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The impotence of an unfinished fight roiled in Elliot’s gut for the rest of the day. She’d baited her hook, reeled in her fish, then been cock blocked by a civilian taking out the trash, for fuck’s sake. She’d been forced to allow the ghost’s escape in order to protect the noncoms around her, had been unable to follow him, trace him back to her father and finally finish this. She hated the feeling of helplessness, the growing urgency to engage Mansa before he could engage her team. She couldn’t find him, couldn’t do anything but wait.
And so she’d ended up here, in the ring at an underground fighting match, getting the shit pounded out of her. It sounded strange to say she was loving every minute, but she didn’t know how else to express the deep sense of ease every kick, punch—hell, even bites and hair pulling—gave her. It pushed away the world when it became too much to bear, allowed her to leave it all behind for a short period of time. It fed the part of her that hungered for punishment.
She deserved it, though she didn’t think anything could erase the memory of Deacon’s face as he left the kitchen this morning, Sydney tucked safely in his arms, protected. From her.
The punch hit her cheekbone like a bomb, setting off a starburst of pain that satisfied something deep inside her. Focus, Ell. Where’s your head?
She knew exactly where it was. Staring down the man in the ring with her, she allowed a grin to stretch across her face. The bunching of the skin made her face throb, rubbed in the pain of multiple blows. Every breath sent twinges through her ribs. Her bare knuckles screamed.
Elliot savored it, grinning wider.
Her opponent blanched beneath his dark olive skin.
She turned her head, offering him the opposite cheek. “How about another?” she asked, blinking innocently up at him.
His lips pulled back from his teeth. A growl escaped. She could almost see the calculations going through his brain.
He lunged, his fist shooting out.
She took the punch half on her cheekbone, half on her brow. Black eye—nice. But it didn’t stop her from catching his wrist on the withdrawal, whipping sideways to stretch him off balance, and planting her heel in his groin. The man’s body lifted half a foot off the mat. Even the cup he wore wouldn’t save him from that kind of impact.
He dropped like a sack of potatoes and gagged.
That’s number three down. “Who’s next?”
The referee—to use the name loosely—blew the whistle dangling between his fleshy lips. “Take ten.”
She gave the man an impatient look, but his back was already to her. Probably couldn’t take another minute without a drag. Elliot pivoted toward the opposite corner.
And came face-to-face with Dain. Over his shoulder, Deacon stared enigmatically down at her.
She looked back at her boss. “Are you here about Kivuli?”
Dain cocked his head. “No. Should I be?”
So they didn’t know. Good.
“What do you want then?”
He looked like he wanted to question her further, but something stopped him short. “It’s time for everything to come out in the open, Elliot.”
So he was keeping his promise, then. If she didn’t spill, he would. Except her personal demons—and what she chose to do about them—hadn’t been part of the deal.
From the fact that Dain had brought Elliot’s lover into her personal hell, she gathered they were now.
“Fucking bastard.”
He shrugged, though she couldn’t miss the way his gaze cataloged her body. No doubt he already had a list of injuries in his head. It didn’t matter, though; she wasn’t his problem anymore. Time to move on.
The agony that ripped through her at the thought was worse than any blow she’d taken today, but she managed—barely—to tuck it beneath the rest. She wouldn’t put her team in the line of fire just because she wanted to be with them. She wasn’t meant for a family.
“What do you want, Dain?”
“You won’t be fit to come back to duty if you keep this up.”
She dropped her focus to the tape on her wrists, picking at a ragged edge. Anything to keep from seeing Dain’s disappointment. “I’m not coming back.”
A heavy sigh. “Of course you are, little Otter. And I’d rather it be while you can still walk.”
“Oh, this is nothing.” She peeked up, barely catching his expression. “You should see the guys I fought this afternoon; now that was some serious damage.”
“You fought someone else today? Who?”
Dain’s tone was more exasperated parent than real concern. Wasn’t he in for a surprise. “Kivuli.”
“What the hell?”
But Elliot was already plowing on. “Well, not Kivuli himself. His goons. Kivuli booked it when witnesses arrived.”
