Read Taken by Two Online

Authors: Sam J. D. Hunt

Tags: #Gay & Lesbian, #Literature & Fiction, #Erotica, #Gay, #Action & Adventure, #Lgbt, #Bisexual, #Romantic Erotica

Taken by Two (10 page)

BOOK: Taken by Two
13.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

He knocked on the heavy metal door, and when a large man answered, he gave a password and we were allowed in. The place was hot—hot, wet, and reeked of sweat. I had to cover my nose to avoid vomiting. Nate pointed to a folding metal chair at the side of an elevated boxing ring surrounded by a metal wire fence. “Wait there,” he instructed.

Nate walked over and talked to a skinny man who seemed to be in charge, who pointed to another man about Nate’s size who was working out on a shredded punching bag hung from the ceiling with a chain. Nate nodded, and began to undress. My hand was still over my nose—the stench of the place causing the cream from the fruit salad in my stomach to churn.

A group of men, most dressed like cowboys and smoking cigarettes, gathered around the ring where Nate, stripped down to a pair of white boxer-briefs, and the other man, in a dingy pair of briefs that appeared to not have been washed in decades, prepared for their fight.

The men placed their bets with a smoking man at a cash window, and stood around the ring. Nate and the man began to box, bare fisted, which quickly turned to kicking as well in some sort of mixed martial arts type sport. The man, who the spectators called Tito, got a good kick into Nate’s face, and his nose bled as they continued to fight. The sight of bright red blood flowing down Nate’s perfectly chiseled face upset me, and I worried about our safety as the men became louder and more aggressive.

The fight seemed to me to go on forever, with Nate emerging as the superior fighter. Tito flailed, and threw constant kicks and punches, but Nate was more of a tactician and waited to get the most impact from his efforts. As the fight drug on, Tito was visibly tiring. The throng of men howled and jeered, shouting at Tito—they’d bet on him and weren’t happy about losing. I stood up from the metal chair as the men got more animated and angrier. I crept to the door and stood facing the ring. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up even though it was steamily hot in the gym. We were in danger, and I was ready to run. If I had a cell phone, I’d have called Rex for help.

Nate’s designer underwear was coated with blood, but it was Tito’s blood. With a solid hit to his nose, the man fell and didn’t get up. I was relieved; it was nearly over. Until—another man walked into the ring. Fully clothed, wearing heavy cowboy boots, he swung at Nate, hitting him hard across the cheek, blood spurting from the cut. The gang of men didn’t care about the rules—they were going to beat the shit out of the rich white American. I screamed for Nate, begged them to stop, but the fight continued. Nate was holding his own, but I was horrified of what would happen if Tito stood up.

Someone suddenly grabbed my behind roughly, and I turned around and swung, my fist landing in what felt like iron. “I’d know that bodacious ass anywhere, Princess,” the low baritone of Rex purred in my ear. “Oh my God, Rex, I’m so glad you’re here!” I’d never been so relieved in my life. “Uh huh, you won’t be glad when I spank your ass red-raw later. What the fuck were you thinking!” His eyes were dark, ominous—his jaw set in a hard line—he was pissed. “Be angry, do whatever, but please save Nate. They are cheating! They added a second fighter—look, the new guy is wearing shoes!”

Rex looked around me toward the ring, his face showing no emotion. Nate looked over and saw him, nodded to Rex as the blood from his cheek flowed. Rex nodded back and walked over to the cashier’s window. “What are you doing? Will that guy stop the fight?” I chased after him. “I’m going to place a bet, make a few
pesos
, baby.” Tears flowed down my cheeks. “You’d bet against Nate?” I couldn’t believe this was the man I thought I loved, betraying the other man I loved.

Rex placed his bet in Spanish and stood by my side, his arm forced around my waist despite my resistance. “I told you, Princess, I don’t
rescue
people. This isn’t my fault—you two did this. Doesn’t have a fucking thing to do with me.”

He stood there stoically, holding me as I struggled to squirm out of his arms. He repulsed me at the moment—I didn’t know who he was. He ignored me and watched the fight. As I’d feared, Tito stood up.

Nate fought both men, but the tide had changed. He was on fire, unstoppable. “Oh my God! He’s so good!” Rex let a tiny grin creep to the side of his mouth before giving me a quick squeeze. “Like Mark Twain said, ‘It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.’ Nathaniel Slater is fucking full of fight, sweetheart. So are you, so am I. Those two other guys? They’re tired, weak.”

