Chapter One
The man grins when he leans over me, a needle clutched in his gloved hand and a glint in his eye that sends a shudder shooting through my body. Tattoos cover nearly every inch of his arms, and the overhead light gleams off the silver hoops and balls decorating his face and ears. There are so many that, for a brief moment, I’m blinded by the glare. I blink and his grin comes back into focus, revealing brown teeth. His beard is spotted with chewing tobacco residue and God knows what else, and just looking at it makes my stomach turn. When the urge to punch that snarky grin off his face comes over me, I clench my hands into fists and suck in a deep, cleansing breath, trying to will the feeling away. There isn’t a single thing I like about this man, but despite my typical lack of self-control, I have no desire to piss off the guy with the needle.
When I shift, the cold table stings my bare skin. My shirt is pulled up to just below my breasts, exposing my mid-section, and my skirt is completely off. Below the waist, I wear nothing but a tiny pair of black underwear. The man’s gaze strokes my flesh as he moves his chair closer, and the hair on my head prickles uncomfortably. I squeeze my fists tighter, digging my nails into the palms of my hands until I’m sure they will draw blood.
Something scrapes against the floor to my right, pulling my attention to the other side of the room. Asher shifts in his chair as he launches throwing stars at the man with his eyes. It’s impossible to mistake that look.
“Get on with it,” I snap, tearing my gaze off Asher.
The man’s grin stretches wider, revealing red, swollen gums that look like they’re barely clinging to his rotting teeth. He scoots his chair even closer, and when he exhales, moist air brushes over my bare skin. Every muscle in my body tightens as adrenaline courses through my veins and I mentally prepare myself for the pain.
The needle touches the soft skin on my lower abdomen, and I suck in a deep breath, letting it out a second later when a slow burn moves across my skin. That’s all it is, though. A scorching discomfort that doesn’t even come close to the throbbing ache I expected. The man runs the needle along my skin, pausing every now and then to wipe away the blood and excess ink. With each stroke the burning increases, becoming more and more uncomfortable and making the urge to slap his hand away grow.
It’s a sensation I’m not used to: allowing another person to inflict pain on me without fighting back. The urge to defend myself gets stronger until I have a hard time sitting still. It’s like a living thing, coiling into a ball in the pit of my stomach, whispering in my ear. Telling me to take my attacker out before he can destroy me. Maintaining self-control has never been an easy thing for me and now is no exception.
I glance toward Asher, hoping to focus on something other than the pain. He’s grinning from ear to ear, of course. It’s like he can read my mind, which wouldn’t be anything unusual. He always seems to know what I’m thinking. I relax my hands long enough to give him the finger, but it only makes his smile stretch wider. He’s more annoying than the needle poking my skin.
I look away, instead focusing on a brown circle on the ceiling above me. Water damage won’t keep me from thinking about the pain, but at least it can’t laugh at me.
The whole process takes less than an hour, and when the man finally steps back, I let out a sigh of relief that’s louder than an airship’s engine.
“All done, Moonchild,” he says in a tone that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up—and has me reaching for my throwing stars. Too bad they’re in the pockets of my vest, which I’m not wearing at the moment.
Every muscle in my body tenses as Asher lets out a deep breath and shakes his head. This isn’t the first time I’ve been recognized, but it never ceases to surprise me. It’s gotten more and more difficult to leave the warehouse.
“How much do we have to give you so you won’t call the enforcers?” Asher asks, getting to his feet.
The man’s filthy smile widens, making him look like something out of a nightmare. His gaze stays on me as I pull my skirt back on. The fabric brushes my new artwork and I have to bite back a wince of pain. I stand up straighter, raising my chin. No way in hell will I let this guy see even an ounce of weakness.
A hacking cough shakes the tattoo artist’s body, making him sound like he’s dangerously close to choking on his own phlegm, and he takes his eyes off me long enough to spit. The blob of brownish-green mucous misses my boot by less than an inch.
When he turns back, he’s once again smiling, giving me an even better view of the putrid mess in his mouth. “The reward’s up to five thousand.”
“You expect us to pay five thousand for a tattoo?” I snap, taking a step toward him.
Heat creeps up my neck to my face as the anger inside me builds. One kick and I could knock every single one of those rotten teeth down his throat. It would be so easy.
