Disengaged: A Dangerously Forbidden Love Affair (21 page)

“What was it?” he asked in a deep, smooth tone. “What caused the two of you to click so hard?”

“Click?” I spat. “Click? Is that what you think it was with Slayton and me? That he just turned me on? I thought he’d give me a memory or two?”

That dark fucking grin of his was pissing me off.

“Are you jealous? Is that it? You’re so fucking pissed at him for losing that you came after me?” I lifted my chin. “I hope he haunts your fucking ass for the rest of your pathetic life!”

His smile faded a bit, became murkier. “I’m sure he will.”

My shoulders fell. The aggression in me was sidelined by grief, a reality check. Channing never pushed me to say more, and he didn’t make me eat the sandwich he brought me, but when the phone beside him rang, after he listened for a minute he told me to get dressed, or he would dress me himself.

I was sure either he was insane, or had packed the wrong bag when I went to the back to change. The jeans promised dignity, so did the long-sleeved shirt, but the jacket and boots, the extra layers I didn’t put on, confused me.

When he opened the door to the room, I almost asked him what the fuck was going on, but he disrupted my thoughts by asking me “Are you going to buckle up for landing or do you need to sit in my lap again?” That question had my mind on anything but my wardrobe.

All the windows in the cabin were closed, so I had no way of knowing what was waiting on me until the doors were opened. The cold air blasting through had me wishing I’d put another layer on and scrambling to understand where in the hell they had flown me—how he made the seasons change.

Channing gripped my arm like the prisoner I was and led me down the steps and across the way to a waiting Hummer. He climbed in the back with me. A glass-tinted barrier separated us from the driver, making it hard for me to see where we were going as we drove into a setting sun.

“I don’t know why the cops showed up,” I said in a shaky voice. “It wasn’t me, and surely wasn’t Slayton that brought them.” I balled my fists as I struggled with his name on my lips. “I was shot with a non-lethal bullet. I can’t tell you why the cop fired it, or why the one who found me had mercy on me and shouted that I was dead,” under my breath I said, “I wish they hadn’t.”

I looked to my side at Channing. “I didn’t say anything and I won’t. Check all you want. I don’t even know anything. Slayton kept it all from me.” My gaze implored him. “Will you tell Malcolm that?”

I may not know why I was there, where I was going, but I knew Channing had the ear of Malcolm, and God help me under all my fucked up depression, I still had the will to live—at least to live without being someone’s sex trophy or a silent message to others.

“Malcolm’s dead,” Channing said in a cold, bitter tone.

I don’t know why knowing that the man was dead felt so terrifying to me—why it angered me so much.

“The first shot was a fatal one that took him down,” Channing said. He leaned closer. “Only four made it out of the box alive...including you.”

His words took me right back to that night, to the pain of the end. It was a memory I could not touch right then, so I kept staring out the dark window, searching for a landmark and questioning why there was so much sand everywhere.

When the ride went on and on and the questions and dark thoughts had nowhere to go but out, I spoke. “I hate you.”

Channing looked up from the phone he had been going through like this was any other day.

“And why is that, little girl,” his tone told me he not only already knew, but didn’t really care. Channing didn’t strike me as a man who spent too much time looking back with regret.

“You lied.”

He shifted his shoulders to face me. I didn’t move from my position, facing him would turn our exchange into an intimate one. “You told me Odin’s princes never lost.”

It took him a moment to respond. I was sure he was wondering when he said such a thing.

“I said my bet was always with Odin’s princes,” he corrected shortly. “But no, they never lose.”

Cocky, coldhearted, fucked up son of a bitch!!
It was impossible for me to hate anyone more than I hated him then.

“You lost big,” I shot back under my breath. “Why would you say something like that? Why would you think you could break Slayton over and over, and he’d never fall?”

My accusing stare locked on him. I didn’t like the anger I saw there, the pain. A glint that told me he not only knew how to feel regret, but had lost more than I had. His audacity had me lusting to hit him. I didn’t care that my time with Slayton was short and tested, that Channing and Slayton had been in the same crew for years. It wasn’t the same.

“A child of Odin never falls,” he repeated.

