and stopped working. It was that or go back into the system and there was no fucking way I was doing that.”

  A shiver grips me, and she curls closer, stroking my bare chest. She says nothing, and that’s good because then I might lose my nerve and shut up.

  “She passed quickly, once they knew what it was. Far too soon. Goddamn cancer.” I stop, draw a sharp breath. My throat clogs for a moment, when I remember my foster mom. She was kind. The kindest person I’d ever met—until Pax. “At least she didn’t suffer for long. That’s what everyone kept telling me.”

  As if that helps with the crushing sorrow. Pax kisses the hollow of my throat, my collarbone. “I’m sorry.”

  Yeah. So many years ago and the pain is still fresh.

  “I was eighteen when she passed. Just barely. The fight club was my only family after that. For five years I trained and fought. It was my whole life. I won some fights, lost some. Won, mainly. Those were good times. I had friends. Markus. He was my best friend. Son of one of the bosses, he and I hit it off right away. We grilled on weekends, sometimes with the other guys from the club. We trained together, went out for drinks. Met his family, his girlfriend, his baby son.”

  “Sounds like a great guy.”

  The pressure in my chest becomes too fucking much and I shift, rolling onto my side, so that we’re face to face, our noses almost touching.

  “I had some real good fights, won some money. Started thinking if there was more in life. Never had the time or the money to imagine it before. Something like leaving the fight club was never in the cards, not when the next fight was where the money for food and rent and the bills would come from. And then came a bad fight. Like, real bad.”

  She places a feather-light kiss on my chin. “Why?”

  “A new fighter came from Boston. The Bone Crusher, they call him. Clay the Bone Crusher.”

  Her eyes widen. “You serious?”

  “It’s his nickname in the ring.”

  “Do you have one?”

  I roll one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Never needed one. Riot is as good as a nickname.”

  She kisses my cheek, smiles against my skin. “So you fought The Bone Crusher.”

  “I did. He beat me up so badly I thought I was gonna die in the ring. Got a concussion so bad I was passed out for an hour.”

  “Oh God.” She’s not smiling anymore.

  “It’s a dangerous profession. I knew it from the start, but it never sinks in until you wake up in a hospital bed and are told you may have damaged your brain. Until the shit happens to you, you know?” I close my eyes when she kisses the tip of my nose. “Decided to leave the underground fight scene, then. After I walked out of that hospital, after the doctors told me I should avoid any more hits to the head and realized I could be dead by the time I turned twenty-five, well...I told the boss I wanted out.”

  She waits patiently for me to go on, but the words stick in my throat. The memories flutter around me like great black wings, taking away the light for a long moment.

  “The boss said hell no, I couldn’t walk out. That he’d taken a fucking chance on me, and I had to pay back what he invested in me. Motherfucker.” I bite back a couple of more choice swearwords. “Anyway, I refused to fight. Missed my next match. And the one after. The boss was livid. He couldn’t keep canceling fights, he was losing bucks. A big match was coming up. It was my turn to fight the Bone Crusher. I flat-out refused and walked out of the club.”

  “That’s good,” she says, her voice soft like velvet. “I’m glad you did.”

  “It wasn’t good,” I mutter. “It was selfish of me, and stupid. I never thought…” Her lips find my cheek again and my breath leaves my lungs in a whoosh. “Never thought they’d make another fight in my place.”

  “Who?” she asks, but then she pulls back and looks into my eyes. “Markus.”

  “Yeah. Markus. Because we were friends. The boss wanted to punish me. And he did. Although Markus didn’t want to do it. The boss made him. Said it was fight or leave with me.”

  Her eyes look huge in her pale face. Her p
retty mouth is downturned. “I’m not going to like what happened, right? Did Markus make it out of the fight alive?”

  I shake my head. If I speak, my voice will crack right through.

  “Oh crap, I’m so sorry…” She snuggles closer, throws an arm around me and buries her nose in my neck. “So sorry.”

  Me too. So fucking sorry.

  “It was my fault.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” She doesn’t move, so her voice is muffled against my skin, and her breath is warm. “Not your fault. You were right to want to leave.”

  “I got Markus killed.”

  This time she does draw back. “It wasn’t you, Riot. That was your boss. That was your world. But not you. You have to trust me on that.”

  I stare at her. She really believes that. It doesn’t make my burden any lighter, but for the first time in two years, I feel like I can breathe again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Paxtyn

  God, he breaks my heart. He lost his best friend and thinks it’s his fault. I don’t know if it’s because he’s in pain or is still drunk, but he can’t hide the sorrow in his eyes when he talks about Markus, or his foster mom.

  And throughout his story he sounds so...alone. In the world. Like he lost the only family he had and since then has accepted he won’t find another.

  We stay like that, curled together, and after a while I think maybe he’s fallen asleep. I wince when I look at his bruised face, realizing he hasn’t told me why he was beaten up.

  Give him time, Pax. He’s already told you a lot more than in these past weeks combined. Things that were hard for him to say.

  Then he blinks. He’s awake. “I don’t want you making any appointments with me,” he says, and I frown.

  “But Riot—”

  “Please, Pax.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut, and curl in tighter in myself. “If you don’t want to see me again, just say it.”

  “Dammit, that’s not what I mean.” He grips my chin, lifts my face. “Call me, but not through the agency. I can’t take any more money from you. You’re not a client.”