17. Roxy
Roxy
Icy air hits me from all angles, forcing me to hug tighter into the warm body in front of mine. My shivering body presses against his sturdy one. I already know I’m in way over my head when the docks come into view.
The wharfs, with all their shadows and containers, have a notoriously bad reputation, the kind you hear about, but no one in Havenport Harbour dares venture to. With it’s menacing shipping containers and dark pockets of concrete... I get it.
Of course, it’s Devil-owned.
My lip trembles, and not just from the frigid air. Maybe I should have listened to Kai when he told me that he wasn’t a good man. But something inside me can’t help but feel pulled to him.
I’ve seen evil. Me and evil have an intimate relationship, and I can spot it anywhere. I know Kai has done evil things. Yet, I don’t believe he is evil.
And maybe that just makes me fucking stupid.
We pull up next to another bike, similar to Kai’s, but instead of midnight black, it’s a deep purple, so dark it almost looks black. I already know it’s Kaleb’s.
An exhale that sounds more like a sob falls out of me, amplified by the puff of air that follows.
When the motor switches off, my ears ring with the silence.
Only the sound of waves lapping at the dock and a soft breeze fills the eerie space.
Thick fog chokes the harbour and I can barely see through it.
Kai swings his leg off smoothly, undoing the helmet, and tugging it off.
“What are we doing h...”
My words are cut off by a rough palm clamping over my mouth. A scream builds in my chest, muffled beneath his palm. Before I can fight back, his other arm snakes around my waist, lifting me effortlessly off the bike until my back collides with his chest.
His warm breath dusts over my ear.
I thrash wildly, kicking and twisting against his hold, but my feet don’t reach the ground. He barely acknowledges my struggle. My muffled cries die against his gloved palm as he walks, his grip unwavering.
“You seem scared,” he murmurs into my ear. His grip tightens around my mouth, pressing brutally into my cheeks. “It’s about time.”
He slows. In the darkness, I barely make out a motionless form slumped against a shipping container. My eyes round in horror at the body with its grotesque, snapped neck and glazed unblinking eyes.
Fuck.
My eyes squeeze shut, as if I can pretend I didn’t just see a dead body. Of course, Kai doesn’t let me. His hand shakes my head softly, and my eyes land back on the body.
“Looks like my brother started without me,” he whispers, finally removing his hand from my lips.
I could scream now. Cry and beg. I know it would be futile.
Pure fear kicks through me, and I struggle against his hold. Leather crinkles against my back, reminding me exactly who is holding on to me. As if I could ever forget.
“Kai,” I whisper, and suddenly I'm dropped to the ground.
My feet stumble against the concrete as Kai reaches into his pocket, cocks his arm back, and throws before , twisting in time to see Kai reach into his pocket, cock his arm back, and throw before I even see the other person.
The knife lodges in the man’s throat, and he drops with a gasp.
“Fuck,” I whimper.
Kai doesn't watch the body fall. Doesn’t confirm his knife hit the mark. He already knows.
The man was made to kill. His eyes are on me, waiting and watching for my reaction. The only sign of life is the small puff of breath that fall from his nose.
In the shadows like this, with a man bleeding out behind him, he looks deadly. His endless eyes, unblinking; glued to mine.
It sends a shiver through me, and not all entirely from fear.
“They took everything,” another voice whispers from the shadows, and my entire body jolts with shock.
Kaleb emerges from the shadows as if he's been there the whole time.
Looking back at Kai, his eyes are still fixed on me.
“Every single fucking container is empty,” Kaleb growls.
I turn to him, and he's also looking at me. Glaring, actually, lip curled as if my presence has filled his mouth with a bad taste.
My heart batters against my chest.
“I've got one tied up in a shipping container,” Kaleb mutters, eyes still boring into me. “He's alive... just,” his smirk turns cruel.
“Get him,” is all Kai says.
Kaleb nods once but doesn't move straight away.
His eyes take in the rest of me, sliding down my body in one slow sweep before coming back to my eyes. Nothing respectable, nothing kind shines there. And then he's gone.
“You've proven your point, Kai. Take me home,” I plead, my voice taking on a panicked edge.
He gives me one slow shake of his head.
“Take me home, Kai. I want to go home.”
Again, that slow shake of his head.
Those gloved hands slide into his pockets as he moves towards me in slow, deliberate strides. Altogether too casual for the man he is.
“I don't think you do get it,” Kai murmurs. He stops just in front of me. Lifting his hand to run a gloved knuckle down my cheek, “but you will.”
It shows how sick I am, the way a jolt of heat hits my core at his promised threat.
The spell breaks when panic pleading fills the silence. “Please, please, this wasn't my idea. I didn't want to do this.” The terrified sounds are mixed with the shuffling of shoes on concrete. Kaleb shoves the young man until he stumbles by our feet.
He looks to be only my age, with shaggy dark hair and eyes wide and full of fear. My heart clenches.
What's happened here? Kaleb said something about the shipping containers being empty. Did they rob the Devils? If they did, then they're fucking stupid. Nearly as fucking stupid as my brothers. Are they working with my brothers?
The thought sends ice-cold dread through me.
Kai picks the man up by his neck almost as easily as he maneuvered my body, and slams him against the metal shipping container.
The smell of piss hits me, and I wince.
“Seriously, what the fuck? This wasn't my idea. I fucking swear!”
“Did Zeke put you up to this?” Kai asks in a flat, bored tone.
The boy scoffs, shaking his head. “Zeke’s dead.”
The muscles in Kai’s back ripple beneath his leather. One look and all the colour drains from the boy’s face. Kai’s grip tightens, the boy clawing for his life, helpless nails scrabbling sleeves and skin and nothingness. Coughs tear from his throat as his face darkens to a sickening shade of red.