“But Odin did, didn’t he?” Seeing anger flare in his eyes only fueled my rampage. “What was so fucking great about him anyway? He was a thug that was taken down—which by the way is perfect karma for an asshole who thinks watching men kill each other is fucking awesome—and now a broken city needs hope. So they cling to the idea of Odin’s sperm donations rising and making the crime underworld all peachy and fair again. Thinking every fighter with a pretty face is one of his.”

When Channing leaned forward and gripped my chin, I was sure I’d gone too far. “Every hell needs a gatekeeper,” he hissed.

His stare flicked to the driver when we both felt the car halt, then he looked back to me. “Odin was born with nothing but the will to fight. He kicked ass and took names, and refused to let anyone control him. He didn’t blow his winnings; he used them to build a fucking empire. He gave the wicked a playground and made damn sure the blameless were kept from it.” Channing angled his head and leaned closer. “He loved as hard as he fought. When he was slain, the lines were blurred.” He lifted his chin. “Malcolm needed a way to be noticed and make international connections. He is the creator of the Gladiator fights. Not me, and not
Odin
.”

I held my glare, but it was hard.

“Odin lives on in the eye of his princes. His kingdom will reign again. Take that bet, princess.”

I was shaking so hard I could barely see him lean in and land his lips at the corner of my mouth as his hand fell to my shoulder. “Odin’s princes never fall.”

Channing turned me in my seat right as the window was lowered. Shock seized me once more. What was left of my sanity started to crumble right as I felt life slip away inside of me.

He was there.

Slayton Winslow was standing outside the car.

TWENTY-THREE

I had been so utterly disengaged from life for so long that the feeling of it rendered me out of control of my body. My arms would not move right, my legs wouldn’t. My heart pounded so hard that I couldn’t breathe. My vision was so blurred that I was sure I was hallucinating.

I’d fumbled out of the car, but I never heard the Escalade peel away. I didn’t see the cabin or the glowing light inside of it. I didn’t even realize that it wasn’t sand I had been staring at for hours, but snow.

All I saw was him. Doubt was so heavy in my mind that it was crippling. When I’d held him against me for hours as the law took the warehouse, I’d felt him slip from me. I felt him die. This made no sense.

Slayton still had the same commanding, intimidating presence to him. Every sharp feature of his face was just as angelic and addictive as ever. He was thinner but still strapped with lean muscle. His hands were whole, no longer busted open at the knuckles. Shadowy circles rested under his stone gray eyes. His jaw was set firmly in a familiar on guard way.

I’d wished for this a million times. I’d woken up calling out his name—I’d ached for him, and right then I was too petrified to move, to organize my thoughts enough to access the possibility this was reality much less what danger was bearing down on us now.

Something primal inside of me grew tired of waiting for my rational world to catch up to where I was standing in my fucked current reality. I launched myself at him. Oh, my God—he was real!

Slayton was rock hard, the furthest from accepting me as he could be, but I didn’t care. I had to feel him. I had to rush my hand over his heated flesh, hear him draw in a hiss of breath. I had to feel life, to know he wasn’t a dream.

Whatever restraint he was holding onto shattered as his lips crashed into mine. God, he even tasted the same—danger, spice, and Slayton. I went mad with passion, with need. I just knew he was going to be ripped from me at any second, that I’d wake up and find myself back in my miserable life.

The two of us fell to the snow blanketed ground as I fought to touch as much of him as I could. More than anything my touch was driven by want, but under it all I was looking for damage, trying to feel his heart under the layers of clothes he had on.

That’s when I felt it, something heavy and oval dangling from his neck. I’d pulled it from his shirt, only out of curiosity. I almost didn’t even look at it as I felt his hands rushing over me the same way mine were—starved. If I hadn’t wanted to stare at his beautiful face, I might’ve never seen the gold glinting in the lights from the cabin.

I tensed. He felt me as I pulled myself up still holding my discovery in my hand—a fucking badge. Like a ‘bang, bang, I’m a cop’ badge. I lost my grip on it when he sat down right next to me in the snow. He wasn’t looking at me. His knee was bent, his elbow was perched there as his hand held his forehead and he squinted his eyes like he was waiting for a blow.

Slayton Winslow didn’t wait for blows, he was the first to strike.

“I don’t understand...”

I didn’t, I truly didn’t. Cops didn’t do what I’d seen this boy do. They didn’t kill, they didn’t push people for money. Cops were the good guys, right?

“Undercover,” he rasped.

