I reached the ringside and gripped the old rope, launching myself over and onto the mat. I grabbed Alexei, but only found purchase with his arm and the fucker was too strong for me. Too fast, and too filled with a rage that had been born years before today.
He flew at Eric, leaving me in the dust. His fists moved like hummingbird wings, but without the delicacy. Without the featherlight touch. Knuckles crunched bone. Blood splattered. And Eric’s wide face was a mauled mess before I could blink.
Eric went down, his big body crashing like a stone. Alexei leapt on him and battered him harder, driving his head into the mat, more blood and spit flying.
Silence descended on the yard. The music cut out, the only sound in the night air Alexei’s fists hitting Eric’s skull.
He’s going to kill him.
The realisation slammed into me, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop it—to stop Alexei. His pain felt like mine, the kind that only went away when my soul was committed to the darkness I was so good at. He needed this, and I wanted him to have it, because I wasn’t his guardian angel.
I was a devil, and Alexei was my kindred spirit.
Cam was different. In the soul-searching seconds it took me to let this shit happen, he hurled himself into the ring, skidding to a stop an arm’s length from the bloodied mess the fight had become. I waited for him to connect with Alexei and pull him off—or all least try, but he didn’t. From a depth I didn’t possess, Cam found the empathic tranquillity that made him such a good leader. “Lexi.Stop.”
A switch flicked. Alexei stilled, then pulled back, his mouth and chin a bloody mess, his gaze distant and wild until it landed on Cam, and the peace he desperately needed seemed to reach him.
He rose from his knees and stepped back, ignoring the pulverised shell of a man at his feet. He tilted his head the way Cam so often did, and another new smile lit up his beautiful face. “Well, well, Cam. Perhaps you are my president after all.”
8
Cam
“Perhaps you are my president after all.”I had no idea what that meant, just that I was an equal mix of horny and horrified and I needed Saint’s body heat at my back to think straight.Help Eric. He’s a cunt, but he’s still a brother.
Story of my fucking life. I looked to Nash. He grimaced and rolled into the ring, crouching to examine Eric.
“Is he dead?”
Nash shrugged. “Don’t think so. What do you want me to do with him?”
“Put him in a van with the others and deliver them to the Crows. Reckon that’s where they’d rather be.”
Saint moved closer to me, his voice pitched to a low murmur, his proximity giving me goosebumps I didn’t need right now. “They were Cracker’s recruits in the first place, but they stuck around.”
“We pay better, and it served Frank Crow to have eyes and ears in our ranks.”
Scepticism danced in Saint’s forest-greens, but he shuttered his expression, keeping his thoughts to himself.
“Do it,” I said to Nash. “Take Mateo with you. Rubes, get this mess cleaned up.”
I didn’t mean literally. Dude was still benched thanks to ongoing concussion migraines. But he had a merry band of club prospects at his disposal and my road captain was an expert at herding them.
My brothers moved out, leaving me with Saint and Alexei, the crowds behind us dispersing as the reality of what had happened scared them back into the bar. I leaned into Saint, snatching a lungful of his earthy scent. “You good?”
He grunted.
I waited for him to elaborate.
Naturally, he didn’t, and I gave in to the pull to Alexei.
He hadn’t moved, still waiting passively in his corner, blood from his face dripping onto his chest.
His perfect fucking chest. I wanted to lick it. Smear my face with the life force oozing from his split lip.You sick fuck.
Yup. As disturbed as I was by the violence and rage he’d just inflicted on four patched members of my club, I was buzzing with a wildfire only he could tame.
I reached his side and tipped his chin to examine his wound better, dampening the predictable nausea with the desire coursing through me. “You let him hit you on purpose.”