The next few days consisted of the same bullshit. Eat, sleep, train. Eat, sleep, train. It all became extremely repetitive. Tension between all the prisoners grew thicker and thicker with each passing day. Any day, the games would begin, and people would start to die. That kind of atmosphere put a bit of a stigma on things. Made it hard to unwind.
Yekaterina hadn’t returned, and for the first time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to.
She’d said there was something I was refusing to acknowledge. Something I wouldn’t admit to myself. But I had no idea what she could have been talking about.
It terrified me. Not only the not knowing, but also the fact that once I did acknowledge whatever it was, she would disappear.
I didn’t want that. I wasn’t ready to let her go. I wasn’t sure if I ever would be.
A comforting kind of strain ached in my muscles as I heaved myself up and down, up and down, completing my third set of pull-ups in my cell. Our afternoon training session had ended about an hour earlier, and we were all waiting for dinner to arrive.
Autumn was sitting on her cot, leaning back casually against the wall, her face drenched in boredom. She had a roll of toilet paper at her side, ripping pieces off and scrunching them up into balls to throw right at me… And it was pissing me the fuck off.
But I wasn’t going to react. Nope. That was what she wanted. She was bored out of her mind, and her only source of entertainment was seeing how far she could push me until I fucking snapped.
She wasn’t going to win. I wasn’t going to let her. I could control myself. I didn’t need to wring her pretty little neck with my bare hands, no matter how much I wanted to. No matter how much the thought of it excited me.
Up. Down. Up. Down.
Another ball of that infernal paper hit me on the side of the face, and I had to bite back a snarl.
In through the nose, out through the mouth.
My muscles burnt, but I welcomed the pain, the distraction. It was getting harder and harder to be in her presence. For some reason, unwelcome thoughts kept pushing their way into my mind, regardless of the fact that I didn’t want them there. Sexual thoughts. Suggestive thoughts. Thoughts of her in compromising positions. Thoughts of her body. How it would feel pressed against my own without the barrier of clothing.
Once those thoughts surfaced, so too did the guilt. The cut of betrayal. How could I have thoughts like that about another woman? I loved Yekaterina. It didn’t matter that she was gone. That she had died over ten years ago. She was the only woman for me, and thinking of someone else in such a way made me feel unfaithful. I couldn’t handle it. It wasn’t right. Those games needed to hurry up and start so that either one or both of us would die, and the thoughts would cease.
I kept my eyes pinned to the spot on the wall in front of me, my gaze never wandering.
Up. Down. Up. Down.
Nothing was going to distract me. I was going to finish my set without thinking about her. Nothing was going to break my focus. Not the other prisoners, talking and laughing amongst themselves, trying their best to distract themselves from their current predicament. Not Autumn, throwing those stupid balls of paper, trying to get a rise out of me. Not the sound of the steel door to our prison opening, signalling the arrival of our dinner.
Not anything. Not—
Shock paralysed me, my whole body freezing in mid-air as my gaze collided with a set of familiar, icy blue eyes.
My son.
Nikolai was there, not even ten feet from me, pushing the cart containing our food instead of one of Talon’s soldiers.
What the fuck—
My body began to move again as if on autopilot, continuing on with the exercise like my whole world hadn’t just tilted upside down.
I had no idea what he was doing there.
It took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to look at him. There were cameras over every inch of the place. I knew we were being watched 24/7. If I showed even a modicum of interest in him, Talon would see it and wonder why.
So, I kept going with the pull-ups like it wasn’t secretly killing me inside not to acknowledge my son. I used nothing but my peripheral vision to track him as he moved about the room.
How had he found me? How did he get there? Were my other children there, too, risking their lives to foolishly try and save me?
If I did make it out of there alive, they were all getting time in the ring for that stunt.
Half of the prisoners did what they always did whenever anybody entered the room: begged and pleaded to be let go. It was such a wasted effort. It made me internally scoff every time.
One by one, Nikolai handed the food and bottles of water to the prisoners through the small gaps in the bottom of the cells. He didn’t dawdle, but he also didn’t go too fast. When he finally approached me, I released the bar and dropped to the ground.
