The Good Girl In My Bed (Dangerous Desire Book 2) (8 page)

I raised my eyebrows at the metaphor.

He laughed again, adjusting his grip on the pipe with deliberate showmanship. I was going to plant that pipe so far up his ass he could use it as a straw.

“So you came alone?” He scanned the area behind me, expression mocking. “Thought you’d bring at least someone to hold your hand, Trip.”

“Don’t need my hand held to fuck you up,” I said.

The guns pointing at me somehow seemed to point harder. The morons holding them looked frenzied.

I knew almost all of them. All of the ones I knew hadn’t liked me much.

“Loco always said you had balls bigger than Gibraltar.” Rufie swung the pipe in an arc beside his thigh. “Gonna be fun smashin’ ’em in. Although, not too much. You’re gonna need ’em.”

“Am I now?” I made a show of returning my gun to my jeans’ waistband, a wordless I-don’t-need-this-to-deal-with-you display. “Why’s that?”

Rufie snorted. “Someone wants them all for himself.”

“Now that sounds—” I pulled a contemplative face, “—stupid.”

Rufie narrowed his eyes. “I’m gonna enjoy fuckin’ you up, Trip. But first…” He nodded.

I heard them coming at me before I saw and felt them. Five. Three of them were Trinity members who hated me. I took two out before they could touch me. The third slammed into me, ramming me to the ground. The fourth smashed his foot into my ribs as the other fucker scrambled off me. I curled around the kick, yanking the dick down, even as my ribs sang with white-hot agony.

The fifth guy swung a kick at my head. I jerked out of his foot’s path just in time, but it was close.

Three on one.

It should have been easy for me. Instead, I kept thinking of Ronnie.

And the plan Lila and I had laid out back in the safe house. Fuck, I had to be patient now.

It took them forever, but they finally overpowered me but not before I broke more than one nose and various ribs. Blood flowed on my tongue, coppery and familiar.

Two of them hauled me to my feet, the third gripped a fistful of my hair to yank my head backward as he removed the weapons I carried. All except the chain, which hung hidden in the leg of my jeans, snug against my left inner thigh.

“That took longer than I thought it would,” I said, watching Rufie strut toward me.

He sneered. “Even now, your fuckin’ ego thinks you’re king shit, Trip. Gonna show you how wrong you are.”

“Go for it.”

He stopped directly in front of me and smashed the pipe into the side of my face. My mouth exploded with blood. My vision detonated with black stars.

Fuck.

I thrashed, fighting against the three dicks holding me. Laughter scraped at my ears, echoing around the cavernous warehouse. Rufie’s. The Trinity members with him.

Mine.

“What the fuck are you laughin’ at?” Rufie snarled, shoving his face close to mine.

“This cliché routine of yours, Randolph.”

He gasped at my use of his real name and smashed the pipe into my jaw again.

Not yet. Not yet.
I thought furiously, spitting out a wad of blood before grinning at Rufie. “I didn’t realize you hit like a girl,
Randy
.”

Rufie snarled, eyes burning with hate. He raised the pipe again, higher. I prepared myself for the blow. This one was really going to fucking hurt.

Instead, Rufie snorted out a chuckle and took a step back. “Girl. Fuck, I almost forgot about the girl. Thanks for remindin’ me.” He turned and waved the pipe in a come-here gesture to someone I couldn’t see.

Ice filled my veins. Wrapped my chest. Churned in my gut.

I let out a ragged sigh of relief as Grub half limped, half shuffled into the clearing.

Rufie chuckled again, turning back to me. “You did a good job on Grub, I’ll admit. I think he’s gonna be shittin’ and pissin’ blood for long while. But his cock still works—so he tells me—and he’s gonna use it on that fuckin’ hot cunt of yours.”

I blinked, my head roaring. “What the fuck are you talking about, Randy.”

The dick gripping my hair tightened his fist a split second before smashing a punch into my right kidney. I hissed and struggled against the arms holding me again, for good measure.

Not yet.
I sent out the silent order even as my entire body protested at the pain flooding it.
Not yet.

Rufie smirked. “Grub told us all about the chick swimmin’ naked in the pool at that house of yours. He’s got plans for her.”

The ice returned to my veins; this time, however, it wasn’t from fear but rage. Cold, murderous fury. “Touch her and—”

“And there’s Trip’s Achilles heel,” Rufie crowed, swinging out his arms to grin at the Trinity members around us.

