Raze & Reap (15 page)

He was smelling me, a deep rumbling growling in his chest as he inhaled my floral perfume. The attention he was giving me was almost primitive … Neolithic. It was like Raze had been stripped bare of any manners, ripped from the Stone Age and stripped of any boundaries.

And I'd never been so captivated, so mesmerized by anyone in all my life.

Raze's warm nose moved to the side, his warm breath ghosting over my face. The tip of his nose traced the shell of my ear before his full lips dragged over my lobe. Shivers of pleasure ran down my spine and into every cell in my body.

I had never felt this before. Never felt this overwhelming lust, this consuming level of instant attraction … this raw and insatiable need to be with a man. It was dangerous. It was haunting. It was forbidden. And although it was wrong, it felt so perfectly right.

Fanning my loose, long brown hair with his sharp exhale, Raze rasped, “You don't belong in here. Why are you here?”

Like a bucket of ice water had been thrown over my head, I pulled back so quickly that the back of my skull hit the wooden door. Raze pulled back, but only an inch, refusing to give me any room to breathe. He loitered in my personal space, unnerving me beyond belief.

His dark gaze was cold, only made more severe by the Eye Black smeared below his eyes, though there was fire in his pupils as he stared me down. He wasn't unaffected by me. Maybe … just maybe he felt this powerful strange connection to me too.

“I … I came to see if you were ready for your first fight,” I said nervously.

A small twitch of his cheek and the slight narrowing of his eyes told me my question was unwelcome.

“Always. I'm always ready. Always ready to
kill
.”

I summoned the courage to stare into his eyes. I knew it was impossible, but those eyes were so, so familiar, like I'd known them all my life. My mind became filled with confusion, with hope, with doubt, with the overpowering necessity to learn more about this man.

“Tell me your real name?” I blurted out.

Raze's face instantly blanked, all feeling seeping from his features. He stepped back, and I immediately felt his loss, felt cold without the burning heat from his body.

Moving from the door, I asked, “Raze, please. It's been haunting me. It's stupid … but I need to know your name. You remind me … I just feel like I know you—”

Raze's head snapped up and he said, “Eight one eight.”

My attention dropped to the large tattoo on his chest. Confused, I traced the numbers with my eyes …
818.

“Eight one eight?” I questioned under my breath, but Raze clearly heard my subtle whisper and strode toward me.

Gripping my hands, he selected my forefinger. My blue eyes fixed on his brown eyes, and he began to outline his large 818 tattoo with our joined hands. I lost my breath, heart beating like a drum, as if it were trying to break free and meld with his.

The air around us was electric, all my synapses firing like bullets. The ambient noise from the first fight slipped into silence as my flesh met his. Raze's gaze became glassy, like he'd drifted off to another world. Then he leaned in and his nose was back in my hair, inhaling my scent, his stubbled cheek scratching my throat.

Hands still on his chest, my breasts heaved in need. “Raze…” I murmured, feeling on fire with lust, going out of my mind due to my ever-wayward hormones. I didn't understand this pull. I didn't understand why my wanting Raze was so strong, so very strong. So strong I could barely resist him.

Raze inhaled deeply and said, “All I can think of when I take in your scent is sand … and sun … and sea…” He shook his head and his face twisted up in disbelief, a momentary hint of vulnerability in his expression. “But I've never seen a beach, never felt sand beneath my feet or smelled the sea…” His eyebrows pulled down.

Every fiber of my body froze. All the air escaped my lungs. A suffocating tension built in my chest as I watched Raze's face run rapidly through a gamut of emotions. I stood stock-still.

Was that hope or disbelief settling in my heart?

Impossible.

Impossible.

Impossible, I tried to tell myself, but …

Sand and sun and sea … Luka, me … Brighton Beach … God! The beach, the beach, the salty air, the scent of sand … It always reminded me of Luka. He always told me it reminded him of me … of our cove, of our first kiss …

My knees began to shake and I stumbled back, only to reach up and grip Raze's cheeks, his huge body turning to stone as I looked into those familiar hypnotic chocolate eyes.