So many different emotions pounded through me. Happiness. Excitement. Anger.
He shouldn’t have been there. He shouldn’t have put himself at risk. If Talon ever found out who he was, how much he meant to me, it would be all over. I would do anything he asked to save him. I’d be his little bitch for all eternity if it meant keeping my son alive.
I rolled my neck along my shoulders, trying and failing to rein in my temper. I stepped towards the front of the cell. Casually. Like it was just any other day.
“What are you doing here, boy?” I whispered out of the side of my mouth.
Nikolai didn’t rise to the bait. He grabbed one of the plates and slunk down into a crouch. I did the same.
“We have a plan to get you out,” he said equally softly, passing me the plate of food.
“We?” Goddamnit. “You roped your siblings into this?” I hissed, putting the plate down to grab the next one.
“It was a joint effort, actually. Tell me about the collar.”
“Titanium steel. Set to explode if we pass through the cell doors unless deactivated first. Equipped with anti-tampering and remote activation.”
His brows slammed down into a frustrated frown. He knew what I did—that escape with that collar on would be near impossible.
He rolled a water bottle to me, his eyes semi-vacant like his brain was running a mile a minute trying to come up with some sort of solution, regardless of how impossible the task might be.
“Go home, Nikolai. There’s no way out of this. Get out while you can. That’s an order.”
He stood to his full height, and I followed suit. He fiddled idly with the cart. A tactic to not arouse suspicion. Clever boy.
“Sorry, Father,” he whispered, barely moving his lips. “You’re not Pakhan. You don’t give the orders anymore. Aleksandr does.”
My eyes narrowed in mild agitation. It vanished quickly, replaced with an overwhelming sense of pride. Aleksandr had stepped up. Of course, I hadn’t doubted that he would. He’d been ready for the role for years. But knowing it for certain made it easier to accept my fate.
Everything would be okay with Aleksandr watching over them.
Autumn came skipping up to my side, and I cursed. I had hoped she’d just stay on her cot and not get involved. I still didn’t trust her. Not one hundred percent. And until I did, I didn’t want her anywhere near my family.
She picked up one of the plates and grasped a piece of steak with her fingers, holding it up to her lips as if she was about to take a bite. ‘Who’s this?” she asked covertly, making sure to hide her mouth so the cameras couldn’t tell she was speaking.
“Mind your own business, devil woman,” I hissed over my shoulder.
She smiled.
Oh, fuck.
To most, it would look like a completely innocent smile. Like she was happy. But I knew fucking better.
That was her psychotic smile. The one she gave right before she hurt someone. I’d seen it a dozen fucking times, each time aimed at me. I knew it so well that I could probably draw it from memory alone.
My suspicions were confirmed when she stomped down on the back of my leg. Pain shot through me, and I stumbled forward, my head whacking against the cell bars.
“Asshole,” she hissed back before walking away, going back to sit on her cot.
I grumbled out a Russian curse under my breath, wiping away the blood trickling down the side of my face. How many times was the woman going to make me bleed?
Nikolai gave me an odd look, his gaze moving from me to Autumn. Suspicion laid in the depths of his eyes. It made my spine snap straight.
“What?” I barked.
He studied me for a second longer, but in the end, decided not to say anything about it, shaking his head. “I’ll see you soon, Father.” And then he left.
My hands curled around the bars, squeezing tightly. It was difficult to watch him walk away, knowing he was in the belly of the beast. Knowing he was surrounded by danger on all sides.
I began to pace up and down the cell, my thoughts wild and chaotic, spiralling out of control. It was even more difficult not knowing what the fuck was going on. Were my other children there, too? What was the plan? I needed more information. More than anything, though, I needed them to go. Having them there put me on edge because I couldn’t protect them. I couldn’t help them. There was nothing I could do. I was completely powerless—something that didn’t happen to me very often.
I was capable of dealing with that feeling when it was just me at risk, but my family, too?
That I couldn’t deal with.
“Was that your son?”
I whipped around to face Autumn, eyes wide with panic. How did she—
“He has your eyes,” she said idly, eating her food. Her lips smacked together loudly as she chewed on the steak, gravy rolling down her hands and arms. I swear, she ate like that to piss me off. She knew it bugged me. “You guys have the same eyes. And the same dark hair. And that same grumpy as fuck aura.”
