8. Lynx
LYNX
Dear Diary,
I think I accidentally made a sex tape.
Reaper was at my bedroom door so early the next morning it should have been illegal. He stared down at me, hands on his hips, with an annoyed look on his prison-tattooed face.
I blinked at him. “What?”
“Get up.”
“No thanks. Sleeping is good.”
“Sleeping is for people who didn’t brutally murder a man, carve their calling card into his back, and made me sleep on the fucking couch just in case he tried to do it again.”
I grimaced at him. “Well, it worked, didn’t it? I didn’t try to kill anyone.”
“You dreamed about it though, didn’t you?”
I fell silent, hating he knew me this well. Hated he was so in my head. And yet I knew I needed someone to be because it was fucking dark in there by myself.
Reaper dug through my closet until he found my sneakers. “Come on. We’re going for a run.”
I didn’t argue with him. My entire body was strung too tightly.
I knew the feeling well. It happened every time I’d lapsed like this.
After the man I’d killed at the prison, I’d run laps of the yard, pushing myself until my body literally hit failure point and Reaper had to drag me back to our cell because my legs literally couldn’t hold my weight.
It didn’t stop the urges altogether, but it held them back long enough to function.
I made myself get out of bed and shoved my feet into my shoes. Within minutes, Reaper and I were off on a jog through the wooded paths within the compound that stretched across hundreds of acres.
He set a cracking pace, one that had me winded pretty quickly because I hadn’t done much of this since we’d gotten out.
Clearly, he hadn’t either, but we’d gotten used to running like this in prison, side by side, our feet and breaths in time. On the inside, this had been the only thing I’d had to regulate my nervous system. I’d fed off his slow, steady heartbeat to force mine into a mirror pattern.
We ran until neither of us could breathe properly and I had a stitch up my side.
And yet the urge to go and find someone to sink a blade into was still as strong as it had been when we’d started.
“It’s not working, is it?” Reaper pulled up, leaning against a tree while he sucked in deep breaths.
I shook my head. “I think I need one of your Murder Squad meetings.”
Reaper nodded, but he made a face at the same time. “I’ll call the others in. But for the love of all things holy, please don’t call it that in front of X. He’s already threatened to have T-shirts made up.”
I forced a smile for him because I knew that’s what he expected. But I didn’t feel it inside. Inside, I was a mess of violent images, dark shapes, and barely controlled desire.
Reaper straightened, his hands on his hips. “I need a shower before they get here. You going to be okay for ten minutes?”
I hated this. Hated needing a fucking babysitter. It occurred to me this must have been how Nyah felt, having me stand outside her bedroom door and follow her around everywhere.
It was suffocating, and I’d barely even started. I waved a hand at him. “Go. I’m not going to murder anyone while I’m behind these gates.”
Reaper looked like he didn’t quite believe me.
That was fucking insulting. “I’m not! I have that much self-control.”
At least while I was awake and not reliving it all in my nightmares.
Reaper gave me a tight nod and jogged back into the clubhouse. I breathed in the fresh morning air. I didn’t know how to meditate, but I squeezed my eyes shut anyway and tried to force my brain to go blank.
All I saw was blood.
All I felt was a desire to spill more.
“Yeah, okay, not doing that again.” I opened my eyes so fast.
“What aren’t you doing again?”
I turned to see Amber, one of the club girls who lived here, strolling out in her workout gear.
“Uh, nothing.” I shrugged, the heat of embarrassment rising into my cheeks. “I was trying to meditate. It didn’t go well.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What on earth for?”
I tapped the side of my head. “My brain is a bit messed up right now.”
She nodded knowingly. “Ah. Triggered serial killer. I heard.”
I screwed up my face again. “Does everyone know?”
She folded her arms across her chest, eyeing me. “If you were War, wouldn’t you want everyone to know? We aren’t supposed to be alone with you.”
That felt like shit. It was smart, of course, but I didn’t want to be a man people feared.
Only Amber really didn’t seem all that concerned. Which was concerning in itself. I squinted at her in the early morning sunlight. “Why are you out here alone with me then?”
