Redemption (14 page)

I held my hand out for Fernandez. A small smile pulled at his mouth, despite the blood running down his face. “Thanks, man. That’s some arm you’ve got there.”

Someone jerked my arm upward, turning my attention to the screaming crowd. “Winner by TKO is Declan Samuels!”

My body hummed at the screams of the people in front of me. Everyone stood, arms clapping wildly above their heads. Pride filled my chest like bricks in my lungs. Guilt tried to worm its way up my throat, but I swallowed the demanding pain.
Fuck that
. This was one moment I’d felt proud of myself. The spotlight wasn’t on me because I’d stolen something or got sent to prison.
TKO in my first real fight.

“Declan!” Coach screamed over the crowd. “You’re a fucking fighting machine, son!”

I searched the ring for her. Her back was pressed against my side, her hands wrapped tightly around the ropes. “We’ve got three more matches after this. Go get a shower,” Coach slapped my back, gesturing toward the locker room.

I swallowed. Neveah watched as I gestured toward the locker room. She gave me a slight nod before crawling under the ropes. All the adrenaline inside of me needed unleashing. I wanted to let loose, kiss her, fuck her. My long strides took me to the entrance of the locker room when I heard my name.

My real name.

Fuck.

“Rage?”

I clutched the doorframe, my back tight with anticipation. When I turned I saw Henry. Henry Johnson. He’d dated my sister her freshman year of college. I’d scared the shit out of him on numerous occasions.

His care-free smile widened when he met my eyes. “What in the hell, man. That was one hell of a fight.” He jutted his hand out to me.

Slowly, I took his hand, aware of Neveah’s footsteps falling closer to us. “Man, you knocked the hell out of that guy! Shit!”

I eyed Neveah who’d stopped two feet behind Henry. “Thanks.”

Running his fingers through his blond hair, he eyed me. “You’ve gotten bigger. Prison done you some good, huh? I didn’t even realize you were out.”

Fuck.
Neveah’s face fell, and my chest collapsed. All the things she thought of me vanished. The fear in her eyes hurt my gut, and I fucking hated it. I clenched my jaw and sent him the grimmest glare I could give. “Yeah, done me a lot of good.”

“So where is your sister? I haven’t talked to her in forever.”

Neveah stared down at the concrete floor. I could see her trying to make sense of this. Trying to imagine every reason why I’d be in prison. “I don’t know. Can you please excuse us?”

Henry looked over his shoulder. “Oh, my bad.” He winked at me before side-stepping Neveah and disappearing.

“Neveah,” I whispered, taking a step forward.

She withdrew from me, her arms wrapped around her stomach. “You’ve been in prison? You—your background check came back—damn, that’s not your real name. Oh God. What were you in there for?” Her voice rose with each sentence.

“Neveah, listen,” I said, grabbing her elbow. She jerked away. “You don’t understand anything. It’s not what it seems.”
No it’s much worse.
“Let me talk to you.”

She began to shake her head, her brows furrowed in confusion or anger—I didn’t know. I just knew I hated to see the pain on her face. “You’ve been in prison. Who are you? What the hell did you do?”

Desperation strangled me. Stepping forward, I caught her neck in my hand. “Neveah, if I tell you, you won’t want me anymore. I’m too selfish of a man to lose you. I haven’t had enough. I won’t. Please don’t be scared. I would never hurt you or your family.” My words were honest and real. I could tell it sunk in, but she wasn’t ready yet. I understood. I rested my lips against her forehead, then her eyes and down to her mouth.

Both hands clutch my shoulders like she was holding on for dear life. “You have to tell me,” she whispered. “I can’t trust you if you don’t tell me the truth, Rage. Why were you in prison?”

Goddammit.
“Baby,” I cooed.

“No,” she snapped, shaking her head. I tightened my grip on her, desperate to keep her in front of me. I needed to fix this. Those beautiful green eyes landed on me. “Tell me.”

The frustration in my throat snapped, and my mouth flew open, eager to tell her everything. “I’ll tell you everything tonight,” I whispered. “Come to me tonight.”