A part of me was impressed he even knew the Achilles heel mythos. A distant part. The rest was ready to kill him. Slowly. Painfully.

Gleefully.

“Now here’s the thing, Trip,” Rufie said as Grub reached his side. “You ratted out on us. Betrayed your Trinity brothers. Not just to the cops, but to some fuckin’ reporter.”

Not yet.

I flashed Rufie a smile. Blood oozed from the corner of my mouth. A bell rang in my head. “What can I say? I’m a prick.”

My Trinity
brothers
shouted at me. None of it was nice.

Rufie strutted closer, stroking the side of my face with the end of his pipe. “Ya got a price to pay, Trip. A debt. So this is how it’s gonna go down. Y’ gonna call that sweet little piece of cunt of yours an’ tell her to get here now. Y’ gonna tell her everything is okay. And when she gets here, y’ gonna stand still an’ watch Grub have his fuckin’ fun fuckin’ her. Then you’re gonna do the same as your Trinity brothers take their turns. Then, and only then, will I fuckin’ finish you off.”

I snorted. “Finish me off? You?”

Rufie grinned. “Ah, Trip, you have no fuckin’ clue how long I’ve been lookin’ forward to—”

The sound of glass shattering somewhere in the warehouse shut Rufie up. He swung around, pipe raised. Grub cowered, flicking nervous glances at me through swollen eyes. The Trinity members did the same, guns jerking from me to the empty space around them, and back to me.

I gritted my teeth, the roaring my head growing louder.

What was going on? Breaking glass was not part of the plan. I needed more info from Rufie. Like how he’d found out about Lila’s ex-husband. How he’d found me.

Rufie turned back to me. He looked on edge.

I bit back a grunt of cold satisfaction. Good. He needed to be.

“How did you learn about the reporter,” I asked. “Who told you?”

“Y’ think I’m gonna tell y’ that? How fuckin’ dumb do you think I am? This ain’t a Bond movie, Trip.” Sneering at me, he shoved his hand into his hip pocket.

“Looking for your dick, Randy?” I asked.

The fucker gripping my hair slammed his fist into my kidney again.

Withdrawing a cell from his pocket, Rufie sneered at me. “Ready to make a call, Trip?”

“Ready to suck my cock, Randolph?”

He swung the pipe at my face.

I snapped my body to the right, yanking the Trinity dick holding my left arm into the pipe’s trajectory.

Steel crunched against bone a second before the warehouse filled with the shouts of men in pain.

“What the fuck?” Rufie snapped his head around, gaping at the sight of three Trinity members collapsing to the ground, blood spurting from their knees.

I pulled the moaning guy hanging off my left arm down, slamming my knee up into his face as I did so.

He crumpled to the ground as I lashed out with my foot, swiping my heel into the ankles of the dick behind me holding a fistful of my hair. I used his momentum to dislodge the Trinity fuck holding my right arm.

Just as I extracted myself, the fuck screamed, dropping to the ground, one of his knees a blood-spurting mess.

She hasn’t lost her aim.

The thought whispered through my head as I swung to face Rufie.

He was still gaping at the wailing, writhing, bleeding Trinity members on the floor. If I were in a better mood, I would have laughed at the confusion on his face.

Unfortunately for Rufie, I was in a killing mood.

I launched myself at him in a jumping reverse spinning kick. My heel connected with his shoulder, sending him into a sprawling fall.

“Fucker!” he yelled, scrambling to his feet. Attempting to, at least. “Shoot the fucker!”

I heard guns cock, saw more than one gun snap to me. And then, in quick succession, four of the Trinity members pointing their guns at me screamed in pain, knees spurting with blood as they fell to the ground.

I didn’t know where Lila had set herself up, but she clearly had a fantastic, unobstructed view of the warehouse floor.

“Shoot him!” Rufie screamed, stumbling to a lurching stand.

One of his goons aimed his gun at me. His knee erupted in blood and shattered bone, and he went down in a screaming heap.

Rufie swung around to stare at me, shoulders hunching as he adjusted his grip on his pipe. “Gutless prick. Got someone shootin’ for ya.”

I shrugged, grinning slowly at him. “It’s you and me, Rufie. This is what you wanted, after all. From the second we first met, you promised one day it would just be you and me.
Today’s
that day.”

He came at me.

I floored him with a turning kick to the temple.