“What? Why? Why did you say that? To
me?
”

Raze's eyes narrowed and he jerked back his head, my hands slipping from his face like leaves drifting from the trees in the fall. That same cold demeanor once again commandeered his face, the chill he always wore, any trace of vulnerability snubbed out. Raze began to pace the holding room floor like a wild animal locked in a cage, like a wild cat in captivity. His frame seemed to occupy the entire space of the room and I could feel his confusion, his agitation crackling the air around us.

His eyes repeatedly squeezed shut and his head twitched like he was fighting something in his head. His neck muscles corded with the strain, or was it pain?

Lord! He looked like he was in pain.

“I'm not here for you, for memories I don't want. I'm here for revenge!” he growled, his softer side gone, the frightening icy killer back in place. “I'm 818 and I'm here for my revenge. On the man who lied. On the man who made me into
this
.”

The heels of his hands pushed into his eyes and he shook his head. His hands dropped only to make fists at his sides. Then he blasted out a frustrated bellow.

My head was spinning.

Why did he think of the beach? Why were his eyes exactly the same as
his
? Why did he smell sand, sun and sea when he was around me?

Without thinking it through, I leapt forward and held Raze's rough face in my hands. I searched his sharp features for any sign of recognition, but under the thick dark stubble of his cheeks and his scarred and weathered face, I could find none.

“How old are you?” I asked, holding my breath.

Raze stilled, eyebrows furrowed, like his mind was shrouded in a thick fog. “I … I don't know.” My heart cried out at the lost look on his face. His gaze looked panicked, even afraid?

He reminded me of a little boy in that brief moment. Right then, my heart cracked, and I wanted to give him comfort. Me, a woman, wanting to give comfort to this hulking brute of a killer. But what if he was Luka? What if the impossible became possible? Luka's body was never returned to his family, to be identified, to be buried …

My heart started to race faster as all kinds of possibilities circled around in my head. And when Raze's head tilted to the side in confusion and he pursed his full lips, my frantic heart nearly exploded …

“Luka, leave me alone!” I said, folding my arms across my chest, and Luka laughed behind me, his arms wrapping around my shoulders from behind.

“Don't be like that, Kisa. Me and Rodion were just joking around.”

“You and my brother were picking on me! When you two are together, you're a nightmare!”

Luka spun me around in his arms, his stunning, beautiful eyes concentrating on mine. His smile faded, his head tilted to the side in that adorable way, and his full lips pursed. “Forgive me,
solnyshko
?”

I loved it when his head tilted to the side and his full lips pursed. He only ever did it when he was sorry or immensely confused. It made him look so beautiful. My heart melted when he looked at me that way.

Sighing in defeat, I rose on tiptoes and pressed my mouth to his. “I forgive you, Luka. I'll always forgive you…”

The door flew open, ripping me from my childhood reminiscence. I instantly dropped my hands like Raze's skin had become a naked flame. Viktor's shocked gaze met mine as he witnessed our intimate encounter. I immediately leapt back and quickly righted my hair.

“Miss Volkova?” Viktor asked. Rushing past our resident Georgian trainer, I burst into the hallway, just as Alik's door flew open and my furious fiancé stepped through.

My body stiffened with fear. Alik's possessive eyes quickly sought mine. I was irrationally worried what he would see in my expression, the realization that Raze
could
be
my
Luka. Alik hated Luka. It suddenly occurred to me that he showed no emotion when Rodion or Luka died. I knew it was because he was pleased that he now had me to himself, that Luka no longer stood in the way of getting what he wanted to possess.

Alik's lips tightened and the bone of his jaw clicked with anger as he walked to where I stood, his heavy hands grabbing my biceps. He pulled me to his damp chest.

“Where the fuck have you been?” he snarled, the hand on my left bicep inevitably moving upward to clutch the back of my neck.