Chapter Seventeen

Neveah

Call me what you will but I went.

I stood staring at the closed wooden door of the guest house. Confusion, anger, fear, want, it all suffocated me. The fact that I stood at his door should have told me I needed help, that I was desperate for him.

He’d told me he’d been in prison—in
fucking
prison. That made sense of the six digit number tattooed on his back, the blank phone and picture of his sister. My stomach lurched as I knocked three times. This was stupid, I was stupid. Despite my inner voice screaming
run
, I stood on the porch determined to find out why, or how. I needed to know everything.

The door swung opened two seconds later. Rage’s hair looked like he hadn’t gotten any rest. Both hands were shoved down into his sweats, showing me the sexy V of his hips and the flat plane of his stomach. After several minutes of staring at each other, his eyes tracing me like it was the last time he’d see me, he opened the door wider. “Come in.”

On wobbly legs, I walked through the threshold. Even though I kept my face forward, I was fully aware of every single movement he made behind me. His breath on the nape of my neck, how his body warmth heated me from the inside out. “Tell me.”

Rage’s gentle touch on my elbow felt like fire. “Take a seat.”

I walked over to the bed, sitting on the very edge, finding his gaze once I got settled. Both hands clutched around the small nightstand he’d leaned against, his eyes eating me alive. “My parents died when I was eighteen and my sister was fourteen. They never had a lot of money, so I was left with the duty of making sure Hannah got into college. Taking care of her.” Those grey eyes darkened, his knuckled turned white from his grip. “So I took a job working with Denver. I’d met him at a bar where I’d gotten into a drunken fight and still whooped his guard’s ass.”

Rage pushed forward, lacing his finger into his hair. “He’d been so tempting. Flashing wads of cash, jewelry and girls around like they were nothing. The picture he painted for me was far from the reality of the job, but I took it. And I made fucking bank. Once I started, I found out the real job behind all that money—and it was darker than I’d ever gone before. Selling drugs for the biggest drug dealer in the Dallas area was more than I’d ever imagined. The killings, the beatings, the torture.”

A lifeless expression took control of his face, and he dropped to his knees in front of me, both palms engulfed my bare thighs. “Neveah, I tried,” he whispered. “After Hannah graduated, I’d tried to break free.” His fingers clutched tighter. “But he set me up. See,” he laughed darkly, “you don’t just stop working for Denver. He set me up, and that’s how I landed in prison.”

One hand clutched my chin, forcing me to meet his heated eyes. “I spent two years in prison, boxing,” he whispered. “That’s how I started. Once I was out, I went looking for Denver and my sister. That’s when you found me. They think I’m dead, and Dante is my only inside source to find her, Neveah. I have to find her.”

Every word that’d left his mouth left a mark against my heart. Those broken eyes that held so many secrets were raw and honest. They would be the death of me. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, pulling my thumb down the center of his bottom lip. “Let me help.”

Silence.

Maybe he didn’t hear me?
“I want to help you.”

There was no sound for the first minute, only the heavy silence filtering through the room. I’d dropped my gaze to my feet, not able to meet his heated glare for another second. Someone had turned the tension in the room up to a thousand. “No.”

Anger built in my throat, and despite being scared to see the look on his face, I looked up. The veins in his neck bulged outward and a sadness overtook his face. 

“Why? You need help.”

Something suddenly registered on his face, and the corner of his lip lifted into a heavier sneer. “You don’t understand, do you? All of what I’ve done. I’m not some innocent school boy, I’m a
fucking criminal
. I’ve done fucked up shit.”

I believed him. I just didn’t care. Something deep inside of my gut told me that he was dangerous from the first moment I laid eyes on him. That was the attraction. Deep down I’d known I wasn’t happy with Heath, because he was so weak. So fake. So secure in his life because of his pocket book. Money would never show power in my eyes. Strength was something on a completely different level.

That bone-deep connection drove us together, no matter how hard we—
he
—fought against it. “I don’t care,” I whispered, aware at how naïve and stupid I sounded. I just didn’t care anymore. I’d begged him to take me, and he’d walked away, but dammit I just
didn’t
care!