“You could have avoided this,” I said, circling him as he struggled onto his hands and knees. “You could have left me alone. Forgot I existed.”

He scrambled at me, swinging his pipe at my legs. I smashed my foot into his cheek.

“Your first mistake was killing Loco,” I went on, once again circling him. I noted none of his support crew were trying to take me out. None of them moved. They were too afraid of Lila and her high-powered sniper rifle, I suspect. If only they knew they were struck immobile with fear by a forty-five-year-old woman.

Rufie threw himself at me again. I stopped his progress with a knee-strike up under his chin.

“Fucker,” he yelled, blood and spit spraying from his lips.

“Your second mistake was sending Grub to my home.” I stepped closer to him, my heart calm, my body thrumming. “But your biggest mistake was bringing Ronnie into this.” I drew my head down to his, fists balled. “I would have let you live if you hadn’t done that.”

“I’m gonna fuck that cunt to death,” he snarled, glaring up at me. “After I’ve finished tearin’ you apart.”

I grinned. “Let’s do this.”

He threw himself at me.

I heard more screams. More Trinity members collapsed to the floor, grown men crying and wailing like babies. From the corner of my eye, I saw others fleeing, running from the warehouse.

And then I drilled my focus onto Rufie and got down to business.

There’s a reason I’d made so much money on the underground MMA circuit. I’m unbeatable. I know how to fight. I fight dirty. I show no remorse or mercy. I hit with no regret and no compunction. And when my fist or my feet or shin or knee or elbow won’t do the job, I’ll use whatever I can.

Underground mixed martial arts is not a gentleman’s sport. It’s a sport for those balancing on the edge of animalistic violence. I’ve walked that hairline edge for many years. It was only Ronnie—the knowledge someone like her was in my life—that saved me from falling into a dark abyss from which I’d never return.

Rufie had dragged me back to that abyss. His threat to Ronnie, his promise of what he would do to her…

Lila kept the fight between just him and me. We weren’t interrupted. I let him keep his pipe, the occasional blows he landed a reminder I still had the ability to feel something apart from cold fury and murderous hate.

I toyed with him. I enjoyed it. I bathed in his pain and fear and flailing ego.

When he managed to smash my jaw with the fucking thing, sending one of my molars flying from my bloody mouth, I withdrew the chain hidden in my jeans and returned the favor. Three times.

Three molars.

And then a fourth. For fun.

Fun. My brain tripped over the notion, tangled in its grim reality.

I was enjoying myself. The violence, the pain. Delivering it. Fuck, even receiving it… I was enjoying myself.

Losing myself…

And I didn’t care.

For what Rufie had planned to do to Ronnie, for the images his words had put into my head, images of the girl I loved more than life, I would end him.

And if that meant losing
my
life—not physically, but emotionally—then that’s what would happen.

Because I was born for this kind of existence. I was—

“Lucas!”

The female shout stopped my fist—mid-strike—bare inches from Rufie’s face.

“Lucas,” Lila called. “Stop.”

I drew a deep breath, my gaze focusing on what my knuckles and the chain had done to him. The blood lust turned everything red. Or maybe that was the sweat and blood trickling into my eyes.

On the ground, pinned there by my knees, Rufie groaned. I’d turned his face to mush. When had I done that? How long had I been hitting him? When had I even put him on the ground? It had been a long time since I’d fallen into such a primitive state of mind. It scared me. Sent a chill straight to my soul.

Whatever happened next, there was no going back to Ronnie now.

The man she loved was gone. I’d killed him as surely as I was about to kill Rufie.

And I
was
going to kill Rufie. He had to die. For what he said. For what he’d planned.

Without turning to Lila, I bunched my fist around the chain and fixed my stare on the bloody, glistening mess of muscle and flesh that had once been Rufie’s face.

He rolled his head in semi-conscious side-to-side movements that caused the torn flesh on his cheeks to quiver. His lips moved. A weak wheezing sound scratched at the warehouse’s silence.

Head roaring, I drew a little closer to him. “Say it, Rufie,” I prompted. “Say
Please don’t kill me, Trip
.”

“I’m…” he whispered, the word choked with fluid, his eyes swelled shut. “I’m…gonna…to fuck…your bitch.”

I reared back, fist balled, colder than ice.

“You die,” I whispered back.

“
Lucas
!”

I froze at Ronnie’s shout.