Asher grabs my elbow before I can make a move, pulling me back. His hand slides from my arm to my waist, stopping on the small of my back. He’s trying to calm me down, but I’ve almost reached my boiling point. Asher should know by now that it will take a lot more than this to get me to relax.
“The tattoo is two hundred,” the man says, meeting my angry glare with one of his own.
“Fine.” Asher slips his hand off my back so he can pull out his wallet.
He drops gold coins into the man’s waiting hand, counting them out while I stand at his side. Fuming. I cross my arms over my chest like I’m trying to hold the rage inside, but there’s more to it than that. The life I’ve made for myself in Columbus has gotten comfortable, and it’s the closest thing I’ve had to normal since my parents died. Being a wanted woman has threatened what I’ve built, and I want it to stop before my world comes crumbling down around me once again.
The second the man has his fingers curled around the hush money, Asher is pushing me out the door. My face is still hot, and the cool night does little to help me calm down. I’d need a bucket of ice water dumped over my head to snap me out of it at this point.
The few streetlights in this part of the city don’t work, and the constantly overcast sky has ensured that there is no chance the moon will ever be able to make an appearance, so Asher and I find ourselves thrust into a darkness thick enough to make me wonder if it will swallow us whole. I’d be terrified if I wasn’t used to it, but I am. Still, I lower my head out of habit. This neighborhood may not have many lights, and we may not get a lot of enforcers, but the area is still crawling with automatons—tiny robots that go around the city, alerting enforcers when there’s trouble. I’ve always savored the darkness night brings, even more so now that everyone in the city seems to be looking for me, but the little mechanical creatures they’ve set loose in the city don’t need light to do their job. If they scan me, I’m done for.
“Why the hell are you carrying around so much money?” I grumble as I pull my hair out of its usual ponytail and brush it forward, hoping to shield my face.
“For emergencies such as this.” Asher waves his hand toward me. “You know, you’re getting more and more expensive to have around.”
His tone is light, which doesn’t make a bit of sense considering he just had to fork over a shit ton of money to keep that man quiet. A man who probably wouldn’t have called the enforcers anyway, because he’s most likely just as wanted as I am. Too bad we couldn’t take that risk.
I sneak a peek at Asher through the curtain of hair covering my face. His grin is just visible in the darkness, and even though I can’t see his eyes, I can picture the playful look in them perfectly. I swear, he can’t take anything seriously.
“I’m popular,” I reply, trying to match his unconcerned attitude even though the blood is still simmering in my veins.
“I’d call it high maintenance.”
I scowl into the dark night since I don’t have an argument for that, but his smile just gets bigger. Of course.
“Why the hell do they want five thousand for me, anyway? They can’t seriously believe I was the only one responsible for that raid, and there’s no way anyone is going to believe I killed all those men myself. What’s so special about me?”
Asher’s eyes dart my way, and when his gaze sweeps over me, it sends tingles shooting through my body. Every second we’ve spent together over the last few months comes screaming back. All the stolen glances and accidental touches, the words spoken and the things unsaid. It all rolls through me, threatening to knock me on my ass. Even though Asher tries to shrug it off, it’s impossible to ignore the longing in that gaze.
Things are more relaxed between us now than they were before I almost died, and he’s gotten better at treating me like everyone else. Still, there are times when he gives me that look. It’s the look that forces me to fight against the desire swirling around inside me, struggling to get out. It gets harder to resist every day.
Asher clears his throat, but when he speaks his voice is still husky. “If I knew, I’d tell you.”
I pull my gaze from his and force my legs to move faster. We need to get to the bar so we aren’t alone. Asher and I do better with a buffer. He’s too sexy. Too hard to resist. I thought it the first time I saw him and no matter how much he irritates me, I can’t seem to talk myself out of it. His dark hair has gotten a bit longer, and too often my mind wanders to how much I’d love to run my fingers through it. His brown eyes seem to constantly twinkle with some hidden mischief, but they’re penetrating too. Sometimes, I’m sure he can see all the way through me. And his body. When he walks around the living quarters with his shirt off, I just want to run my fingernails down his back and…
Desperate to clear my head, I inhale sharply, sucking air in through my nose. The stink of garbage and urine slams into me, mingled with just a hint of decay, and other things replace all the thoughts and images of Asher. Dead things and piles of garbage. Men half out of their minds, peeing in alleys. Images from my life on the streets that should have been long forgotten, but instead are tattooed on my mind like a permanent reminder that I shouldn’t be the whole person I am.
