Chapter Seventeen
Nano
The stairs felt too narrow, the walls pressing in on both sides as I climbed. My boots hit each step too hard, the sound echoing off concrete like gunshots, like accusations, like the fucking screaming in my head that wouldn’t stop. What the fuck did you just do?
I didn’t know. I couldn’t explain it.
I’d stood there, mere feet from her, and watched as she kneeled on that cold floor, watched as her body trembled and her breath came in ragged gasps as her eyes locked on mine with something that looked like want, and I fucking walked away.
I just turned and left as if she were nothing. Like I didn’t fucking care.
Liar. The word ricocheted through my skull, vicious and unforgiving, because I did care.
I cared too fucking much, and that was the problem.
I had stood there looking at her, at the broken, defiant thing who had stolen from us, who had lied to us, who should have been nothing more than a job, and I wanted to touch her so badly my hands shook.
I wanted to wrap my fingers around her throat.
I wanted to feel her pulse hammer against my palm.
I wanted to watch her eyes go dark and her body convulse and hear the desperate, involuntary sound she made when she came.
Fuck.
I shoved through the door at the top of the stairs.
The wood slammed against the wall hard enough to crack, as the sound echoed through the narrow hallway, sharp and violent, but I didn’t care.
Didn’t even slow down. The main room of the clubhouse opened up in front of me, too bright, too loud, too full of people who weren’t her.
Bodies everywhere. Voices bleeding together into meaningless noise.
The smell of beer and cigarette smoke and leather hung thick in the air, suffocating.
My chest felt tight. My skin felt wrong, like it was stretched too thin over something that was trying to claw its way out. My hands shook as I shoved them into my pockets and curled them into fists as I tried to make it stop.
Get it together. You’re losing your shit.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t think past the image of her kneeling there, waiting for me to hurt her.
Those wide, trusting eyes looking up at me like I was something other than the monster I knew I was.
I couldn’t stop hearing the way her breath had hitched when I turned away.
That small, broken sound that had cut straight through me like a blade, and worst of all, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had just made the biggest fucking mistake of my life.
I left her there. Alone. Vulnerable. After she offered me everything.
And I walked away like a fool.
The bar was across the room, and I headed for it without thinking, my vision tunneled until all I could see was the bottles lined up behind Xzibit’s head as everything else faded to gray.
The pool table where Morpheus and Cerberus were racking up another game, the worn leather couches where a few of the younger prospects sprawled out watching some fight on TV, the haze of cigarette smoke drifting through the dim lighting.
None of it registered. My boots hit the scarred wooden floor in a steady rhythm, each step automatic, as my body moved on autopilot while my mind was still back in that room, replaying the conversation that had sent me storming out.
Xzibit was a good prospect. He’d tended the bar at the Brotherhood’s clubhouse for the last year, maybe longer.
Time blurred together in this place. He had seen every kind of fucked-up thing that walked through our doors.
Brothers who came back from runs gone sideways, brothers drenched in blood, carrying a darkness that didn’t wash off no matter how much whiskey he poured into them.
He knew how to read the signs. The set of a brother’s shoulders, the clench of their jaw, the look in their eyes that said he was one wrong word away from them putting his face through a wall.
Through it all, he never said a word as he grabbed a beer from beneath the bar, twisted off the cap with a practiced flick of his wrist, and slid it across the scarred surface as I reached him.
The bottle left a wet trail on the wood, cutting through a ring of condensation from someone else’s drink.
I caught it without looking, brought it to my lips, and drank.
The cold burned down my throat, sharp and bitter, but it didn’t help.
It didn’t touch the heat crawling under my skin, the pressure building in my chest, the rage that coiled tighter and tighter with nowhere to go.
If anything, it made it worse. It gave me something to focus on, and made me aware of how my hands shook, how my knuckles were still white from where I had them clenched into fists for the last ten minutes.
