Wheeled in.
Who won that one, bitch?
Oh, and neither of them had been kicked out. Apparently, short of betting on the outcome, the Brothers weren't going to get involved--
One of the doors to the gym was punched open, and this time, as the Brothers Butch and Rhage came in, they were dressed in the same loose-fitting cotton pants and shirt that everyone else was.
The Brother Butch didn't waste any time as they came to a halt in front of the group. "So, in light of all the Mayweather/Pacquiao going down, we're gonna start with hand-to-hand combat instead of book learning."
"Please note," Rhage said with a smile, "that your unis are white."
"It's because OxiClean is wicked good on bloodstains, but we're prepared to use Clorox if we have to."
Craeg swallowed a curse. Just what he needed.
"We're going to pair you up," Butch continued, "and get an assessment of how much you know. Since one of you is already on the horizontal, no one has to worry about fighting Hollywood over here."
"Personally, I'm about to cry over that," Rhage said. "So let's put Novo with Boone--Axe, you take Anslam. That leaves Craeg and Paradise."
"Hold up," Craeg said. "I can't . . . I won't do that."
"Hit her? Why? 'Cause you can't lift your arms up? Not my problem."
Craeg leaned in and dropped his voice. "I won't hit her."
Rhage shrugged. "Fine, you can get your ass kicked again."
Butch cut in. "Actually, he won that fight, remember. And I got your five bucks to prove it."
"Only because golden boy over here knocked his own self out."
"A loss is a loss." Butch refocused on Craeg. "But my brother is right. You either defend yourself or go back for more of Doc Jane's thread. Your choice."
With that, they were told to spread out into different quadrants of the enormous gym, and Peyton was wheeled off to the side.
Craeg watched the others go, trying to think of a way out of this. Funny, when he'd told her way back when that she should enter the program to learn self-defense, he hadn't considered that he was the one she'd have to be defending herself against.
Even in a "classroom" situation.
"Well," Paradise said as she came up to him. "Are we going to do this?"
"I'll wait until one of the males is finished."
"You're serious."
He looked down at her from his much greater height. "I don't want to hurt you."
"You didn't beat Peyton with ease," she muttered. "That took, like, half an hour."
"You're actually comparing yourself to a full-grown adult male. Who I put on a stretcher."
"Oh, you're right. That wouldn't be fair. Because compared to the two of you, I'm a goddamn genius."
As she put her hands on her hips and glared at him, he wondered what in the hell else was he going to say to her? He didn't want to spout the real truth--which had everything to do with the fact that he could still remember what her soft skin felt like . . . could still picture how small her ankle had been compared to his palm . . . could imagine so many things he wanted to do to her, absolutely none of which involved violence of any kind.
Absolutely all of which included contact with his fingertips, his lips . . . his tongue.
Craeg crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm not going to fight you."
"So if I swing at you, you're going to do nothing."
He cocked a brow. "I'm not worried about getting knocked out."
"Oh, really."
"No. Your lesser endurance aside, you're not going--"
The next thing that came out of his mouth was a high-pitched scream that left everyone in the gym ripping around to see what the hell had happened.
And he might have told them--but he was too busy covering his nuts with both hands and bending at the waist.
She had kneed him in the groin.
In the groin. With her knee.
"What the fuck!" he sputtered. "Why did you do that?"
She seemed as surprised as everyone else. But she recovered fast--by clamping a hold on either side of his head, bringing up that knee again, and nailing him so hard in the face, he saw more stars than a human Christmas tree had lights.
As he let out another howl and lurched off balance, she locked both of her hands together, extended her arms, and swung around in a tight circle like she was throwing a discus--catching him in the temple with enough force to knock his legs right out from under him.
Boom! Down he went to the blue mats.
Everyone came running as she stood over him, braced for whatever came at her--while he made out with the floor.
Shoving his palms into the mats, he hefted his upper body to the vertical and looked at her. "You really want me to do this."
