Chapter 1 #2
He turned, shoulders rolling back, expression carved from stone. But before he could take a step, the dark-haired woman was suddenly in front of him. Up close now. Close enough for him to smell her perfume, her heat, her want.
She didn’t touch him this time. She just said, voice soft and sinful, “You want to forget something tonight?”
His jaw flexed. His grip tightened around the glass, and that ache in him made him want to punch the bar or someone’s smug face.
He had never wanted to be that guy who was a slave to his appetites…
like Derrick. His throat closed, his chest felt tight.
Stop thinking, stop feeling, and disappear into that empty darkness.
Her eyes flicked to the hallway that led to the bathrooms. An invitation. A promise. A cliff he was already falling off.
Breakneck tipped back the last of his whiskey. Set the glass down slowly. Finally, he followed her by walking straight into the version of himself he thought he’d buried in the dirt…only to discover it had been waiting for him all along.
The hallway was dim, lit only by a flickering bulb that buzzed like it was dying.
The bass thumped through the walls, uneven, like a heartbeat out of rhythm.
She didn’t look back to see if he was behind her.
The pull between them felt like a hook sunk into the part of him he had spent a decade locking down.
The place smelled like sweat, booze, sex. Like who he used to be. The thought hit him hard. Had he been kidding himself all these years?
She pushed open the bathroom door and stepped inside. The second she crossed the threshold, she lifted her chin, offering him her throat as if she already knew he wouldn’t be gentle.
He shut and locked the door, then leaned against it, vest open, hip angled, letting her look. She stared at him, and a visible shiver rolled through her. She liked the danger. Her tongue slipped out to wet her bottom lip, and his already throbbing dick pressed hard against the placard of his jeans.
“What are you waiting for?”
She saw an object. Most women did. Face. Body. Heat. Not the man underneath who needed more than praise for how he looked.
He smiled faintly. “I don’t chase tail. It comes to me. Show me what you want.”
Her eyes flashed and her breath caught. “Gladly.” She walked up to him, her hand went over the hard muscles of his chest, over the flat disk of his nipple. Inside, he was on fire, but he showed her no response. “You are gorgeous,” she whispered. “I’ve never seen anyone like you.”
“Do something useful with that mouth.”
He was bored with the script. Tired of the worship. Tired of being reduced to skin and muscle and bone. Was there even one woman out there with enough substance to tell him to fuck off, put him in his place, show him that he was more than flesh and muscle and bone.
She moved in close, the space between them empty in a way that had nothing to do with inches.
She cupped him through the denim, squeezed, and he closed his eyes.
“Now, I’m interested,” he murmured. His body was burning with that wildfire blaze that never seemed to be extinguished.
He’d funneled it into his study of stoicism, but everything he learned seemed to be a jumbled mess, and everything that had made sense before didn’t now.
She pulled at his belt buckle, released his zipper, relieving the pressure against his erection, but creating a stronger, undeniable kind of tension and anticipation instead. Pushing both his briefs and jeans off his hips, her mouth trailed down his chest.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, taking in his junk, hard and jutting toward his abs. He closed his eyes to hold on to even a piece of himself who was decent and whole, but it slipped through his fingers like water.
She grasped him, sending her thumb over the crown of his cock, the moisture slicking his skin, his hips moved with a jackknifing jerk.
“How about you worship me on your knees,” he said, voice low and cold.
Her tongue traced along him, slow and deliberate. Heat shot through him, hard and immediate. When she took him deep, mouth closing around him, a rough sound dragged from his throat.
He slid his fingers into her hair, not gentle, not cruel, just claiming control. He watched the wall instead of her, forcing himself to focus on sensation alone. The rhythm built. Slow strokes. Slick heat. Pressure gathering low and heavy.
He told himself it was only physical. Only friction. Only nerve endings firing.
When she tightened her grip and increased the tempo, his hips began to move with her, shallow thrusts, controlled but fraying.
That was enough.
He pulled her up and took her mouth, hot and hard. Tequila and want and something reckless on her tongue. He didn’t soften the kiss. He didn’t pretend this was anything but hunger.
“God, you’re trouble,” she whispered against his jaw.
“You have no idea.”
His voice barely sounded like his own.
She stroked him again and something snapped loose inside him. He turned her, pressed her against the sink, her dress shoved up, her hands braced against the counter. He wasn’t gentle. He didn’t try to be.