I didn’t know what to say back to that, so I said nothing, continuing my pacing.
“Jeez, what gives?” She picked up a roasted potato and popped it in her mouth next. “I thought this would be a good thing, but you look even more pisser than usual.”
“What exactly is supposed to be good about this?” I hissed at her under my breath. “My—” I snapped my lips shut, my gaze cutting around the room in alarm.
“Relax,” she mumbled in between bites. “We figured out the first day here that those cameras don’t have audio. They can’t hear you.”
No, they couldn’t. But the other prisoners could. They were all eating their dinner, talking and laughing amongst themselves. But what if someone was listening? All it would take is one ambitious person to say something in the hopes they could be released in exchange for the information.
“That asshole might be a gajillionaire, but he’s also a cheapskate.” She scooped up some vegetables with her fingers, slurping them into her mouth. “Like, seriously, if you’re going to drop millions into something like this, spring for the high-tech stuff,” she said, mouth half full. “And five-ply toilet paper. Don’t be stingy. You gonna eat that?” She pointed to my plate of untouched food, still sitting on the ground.
My mouth dropped open in outrage as she moved and picked it up, not even waiting for me to answer her.
“So, what’s the plan?” she asked casually, like she hadn’t just stolen my fucking food. “Is your son—”
I leapt into action, jumping across the cell and slapping my hand over her mouth to keep her from saying another word.
“Be. Quiet,” I hissed. “If anyone finds out my son is here, it will put him in danger.” I brought our faces even closer together until we were only inches apart, and lowered my voice to barely above a whisper. “You don’t want to see what I’m willing to do to keep my son out of danger.”
She narrowed her eyes but said nothing. Or maybe that was because I still had my hand over her mouth. I kept it there, staring down at her.
Fuck. I was so close to her.
So, so, close.
Electricity sizzled down my spine, curling around to grip my cock in a tight vice.
Jesus. Fuck.
Danger! Back away!
I removed my hand and went to step back, but she gripped my wrist tightly, keeping me exactly where I was. Not by force, but by touch alone.
Her touch.
“Your son being here can only mean one thing,” she whispered. “And when the time comes, you’ll be taking me with you, Butcher.”
Will I now?
That was never going to happen.
Even if—and that was a big fucking if—we managed to find a way to escape, there was no way I could allow her to come with us. There was no way I could allow her to live.
The feelings she invoked within me were far too dangerous. The only way to make them disappear was to make her disappear. With her gone, everything would go back to normal. The inappropriate thoughts would vanish, the guilt I felt right along with them.
If an opportunity came up in the games where I had the choice to save her or let her die… I would have to let her die. If that meant continuing on in the games by myself, so fucking be it. Our truce was for us not to hurt each other. But if someone else did it? Well…we had no truce about that.
Her nails dug deep into my skin, snapping my attention back to her. “Alright?” she pressed, demanding an answer.
I snatched my wrist out of her grasp. “Just shut up about what you saw.” I pulled my plate off her lap. “And don’t touch my fucking food.”
“See this? See this line? Don’t fucking cross it. This is my side, okay? And that’s your side.” I pointed to the makeshift line I’d created out of toilet paper that ran through the middle of the cell, spanning from the bars at the front all the way to the concrete wall at the back.
Autumn stood on her cot, hands on her hips, looking at the line incredulously. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, yes, I fucking can.” I’d had enough. It was bad enough that I was sharing a cell with the woman, but having her constantly up in my space all the time? Always coming over and sitting on my bed, taking my blanket because it looked warmer than hers, stealing my fucking food, drinking out of my water bottle… No.
She was fucking everywhere. All the time. There was no escape from her.
It would be fine if the only thing I felt about it all was annoyance. I could handle that. What I could not handle, however, was the fact that my heart beat that little bit faster whenever she was close to me. Especially when she was close enough that all I’d have to do is reach out to be able to touch her annoyingly soft skin.
I needed space from her, which was damn near impossible considering our circumstances, and the only solution I could think of was to establish boundaries.