“Elliot—”
Deacon broke in. “What the hell happened, Elliot?”
Was his voice hoarse? “What do you fucking care? I don’t work for you anymore, Mr. Walsh.”
A string of ugly curses left his mouth, low and angry and, Elliot had to admit, more inventive than her usual go-tos. She preferred vulgarity over variety.
Tilting her head playfully hurt like hell, but she managed. “What’s that, Mr. Walsh?”
The curses petered out as Deacon glared down at her. Elliot grinned, ignoring the shaft of pain through her lip.
“I’m not the one in the wrong here,” Deacon said.
And he wasn’t; she knew all too well that she was to blame, for everything. Still, “Again, I don’t work for you anymore, Mr. Walsh.”
Something volcanic ignited in his expression. “You weren’t calling me Mr. Walsh last night, were you? Or this morning in the shower.”
Elliot reached for a towel hanging over the ropes and used it to wipe her face, used the motion to wipe every ounce of expression away, every thought. It was the only way to stay upright. She turned toward the ref’s assistant, a slinky blonde in a costume more suited to pole dancing than a boxing ring. A quick slash of her hand across her throat told the woman she was done for the night.
Deacon didn’t step back when she slid her leg through the ropes to climb out of the ring. She didn’t let it intimidate her. Her ass brushed his thigh, her sweaty arm knocking his away as she moved past. She didn’t look back on the trip to the locker room.
Unfortunately the swinging door had no lock. And her male companions had no qualms about waltzing in behind her. Guess it really didn’t matter; both of them had seen her naked, though in very different circumstances—assignments didn’t always allow for privacy. But Dain and her team didn’t really look at her body; they assessed her strength and ability to work, her health if she’d been injured. Deacon didn’t look at her like that. There was something squirm-worthy about having her lover and the man she considered her father figure together in the room she was supposed to strip in, even when she was clothed.
“You didn’t answer me, Elliot. What happened?”
“Not much. They trailed me, cornered me in an alley, got their asses kicked, and Kivuli ran.” She shrugged. “I need to shower. You can go now.”
“No—”
She caught the slash of Dain’s hand from the corner of her eye, his own we can discuss that another time. Deacon rubbed roughly at his face.
Yeah, I get that reaction a lot.
“All right, then, how about another question.” Deacon surveyed her wounds, something akin to horror in his eyes. “What the hell where you doing out there tonight?”
She sat on the bench to one side and began to slowly unwrap the tape from one wrist, anything to keep from seeing that look on his face. “It’s called fighting.”
“It’s called punishing herself,” Dain countered.
The burn at the backs of her eyes had her tugging particularly hard on the tape. She bit back a curse as several layers of skin went with it.
“It’s what she does,” he continued. “Beat the emotion out of herself.”
Better that than let it kill you.
“You don’t deserve punishment any more than the rest of us, Elliot.”
She raised her head, staring beyond Deacon to the man who meant far more to her than anyone still alive on this earth. “I quit.”
“I don’t accept.”
Elliot shrugged.
“You see, Deacon,” Dain continued. “Elliot was raised on the run. Her mother escaped when she was three, on a boat with a captain she later married. For ten years they kept moving, kept hiding, always isolating themselves and their daughter in order to avoid Mansa’s vindictive reach.”
She balled the used tape up, tossed it toward an overfull trash can, and started on her other wrist.
“Except when she was thirteen, Mansa caught up with them. You guessed right,” Dain said. “The couple was Elliot’s mother and stepfather.”
A fireball of the hottest red and orange and yellow she’d ever seen. Screams ringing in her ears—her own. Her mother hadn’t had time to scream.
“And then Elliot followed the instructions her mother had ingrained in her. She traveled to the Colorado wilderness, where she was taken into a survivalist camp run by an acquaintance of her stepfather’s.”
She stood, threw the second ball, and turned to her locker. The slap of metal against metal rang through the room when she pulled the door a little too forcefully.