No way, this made no fucking sense! He wasn’t old enough for a job like that. I knew he wasn’t. Slayton may have held most of his history back and been guarded with what he did say, but he didn’t outright lie. Or so I told myself as I stared at his badge and tried to make the pieces in my head fit.

Everything I’d gone through. Every time I was sure I was running for my life, or worse, the time I was sold as a
hooker
and told to fucking ‘perform,’ erupted from the dam I’d pushed the dark memories behind.

Rage washed away my relief that he was alive. An undercover fucking cop who had not only faked his death but let me believe he was dead for months! An undercover cop who had taken me to the pits of the underworld making me a possession to be had.

I lost control of my actions and words right then.

Slayton let me shove him further away. He let me curse him. He even listened as some of those words rushing through my mind came out, but then he grew tired of taking the punches and pinned my arms above my head as the weight of his body held me to the ground.

When our eyes met, when I looked past my emotion and his, I stilled. So did he. I could still feel it, this unexplainable bond, a tragically beautiful link between us. The sensation didn’t promise bliss; it only promised that I was born to love him unconditionally. Him and all his hells.

Slayton waited until he’d caught his breath before he spoke. “Channing pulled me out of jail when I was seventeen and gave me two options. Go back in or step up,” Slayton said through gritted teeth.

My glower softened, but confusion was still evident, so he refused to let me go as he went on.

“It didn’t matter how smart I was, how much school and responsibility they crammed down my throat in the system. I was still one of Odin’s
fucking
princes. I was still a born fighter and stubborn as hell. I wasn’t meant to live in the straight world. Not built that way.”

Sympathy flashed in my eyes, but it was fleeting. No one, not even him, was allowed to trash talk about him.

“I thought Channing’s way out was easy—become what I was born to be.”

I drew my eyebrows together as his words started to catch up with me. “Channing’s a cop?”

Slayton heard the ache in my voice, the last bit of trust I had for the law fading. He fell away and landed at my side, just as the anger I always knew he possessed flashed in his eyes. “I don’t think Channing knows what side he’s on anymore. Depends on the day.”

We both stared at the stars as precious seconds ticked by. I kept telling myself to let it all go, that knowing he was alive, strong, young and free was what mattered, not the path that we took to get here.

If I had learned anything, it was that it’s impossible to live life without getting a stain or two on your soul. I’d been through too much; he’d been through too much, to just shrug this off. Digest it like it was just a really cool plot twist where for once favor landed in our laps.

“I watched you die,” I whispered. “I laid in a pool of your blood.”

He didn’t move to hold me or look at me, but he reached his hand across the snow-covered ground and took mine. The irony is I was pretty positive this was exactly how we were laying that night. Which made it hard for me to compute any of this. I could feel the life in him now, his pulse, the heat of him.

“The same blood packs Channing put under your dress were in my mouth, I had one on the back of my head, under my hair. It’s a chemical that expands and flows when activated.”

Catch up was the game I was playing. I almost told him Channing didn’t put anything under my dress, but then I did remember the blood I saw on my dress and when I forced my mind to go back to when Channing was spreading me wide for the crowd below I did remember his hands under my dress. All over me, it was cold when his touch left, and I hated myself for noticing.

Fuck. Me. I can’t deal with this reality!

“I took a drug that slows the body down, to mimic death.”

I couldn’t fathom why he would do this to me! Witnessing it was hard enough, believing it was real for months was cruel. The coldest thing anyone has ever done to me.

“Whose idea was it to murder you before my eyes?” The wide-open air filled with tension and fury. I wasn’t sure whose was more infused.

He tightened his grip on my hand. “The only way to control the underground is to become the underground. Cases take years to build. They never said that would be my end when I came in.”

“So they fucking used you? Me?”

Fiercely he rose to his side but somehow gained control and halted. “You were
not
supposed to be there.”

I knew he was laying blame on me. That as long as he lived, he would never forgive me for staying with my father that night at the church.

“I was, though.”

“You were,” he spat. “You were because Channing didn’t trust that one of your father’s enemies would not come after you. He watched every line he could on the legit side of the law and made sure fucks like Zee thought he got off on girls like you.”

“Like me,” I repeated.

“Fucking innocent.” He closed his eyes. A few seconds later he looked at me again with a new degree of calm. “Channing didn’t want to find you, but when he did, my deal was set.”

“Your murder,” I seethed.