It’s never a good idea to breathe through your nose in the slums, but it’s a hell of a lot more effective than a cold shower.
We cross into a more commercial area, where bars and pool halls and sleazy strip joints line the street on both sides. Lights flicker above doors, illuminating signs that hang in cracked windows and giving off a soft glow that gets lost somewhere between eerie and comforting. It’s just enough light to showcase how run-down this area of the city is, but not quite enough to light up all the corners and alleyways. The darkness in those places is thick and threatening, like a nightmare I used to have when I was little where arms would reach out of my closet and grab at me, desperate to pull me in. Of course, I’m smart enough to know that the things lurking in these shadows are far more menacing than that silly, childish dream.
A shiver runs down my spine, but I shake it off and hurry across the street, keeping close to Asher’s side. I ignore the catcalls from men who are so intoxicated that the words roll off their tongues and mix together until they sound like a foreign language. I could take them with one flick of my wrist. Men like this aren’t a real threat to me.
The door to our bar is wide open, and the laughter and music floating out to greet us is familiar and comforting. Puffs of tobacco smoke fill the night air and drift up into the sky where they mix with the thick, gray clouds that always hang over this city.
It’s the same bar we always go to—the one I met Keith in just a few months back—and I know that once I’m inside, I’ll be safe. No one who frequents this place would dare call the enforcers. Most of the patrons are fugitives too, charged with crimes even worse than the ones printed on my wanted posters, and there would be serious hell to pay if some moron tried to collect a bounty in here.
A sea of black clothes and heavy, metal weapons engulfs us when we step inside, and the stench of garbage is replaced by the earthy scent of pirates—tobacco, leather, and dirt, with just a hint of body odor. People nod in our direction as we push our way through. Most of the scarred and tattooed faces we pass are familiar, and not nearly as intimidating as they used to be.
We pass a table of regulars and Asher stops to chat while I scan the room for our group. A few men I know by name smile my way, while a few women I don’t know glare in my direction—competition isn’t welcome in places like this. My gaze falters on a man in his mid-thirties who is sitting at the bar by himself. Something about the way he’s hunched awkwardly over his drink makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up; only I’m not sure what it is. I’ve never seen him here before, of that I’m sure, but he doesn’t exactly look out-of-place. He has no tattoos or piercings, but that isn’t very unusual. Asher doesn’t have any tattoos—at least none that you can see—and there are a handful of other people in our group who don’t either. Still, something about this guy has every warning bell going off in my head. I just can’t put my finger on what it is.
I turn away when Asher nudges me. He tilts his head toward the other side of the room, and I follow his gaze to find our group gathered around a table in the back corner, drinking and laughing. Keith looks up, and when his eyes meet mine, a huge grin breaks out across his face. He waves enthusiastically, acting like a ten-year-old who just spotted his best friend on the other side of the playground. He looks a little more like a pirate than he used to—thanks to a few drunken nights with Ryder and Turk that resulted in some piercings and tattoos—but he doesn’t act any more like one than he did when we first met him. And he still hasn’t totally given up on the hope that he may one day get lucky with me, regardless of how many times I’ve told him it isn’t going to happen.
Asher lets out a little snort and I shoot him a dirty look. Things may have gotten better between the two of us, but he still isn’t thrilled with Keith’s presence or how he came to be with us.
“Will you get over it already?” I mutter. “Give Keith a break.”
“Whatever,” Asher says. “You want a drink?”
“Yeah.”
Jealousy is an ugly thing, but I guess everyone is allowed one flaw. Lord knows Asher sure doesn’t have any that are visible to the naked eye.
I watch him for a second as he moves through the crowd, smiling to myself when every woman in the place looks him up and down. At least I’m not the only one who’s affected by Asher’s looks, I just wish his personality didn’t make him seem about a million times more attractive. If he were an asshole, he’d be easier to resist.
When he stops at the bar, I give up on watching him and head to the back corner.
“So let’s see it,” Dex says when I stop in front of the table.
I grin as I gingerly move my skirt down to reveal my new tattoo, being careful not to disturb the area too much. It’s low on my right side, next to my hipbone and just above my underwear. A small crescent moon with two stars next to it, representing my parents. A part of me hesitated to get a moon because of the whole Moonchild thing, but there was a time when that nickname meant a lot to me. Before the authorities found out about it and started using it on my wanted posters. Back when it was just a name my mom used to whisper to me at night. That’s a memory I want to cling to. One of the few happy ones left from my early years.