"You haven't done anything yet," somebody cracked.
"Tell me," another one chimed in. "Do you take a piss sitting down?"
"He does now," came a reply.
Paradise just tracked every move he made, each twitch and breath and shift of his eyes. But she had no idea what she was doing. He could tell by the way her hands were trembling, and the fact that her ribs were pumping way too hard for the physical activity she'd just done.
She was also ever so slightly aroused.
Okay, that was straight-up trouble. The scent of her sex triggered the very male part of him--and made him want her to run just so he could chase her and catch her and get her underneath him to take her hard. He wanted her nails scratching his back as she came . . . and her fangs bared right before she took a vein at his throat.
The lust was so strong, he could have fucked her even if there were people watching--and as if she recognized the change in him, she took a step back.
And then suddenly no one was laughing or joking at him anymore.
Butch stepped in between them. "Easy, there, big guy. How about you come at me?"
The Brother sank down into a fighting stance, his fists up in front of his chest, his eyes narrowed.
But Craeg wasn't interested in the male. He looked around those mammoth shoulders to Paradise, who was staring at him with an inscrutable expression on her face.
This time, when a punch came at him, Craeg went into full fight mode, something that had not happened with Peyton. With the other trainee, he had given about sixty percent of what he had, holding some of his strength back because he had been afraid of killing the piece of shit, or doing permanent damage--and thereby getting booted from the program. Now? The knife-edge of his arousal cut through all restraint as he went into the hand-to-hand battle, ducking, throwing a fist of his own, ducking again, jabbing. The Brother was viciously quick, mercilessly powerful, eminently trained.
Not like Peyton at all.
And as the fight wore on, as they traded kicks and dodges, grabs and grapples, more people came over and stood around, until there was a crowd of ten, fifteen . . . twenty in the gym.
It was about fifteen minutes in when the daggers got tossed at them.
The two razor-sharp, black-handled, silver-bladed knives flew through the air from out of nowhere. Butch caught one on the fly. Craeg caught the other. And then they were circling, searching for a way past defenses, weaving the weapons back and forth--lunging, retreating, the stakes so much higher.
Butch wasn't breathing heavily at all. Craeg, on the other hand, was panting like a motherfucker--sweating like one, too.
First blood was drawn when Craeg misjudged one arc by a millimeter and got his cheek cut open. When he miscalled another, he started leaking at the shoulder. Mistaking a third, he got his thigh sliced.
It was then that he realized the Brother was giving him just sixty percent of what the male was capable of: The precision of the cuts told Craeg that his opponent knew more than he did, was stronger than he was, and was prepared to nick his way to a victory based on incremental blood loss.
But Craeg wasn't going to give up. Not yet, at any rate. Not until he couldn't stand, couldn't see, couldn't move.
&nbs
p; His will would accept nothing less.
*
Paradise recognized immediately that this fight was a totally different thing than that mad, sloppy scramble that had rolled out into the corridor earlier. In fact, back with Peyton, Craeg had been reining himself in for some reason; he was no longer. His coordination as he faced off against Butch with his fists, and then--oh, God, those daggers--told her, and everybody else in the gym, that he was an incredible fighter, capable of great strength, balance, flexibility, and power.
It was enough to make her entire body light up like a switchboard.
And no, she thought, as much as she respected Novo's females-can-do-everything-males-can, it was very clear to her that she could not have handled the likes of what Craeg was putting out now. He would have knocked her cold with just one of those knuckle punches. Or snapped her head clean off her spine. Or broken one of her legs with an easy twist.
Not that she couldn't learn appropriate defenses and counter-measures, she just didn't know them now--and he had, in fact, been prepared to attack her: When he'd crouched down and bared his tremendous fangs, she had stumbled back--and yet, for some insane reason, she hadn't been afraid of him. Which was just plain nuts. He had more than a hundred pounds on her, and he'd been out for blood.