The crowd jeered and eventually sat down in disgust as both of their men were knocked out by Nate. The manager of the gym walked into the ring, lifting Nate’s hand to pronounce him the winner, and handing him a towel to wipe the blood. Nate dressed and walked toward us, his eyes anxiously on Rex. “Man, I–I fucked up,” he said, waving his arms before raking his hands through his hair. “You fucked up
big time
. Let me collect our winnings, and we’ll go.”

After Rex left the window, shoving a wad of bills in his pocket, the throng of men crept over, angry and ready to start trouble, until Rex held up a gun and spoke to them in Spanish, pointing toward the door. They didn’t move as we left the gym. The minute the door closed, Rex and Nate broke into a run, Rex picking me up when I couldn’t keep up.

We made it to the truck. Rex’s dark van, the one I’d been taken from the airport to the compound in, was parked behind it with Rex’s driver idling the engine. “Get in,” he screamed as the sliding door slid open. Nate and I jumped in, with Rex behind us slamming the door closed. He tapped the glass to tell the driver to go.

“I can’t deal with you two right now—if I do, I’ll fucking strangle you both. I have to get back to the jungle,” he said through gritted teeth, not making eye contact with either of us. I held a towel to Nate’s bleeding face, trying to calm myself down. I knew this was my fault—
me and my damn makeup
.

“How’d you know?” Nate asked, less afraid of Rex than I was.

Rex didn’t look at him, but eventually answered, “DEA buddy of mine saw you two in town and called me. You’re fucking lucky I had a signal.”

“I could have handled Tito
and
Deke,” Nate said defiantly.

The van was silent until we pulled into the tall walls of the compound, the security staff at the gate waving us in. Rex knocked on the glass, and the driver lowered it. “Tell them we need a couple of guys to go get the gardener’s truck from town.”

We left the van, Rex telling his driver he needed to leave for the jungle again as soon as he stitched Nate up.

“Wait, stitches?” I shouted to Rex’s back as I followed him inside. “Shouldn’t we go to a hospital, an ER, for that?”

Both men ignored me as we followed Rex through the house. At a far wing, he stopped at a heavy metal door, armed with a keypad and a small screen. He held his hand up to the screen, and when it beeped, he entered a code—his keystrokes shielded by his other hand. The heavy door slid open.

Inside, there was a brightly lit, windowless medical room. There were two gurneys, and the walls were lined with locked cabinets and medical equipment. “Welcome to the emergency room on King Rex Island,” he said sarcastically. Nate hopped up onto one of the tables as if he’d been in this room many times before. Rex ignored me, walking over to a sink to scrub his hands. “It’s on his face—should we get a plastic surgeon?” I once had a similar cut from a gymnastics fall and my parents went berserk about scarring. “What the fuck planet do you live on, Penelope? Go play with your makeup while the men get shit done,” Rex said as he pulled on latex gloves. His words stung—I understood his anger at me, but I didn’t know how to make it better. I slumped into a chair in the corner. Nate looked over at me and mouthed the words, “It’s okay.” I suspected he’d dealt with a much-angrier Rex before.

“Okay, dude, this isn’t going to feel great, but once it’s numb, I’ll sew you up. I’m going to give Penny only enough codeine to get you through until I get back.”

“No meds, no numbing.”

“Nate, I appreciate that, I do.” Rex’s voice was soft, loving again. “The shot is just some lidocaine, it’s not addictive. You can do over the counter Motrin after if you’d rather not risk opiates.”

“Just the numbing shot, then, if you think it’s okay—if not, I’ll take the pain. But nothing after, no pills.”

Rex nodded as he swabbed Nate’s cheek with an alcohol swab, Nate grimacing from the sting. “I’d rather have you still when I sew—I’d hate to mar that pretty-boy skin,” Rex said as he raised the needle. Nate showed no sign of pain as Rex gave the injection.

After Nate was numb, it took only minutes for Rex to have him sewed up. “Keep it clean and dry, and use this ointment. Your face will be fine—the rest of you maybe not so much when I get back from the jungle.” He pulled off the gloves, tossed them in a stainless steel garbage bin, and gestured for us to leave.