Oh God. He’s going to kill him.
Dread floods my veins, and I stumble back a step. Then another, getting ready to spin and floor it out of here. But my back collides with a wall of solid muscle.
I don’t have to look to know it’s Kaleb.
“Uh, uh, Roxanne...” Kaleb sings into my ear, amusement dripping from his voice. His arms lock around me, pinning mine to my sides with effortless strength. “The show isn’t over yet.”
Tears blur the vision in front of me. No matter which direction I look, there is no escape. Only the brothers.
Kai doesn’t look at me, his focus on the man gasping beneath his palm, yet I know when he speaks, he is speaking to me.
“His struggle excites me,” he says, his voice a calm whisper. The words land under my skin. “Does that make me a good person?”
The man’s boots drag frantically across the concrete, as he fights for air.
“Please...” I whisper, but even I’m not sure what I’m begging for anymore.
Kai’s hand opens, and the man crumples to the ground, sucking in ragged breaths, clutching his destroyed throat.
Kai reaches into his pocket, and another blade catches the dull moonlight. The man’s eyes widen and the word “no” barely falls off his tongue before Kai imbeds the blade into the side of his neck.
Just one cut. Then blood pours; the man clutches at his neck, choking as crimson spills onto the concrete.
I flinch, only to press harder into Kaleb’s body. That’s when I feel it. His erection pressing into my lower back. This excites him.
Kai kneels in front of the dying man, wrapping one blood-soaked glove around his ruined throat. Blood spills between his fingers, and his eyes track the movement.
When he finally speaks, his voice is barely louder than the waves crashing into the dock.
“His blood excites me.”
He stands and turns toward me, his eyes impossibly dark now, as if his pupils consumed any light left hiding there.
“Am I evil now?”
I try to swallow, but my throat is dry. In those impossible eyes, I see everything. Blood and violence. Pain. But I don’t see evil.
Slowly, I shake my head.
His jaw clenches.
“No?” he repeats, stalking towards me.
Kaleb holds me tighter until Kai is stepping into my space. Until I’m stuck between the two twins, at their mercy. Staring at Kai through my lashes, blood freckles his face. A crimson drop clings to his bottom lip.
His lip curls, just the tiniest bit. A reaction I’ve never seen from him. It has my heart thumping against my ribcage, and not in the way it should be.
“No,” I repeat, lifting my chin.
He can try all he wants, but he doesn’t scare me.
His actions might.
But he doesn’t.
His eyes flare, and he steps impossibly close.
“Oh really?” he grits through his clenched teeth, hand coming up to grip my jaw, leather biting into my skin. “What about that first night we fucked?”
My lip trembles.
“You didn’t touch me,” I whisper.
Leaning down, his breath floats over my lips. He smells of blood and sweat. “It took every ounce of my control not to grab your little fucking body and fuck you to the brink of death. To fuck and use your body until your brain stopped working.”
Breathing suddenly feels impossible. My mind flashes to that night. When I rode him. The way his hands fisted the covers, leather creaking under the strain.
“I wanted to carve your body. To hear you beg and cry and scream in pain.”
My body reacts to his words in the worst of ways. My back arches, grinding against the hard cock behind me, as I bite down on my bottom lip.
“You won’t hurt me,” I murmur, voice drenched in need. “Not in a way I don’t want.”
“I will, Roxy!” his voice cracks. Removing his hand from my jaw, it shakes with restraint. “You have no idea of the things running through my mind right now. The way I want to see how much pain you’d survive. The things I want to do to your body.”
Every word sounds like he’s trying to convince himself more than he is me.
His chest rises and falls, and he shoves his blood-covered hands through his dark hair, wild, dishevelled, frantic.
His fingers rake and tug, Kai unravelling in a way I’ve never seen before.
In a way, I wasn’t sure if he was capable of.
I try to lift my hand, but it’s pinned to my side.
“Kai...” I murmur, and his eyes land on mine. Wild, like a beast.
“Stop looking at me like that!” he roars, and I flinch. “I’m not the man you want.”
Slowly, he shoves the leather cut off his shoulders, the leather falling to the ground. His muscles bunch under his long sleeve shirt as he reaches for the hem, peeling it off his body. The gloves go next.
The world stops.
It’s not the carved muscle that catches my attention. Not the sculpted abdomen muscles tapering off into his black cargo pants, or the beautiful ink that covers his dark skin.
It’s the scars.
Raised lines, cuts, and marks litter nearly every inch of his skin. A raw sob tears from my throat when I see his arms.
Because those scars are ones that I recognise.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of small circular scars from his fingertips to his shoulders. Raised, burnt skin. Cigarette burns. My breath leaves me. I know those scars.
My trembling fingers ache to find the inside of my own wrist.
Only three. Compared to the hundreds that he has.
Images I buried years ago slam into me. The pain of a cigarette pressed into my skin. The smell. The cruel look on Jacob’s face when I screamed and cried and ran to my room to hide. The way he’d follow me, hours later, and fuck me while wrist still throbbed.
Tears pour down my face, and Kai’s expression doesn’t soften.
“This,” he says, gesturing to every scar carved into his body, “is who I am.”
My eyes scan over him. Landing on the gnarly scars around his wrists. The thick scar from hip to rib. What looks like a branding burn on his chest.
“I was made by pain.” His voice is raw now. “Raised by pain. Pain is all I know. All I deserve. All I want.”
Silence falls over the docks. I can’t stop crying. Not because I’m afraid. Because no one should carry this much suffering on one body. He takes one final step, his scarred skin pressing against mine.
“So tell me,” he whispers. “Am I a good man?”
I look at the scars. At the tattoos trying to cover them. Then back to his eyes.
“No,” I choke out between sobs.
His eyes are cold on mine.
“You’re beautiful, Kai.”