Page 95 of Running on Empty

“You told me to beg for your poxy little cock, even though I’ve never done that before in my life, and fucked up on that drug, I did beg. For understanding, for help, for someone to get rid of the red haze inside my head, right before my fingers moved to slide your zipper down.”

“Beg now, cunt,” Ronan said, grabbing a handful of Jack’s hair and wrenching his head back so hard I wondered how I didn’t hear his neck snap. “Beg for mercy. Beg for her forgiveness.”

“I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have done—” Ronan’s grip tightened. “I’m a piece of shit, not even good enough to be ground under your heel. I’m a…unh!” Jack’s voice cut off at a yelp of pain as Ronan twisted harder.

“Let him go, brother.” You might have thought Ash was stepping in to stop things, but you couldn’t have been more wrong. I felt like I finally saw the Ash that lurked behind those cool blue eyes. He wasn’t hot, hard and messy like Ronan, instead being the cool calm of a sniper about to go in for the kill. “This little prick can’t beg properly when you’re torturing him.”

Ronan let go of Jack regretfully, stepping back with a dark look at his brother, but Ash surged forward, taking Ronan’s place.

“You abused Stevie, drugged her and used her because deep down you knew you’d never get anything as fine as her without your little date rape tactics. You’re nothing but scum, shit on the sole of her shoe and you need to beg for your pathetic little life.”

“I’m sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean too…” Tears pricked at Jack’s eyes as I watched his heart break, as he seemed to fully realise how futile this was. He and his brothers had done their best to debase me, but right now the tables had been flipped. No amount of money, position or privilege would stop this. So I watched him beg, spluttering out the words over and over, making little fucking sense as his tongue tripped over the cascade of pleas, his brain racing to find the words that would stop me.

“I thought like you did.” My voice was curiously gentle. “I thought somehow, some way I could appeal to your better senses, force you to see me as a person, not a piece of meat, make you feel something, anything, other than a punishing lust to use me up, and throw me away. Did it work?”

I tilted my head to one side, brandishing my knife to make clear I expected an answer.

“Look, I didn’t—”

“Did it work? Did you relent?” I demanded.

“Answer the lady,” Jax said, then drove his fist into Jack’s unprotected guts. Jack sucked a breath in, but his diaphragm failed him, his lungs seizing.

“Far be for me to recommend that path of least violence, but he’s not gonna say anything if you keep doing that,” Ronan said, then raised his fist. “Aim for the face instead.” And with that he smashed his knuckles into Jack’s unprotected face.

My savage mate always gave me the best presents, a smile spreading as I watched blood trickle down Jack’s. He let out a nasal little sound, high pitched, followed by a flurry of bloody bubbles blown out his nose.

“Or hit them hard where it hurts, but won’t kill them.”

I hadn’t expected Ash’s input and neither Jack or I anticipated his strike, his fist slamming into the man’s kidney, forcing a guttural groan from Jack, his eyes rolling backwards as he hung limp on the rope.

But not for long.

Jack rallied with all of a wolf’s resolve, a growl building in his throat, fur prickling across his skin. His beast had been kept down too many times to come out when we first struck, but now it was facing near annihilation, it roused, ready to spring forward.

Which had me moving.

“You shoved things into me,” I said, raising the knife. “When I cried.” I stabbed it into his guts, knowing from all the lessons Ronan had given me over the years that it’d hurt like fucking hell, but would not kill you immediately. “When I screamed.” He made the same sound, thin and weak, his wolf shoved back down, the ripples of fur dying away and them stopping. “When I begged you to stop, what did you say?”

I grabbed Jack’s hair, forcing him to look at me, but he was deep in it, the pain, not here with me. I knew exactly how he felt, remembering that feeling of body blindness, where pain overwhelmed everything else, but that awful feeling of presentness, where there was no past, no future, only now, now, now, sensation pummelling your bones, your muscles until you wanted to scream.

“What did I fucking say?” I demanded, cold and calm, despite the slight shake in my voice. “What did I say over and over, while you did everything you could to me? What did I say?” It took my knife being pressed against his neck to get an answer from him.

One perfect for me then, and him, now.

“Please… stop.”

But he didn’t then and I didn’t now, my shoulders squaring, my muscles drawing taut, their entire purpose being to hold this knife up, the blade of vengeance sharpened on my pain, and the pain of so many people before me. Jack was sentenced, not just for his crimes against me, but because we had evidence he’d done this over and over to anyone he could.

Until someone stopped him.

“No,” I said, savouring the word women are schooled not to say. “I don’t think I will.”

I slit his throat then and his blood spurted free, bathing me in a savage kind of baptism before Ash took over. He pressed his body into mine, covering my hand with his to complete the stroke and cutting Jack’s throat.

“Never again…” Ash promised me that in a low whisper. “Never again.”

Chapter56

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