So yeah, what was totally insane? She had suddenly wanted to run from him--but not too fast. She'd wanted him to come after her, and catch her on the fly . . . and . . .
Well, it was back to that moment they'd shared when they'd been alone in the break room.
But Jesus, I can't handle him, she thought as she watched him move. And not just in a fight: Any female who set chase to a male like that wasn't getting a sweet kiss at the end of the running--she wasn't getting a hand held and a sacred promise of a bonded mating and a conversation with her father where said suitor bashfully asked for permission.
This was not the kind of refined male one was expected to give one's virginity to on the night of her mating before the Scribe Virgin and her family.
No, he was an animal with only a modicum of higher reasoning.
And the way he'd looked at her in that moment had suggested that his brain had checked out entirely.
She should have been afraid, she told herself again.
Instead, she wanted him to catch her--
All around, the crowd let out a hiss as Craeg took another cut, this time right across the chest. He was bleeding in several places now, his sparring uniform stained red, blood dripping from his chin from the slice on his cheek, dripping from his thigh, dripping from his pecs.
Another flash of the Brother's blade caught him on the opposite shoulder. Then it was the side of the throat. The other thigh, the abdomen, across the back.
"Stop," Paradise said under her breath. "Stop coming at him."
But every time that vicious blade of the Brother's struck, Craeg went back for more, reengaging over and over again, until he was slipping in the puddles he was making on the blue mats, and his uniform was stained red and plastered to his body.
He wouldn't relent.
And Butch gave him no quarter except to spare him death.
"Craeg! Stop!" she called out because she couldn't help herself.
Putting her hand to her mouth, she felt her heart go back into panic mode as she wondered whether he really would keep going until he'd lost so much from his veins there was no coming back.
"Craeg! This is crazy!"
But still he continued, until he started to sag into his knees, and lurch instead of lunge, and wobble when he retreated. Now, the sloppiness came to him.
God, he was too pale.
"Stop!"
From over on his gurney, Peyton sat up and yelled, "Craeg! Come on, man--he's gonna kill you."
Ripples of unease passed through the other trainees, but not through all the Brothers who had come to watch the show. The medical people, in contrast, also didn't look thrilled--however, when the female doctor with the blond hair went to step forward, the Brother Vishous shook his head and made her stay beside him.
Craeg went down for the last time forty-two minutes and many, many liters of lost plasma later.
He just dropped to his knees, swayed for a moment . . . and then fell facedown in his own blood. Exactly as he had done out on the track.
Paradise rushed to go forward, but Rhage caught her and yanked her back. "No. You allow him his honor."
"What are you talking about?" she hissed.
Rhage just nodded toward the two combatants. "Watch."
Butch stood over the fallen male for a moment, giving Craeg a chance to get back to his feet. When he did not, the Brother waited for Craeg to look up at him.
Unfocused eyes struggled in an ashen face to lock onto the Brother. But when they finally did, Butch switched the weapon to his other hand . . . and scored his dagger palm deeply with the blade.
As Paradise gasped, the Brother extended his palm to Craeg--who, from out of nowhere, suddenly found the strength to reach up and accept what was offered.
The Brother pulled Craeg to his feet . . . and embraced him. "Good job, son. I'm proud of you."
Craeg blinked his eyes fast, as if he were tearing up. Then he seemed to give up the fight against his emotions by closing his lids, tucking his head and sagging into the Brother's arms.
"And that," Rhage said in a loud, approving voice, "is how you do it."
Chapter Seventeen
Sitting at her desk at Safe Place, Marissa had all kinds of work to do: patient files to read, intake papers to approve, bills to process. Instead of tackling any of that, she just sat in her chair and stared at that black strip of metal with its red tassel.
After she and Butch had gotten home, she'd shown the odd, key-like object to a number of the Brothers, and none of them had recognized it or been able to put a solid name to the thing. Then Vishous had done an Internet search on an image of it--and come up with nothing.
By the time she and Butch had gone to bed, she'd been so exhausted, she'd fallen asleep as soon as her head had hit the pillow.
