32 #2
“Ezla, Ezla, Ezla,” he coos as he keeps drawing her backwards, desperately trying to calm her down, me, Tiger, Tate, and Cooper warily moving forwards as one to form a sort of semicircle to block as much of her from sight as possible from any lingering spectators, namely Aider and Troy’s Bonded group.
“Ezla, Love . . .” He falters as if he didn’t mean to let that slip but doesn’t relent, tightening his arms around her to make sure she can’t run while he settles into place in the little bubble we’ve made.
“Who is he?” Cooper murmurs darkly, and that finally catches her attention, her panting breaths distorted through the helmet that slowly turns his way as her body stills.
“The Showmaster.”
Shock bludgeons through me, my mouth dropping open. “That’s . . .”
“Fucker’s getting away,” Tate hisses, and we all turn our heads to watch the Exot struggle to his feet.
Ezla hisses like a viper, fingers flexing around Scotty’s forearm in a mindless rage, and he adjusts his hips awkwardly as she thrashes about, a faint colour tinting his cheeks.
Oh . . .
Cheeks following his lead, I snap my wide stare away.
Where it lands on Tate as he starts to march towards the fleeing Showmaster.
“No!” our Bonded barks out, and he comes to a screeching halt. “He is mine! My kill.”
He pouts but stalks back this way, his attention immediately snatched and held firmly by his favourite everything. “My, my Havoc, you do look good in his arms . . . like a wild lioness. I don’t think I’d mind fucking you with him.”
A strangled noise leaves me, and my blood heats so much it feels like I might get third-degree burns.
“Both of us in your tight little pussy,” he continues with a bite of his lip that Tiger attempts to mimic as he makes goo-goo eyes at Ezla, though he isn’t quite as successful as Tate. “We’d stuff you full so good, Havoc, baby. Would you like that?”
Scotty clears his throat, the red in his cheeks expanding.
“I would not.” Her composure is regained with her focus now on us, and warmth suffuses through me . . . in quite a few different places and in multiple different ways, until I’m full to bursting with it all.
I can’t help but notice she’s not moving. She’s just . . . letting Scotty hold her. And everyone is painstakingly aware of this.
Even if she does look ready to pounce at any given moment.
She’s never been held by one of us, not even in training since none of us have been able to best her yet, despite a few risky instances with Tate where I’d been concerned for his life.
Scotty’s hand splays across her stomach, almost spanning the entire width, and with the way his fingers flex, I’d say he likes that; it no doubt feeds into his desire to protect and cherish her if he feels like he can swallow her whole and keep her cocooned in his arms, even if she very obviously doesn’t need to be.
Everyone’s eyes, including my own, track that hand obsessively.
“No?” Tate licks his lips, storm-grey eyes doused in a fiery hunger as they slowly stroke over her breasts, before rising up to her onyx-and-crimson helmet.
“You wouldn’t want our cum dripping from you?
Wouldn’t want us worshipping you like you deserve to be worshipped .
. . all night . . . all day?” My breathing escalates as he steps right into her, pressing her firmly between him and Scotty, whose middle finger I watch in a trance as it slowly slides along the thin belt-like Arvi encircling Ezla’s hips .
. . and who also closes the gap he’d made earlier, pressing his hips into her snugly, torso cosy against her back, as if instinctively responding to the rising tension.
“You wouldn’t want that, would you, Havoc? ”
A beat of taut silence. Then, “No.”
“Hmm . . .” Tate flips his visor up, leaning down so his face is more level with her helmet. “What about our love? Will you except that?”
Everything freezes.
And I know he’s made a mistake in saying that.
Both men are on the floor so fast I can’t even piece together what happened, pained grunts shoved from them. Then our Bonded storms away and out of the Training Centre.
Leaving our Bonded group incomplete again.
***
“She always just vanishes! She never talks to us unless it’s to boss us about or critique us! She never stays around, she’s always off doing whatever the fuck she wants!”
I flinch at Cooper’s harsh words, and Tiger wraps his arm tighter around my shoulders in silent support as we sit in our living room together on one of the black leather couches, listening to the argument that’s predominantly between Tate and Cooper which broke out the moment we entered our Bonded chambers.
Scotty stands nearby with a tight expression, arms crossed over his chest as he monitors the two carefully, ready to intervene if necessary.
The glow of a red Avri strip from one of the many in the room glints off of Tate’s eyebrow piercings and eyes in a physical representation of his anger as he takes a threatening step closer to Cooper.
“You don’t get it! She could’ve killed us the day we bonded her!
She isn’t merciful! That means something! ”
“It doesn’t mean anything!” Cooper roars back, throwing his arms out either side of him to encompass the chambers as he continues relentlessly, “She’s not here, is she?
! If she really wanted to be here, she would!
She doesn’t want us! The only reason we’re not dead is because it’s forbidden to kill your Bonded!
And, oh! Maybe because there was something fucking wrong with her that day, and she wasn’t thinking clearly as well as hardly being able to stand without wobbling!
Another thing no one ever mentions and she certainly hasn’t bothered to explain! That’s it!”
“No it’s not! She wants me! She wants us!”
“NO SHE DOESN’T! SHE DOESN’T AND SHE NEVER WILL! SHE WILL NEVER FUCKING LOVE YOU!”
With an anguished bellow of cataclysmic rage, Tate throws his full body weight at him, and they crash to the ground, rolling around furiously in a tornado of pain and anger and punches and kicks.
My shoulders draw up to my ears, and my vision grows spotty with a horrid suddenness as my breath escapes me and refuses to return. My head becomes fuzzy, and everything is dunked in viscous liquid so that every sound is muffled and disjointed.
CRASH!
“. . . IT BACK! TAKE IT BACK! . . .”
“. . . op! Knock it o . . . I said sto . . .”
Thump-thump, thump-thump.
“Scotty, he’s . . . No! Help hi . . .”
Hands on my face, shaking me.
“. . . not . . . working!”
Oblivion clutches me in its inky depths.