He clenched his jaw before he spoke again. “I told them I wanted out. Clean.”

“You call that clean?”

Pain flashed in his eyes before he answered me. “It was the only way I could be with you.”

Again I was playing catch up. I knew he was mad at me for staying with my dad, but I was just as furious at him for being too stubborn to tell me goodbye, for packing up our attic like we never happened. Knowing he was going through everything I saw him endure for me, settled in a sick pit in my gut.

“They let you kill those people? Then helped you get out?” I regretted asking as soon as I did. I saw the hell in his eyes, every bloody life he had taken.

“It was the only way. The law wants their catch, one way or another.”

Mystified and broken I stared up at him. “But they killed him. Channing said Malcolm was dead.”

Slayton swayed his head. “Malcolm was only a stepping stone to where they’re going.”

I was on my feet and pacing seconds later. All that crap Dawn had said to me over the last four months; all her therapy bullshit was starting to chisel away at my mind and emotions.

“You got over me,” I finally said. Before I turned to him, he was already on his feet glaring down at me like I had just crossed the last fucking line that should be crossed. “You got out clean. I thought you were dead. They did too.” He glared at me and I went on. “Months, Slayton. Not weeks.
Months
.” I swayed my head in defeat. “Why now? Why did you shelve me and right when I found a way to agree with the pain you do this? Show up.”

“Over you?” he roared. “Every day, every fucking day you are the only thing I think about!”

I kept shaking my head, doubting him. He lunged and gripped my shoulders. “Do you know how fucked I am, Ember?” He leaned closer to my face. “I was twisted before you ever came ‘round. I stayed unhinged and cold. Never knew who to believe or why I cared.” His grip on my shoulders tightened but then loosened the second he figured out he might be hurting me. “Those last few months in the cage all but stole my humanity,” he stepped back. “I didn’t trust myself with you. I still don’t. Not even after thousands of hours of therapy.” He glared me down, the demons he could see in my eyes. “You needed time to heal, too.”

I trembled “Why now?” my voice was a whisper that was all but lost on the wind.

Slayton’s gunmetal stare rushed over my face as his expression soften. “Channing came to check on me two weeks ago. He told me I had to stop fucking ‘round with my pussy ass anger—he said you need me.” His eyes welled. “He said we couldn’t heal without each other.”

I only vaguely nodded in agreement.

“Next thing I knew he turned into a fucking genie, landed me here with a chaste kiss on the cheek,” he dropped his head, but before he did, I saw the sorrow in his eyes. 

“He kissed me too,” I said with wide eyes, not to invoke jealousy, but to figure out what the hell that meant.

Slayton looked to the side then in a raspy voice said, “He freed us from the life of the underworld, a kiss of death. That’s what we are to him now.”

I hesitantly took a step forward but halted when I saw him tense.

“You love him,” I whispered.

Slayton met my stare dead on then. “He’s my brother...”

It was all I could do to stay balanced just then. I was searching Slayton’s features that I had memorized and doing my best to pair them with Channing’s. Where Slayton was dark, Channing was fairer, but the eyes were close. I’d always assumed that it was the life they lived, the emotion behind the gray stare that made them seem that way.

“Odin’s princes, different Mom’s,” Slayton said like a curse. “I didn’t know my story, but Channing did. He remembers Dad—a man I never met.”

When I moved closer to him, he held his hand out to stop me. “I always wanted to know my story until I knew it. I didn’t want to know that the parts of me I hated the most were a reflection of a man that was a legend to most, and a deadbeat bastard to me—only one of his sons.” His breath hitched. “My mother was a pretty face that he sucked into his hell, and in the end, she was hunted, and I was tossed in with the throw away kids.”

Slayton balled his fists as his stare raked over me. “Don’t you get it? I fought so hard
not
to be him. To not elegantly and proudly rise in his world.” He bit his lip. “What did it get me? I was tossed into the pits with the trash of the underworld, treated the same, and they
still
took you. Still sucked you in. We became a tortured version of the two people I hated the most in my life. My parents.”

I swayed my head in my denial. I may be fucked up in the head right about now, but I knew we were not them. His story had put words behind the emotion I had always read in his eyes and explained why he held back from me, even though being with me was the only thing he wanted. But we were not anyone but Slayton and Ember. Our fate may have been set, but we chose how to endure it. And we chose poorly.