He was what I needed.

His dark chuckle hit me like a brick in the chest. “Sweetheart, you have no fucking idea what you’re asking for. I’m not like any person you’ve ever been with—I can promise you that. My life isn’t something you should want, but I’m damn sure not about to let you go. It’ll be over my dead body when I drag you deeper into this than you already are. I can’t take your help.”

I watched his face closely. The hard lines of his face were stern but it was there in his eyes. The sadness in each word he uttered. “You don’t understand,” I whispered. “My body craves you,” I whispered. “I want to help you. I hate seeing you sad.”

He stood silent, his chest heaving harder and faster, a look that pinned me to the bed. His first movement toward me sent flutters to my lower stomach, and the second filled my veins with a heavy need. My heart thumped loudly, causing me to strain to hear his voice. His rough, rogue voice. “Do you think I haven’t felt every single thing that you’ve felt for me? That I don’t know your panties are soaked for me right this fucking second?” Grasping my wrist, he placed my palm against the ridge in the front of his sweats. “You feel how hard you make me?”

I bit my tongue to hold in a pathetic whimper. “I want to help you. I want you to know that I’m not judging you, and I see the way you look at me. Everyone deserves a second chance—,”

Rage gripped my upper arms, yanked me up and pinned me against the nearest wall, his mouth a hairbreadth’s away from my parted one. “I’m a fucking low down, dirty criminal and you want me?” he whispered. “You don’t know the real me, Neveah. You don’t know the fucked up shit I’ve done. The demands a true drug dealer has for his employees. His fucking puppets,” he whispered, his voice the roughest velvet I’ve ever felt against my skin.

Holding his gaze, I tried to clear my thoughts, stop the overwhelming euphoria going off in my head from the smell of him. “We’ve all fucked up,” I whispered. “But that doesn’t make you a bad person. The fact that you care about your sister and would put your own life at jeopardy for her, shows me you’re a different man inside than you are out.”

He groaned. “I’m not this good guy you think I am, and I’m not some prince charming, Champ. I know that’s what you need me to be, but it’s not that simple—not yet. This mission to get my sister in a dead-end. Dante and I both know it, and I refuse to put you in the middle of it.”

I opened my mouth to argue but he stopped me with a kiss. A bone melting, hot and deep, but slow and torturous kiss. When he pulled back, his eyes were dilated, his mouth opened in a heavy pant. “Do you know what you do to me?” he whispered. “Do you know how long I’d wanted to touch you before I did? Or that fact that I’d prayed someone would find me—and it was you. God sent me you.”

Tears swelled the corners of my eyes. The truth was riding on his tongue, and there was no way I was going to make a peep to stop it. “You saved my life and you’re making me crazy with your filthy mouth.”

I panted against him, my hardened nipples brushed against the hardness of his chest. “Then do something about it,” I rasped, my vision threatening to give, stars danced along the corners.

His lips turned upward into a greedy smile that I felt in my toes. “You don’t have to ask me twice.”

One flat palm pressed against my stomach, and the other pulled my shirt over my head. He tossed my shirt to the side, his index finger slid up my hot skin until he cupped my jaw, prying my mouth apart with his own.

I let myself relax into the hardness of his body, tangled my fingers into his hair and pulled him closer. There wasn’t any denying how badly this would probably turn out. Though I was sure neither one of us cared anymore. “I love your taste,” he whispered into my mouth. “I craved it after I kissed you in the barn.”

Keeping his eyes on me, he unzipped my jeans, shimmed them down my legs and grasped me under my ass. The hard bulge in his underwear pressed against my drenched panties. I whimpered, helplessly, clutching his shoulders like someone tried to pry me away.

Slowly, he walked me to the bed and tossed me down like a man on a mission. He never took his eyes off of me while he stripped out of his clothes. “Do you know what I’ve done with these hands?” he asked.

My body ignited thinking about how strong they were. Each tanned, long finger had done things unimaginable—but yet, they were so soft and gentle on my skin. “Bad things,” I whispered, watching as he slid out of his underwear.