He pushed into her without hesitation. Deep. Hard. No teasing.
Just need.
Just movement.
Just the brutal, desperate cadence of a man trying to fuck the truth out of his own blood.
She gasped, pushed back against him, wanting the force he usually kept leashed. He gripped her hips and drove into her again, harder, chasing the roar in his veins. The photo flared in his mind. Derrick’s face. His mother’s voice. The hollow terror that he was made of someone else’s violence.
Every thrust was denial. Every slam of his hips a rebellion against resemblance.
She tightened around him and cried out, shuddering as she came. He followed seconds later, thrust burying deep, muscles locking, a curse tearing free as release ripped through him.
For a heartbeat, everything went blank.
His forehead dropped against her shoulder, breath harsh and uneven.
When it was over, there was nothing.
No relief. No clarity. Only a hollow opening wider inside his chest.
He stepped back first.
She smoothed her dress, adjusted her hair.
“You make me shiver,” she said quietly. “Behind those storm-cloud eyes is heartbreak. You won’t find what you need here. Running only makes you winded.” She touched his cheek once and slipped out.
Breakneck braced his hands on the sink, staring down at chipped porcelain.
Her words echoed, cutting deeper than the act ever had.
He turned on the faucet and scrubbed his hands under cold water, as if he could wash the night off himself.
His hair dripped sweat onto the counter.
His pulse pounded against his ribs like it wanted out.
But when he lifted his head, the mirror betrayed him.
A stranger stared back. Gray-eyed. Raw. Unhinged.
His breath caught. Derrick. The shape of the jaw. The glint in the eye. The sharp, coiled violence. He stumbled back a half step. “Fuck,” he whispered. His mother’s voice twisted through him like barbed wire. I told you what you needed to hear.
He didn’t know what was true anymore. What belonged to the man who raised him. What belonged to the one in the photograph. The not knowing scraped along his ribs as he stepped out of the bathroom.
The hallway felt narrower than before, the low amber bulbs flickering overhead, casting a sickly halo over peeling wallpaper and scuffed floorboards.
Heat pooled thick in the air, a humid blend of sweat, spilled liquor, and perfume that clung to his skin like a second layer.
The bass thumped through the walls in an erratic pulse that made his teeth vibrate.
Every breath tasted like smoke and desperation, like the ghosts of a version of himself he’d trained out of existence.
Breakneck needed another drink. Needed ten. Needed the kind of burn that could cauterize the screaming inside him before it tore him open.
He reached the bar and set down a wad of cash. “Keep ’em coming.”
The bartender didn’t flinch. He’d seen men like this before, eyes blown wide with purpose, jaw set hard, violence coiled beneath the skin.
“For the ladies,” Breakneck said, the words flat, edges dulled by something dark and unraveling.
The bartender poured. Breakneck swallowed.
The whiskey hit like fire. A second glass followed.
He didn’t taste it. A third. Still nothing.
He wouldn’t be the first man to think alcohol could fix anything.
He wouldn’t be the last. Right now, it was the only thing that might dull the noise long enough for him to breathe.
Women drifted toward him as if pulled by something unseen, curves brushing his arms, soft laughter rising, eyes lingering on the heavy line of his shoulders, the open leather vest revealing muscle that invited attention and fed hunger.
A fingertip skimmed his forearm. Another hand ghosted over his ribs.
Their whispers braided around him, compliments and promises from women who saw a man they wanted, not the fracture he was trying to hide.
He didn’t touch them. He felt their heat at his back, the slow way they encircled him, like moths drawn toward something ready to ignite.
Across the room, the man he’d clipped earlier hunched over the edge of the pool table, resentment etched across his face. His glare hooked onto Breakneck and didn’t let go.
“Pretty boy thinks he’s some goddamn movie star,” he muttered loud enough to carry. His friend grunted. “Look at him, roostered up with his little flock. Cocky son of a bitch. What, we’re not good enough to breathe the same damn air?”
Breakneck heard it. His awareness was razor sharp, a sniper’s instinct that never powered down. He didn’t turn. Didn’t blink. Before his mother’s betrayal, he would’ve ignored it, diffused it, let it slide. Tonight the darkness she’d torn open sat too close to the surface.
The man raised his voice. “Hey, sweetheart. Love the vest. You auditioning for Chippendales?”