I should have touched her. The thought came unbidden, unwelcome. I should have wrapped my hand around her throat and squeezed until she stopped thinking. Until she stopped fighting. Until she was nothing but sensation and submission, and mine.
But I didn’t. I walked away and now I was standing at the bar, drinking a beer I couldn’t taste, trying to convince myself I made the right call.
Logically, I knew it was. I was playing a long game.
I wanted to break her down. To make her want me, make her beg for me.
Except it didn’t feel like I broke her down. It felt like I had broken myself.
“Nano.”
The voice was soft. Feminine. Familiar in the way all club whores were familiar.
Interchangeable, disposable, and designed to be used and forgotten.
Just another face in the endless rotation of women who circulated through this place like blood through veins, keeping the club’s darker appetites fed.
I turned my head slowly and saw her standing beside me, too close, invading the bubble of space I had carved out for myself.
Blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders in waves that had to be extensions.
Small tits pushed up and out by a corset that left nothing to the imagination.
Lips painted a particular shade of red that was supposed to scream sex and sin.
She was okay in that generic, manufactured way that should have been appealing.
The kind of beauty that came from good genes, strategic makeup, and knowing exactly what angles worked best. But all I could see was dark hair and defiant eyes and a body that trembled when I touched it.
All I could feel was the ghost of her skin under my hands, the memory of her breath hitching, the way she looked at me like I was simultaneously her salvation and her damnation.
Stop. Stop thinking about her.
“Hey, handsome,” she said, her voice dropping into that practiced sultry tone that probably worked on ninety percent of the men in this club. “You look like you could use some company. Someone to help you... relax.”
I didn’t respond.
My jaw was clenched too tight, as my teeth ground together hard enough to hurt.
My hands were curled into fists around the beer bottle, knuckles white with tension, the glass slick with condensation from the heat of my palms. My entire body vibrated with something I couldn’t name.
Something raw and jagged and dangerous that clawed at my insides, demanding release.
She stepped closer, eliminating what little space remained between us. Her hand landed on my arm, fingers trailing up toward my shoulder. Light. Teasing. Deliberate. The kind of touch that was supposed to be an invitation, a promise of what could happen if I just said yes.
But something inside me snapped, and I moved blindly, without planning, without control, with none of the careful restraint I had spent years cultivating like a weapon against my own nature.
My hand shot out and closed around her throat. Not gently. Not carefully.
Hard.
Her eyes went wide, and her pupils dilated in an instant as shock and fear flooded her expression.
The transformation was immediate. One moment she had been defiant, the next she was utterly terrified.
Her hands flew up to my wrist, as her nails dug deep into my skin, trying to pry my fingers loose.
I could feel the sharp sting as she clawed at me, drawing blood, but the pain was distant, almost irrelevant.
But I didn’t let go. Something inside me snapped, as some invisible thread that had been holding everything together finally broke under the weight of it all.
The pressure felt good. Right. Like this was what I needed all along.
This release, this violence, this proof that I was still in control of something.
After days of feeling powerless, of being pushed around and manipulated, here was something I could actually affect. Something I could dominate.
Her mouth opened wide as she tried to scream, tried to call for help, but no sound came out.
Just a choked, desperate wheeze as her face turned red, then darker, a deep crimson that spread across her cheeks and forehead.
Her eyes were pleading now, begging me to stop, to show mercy, but I couldn’t look away from what I was doing.
Tighter. The thought was cold. Clinical. Squeeze harder. Make her pass out. Make her stop struggling.
“Nano!”
The shout came from somewhere behind me and cut through the red haze that had consumed my vision, but I didn’t turn.
I didn’t care. All I could focus on was the way her pulse hammered against my palm, frantic and desperate, like a trapped bird beating its wings against a cage.
I could feel every erratic thump of her heartbeat beneath my fingers.
The way her body went limp, her struggles weakening with each passing second, her arms that had been clawing at my wrists now falling slack at her sides.
The way her eyes rolled back, the whites showing, her face turning an unnatural shade of purple.