His cock fell heavy against his thigh, his right palm wrapped around the base. With a dark gaze, he started to stroke himself. “Terrible things,” he whispered. “And you still want me?” He lifted his chin in a challenge.

Lava seeped down my veins. I wanted him like I’d never wanted anything else before. Like I’d wanted to box growing up. “I still need you.”

Something crazy crossed his face, but he knelt down in front of me, jerked my thighs apart and shoved his finger inside of my pussy. He watched as my eyes rolled back in my head. “That’s it, baby,” he whispered. “I can’t wait to stretch out this tight little pussy.”

I was so wet my body hurt for him. My back arched, my fingers dug into the bed beneath me. “Please.”

He slowed his pace, dropped his head and kissed along the inside of my thigh. “I’m going to lick, kiss and suck on you until my fucking mouth feels like it’s going to break.”

Oh God
… I squirmed beneath him. His hands pinned me down by my thighs, and before I could protest, he pressed his mouth against my pussy, sliding his tongue deep inside of me. “Oh God,” I moaned, raking my hands through his hair, yanking with each swipe of his tongue.

I rocked against his face, enjoying the feel of his facial hair against the insides of my thighs, his hot breath pushed me closer to the edge. “So sweet,” he mumbled against me. “So goddamn sweet.”

Tears brimmed my eyes, my hips rocked to the rhythm he provided with his tongue. Need built in my stomach, and a desperate moan escaped my throat. His lips pulled into a smile against me, his laugh sent my heart into a rampage against my ribs. When I felt his middle finger slid into me, breaking through any chance I had at composure, I come undone, on his face. He ate me like candy, licking up every drop of lust that erupted from my body.

Stars danced along my vision, a heavy release softened me. Rage kissed up my stomach, slowly dipping his tongue into my belly button, one hand still stroking my drenched pussy. “I’ve never had a great memory,” he whispered against my skin. “But, your face,” he lifted his head, “I memorized it the day you saved me. Your eyes, your small straight nose. Dark hair I wanted to sink my fingers into. Your mouth—,” he pressed his lips against mine. “I’ll never forget how fucking beautiful you are, Neveah.”

I’m beautiful? Has he looked in a mirror?
A second finger entered me. A small devious smile rose the corner of his mouth.
“
The way you moan.” He closed his eyes like my moan could undo him. “The way you whisper my name. I want you so badly that I’d give up anything to have you.”

My head flopped helplessly to the bed. I arched my back, giving him full access to my neck. He chuckled, biting a path up my stomach, stopping to suck my peaked nipples into his mouth before kissing my neck. “Do you want me like I want you?” he whispered.

He knew, but he wanted to hear me say it. “Yes.”

He nodded, increasing the pace of his fingers. “Do you want my cock where my fingers are right now?”

“Please.”

His breathing heaved, the fingers inside of me moved faster. His intense grey eyes looked back at me from under hooded lids. “You want me in that tight, little, pink pussy?”

The dirty taste of his words set me on fire. I’d never been talked to so naughty. “Yes,” I pleaded, sinking my fingers into his hair. “Fuck me hard.”

The playful hint in his smile vanished when he pulled his fingers from me. Something serious crossed his face. “I want you without a rubber. Are you on birth control?”

Without a rubber? Jesus, yes.
“Three years,” I panted. “I’ve been on it for three years.”

He nodded, slowly, his eyes making a sweep down my body and then back. “I’m clean. They test us when we go in and when we leave prison.”

I nodded. “I get checked every six months.”

“I’m going to make you scream, Angel.”

I didn’t deny him or answer. I just waited, hungrily. When he crawled on top of me, there was something different in his eyes, more human than before. The beast that’d fucked me senseless before was there, but he’d forced himself to be gentle—his hands tangled in my hair, his mouth hot on mine. The kiss went on until I was thrusting my hips against him, shaking and begging him to take me where he’d taken me before. “Eager, little kitten,” he mumbled, reaching between us to grab the base of his cock.