She unfolded her arms and pulled one up over her head to stretch out her triceps. “Because some of us work out at this time of the day. And because I’m really not afraid of you.”
She couldn’t see inside my head. “You probably should be.”
She laughed and switched arms. “Have you met the guys in Grayson’s Murder Squad? Or Hawk or War or Fang? Any of the men behind these fences could snap my neck at a second’s notice. And none of you would even be half as scary as the men I knew before I came here.”
Her smile fell a little at that, and I wondered where and how she’d grown up if living with a bunch of men, who all had the ability to take a life, was a less frightening option than where she’d come from.
She dropped down into some warm-up body-weight squats and eyed me. “Want to work out with me? Since your attempts at meditation don’t seem to be going too well.”
I remembered a conversation we’d had before, where she’d offered sex. “Work out as in actually work out or as in go fuck?”
She laughed. “Nah, I heard you last time. I think your heart lies with the cute brunette you arrived here with last night, am I right?”
“Which one?” I asked before I really thought about it.
She paused her squats and widened her eyes. “Which one? I meant Nyah, but do you mean…” Her eyes got even wider again. “Are you and Luca Guerra a thing?”
I breathed out a slow breath. “I have no idea. I don’t know what I am to Nyah or to Luca.”
She cocked her head to one side, studying me. “What do you want to be?”
So much. So fucking much. And then I’d gone and sliced a man into Swiss cheese in front of them. Though neither was any stranger to violence, I doubted they were also familiar with men who’d once been a serial killer.
Once been. Huh. Probably couldn’t say that any more since my most recent kill had been in the last twenty-four hours. If the way my fingers shook every time I stopped moving was anything to go by, I would probably be adding to that body count.
Fucking hell. I needed help. I should probably save all these people the trouble of being burdened by me and just turn myself in to the cops.
Except the thought of being locked up in a cage again made me sick to my stomach.
“I know I don’t want to be their friend,” I told Amber honestly, because who the hell else did I have to tell? Reaper didn’t want to talk to me about my stupid crushes on people who were clearly more into each other than me.
She patted me on the shoulder. “Have you told either of them that? Have you even given them the hint you might like them as more than a friend?”
I lifted one shoulder. “I watched them fuck on a plane.”
She did a double take that I almost laughed at because her eyes were owl sized by this point.
She got herself under control with a small shake of her head. “Wow. Didn’t think little Nyah had that in her.” She side-eyed me. “They did know you were watching, right? This wasn’t some sort of Peeping Tom situation, where you were hiding behind the seats while tugging on your own dick?”
I made a face at her. “Ew. No. Everyone was well aware. And my dick was in my pants, thanks very much.”
She sniggered. “But you’re still worried you’re in the friend zone?”
“At least with her. Luca, not so much. But Nyah for sure.” I grinned at her, the conversation actually helping my head a lot more than the exercise had. “Got any advice for me?”
She thought about it for a second, and then a sly expression crossed her features. “Are you on social media?”
“Not really.”
“Do you have a phone though?”
“Yeah, of course.” I pulled it out of my pocket, where I’d stuck it before we’d gone for a run.
She motioned for me to hand it over, and I did because there was nothing on there of interest to anyone. I didn’t even have a lock on it. She opened it and then as she was tapping her painted nails across the screen, she waved her free hand at me distractedly.
“Plank.”
I blinked. “Sorry, what?”
“Plank,” she repeated, but this time she looked up. “You know, high push-up position, core exercise. I’m sure you’ve done one or two in your time.”
I must have still been staring at her blankly because she added, “Missionary style? Pretend there’s a woman beneath you.” She grinned. “Or Luca Guerra.”
I shook my head. “No, I know what a plank is. I’m just confused as to why you suddenly want me to do one.”
She flapped her hand again. “Just do it, Lynx. Hold the plank until failure. Like, I’m talking you hold that thing as long as you humanly can and you do not give up. Fight the urge with everything you have. I’m going to film it.”
“Why?”
“Do you want Nyah to see you as more than a friend or what?”
I mean, I did, but I really wasn’t sure how planking was going to help that.