We stood in the main living room waiting for Rex. He eventually emerged from the medical room and walked past us without a word. With a slam of the front door, he was gone. I looked to Nate, battered, bruised, and stitched. “He’s so mad—he’s never going to forgive me,” I cried to Nate, who held me as we walked back to his bedroom. “He gets that way—believe me, Pen, I’ve done
far
worse things to make him
much
madder than this. It’ll pass, just weather the storm.”

 

Later that evening, with no word from Rex, I sat out by the pool having dinner with Nate. “How’s the face?” I asked, sipping a glass of chilled white wine as Maria cleared the dishes. “Hurts, but my whole body aches. The sign of a great fight.”

I shook my head at him. “I don’t get it—that didn’t seem like sport to me. When they added that second guy to the ring…”

“Oh, that group always fights dirty. That’s their thing—I knew it was coming. I wanted to play them. The gym manager, Chewy, would have stopped it otherwise. I placed a bet on myself with him before the fight.”

“Going there was careless, I have to side with Rex on this one. I was an idiot for not listening to you when you said no to going to town, and you were an idiot for taking me,” I admitted.

He took a small sip of his glass of wine. Despite battles with drug addiction, Nate wasn’t much of a drinker. “Well, Penny, I don’t have the best judgment. I’m rash, impulsive. Rex is good for me in that regard. He’s taught me to slow down, strategize,
think
. And most importantly, when you fuck up, you pull
yourself
back together and start again.
Never
stop fighting. Today was a set-back, nothing more.” I leaned back into my chair, the stars dancing overhead as the warm, wet air wrapped around me like a hug.

“You met Rex when you took his course?” He nodded. “My dad talked to me into it—but he’s a whole other story. I’d just come out of yet another ninety-day rehab and was looking for something different. I showed up, pampered and arrogant, and ended up leaving Rex’s ‘let’s eat wild animals’ shit after the first day. I managed to hitch my way to Medellin, where it was easy to score plenty of cocaine by just signing my name. Well, it was for a day or so. When I couldn’t pay—all of my stuff was back in Rex’s airport storage—the dealers got pissed. In the back of a dank warehouse, I was given two options: pay my hefty drug bill, or they’d slowly cut me into pieces. Starting there,” he pointed grimly to his groin.

“Oh my God,” I gasped. “What did you do?”

“They let me make a phone call—no way in hell I was calling dear ol’ dad, so I dialed Rex’s Blackberry.” He smiled and shook his head. “Looking back now, I was lucky as fuck that it connected! The signal out there is beyond sketchy.”

“So you called Rex and he came and rescued you?”

“No, he hung up on me. Told me in order to survive, I needed to learn to unfuck things for myself.”

“That’s harsh.”

“You know by now King Rex can be harsh. Harsh
and
cold. But, he did send one of his buddies, one of the spook-type agents he used to work with, over with my belongings, including my wallet. The guy helped me pay off the dealers and, clueless as to what to do with me, dropped me back with Rex. By the time I got to the compound, I was already crashing from the binge. Rex locked me in the safe room—where you stayed at first—as I suffered through the pain. At some point, in the throes of delirium and hallucinations, I started screaming for ‘daddy’—I have no idea where
that
came from. But, for some reason, it made an impact on him. He came in and held me all night long—physically held me in a bear hug for hours because it was the only thing that would calm me down.”

“I know why that made an impact—he told me about his father.”

Nate gulped and nodded. “Yeah, that’s rough stuff. My own dad—I mean, he
thought
he was doing the right thing, but I just can’t forgive him. Rex thinks I should, but Penny—he called the cops on me! He turned me in—more than once.”

“Tough love?”

Nate refused to answer, and we sat there in silence as the jungle howled around us outside the secured walls. It did feel like an island here, the compound. I could see why Rex jokingly called it King Rex Island.

“I think that’s where my physical attraction to him began—it sprang from that night, being calmed and soothed by his touch.” Nate’s voice was soft, his face shrouded in the darkness of the night. “The next day, he told me about his own father, and then said he’d never shared that with anyone before, not even his wife. We were both shocked at the connection we had, but, for some reason, the universe brought us together and we just bonded. Bonded
hard
.”

BOOK: Taken by Two
13.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

B00B9FX0F2 EBOK by Baron, Ruth
Trust Me by Melanie Walker
The Tournament of Blood by Michael Jecks
Shiloh Season by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Woods (Aces MC Series Book 5) by Aimee-Louise Foster
They Who Fell by Kevin Kneupper
The McKinnon by James, Ranay
Elizabeth Powell by The Reluctant Rogue