“I … I was working,” I said quickly. To evade his suspicion, I flattened my uneasy palm on his cheek. “But I'm here now, baby,” I soothed as I felt his grip slacken and his deep exhale of relief. “I'm here to help you win this fight.”

Alik pressed his clammy forehead to mine and he forced me into the holding room he always used here at The Dungeon. Once the door was closed, he forced me against the wall, his hands roaming over my body. I noticed bottle after bottle of creatine, steroids, and testosterone pills.

As his finger plunged into my channel, I closed my eyes and let myself drift away on a ship of memories … Alik's free hand hitched up my dress and he began fucking me against the door.

I pictured a beach. Sand. Sun and the sea … and I pictured my Luka kissing my lips … my Luka looking at me with head tilted to the side and his full lips pursed. Then I pictured Raze's hard face. Raze, with whom I was becoming more than obsessed. I pictured what Luka's face would look like older, stubbled, and with scars, worn down by hardships thrown in his path … and a part of me excitedly but foolishly hoped my Luka could be the fighter in the other room …

That Luka could be Raze …

 

12

RAZE

“What the fuck was
that
?” Viktor hissed as I stood in the center of the room, my head spinning from flashbacks …
A hot sunny beach, a boy and girl kissing … a girl pissed at a boy but forgiving him with a smile.

Kisa's question about my name and age stabbed at my brain. But nothing, nothing came through; no answers emerged to answer the questions she had asked. I'd always been numb. I'd learned to only ever be a fighter of the Gulag who had a burning need for revenge. I'd learned to never give any thought to my name. I'd learned to never think about my age, where I'd come from. I'd learned to always accept I just … was …

Fuck!

“Raze!” Viktor snapped. For the first time, the booming of his familiar accent made me freeze.

I stared into the drunk's eyes and stomped forward until I towered above him. My head tilted to the side as I studied his face. Viktor was well built, tall, and, if his accent was anything to go by …

The tattooed 818 on my chest felt like it was burning, and I said, “You're not Russian. Everyone here is Russian, but you … you sound different.”

Viktor paled and glanced to my tattoo, then again to my face. He shook his head and answered, “No. I'm not Russian.”

Stepping even closer, smelling the burn of alcohol on his breath, my teeth ground together and I demanded, “Where are you from? And don't lie.”

Viktor swallowed hard, a defeated expression veiling his face. “Georgia.”

“You speak like
them
,” I growled, thinking of the guards, the guards of the Gulag who would beat me, belittle me, dismantle me piece by piece … come into my cell at night …

Viktor slumped to the chair behind him. “That's because I
was
one of
them
,” he whispered. I burned with rage. A storm, a fucking hurricane of violence built up inside me.

“You were a guard?” I hissed through clenched teeth, my neck aching from the tightness of my muscles.

“Not a guard, a transporter. But I attended the fights in the Gulags, even helped train some of the fighters.”

“
Gulags?
” I repeated, shock in my voice. “There's more than one?”

Viktor nodded and sighed. “There are many. Places where souls are forgotten, places where young men disappear from the face of the earth, places where they become nothing more than fighting monsters.”

“And me?” I asked through gritted teeth. “Do you know me?”

Viktor shook his head. “No, not personally. I've never seen you fight. But that tattoo on your chest comes from one and only one gambling ring: Georgian. Your tattoo tells me you came from a Georgian Gulag. I knew it the instant I saw you. You have the same dead look in your eyes all the inmates have. The look that remains after they've had their humanity ripped out of them.”

“I'm from Alaska. My Gulag was in Alaska,” I pushed.

Viktor looked up at me and said, “I went there only once. I took the fighters where they needed to go, delivered the fighters to the Gulag's door. I had no choice until I'd paid my family's debt. Then they took me on as a trainer. I spent years training fighters for the Gulag's cage until I was bought by the Pakhan and came to train fighters full time here in New York, for the Bratva.”

My eyes narrowed. “You were successful in the Gulag? Your fighters won?”

Viktor nodded. “I was. They did. My fighters were undefeated until I was brought here. I'd have been killed if I failed.”