But she hadn't stayed that way.
Her eyes had opened at around three in the afternoon, and she had lain on her back, staring up in the darkness while Butch had snored quietly next to her.
It was just as her hellren had said. Images of that female had played across the blank ceiling, a photo montage that had made her tear up. And the sad thing was, the urge to cry had gotten even worse as she'd thought of her and Butch.
Which was crazy.
There was nothing wrong between them. He couldn't have been more supportive, taking her out to Havers's, sticking with her through her efforts with the key, being understanding of everything she was feeling.
"I'm losing my mind," she said--
"That's what I'm here for."
Marissa jerked her head up. "Mary, hi--sorry, I was talking to myself. I'm a little scrambled right now."
Rhage's shellan came in and closed the office's door. "Yeah, I got that impression--I've been saying your name three or four times and not getting through."
Marissa eased back, pushed her hair over her shoulders, and forced a smile. "What can I do for you?"
"You can talk to me." The female sat down in the chair across the desk. "I'm worried about you."
"Oh, God, don't waste a second on that. We've got people here who are seriously in need of your help--"
"Good Samaritans like you and I have trouble doing our jobs if we don't talk about the hard cases. It's a fact. I'd also like to point out that I'm a friend of yours."
In the silence that followed, Marissa kept quiet about all the paperwork she hadn't been able to concentrate on because her head was messed up. And then she remained silent about the day she'd spent not sleeping. And finally, she said nothing about the strange distance between her and Butch--
"I can't get her out of my mind," she blurted.
Immediately, tears came, and she cursed as she reached for a Kleenex. "I don't want to talk about t
his."
"I know," Mary said gently. "Trust me, I've had a lot of personal experience with not talking. It wasn't a good strategy."
"Oh, come on, you're the most self-actualized person I've ever met. You're like a ten out of ten on the relating scale."
"You've only seen a snapshot of my life, Marissa. You didn't know me before. And I still struggle, just like everyone else."
Marissa blotted under her eyes and had to fight a wave of straight-up bawling. "How do you deal with that."
"The struggling? I talk to people. I talk to Rhage. I write things down."
"No . . . the clean cut."
"I'm sorry?"
Marissa waved her tissue around. "I'm not making any sense. Just forget--"
"You mean the fact that one life ended for me and another began when I got with Rhage?"
God, her heart was pounding for no good reason. "Yes. That's exactly it."
Mary crossed her legs and chewed on her lower lip, and as she took time to compose her thoughts, Marissa studied her even-featured face, and her newly bobbed brown hair, and her aura of calm confidence.
Yes, Marissa thought, Rhage was right. The female was gorgeous--not in the flashy, beauty-queen kind of way, or the all-angles, no meat, anorexic model stuff, and not even the girl-next-door standard. Mary was like the glow of a banked fire in the deep vicious winter, warm and sustaining, captivating and illuminating.
No wonder the Brother adored her.
With an exhale, Mary said, "I think it was different for me because I was dying--so I knew I was leaving? Even though I wasn't aware of the cancer being back for a while, I'd been preparing for the day when they'd tell me it had returned. So I'd checked out. Packed my mental and emotional bags, got my ticket, was ready to go. I mean, my mother was gone, I hadn't really connected with anyone else on the planet . . . there was nothing for me so there wasn't anything to walk away from, if that makes sense?"
Marissa thought about the night her brother had kicked her out for being with Butch.
"If I understand things correctly," Mary said, "that was not the case for you. Was it."
Marissa had to look away. "No, it was not. I came back to the house Havers and I shared one evening just before dawn and he . . ." Now, her tears welled and fell in a rush, one after another, landing on her blouse, her slacks. She mopped up before she could go on. "All of my things had been packed. He told me he didn't care where I went, he just wanted me out of his house. He put money . . ." She had to clear her throat. "He put money on one of the bureaus. It was as if he didn't want to touch me."