Now that I’ve gotten a good look at it, I’m glad I did it. The tattoo is all black, but the moon is intricate, and the stars dainty and feminine. It suits me.
Asher walks up with a glass of ale in each hand and his gaze sweeps over me, burning my bare skin. A flush creeps across my face that has nothing to do with embarrassment as the air between us simmers.
“Your drink,” he says when his eyes have moved up to meet mine. He wiggles his eyebrows, and the warmth in my body increases until flames lick at my insides.
“Thanks,” I mumble, taking the drink.
Asher chuckles quietly and I roll my eyes. He enjoys my discomfort way too much.
“It’s cute,” Rory says, leaning closer so she can take another look.
Her caramel colored spirals fall across her eyes, but she doesn’t make a move to push them aside. I don’t have a clue how she can even see the tattoo through her curls. Her cheeks are flushed and her greens eyes sparkle when she turns away from me to look at Turk, whose hand is resting on her upper thigh. High enough that it would be inappropriate if we were in a nicer establishment. Here though, they could probably do it in the middle of the table and people wouldn’t care.
I slide into the empty chair at her side and Asher takes the one next to me, scooting his close enough to mine that our knees touch under the table. Across from me, Katana—one of the girls we rescued from the auction with Rory—puckers her lips as her dark eyes move back and forth between Asher and me.
She’s had her eye on him since the first day they met, and she’s never been shy about showing it. Or about showing how much she dislikes the attention he gives me. The drama that follows this chick has gotten old. Fast. Even worse, no matter how hard I try to ignore her, she seems determined to irritate me.
Asher picks up his glass and tilts it Katana’s way for a split second before taking a sip, his eyes once again on me. Like clockwork, her pucker morphs into a smile. She tosses her long, dark hair over her shoulder and bats her eyes in his direction even though he’s no longer looking. I choose to focus on my drink instead of the flirty little thing across from me.
I throw back a few drinks pretty quickly, enjoying the company and the ale. When I’m with these people, it’s easy to forget that just five months ago I was living on the streets of Athens, barely making it. At the time I had no idea what I was missing, but now that I have a home and a group of friends, I know exactly how awful living on the streets was. It wasn’t just the dirt or the lack of food, though; it was not having a life. I thought distancing myself from people would make things easier, but now I know better. It’s the people around you that make life worth living.
Not that I don’t still have trouble opening up from time to time, but I’m working on it.
“Did it hurt?” Rory yells over the noise.
I hold up my arm and point to the scar Asher’s father left behind, ignoring the feeling of cold dread that settles in my stomach. “Not as much as some other things I’ve been through.”
Rory frowns and Asher swears under his breath, then takes a big swig from his glass. They both look away. No one likes thinking about that night, least of all me. I almost died, but worse still, I saw the man who has haunted my dreams for years, and I learned a horrible truth about him: the man who sent me to the mines is Asher’s father.
It’s hard to imagine, thinking about the man with the fake smile and the cold eyes, and comparing him to Asher. But it’s true, and it’s terrifying. I still haven’t told anyone about our connection, or the threats he made that night, but the more time that passes, the easier it is to brush off. He can’t touch me. I’m safe here, with my friends. I’ll be okay.
I take another drink, a bigger one this time, and try to think about something else. Something that doesn’t revolve around a man who would kidnap and torture and auction women off to the highest bidder.
“How was shopping with Layla?” I ask Rory when a shiver moves through me.
She sinks her teeth into her bottom lip, but somehow still manages to smile. “Good. We had a nice time.”
It’s loud in the bar, so it’s hard to tell for sure, but something about her tone seems off. “Are you okay?”
Rory lets out a little laugh that sounds almost like it’s choking her, and her eyes dart away. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” Before I’m able to respond, she leans forward and calls out to Dex, “When are you going to get that classy girlfriend of yours to come here?”
“She’d fit right in, wouldn’t she?” Dex’s smile lights up his face.
I laugh along with them, and Asher joins in as we try to predict how the other pirates would react to Layla walking through the front door in her designer clothes. My guess: they’d probably fight over who got to rob her.
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