A couple of women laughed, not at Breakneck, but at the fool who didn’t recognize danger.
Breakneck lifted his glass and took another slow drink. The whiskey warmed the hollow inside him for half a heartbeat. He leaned toward the dark-haired woman. “Now you’ll see what I meant about trouble.”
Her eyes flicked to the instigator. She shivered.
He turned.
“Yeah, that’s right, princess. Real men don’t preen like—”
Breakneck set the glass down quietly. The sound barely registered over the music, but the intent behind it did. He turned fully, the shift of his body slow and deliberate, and the room reacted in that subtle way crowds do when they sense something about to snap.
He walked toward the man, each step measured, boots striking warped wood in a steady rhythm. His vest hung open, muscle bunching beneath skin, shadow sharpening the angles of him as he closed the distance.
The man swallowed but held his ground, shoulders squaring, bravado flickering.
“It would be in your best interest to shut the fuck up,” Breakneck said, voice low and restrained.
The man smirked, the expression brittle. “What you going to do about it, Pretty boy?”
Breakneck’s hand moved faster than a blink. One moment the man was standing,
the next he was flat on his back, slammed onto the felt of the pool table, billiard balls scattering like startled prey, the overhead light swaying, casting frantic shadows over the scene.
Breakneck’s hand closed around the man’s throat, pinning him with a weight that felt less like anger and more like inevitability.
The man’s breath hitched, a wet choke. His fingers clawed at Breakneck’s forearm, nails scraping skin, but Breakneck didn’t give him an inch.
His jaw locked. Everything inside him went flat like the ocean before a storm, the kind of threat generated by the stirring of a powerful mass that didn’t belong to a man losing control.
It belonged to a weapon deployed without conscience.
There was nothing there, no anger, no regret, no fear, and no remorse. He was all about those cold zeros, and that was it.
That was far, far worse.
Breakneck’s grip tightened, his forearm an unyielding bar across the man’s windpipe. He watched the man’s face redden, veins rising beneath straining skin, panic setting in with a sharp, animal desperation. The man’s heel drummed against the table leg in frantic, uneven kicks.
Shouts erupted behind them, chairs scraping, boots scuffing against the floor, someone shouting for the bouncer, but Breakneck didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t hear anything except the slow, pounding pulse under his palm.
He leaned in, voice dropping to a low, guttural whisper meant for the man’s terrified ears alone. “You have no idea who you’re talking to.”
The man gasped, a thin rasp of air barely making it past the crushing pressure of Breakneck’s hold.
Breakneck didn’t loosen his grip. Didn’t soften. He squeezed harder.
It wasn’t until a hand, strong, familiar, shaking with barely contained fear, clamped around Breakneck’s wrist that he felt the world rush back into his body in a disorienting wave.
The man’s voice was a harsh, broken thing, barely audible over the chaos. “Let him go, brother.”
Boomer.
Breakneck didn’t react, his mind still lodged in that empty, echoing place where reaction and identity and conscience had been stripped down to nothing. Boomer stepped closer, positioning himself between Breakneck and the man in a way that made no tactical sense and every emotional sense.
“Let him go,” Boomer repeated, voice catching like it hurt him. “He’s not worth you losing everything. If you kill him, there’s no coming back from that.” His grip tightened. “Don’t throw everything away on this shit.”
Breakneck blinked once. Twice.
The world snapped into brutal, nauseating focus, the blotchy purple of the man’s face, the crowd frozen in horrified silence, the bartender frozen mid-dial on the phone, and Boomer staring at him with an expression Breakneck had never seen before.
Fear. For him. Because of him. Both. What was absent? Judgment.
Breakneck’s fingers slipped open. The man collapsed on the table in a wheezing heap.
Breakneck staggered back, chest heaving, his pulse hammering like artillery fire under his skin. The whiskey churned in his gut. The room tilted, heat pressing in on all sides like a closing fist.
Boomer didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t reprimand him. Didn’t call attention to the circle of witnesses holding their breath.
He just grabbed Breakneck’s vest in a firm, steady grip, pulling him away from the table with a quiet control that made Breakneck feel ten feet tall and utterly, devastatingly small.
“Fuck, kid,” Boomer whispered, something like grief warping the words. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Breakneck had no answer.
He wasn’t sure he had a voice left at all.