Yes. Boundaries. I need boundaries.
Dear God, what’s become of me?
“This cell is the size of a fucking bathroom. We already have barely any space, and you want to minimize that even more? Are you insane?” she hissed, her face turning red.
“Consider it a pre-emptive strike. Because if you continue the way you’re going, I’m going to end up fucking murdering you.”
She pointed to her chest, aghast. “Me? What the hell have I done?”
“What haven’t you done is the appropriate question,” I seethed. “You keep touching all my stuff.”
“What stuff?!”
“My blanket. My pillow. My food.”
“You really shouldn’t touch his things,” Rebecca chimed in from behind me.
I spun to face her. “Did I ask for your fucking help?” I growled.
She recoiled, stepping away from the cell bars.
I looked back to Autumn. I pointed at her side. “Your side.” I pointed to mine. “My side.” I pointed to hers again. “Your side.” Back to mine. “My side. Got. It?”
She jumped down from her cot and moved towards me.
“Ah!” I pointed to the line. “Don’t you dare take another step.”
“Or what?” she taunted, her leg up in the air, hovering over the line.
Fuck. Or what? What could I do? I didn’t have a whole lot to work with. Thankfully, I didn’t have to answer because the lights blinked out, encasing the room in total darkness. We both stayed where we were, letting our eyes adjust to the lack of light, then we both grumbled at each other before moving to sit on our beds.
“Here’s one thing you probably didn’t think about, Your Royal Grouchiness,” she huffed, her annoyance dripping with every word she said. “How are we supposed to train if we’re meant to stay on our designated sides?”
A very good point. One I actually hadn’t thought about… But I wasn’t going to tell her that. So, I just lied out of my ass. “Training is done for now. I don’t trust that I won’t snap your neck by accident.” Oh, would you look at that? It turned out I didn’t have to lie after all.
Funny that.
“Whatever,” she grumbled under her breath. “I hated it anyway.”
I didn’t. It gave me an excuse to touch her. One that didn’t leave me riddled with fucking guilt.
And that was the damn problem, wasn’t it? I’d come to look forward to our training sessions when really, I should have hated them. Fucking dreaded them. Dreaded the idea of laying my hands on a woman who wasn’t my wife.
My wife.
I closed my eyes, willing Yekaterina to appear. I needed to see her. To banish any thought of Autumn from my mind.
Come on. Come on.
When I opened my eyes, disappointment filled me. She wasn’t there. I closed my eyes again.
Please. I need you.
I prayed for her to come to me. To help me. I couldn’t handle what was going on. I needed her to make it all disappear. But I knew before I even opened my eyes that she wasn’t there. She wasn’t coming.
Shadows started to form shapes as my eyes adjusted in the darkness. Autumn was sitting on her cot directly opposite me, glaring at me. She of course made no attempt to hide it. That was something I couldn’t miss.
We sat in silence for a while—a silence I had no intention of filling. The tension building between Autumn and I was getting out of hand. Constantly being stuck in her presence, having no choice but to be around her, the close proximity being forced upon me… It was driving me fucking insane.
The games couldn’t start any fucking sooner.
I was enjoying the peace and quiet—a luxury not easily afforded in that kind of environment—when sounds from the cell adjacent to us made my spine stiffen.
“Oh, oh, oh.”
My eyes darted to the right. It was too dark to see exactly what was going on, but then again, I didn’t need light to figure it out.
Flesh slapping against flesh… A woman’s pleasure-filled moan filling the air. It was pretty obvious.
Someone was fucking.
It was Mac. The noises were coming from his cell. Looked like he’d managed to find someone to bang one out, after all.
Sexual energy buzzed in the air. The deep panting. The grunting. The rhythmic moaning.
“Yes, oh, god. Just like that.”
Shit.
I readjusted, trying to ignore what was going on, but it was hard. It wasn’t just because I hadn’t had sex in over ten years. I hadn’t done anything. That included self pleasure.
Fuck, I hadn’t even gotten hard in a decade. Hadn’t felt the need to do anything like that since my wife died. It was like that part of me had completely disappeared when she did. It wasn’t until recently that the desire had started to return…and I wasn’t going to stop and think about why.
