Chapter 12 #3
His finger curls a strand of my hair around it and tugs before he lets it go and walks to the wall. “If you run across Bergmann before I do, don’t shoot him.”
My eyes narrow. “Why? ”
“He should be mine.”
“Why?”
“Because.” His tone is final, which causes me to feel both attracted to him and annoyed.
“I’ll shoot him if I want,” I say in a surly tone.
War grabs the insulation and starts tearing it out from between the boards. When he rips out the fourth piece, there’s a smooth white wall that isn’t cinder blocks. He taps the wall experimentally and then slams his fist into it. Plasterboard explodes as his arm goes right through.
“How did you know?” I ask with a gasp.
He doesn’t bother to answer. Grabbing the broken wall with both hands, he rips a giant hole in the drywall.
Within seconds, he breaks through it with his whole body. Covered in white dust as though he’s a powdered sugar donut, he stands in some kind of basement lair.
There are markers in a circle on the tile floor around a leather-covered bench.
At first glance, I think it’s a piece of gymnastics equipment.
A pommel horse without the hand-holds, maybe?
But the way it’s sitting in the center of the tile circle…
It reminds me of an altar. My eyes scan for blood.
I don’t see any, but there are dark spots on the leather, like oil or something was spilled over it.
My hands grip the two-by-fours, bracing myself and hesitating to climb through. I don’t like the look of where he’s standing. “What is this place?”
“The ritual room in the basement of the Lambda Delta fraternity house.”
“Ritual room? For what? The occult?” I wrinkle my nose and withdraw slightly. The Lambda Deltas had ties to a vicious serial killer. I wouldn’t put anything past them.
“You see any pagan symbols?” War shakes his head. “I assume they use it for hazing pledges and taking oaths. As well as… some other things.”
Staring at the bench, I frown at the metal eye-rings on the sides. Those look similar to the one on the wall above the headboard in the cell. The one with the chain that ended in restraints. “What other things?”
After a pause, he says, “Sure you wanna know?” His gaze rests heavy on me.
“I think I do know.” The edge to my voice is as sharp as a blade.
“Yeah.”
“Yes, what? Just say it.”
“It’s a piece of sex furniture. They use it to gang-bang a whore or a drugged college girl they lure in.”
His last words hit me like a fist. This is a place where they bind and gang-rape incapacitated girls? I’m someone who can get pretty buzzed on a night out. I like to think I’m pretty streetwise, but when men hunt as a pack…
The feeling of being held down and force-fed drugged water comes roaring back.
Yeah, I know what a girl on that bench would feel while she was fighting to get up.
Fighting to escape. To survive. I can almost feel the hands holding me down.
Forcing me to take something inside me that I didn’t want.
A gang-rape might have been coming next for me if War and I hadn’t escaped the other cell.
Fuck those assholes. Whose number I dropped by three, I think with vicious satisfaction.
Looking at the jagged drywall, I frown.
“Here,” War says, reaching through. He swings me up into his arms, cradling me against his chest as he brings me through the open wall. After carrying me away from the debris, he sets me on my feet. “All right?”
“No,” I mutter. With an ill-advised need to expose their dark secrets, I open drawers in an antique French buffet that sits against a far wall. In it, I find condoms, lube, and sex toys. Next, I find a pad of paper, markers and some kind of ceremonial knife with an ivory handle inlaid with gold.
Mother fuckers.
One day, I will come back and burn this place down.
War watches me with interest as I stab the blade into a piece of wood and break off the handle.
“Okay,” I say, my voice raw with rage. “I’m ready to go, and I’m taking this with me. If anyone tries to stop me, you’re not going to let them, right?”
His expression is unreadable, but his words are firm. “When have I ever stood back and let some other guy touch you?”
My eyes widen as his words sink in. They aren’t what I expected, but they’re true. Technically.
A few times men have tried to manhandle me in front of him, and he was the one to get to me first and intercede. I’d assumed it was because they’d been aggressive, bordering on violent, and he couldn’t let it go while there were Crue guys around to report back on the incident.
But honestly, it was never his job to bodyguard me. And both times, my cousin Jamie was on his way over to jump in. It was just that War always seemed to get to me first. Why was that?
Running a tongue slowly over my lip, I scrutinize him. “Is that a blanket policy? Or just when someone means to do me harm?”
“What do you think?” His expression hardens, as though this is a conversation that annoys him.
My voice downshifts, coming out soft and curious. “I don’t know, War. That’s why I’m asking.”
“Blanket.” His defiant tone is a challenge. A red flag in the matador’s hand.
I don’t charge in. Instead, I’m thinking, trying to work this out. I’ve been on dates since arriving on campus. War and I have crossed paths from time to time. He never tried to wreck my dates. “Since when? The blanket part?”
The edge to his expression eases, the wariness crinkling the corners of his eyes lessening. “Can’t say. Started around Christmas.”
“That’s why you were following me? To make sure I wasn’t going to hook up with someone else? ”
He nods, completely unabashed. “Or to get into some kind of trouble. The way you often do.”
I’m a little too stunned to really know how I feel about this. “Stalking a C Crue baby is pretty dangerous,” I muse, my tone light. I’m not looking to fight about it. At least not yet. “What changed at Christmas? I don’t remember anything. Definitely didn’t give you the nod.”
War shrugs his broad shoulders and glances around. “Not the place to have this conversation, or any other, really.” He walks over to the steps. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“You dropped a bomb. Do you even wanna know how it landed?”
“Not really.”
Lowering my head, I stare down at my bare feet. He’s unbelievable. And really overconfident.
What he’s doing could get him in a lot of trouble… which he knows .
Apparently, he just doesn’t care. A slow smile curves my sore mouth.
I like that he’s a fearless risk taker. It’s what I suspected all along. He’s only willing to take orders up to a point. And when the order is something he doesn’t like… When it means he’ll have to stay away from me, the answer is no.
Good , I think, not even fully knowing why.