The Russian leaned down, unclipping the handcuffs, grinning and breathing into my face. “You scared?”
I met his watery eyes. “You wish.” I snapped my foot out, putting all of my strength into the kick. I was aiming for the solar plexus, which will put someone down no matter how big and mean they are. You can’t fight if you can’t breathe.
My kick went low, but that worked out, too. The Russian howled as my foot connected with his balls, and stumbled back from me. I was up and going for the door. I wasn’t going to run for it, seeing as how splendidly that had worked out the first time. I just needed Grigorii to see exactly what I would cost him if he kept putting me in a room with johns.
A hand closed around the back of my neck and the Russian grabbed me and tossed me onto the mattress, all of his panting weight landing on top of me. He was babbling in his own language—enraged or horny, I couldn’t tell. He pinned my wrists down, grinned as I thrashed wildly under him. Why shouldn’t he—this was what he’d paid good money for.
I’d like to say that I remembered all of my close-grappling techniques, that I stayed calm and focused and didn’t let panic overtake me, but that would be a lie, mostly. I didn’t panic.
But I did let my were overtake me.
A snarl ripped out of my throat and I shoved up with my knees, levering the Russian’s weight off me by sheer force of rage. My claws sprouted, my eyes changed and my fangs grew.
The Russian stumbled back, uncertainty flaring in his eyes. Not many weres can phase at will, without a moon to bathe them and trigger the monster that lives hidden deep within their genes.
I wrapped my legs around his neck as he came for me again, and I squeezed. Just because I was down didn’t mean he had all the power. I’d learned that lesson a long time ago, with the guy who gave me the bite in the first place. Never be submissive. Never give up your dominance. Dominance keeps you alive.
The Russian gurgled, scraping at my thighs, his own claws sprouting and carving bloody furrows.
The pain didn’t move me, it just made me squeeze harder. The Russian started to turn blue around the edges, lips darkening, but his hand shot out and wrapped around my throat in turn.
“Bitch…” he wheezed. “I’ll kill you and then I’ll take you. You’re mine. ”
“I’m no one’s,” I rasped. “Especially not yours.”
My air was cutting off, and he wasn’t passing out. My were roared, and the silver slid across my vision again, the monster in me eating up everything that made me Luna.
I gave one last desperate squeeze with my spent muscles and jerked my legs to the left.
There was a snap, no more than someone stepping on a stick, and then weight on top of me, suffocating, immobile.
Dead.
I blinked, coming down with a vertiginous jerk in my stomach. The Russian lay on top of me, head at odds with his body, his neck loose and pulpy. Boneless.
“Gods,” I breathed, because what else could you say in a moment like that? I pushed at him, rolling him off of me and onto the floor with a thud. Eyes wide and glassy as any cadaver I’d encountered, his lips and tongue swollen from our struggle. The guy was deader than a coffin nail.
I’d killed him. And I didn’t feel one iota of regret, not when the were had taken over and not now, as my heartbeat slowed and my vision came back and my claws and fangs retreated with my adrenaline. It was him or me, survival of the meanest, nastiest wolf on the block, and I was it.
I’d killed him. I stood up, stepping over the body, feeling drying blood on my legs in the cool draft. I pounded on the door. “Hey!” I screamed. “Hey, Grigorii! You want to see what a good time I gave your friend?”
My heart was jackhammering against my ribs, slow and heavy, but my mind was calm and blank as a black pool of water. Dimly, I thought that I should be freaking right the Hex out, shaking and crying and vomiting. But I wasn’t. I was acting like a were for the first time in years. Death wasn’t personal and it wasn’t always tragic. Survival was a perfectly good reason for a death, and this was survival at the rawest, most low-down level.
Screw what I should be doing, I’d done the world a favor. I snarled at the body once more, one final fuck you to a waste of oxygen that had dared to challenge me for dominance.
The door rattled and Peter yanked it open, his eyes widening when he saw what was on the other side. He turned and yelled, and Grigorii came, annoyance painted on his face.
“Oh,” he said, looking at the Russian. He moved me aside and knelt, feeling for a pulse. “Oh, my dear,” he sighed. “That was one of our most expensive clients. You’re in a world of trouble now.”
I put up my hands and gave him a toothy smile. “Take me in, Officer. I’m guilty.”
CHAPTER 16
Grigorii was surprisingly gentle as he led me down the hallway toward the one part of the establishment I hadn’t seen yet—the arena. Maybe it was because I didn’t fight, keeping my head down and my hands at my sides.
“You know, you display so much savagery,” said Grigorii. “If I were a nosier man, I might ask what you’d repressed to make your monster fly forth so.”
“My mother didn’t love me enough. My daddy loved me too much. I never got to be homecoming queen. Take your pick.”
Grigorii chuckled. “In a different world, Joanne, you and I might have gotten along very well. It’s a shame, really.”
In a different world, I would have been looking at