“A survivalist camp?” Deacon asked. He was still facing her, watching her; she could tell by the sound of his voice, the heat of his gaze. The skin between her shoulders, right over her tattoo, crawled like she was a bug under a microscope.
Dain wasn’t letting up. “A militia group run by an ex-general from Africa. See, Elliot has more real-life training than any of us—she was, quite literally, raised to it. Having emotions beat out of her is second nature. And when the general threw her out at the age of eighteen—”
“Stop it, Dain! Shut up. Just shut up.” She snatched her bag from the locker and rounded on the two men. “You don’t get to analyze my past. I’m not some psych experiment, and you’re sure as hell no therapist, so get the fuck out.”
Deacon took a step toward her. “Ell, don’t—”
Her glare was filled with all the rage boiling inside her, the hell of hearing that name again, the name he’d called her while he was inside her. Deacon blanched.
“Don’t you dare call me that. Don’t pretend you give a fuck. You hate me now; fine. I did what you wanted. Now leave me alone.”
“I—” Deacon clamped his mouth shut. The muscle in his jaw jumped as he seemed to fight with whatever words he wanted to say. “I don’t hate you, Elliot.”
“Really?” she scoffed. “You should. I put Sydney in danger. Just by being born, I put my mother in danger. She ended up dead. You should keep me as far away from your daughter as humanly possible.”
“I can’t!” Deacon shouted. “I can’t, no matter how much I want to—because Mansa wants you, not just her.”
All the anger deflated, leaving her body a hollowed-out balloon with nothing to keep it afloat. No wonder they’d come to find her. She didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it earlier: they needed bait.
She looked at Dain, but whatever he was feeling, she couldn’t tell. “So that’s why you’re here?”
Dain’s sigh sounded like it hurt. “I came because you belong with us. You need to come home, little Otter.”
She barely managed to turn away before a tear escaped. She was scrubbing it into oblivion with her fist when the creak of the door opening registered.
Her boss had said his piece, apparently. As she spun to stare at the closed door, the weight of the silence in the room threatened to choke her.
Deacon advanced, his wide shoulders blocking her view. He didn’t stop until her back was to the row of lockers and all she could see was his angry face and tense body looming over her.
Why the hell did that make her the tiniest bit hot?
“I need you to come back.”
“I’m a liar, remember? You can’t trust me. I might be working for the enemy.”
This time it was Deacon’s turn to sigh. “Okay, explain it to me. Why did you lie, Elliot?”
“I didn’t lie. I omitted things.”
His fists landed on the lockers behind her with a jarring bang. “Don’t play games. This is too important. Now tell me, why did you lie?”
She tried to swallow, but every drop of spit had dried up. Not because of Deacon; his anger she could handle. It wasn’t him she was afraid of.
“Dain gave me the basics, and I get it; your childhood was a nightmare. You were raised to secrecy and raised to believe trust would get you killed. That doesn’t mean I can forgive you for withholding information that would affect my daughter.”
“But you still want me in the same house with her.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
Right. She should be used to being a commodity. Maybe she had gotten soft staying with Dain’s team.
And yet she couldn’t stop herself from rubbing salt into the wound. “And what about us?”
She was staring at Deacon’s broad chest, right in front of her face, but she didn’t need to see his expression to interpret his shrug or the disdain in his voice. “What about us? The sex is good, we’ve had it, and now we’re done.”
She had to laugh. She’d been such a girl, reaching for something she had no business wanting, then hurting when she didn’t get to keep it. Stupid. Fucking stupid.
She looked at the floor, her gaze catching midway down. “Done. Really?”
Without thought her hand came up to cup Deacon’s cock. His erect cock. When her fingers folded around his length, he grunted.
She glanced up from beneath her lashes. “You were saying?”
She had just enough time to watch his brown eyes go black before his mouth slammed onto hers. The back of her head hit the locker behind her, but she didn’t care—all she cared about was the hot, angry taste of him in her mouth, the bruising pressure of his hands as they wrangled hers above her head, the heavy push of his thick thigh as he forced her legs open around it.
