Page 11 of No Fear
Chapter Three
Coming here had been a bad decision. One of her worst. Just ahead of letting her older brother live with her and right behind eavesdropping on his conversation earlier. This, choosing to come here, to this place, had been a terrible idea but it was the only one she’d been able to come up with after what she’d overheard.
Rachel looked up at the angry, bearded Bomar boy next to her and shivered with fear. He wasn’t looking back at her. He was glaring out into the crowd. The crowd that, even now, with their champion climbing into the cage was staring ather.
All her life, she’d been the kind of girl that was invisible. As a quiet, painfully shy and awkward child, nobody had ever paid much attention to her. Even when her body had changed with adulthood, she’d learned how to conceal it and keep people from looking at her. All her years of hiding from Craig and his friends, praying for invisibility, it had disappeared in one amazing, life-changing, terrifying moment.
The spotlight was on her now. She could feel it. She could feel the eyes of dozens and dozens of men on her, leering at her, and it made her skin crawl. She wanted to disappear, wanted to go back in time to when nobody had noticed she was here because she had a feeling her brother was somewhere out there, amid all of those hard, staring faces, plotting her death.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up as she scanned the crowd. She didn’t see him but she was certain Craig was out there. She’d been hoping to lay low and stay invisible until she could talk to Remy, gauge his mood and figure out how much she would have to tell him to earn his protection. The scene he had made was the opposite of laying low and she cringed thinking about what her brother must be thinking right now, not just having seen her here but having seen her at the side of the Bomars.
Instinctively, she moved closer to the Bomar standing beside her. He was one of the scariest men she’d ever laid eyes on but he was her only defense right now. If he walked away from her, she’d be on her own with no way to defend herself.
And Craig wouldn’t waste any time hurting her if she was alone.
Her shoulders automatically hunched in an attempt to make herself smaller. Trying to be less of a target came naturally to her but she fought the urge. She pushed her shoulders back, straightened her spine and tried to keep her chin up even though her teeth were chattering. If nothing else, she had a fairly well honed survival instinct and it told her that any outward signs of weakness here would be a mistake.
She had to be strong. Fierce. She had to be like Skylar. Someone worthy of standing next to a Bomar boy.
Oh God… she put a hand to her mouth to contain a small whimper as she watched Remy walk into the cage, his back to her now but the tension in his shoulders clear even at a distance. He’d claimed her. He’d said she was his. Publicly. And she might be young but she wasn’t nearly as innocent as she looked. She knew exactly what something like that meant in this crowd.
Remy had claimed her as his woman. She was as good as considered a Bomar now. Just like Skylar. Just like Jemma. She was one of them now. And if you messed with a Bomar, you dealt with all of the Bomars. Everyone knew that.
She hadn’t come here to choose a side but Remy’s claim had done it for her.
If she was with Remy, she was with all of the Bomars. And if she was with the Bomars, she was against Craig. Her brother. The only family she had left. For a split second, she almost felt bad going against him but it passed quickly. If coming here had signed one of their death warrants, it was better his than hers.
It took her a minute, through the fog of her fear and terror, through the rationalizations and the reasonings, to truly put together what Remy had just done. He’d claimed her. To these people, she was someone important to him, someone to be protected, a girlfriend possibly or a lover. But she and Remy both knew that wasn’t the case.
She wasn’t really his… was she?
Remy glanced up, looking right at her. Their eyes connected across the distance, through the bars of the cage, and she forgot to breathe. The heat in his dark eyes set the blood in her veins on fire and she shivered involuntarily.
Who was she kidding? Of course she was his. She’d been his from the moment she first looked up into his ridiculously gorgeous face and felt alive for the first time in her life. He’d seen her that day, really seen her in a way that nobody else ever had.
He looked at her like he wanted to claim her. Wanted to own her. Wanted everything from her. And for some reason, the thought of giving herself to him, giving him every part of her, didn’t scare her.
She wanted things with him that she’d never wanted from a man. And from the way he was looking at her, she had zero doubts he could, and would, give it to her. She had a sudden, panicked feeling that everything about their relationship had just changed.
“You’re gonna get him killed.” A hard, angry voice snarled from nearby and she almost jumped out of her boots.
She looked up into the equally hard and angry face of the bearded Bomar boy that Remy had said would protect her until he returned. Which one was he? There were so many of them it was hard to keep track. Add to that how much they all resembled, the fact that so many of them were twins and… Ford, she remembered finally.
As if the Bomar family tree wasn’t confusing enough, one entire branch was named after cars. The Auto branch, naturally, as if that wasn’t weird at all. Auto Bomar ran the sole garage in Old Settlers, the one his sons used to tear down and sell off parts of stolen vehicles on the black market. At least that was what the rumors claimed. Auto had two sets of twin sons. She couldn’t remember all four of their names at that moment but she knew enough to know that Ford was part of the older set of twins… which meant his twin was Lincoln.
Lincoln. Their leader. She shivered as she looked up at the twin glaring down at her. She’d always thought Lincoln was the scariest of the Bomars but this one was giving him a run for his money in a completely different way. Lincoln came off polite and charming at first glance but she’d never bought it. There was something about him, something that hid just beneath his ever-present smile that scared the holy hell out of her. This man was his twin, and he did resemble, but there was no veneer of false pleasantness. He was as rough as his twin was smooth and she wasn’t sure if that made him more or less terrifying.
“Wh-what?”
“You’re gonna get him killed.” He snarled at her again, “He needs to focus and instead he’s makin’ goddamned googly eyes at you.”
Rachel bit her lip and dropped her gaze. Was she distracting Remy? She hadn’t meant to. She thought about the things she’d overheard Craig and his buddies say about these fights over the years and winced.
Bomar fight nights were brutal. Bare-knuckle, cage-fighting with little to no rules. Fights that went on until someone was unconscious or tapped out. She’d known when she came here that she’d have to witness some vicious blood sport but she hadn’t realized until she arrived that Remy would be the one climbing into the cage. The kind, gentle, sweet man that she’d gotten to know a little over the past few weeks was going to beat someone half to death. Or he was going to be the one beaten. She felt sick to her stomach all over again.
“I-I-I don’t want to distract him.”
“Too late.” Ford snorted.