But Amber had taken my phone hostage and was clearly not giving it back until I did as I was told.
So I got down on the ground, nudged some leaves and sticks aside so I had somewhere for my hands to rest comfortably, and got into the position.
Immediately, I had to turn my core on to hold it, and again, I’d been a bit slack on the workouts since getting out of prison, so those muscles were a tad sluggish to engage.
Amber peered at me through my phone screen and pursed her lips. “Drop down onto your forearms.”
I wasn’t going to argue with her since that was a hell of a lot easier than the higher position.
I looked up at her, and she was nodding as she directed this little film, moving around me with the camera.
“Okay, perfect. Now hold it until failure. Do not be a wimp, Lynx. Hold it.”
The part of me who’d loved hockey as a teen and in my early twenties and who had loved the competition of it all reared to life inside me. “Is there some sort of record to beat?” I asked her.
She giggled. “No, no. No record. Just…hold it.”
I seriously had no idea how this was supposed to make Nyah see me in a different light, but now that the competitive part of me had been reignited, I knew I couldn’t let this go until I actually hit that failure point.
Minutes ticked by, and while at first the exercise was easy, the more time passed, the more my body began to feel it. By the five-minute mark, I’d basically lost the will to chat. My arms shook, and my core complained. My head kept shouting to give up.
I didn’t, but only because my core screaming at me was preferable to the urge to kill. It whispered sweet nothings about how good it would feel to carve my mark into someone else’s skin.
By the seven-minute mark, I was having to breathe more consciously, trying to fuel my aching muscles, and by the ten-minute point I was vaguely aware of Reaper coming back outside to find me, and Amber shushing him when he tried to ask her what I was doing.
At twelve minutes, all I could do was groan.
“Fuck,” I muttered, dropping my head but fighting to keep my hips and abs from hitting the ground.
The pain was intense, every muscle in my body locked tight.
I breathed deep; my body shook. The only word I could get out was the occasional “Fuck” when my body threatened to give in.
The pain grew. I moaned, wishing I was the sort of person who could ignore that competitive streak and just give in.
But I couldn’t. I fought it until there was no fighting it any longer. When I hit failure point, I hit it so hard I face-planted into the dirt, my arms and core and legs and even my neck no longer able to support me.
I rolled over onto my back in agony and slung an arm over my face to protect my eyes from the morning sun. “What the fuck, Amber? Why did you make me do that?”
I peeled my arm off my eyes long enough for me to glance over at her and Reaper. Amber grinned wickedly.
Reaper just looked embarrassed.
I pushed myself up into a seated position, though my body complained profusely at the attempt. “What?”
Amber laughed in Reaper’s direction. “You want to tell him or should I?”
He was beet red in the face. “Just show him.”
She walked over and squatted beside me, holding out my phone, the video she’d taken of me on the screen. “Just forward to the last minute or so.”
I took it from her fingers and dragged the little bar at the bottom of the screen along until it got to the place she’d indicated.
When the video played it was the last minute of my plank, where I’d been fighting for my life. Sweat dripped down the side of my neck, and my entire body shook.
But it was the noises I was making that caught my attention. The moans. The guttural, “Oh, fuck…” and the whimpering.
I had fucking whimpered.
And all of it sounded exactly like someone having the best, slow, deep, mind-blowing sex of their life.
I jerked my head up and stared at Amber. “You knew I was going to make sex noises?”
She laughed, patting me on the shoulder.
“Social media. It’s a whole thing. Send that to Nyah.
I guarantee she’ll no longer see you as a friend after she hears how you sound when you…
” She winked and pressed to her feet. “By the way, I totally sent myself a copy of that. You know, for my spank bank. I think I need a cigarette before my workout now, because that was hot.”
She flounced off toward the clubhouse, like the entire encounter was no big deal.
I stared up at Reaper. “What just happened?”
He chuckled and offered me his hand to help me off the ground. “I feel like I watched you come.”
I elbowed him. “Shut up. I didn’t know I sounded like that.”
“You going to send it to Nyah?”
I breathed out a slow breath and hit play on the video again. Was I?