“I was saying”—he bit down on her bottom lip, sending a zing of pain through her—“we’re”—another bite, this one to her jaw—“done.” His teeth caught the sensitive join of neck and shoulder and clenched. When Elliot arched into the sting, her hard nipples dragged across his body. Deacon shook his head, worrying her skin like a dog with a bone.
She lifted her chin, giving him access to more. A hard suck on her neck pulled a whine from deep inside her.
The sound sent Deacon into a frenzy—she couldn’t tell if he needed her to hurt more or simply couldn’t take holding back any longer, but either way, the foreplay ended there. No sweet caresses, no whispered endearments. That wasn’t what this moment was about. It was about muttered curses and heavy breathing, the rough jerking of zippers and tearing of material and then finally, finally, the hard entry of his body into hers. Only when he hit the end of her and a cry of pain escaped did Deacon still. Elliot hung there, pinned to the metal lockers by his cock, his hands, the force of his weight against her. She panted through the minute it took for her vagina to soften, for her body to accept its too-full invasion. Tears tracked down her cheeks, but they weren’t from the pain—they were from fear. She could finally admit it: she was afraid. Of revealing herself, of Deacon’s rejection, all of it. She didn’t want to have this taken away from her. She didn’t want to go the rest of her life without knowing Deacon, without knowing love, without knowing what it really meant to be a family. She didn’t want to lose him or Sydney or Dain or anyone else.
She didn’t want to lose this.
“I—” She closed her eyes, needing to keep some small part of herself hidden when her entire body, her very soul was being invaded. “I didn’t tell you because...I...I just can’t. I can’t talk about it. About him. You don’t understand.”
The death grip on her wrists loosened the slightest bit. Deacon shifted his hips, pushing her thighs out until it was the most natural thing in the world to raise her legs, hook her knees around his waist. Hold him like he was holding her.
She kept her eyes closed.
“I was born dirty, Deacon. You can’t understand what that’s like. What he did to her just to conceive me...it was...ugly. I’m ugly.”
A soft brush of his breath on her skin, then his mouth against her neck. “You could never be ugly, Ell.”
Her body clenched around his cock when he whispered her name.
“I can never be clean,” she argued. “But I could pretend...if no one knew.”
Deacon lowered his arms, taking hers with him. At her hips he released her wrists, his hands moving down, down until he had her ass cupped in them. She opened her eyes when he lifted her away from the lockers.
The dark brown depths of his eyes drew her in, drowned her. Nothing else registered until he settled on a bench, his back to the door. The shift allowed him in deeper, if that was possible. Elliot moaned at the back of her throat as the base of his cock pressed against her clit.
Deacon held her steady, a hand at her lower back, one at her nape. His grasp wouldn’t let her hide her face, wouldn’t let her do anything but stare up at him as her body grew wet and his shaft pulsed inside her.
“You don’t need to pretend, Ell.” His lips brushed hers. His tongue stroked into her mouth, then withdrew, but he didn’t. His words were spoken into her mouth, into her soul. “Nothing he did can make you dirty any more than it made your mother dirty. You’ve been clean since the moment you were born. You’ve been worthy. You’ve been a gift. He can’t change that. Only you can. Don’t give him that power.”
And then he tipped her backward, arching her spine to bring her breasts to his face. He sucked a nipple right through her clothes.
Elliot lifted toward the touch, needing it, needing him.
They both groaned at the slick slide of her up his cock.
“Again,” Deacon muttered, then sucked her harder.
Elliot did it again, lowered, lifted, beginning a slow, rolling rhythm as she stared at the bright fluorescent light over her head, blind to everything but Deacon—his mouth, his thrusts, his gravelly curses. And her tears. Deacon was shattering her, breaking apart everything she was, and afraid or not, she wanted it. So much. So she kept going, kept moving, even when it felt like the coming explosion would leave nothing of her behind. Even when it felt like she’d never be put back together again, she continued. Again and again and again.
And finally, when she stood on the edge, looking out over the precipice toward the unknown, she clutched him to her and prayed.
Then let herself go.