Total pages in book: 174
Estimated words: 159159 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 796(@200wpm)___ 637(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159159 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 796(@200wpm)___ 637(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
Richie began to gag. His stomach heaved and he began vomiting. Savage grabbed the back of his chair and dragged him over to where the second tarp was laid out. He kicked the chair over, stood behind him and cut his throat.
“Fuckin’ pussy,” he snapped. “What a mess.” He stood up, holding up his arm. “I’m showering first.” He started to walk away and then turned back. “I was ten years old the first time they burned the fuck out of me, and I didn’t even piss my pants, but I cried like a fuckin’ baby. Got the shit kicked out of me for it too. Second time I was fourteen and I never made a sound.” He stomped off.
Ice was well aware Savage had been burned more than once. He was a twisted son of a bitch thanks to their schooling and the instructors who loved to torture children. None of them were supposed to survive, and out of two hundred and eighty-seven, only eighteen had. They’d banded together, working on strengthening their psychic and physical assets, and had begun to kill off those assaulting them. They had just been children, with no guidance other than Czar, a child himself, and they’d made their own rules and lived by their own code, relying completely on one another. They were still doing it.
Maestro and Ice finished rolling up the two bodies, and they washed off in the deep sink at one end of the room, then peeled off their gloves to add them to the burn pile.
“What made you do it, Ice? Can’t be because she knows how to suck dick,” Maestro said. He sat on the table eating an apple as they waited to use the shower.
“You mean marrying Soleil?” Ice knew exactly what he meant. “Had to.”
“You knock her up when you gave her an orgasm? Hottest thing I’ve seen in a long while, by the way. Your woman is fuckin’ gorgeous.”
“She is, isn’t she? And hot as hell.” Ice knew Maestro was looking for something to hang on to. They all were. They were drowning, trying to fit into a world they didn’t understand. The rules didn’t make sense. They’d been raised on violence. It wasn’t like they could just stop what was second nature—no, make that first.
Ice tried to explain. “She makes my cock hard as a fuckin’ rock. Titanium. I look at her and I’m there. I don’t have to have three women suckin’ my dick, one after another, while I tell the damn thing to cooperate. I’m not thinking, Maestro. I’m just feeling. It’s terrifying, but holy fuck, I never felt anything like that in my life. I’m not giving that up.”
“A lifetime is a long time,” Maestro pointed out. “What if you can’t live with her? What if every time she opens her mouth you want to strangle her?”
“I’ll shove my cock down her throat and then she’ll be nice and quiet,” Ice said with a little smirk. The smile faded. It was get-real time. “She got rid of them.”
Maestro raised an eyebrow. “Rid of what?”
Ice leaned against the wall and drank down the rest of his water. “Wanted to blow my fuckin’ head off, Maestro. Every hour of every day. Demons were eating me alive. Couldn’t stop the memories anymore, and they got inside my head and ate their way to my gut. Nothing I tried helped. Lately, I even thought about forcing the cops to do me, but . . .” He shook his head. “The nightmares were getting so bad sometimes I couldn’t always tell reality from my past. I was really afraid of hurting someone. I stopped going to Czar and Blythe’s house so often because I didn’t trust myself.”
He watched Maestro’s face. The man didn’t blink but continued watching him.
“You know what I need a lot of the time to even contemplate having sex. We’re all fucked the hell up. Not one of us is what would be considered normal.” He glanced at the door Savage had disappeared behind. “He’s the worst of us. How the hell is he going to find someone who’d take him on? Or you? Or me?”
“You just got married, brother.”
Ice reached for her. She was inside him, wrapped tightly around his organs. His heart. Maybe his damn soul if he had one. He let himself smile. She was there. She wasn’t going anyplace. “She took the demons away. All of them. I didn’t feel a fuckin’ thing but good. Paradise, man. She let me do whatever I needed. She didn’t flinch when she realized she’d had her first orgasm in a bar in front of my club. And when her mouth was around my cock and I was so close and needed her to keep going, that bitch coming to look down on her because she was fuckin’ jealous, Soleil kept going instead of quitting. She took me all the way. All the fuckin’ way, Maestro. It was a thing of beauty. Never thought I could have it all, but she makes me believe it’s possible.”