This is Colt’s world, where you fight to survive because, for him, his dad didn’t care enough to pull him out of the world he’s been living in.
With an aching heart, I watch him lose his thin veneer of boredom and take his first few shots. Buck doesn’t know what hit him and staggers under the blows. Soon the mask of boredom fades away, and an ice-cold look of hatred crosses Colt’s face before he’s pounding on him brutally.
After a while, I have to look away. The sheer violence of the beating Buck’s taking makes my stomach hurt. When I do, I meet Hayden’s smirking gaze and roll my eyes.
He raises his brows in a challenge, and I turn back with a sigh. Colt’s still pounding on Buck, and the crowd is going wild, but Buck’s no longer standing, and Colt continues to kick on him with a glazed expression.
“He’s won. Why don’t they make him stop?” I ask.
Beside me, Ramie says, “No rules. They agreed when they got in the ring.”
Colt’s not even present anymore, and my stomach sinks at the realization he’s somewhere in his head.
Stepping forward, I shout his name, but he can’t hear me over the din. Grabbing onto the ropes, I pull myself halfway up onto the ring and shout again.
Colt’s face pops up, his expression savage, and I shiver under the violence looking back at me. At first, he doesn’t recognize me, giving me a wild, unfocused look until I repeat his name, and his expression fades into confusion.
“Finn?” he says, stepping toward me.
“Yes,” I shout, tears filling my eyes. “Yes, it’s me.”
“What are you doing here?” he asks, searching my gaze avidly.
“It doesn’t matter. Please, it’s done,” I say, waving toward Buck, who hasn’t moved.
His eyes move to Buck, his face hardening into lines of visceral hate, and I pound on the ring again to draw him back to me. “Please, Colt. Please come to me.”
His gaze softens, and he steps toward me before dropping to his knees and pulling me through the ropes and wrapping his arms around me tightly.
Gasping, I grab him to me, breathing in his sweat as he trembles around me.
“I’m sorry,” he mutters into my hair.
“Hmm?” I murmur, the din of the crowd drowning out his words, as I bury my nose in his shoulder and hang on tight.
“He wouldn’t have had the chance to hurt you if I hadn’t sent you in there,” he says, his voice turning to ice.
“Shh,” I soothe, pulling back. “Can we get out of here?”
Chapter Five
I’m shuffled away while Colt deals with business. Apparently, he got paid for kicking the shit out of Buck, who has to be physically carried from the ring.
I wait with Hayden while he does his thing, my body tingling every time he looks back to make sure I’m still here with an intensity to his eyes that causes butterflies to whoop it up in my stomach.
I don’t know what to make of it all, Dirk’s revelations, Colt’s need, but at this moment, I don’t care. I can psychoanalyze it all tomorrow. Tonight, I need to feel his arms around mine again. Maybe it’s weak, but I just don’t give a damn.
My breath catches in my throat when some blonde chick with a huge rack steps into my vision and grabs on tight to him, giving him a bright smile. With a surge of annoyance and, yes, the green-eyed monster flowing through me, I step forward to intervene, but Colt shakes her off before I get far.
And the tight feeling in my chest eases when he doesn’t so much as glance at her, but I’m feeling itchy, weird as I stand and wait for him. Is this my future if I accept whatever fucked up scenario this is? Women throwing themselves at him? Can I trust him? This? Do I even know what this is? I’m so fucked in the head right now.
As he finishes up, I wait impatiently until he gives some guy a fist bump and turns to me with a fiery expression, and the tingles in my body surge into a crescendo.
Stepping forward as he pulls me into his arms and drops his mouth to mine in a searing kiss, I melt into him, my body heating a thousand degrees in recognition of his.
I missed this, him, more than I’m willing to admit out loud. When we were together, I felt like the light Colt said he felt around me, except those times he would back away, become distant, as though the feelings between us were more than he was willing to bear.
Hayden chuckles behind me, and Colt breaks away long before I’m ready. I give him a scathing glare, but he just smiles and says, “You can thank me later.”
We watch him saunter off for a moment, and then Colt pulls me into his body again, growling, “I need you so bad, Princess.”
Shuddering in his arms, I arch against him, and he groans, pulling me into another hot kiss that leaves me boneless and gasping for air, before grabbing my hand and pulling me through the crowd at a brisk pace.
Guys call out to him, slapping him on the back and congratulating him, and he returns the adulation with a smile or nod but doesn’t falter in his pace.
The cool air feels good when we breach the doors, and I suck in a breath as we walk rapidly to his truck parked toward the back. When we reach the door, he spins me around and pins me against it, pulling me into another kiss.
“Fuck, I’ve missed these lips,” he mutters, licking into me like he’s starving.
Unfortunately, his words cause images of Sarah sucking face with him to flash through me, and I stiffen. Yes, we’ve had sex since then, but our hate fuck in the woods was different.