“Oh, yes. Harder, Mac.”
“You want it harder?” The sound of the bed banging against the wall rocketed through the room like a gunshot. “Yeah, take my cock,” Mac grunted.
My eyes connected with Autumn’s. She didn’t look away. Neither did I. Heat travelled down my body. My cock began to stir, growing thicker and thicker in my shorts the longer we stared at each other.
The sounds of kissing hit the air. Suckling. Slurping. More moaning. More grunting.
I needed to look away. I needed to. But I couldn’t. I fucking couldn’t.
Autumn squirmed, a small, almost unnoticeable swirl of her hips as the sex noises got louder, more prominent.
My heart hammered so hard that I thought it might burst out of my chest. I swear, I could feel it in my cock. No. It was my cock throbbing. God, I hadn’t felt that in so long. My blood pounded in my ears.
Look away. Look away.
It was impossible. I was ensnared in her fiery green gaze with no hope of escape.
Did I even want it?
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so fucking alive…and I wasn’t even touching her.
What would it feel like to touch her?
The woman moaned again, long and low.
Would Autumn moan for me like that?
No!
I closed my eyes, taking a big, deep breath in through my nose, trying to calm myself. It didn’t help. The air stunk of sex, of a good, hard fucking. I quickly realised that it wasn’t those sounds that were turning me on. It was staring into Autumn’s eyes while that moaning filled my ears. It was imagining her making those sounds because of me.
My eyes snapped open, burning with fire. Autumn’s hooded gaze was roving freely over my body, trailing across my chest. Lower. Lower.
It might have been dark, but I knew she could see how heavily I was breathing. I just hoped she couldn’t see how rock fucking hard I was.
More sounds of pleasure echoed around me, but this time, they were closer. A lot closer. It was coming from the cell right next to mine.
I didn’t need to look over my shoulder to know Gregory or Rebecca, possibly both, were now “taking care of themselves”. Either individually or together. In fact, it became abundantly clear as the chorus of moaning got louder and louder that it was coming from all directions. Several of the other prisoners were joining in.
I was smack dab in the middle of some kind of voyeurism orgy.
Based on Autumn’s wide-eyed expression as she surveyed the other prisoners, she knew it, too.
When her gaze came back to me, she smirked and shrugged lazily. “Why the fuck not?”
I stiffened. She’s not going to do what I think she’s going to do, is she?
The tips of her fingers ran down the column of her throat slowly, sensually, moving through the valley of her breasts and heading right for the waistband of her shorts.
She is. Oh, fuck, she is.
My pulse skyrocketed, my BP well and truly entering the danger zone.
I knew the exact moment she touched herself because she let loose the softest, sweetest fucking sound I’d ever heard. My hand itched to grasp my cock. To stroke it while she watched me and I watched her. Lust burnt in my veins, threatening to boil over like a volatile volcano.
“Oh, Mac. Mac! Yes!” the woman moaned over and over and over again.
Autumn’s hips rolled, her chest rising and falling fast as she chased her own pleasure. She wasn’t even the least bit shy about it, staring me dead in the fucking eyes, her free hand reaching up to squeeze her breast.
“You can join me or watch. It’s up to you,” she panted heavily, her words falling on a breathy moan.
I clenched my hands into tight fists to restrain myself from pouncing on her right there and then. There was a part of me that was dying to join her. Dying to replace her fingers with my own. With my tongue.
I hadn’t felt the touch of a woman like that in so long, and now that it was right there in front of me, I fucking craved it like an addict in desperate need of their next fix.
Then there was another part of me—a part that was screaming in my head that it was a betrayal. Guilt cut through the lust like the sharp edge of a blade slicing through butter.
This is wrong.
I can’t do this.
The desire was still there, beating like a drum beneath my skin. It was too strong to disappear into thin air, but some clarity had managed to squirm its way back into my mind.
It took everything I had, every ounce of strength and willpower I possessed to move. I kept my movements slow and precise, fearful that my body would just take over and pounce on her if I didn’t use all of my concentration, all of my focus to turn over.
I glimpsed the small flash of surprise in Autumn’s eyes right before I laid on my side, facing away from her.
