Thicker Than Blood (Thicker Than Blood #1)(124)
It never ceased to amaze me how fearless she could be, especially being as small as she was. She was scared of nothing and no one, not even me. I wasn’t too sure on the specifics of her story or how’d she come to be here, but whatever kind of hell she’d gone through, it must have been some f*cked-up shit. Either that, or she’d just been born one crazy-ass bitch.
Grabbing her finger, I pushed her hard enough that she stumbled backward. She glanced at Jeffers, waiting to see his reaction, though we both knew Jeffers wasn’t going to do a damn thing, not against me.
When his eyes finally did rise, his gaze was hard, the way it used to be, the way it had been when we’d first put this place together. From the ground up, just him and me and a small group of survivors had made this place what it was today. Then Liv had come along and took him, his balls, and any last shred of testosterone he’d had, and wrapped it all up in a pretty pink bow around her little finger.
“You let them go!” Liv screamed. “A fighter and two decent pieces of ass! And for what? Because you liked one of them? I had plans for them all!”
I shrugged. “I’ll fight back what I owe you for the fence.”
“Nobody wants to fight you!” Throwing her arms up in the air, she spun away and started stomping off. But not before sending her fist into Jeffers’s gut and hissing, “Do something!”
With a sigh, Jeffers took a step forward and opened his mouth to speak.
Smirking, I held up my hand, cutting him off. “Don’t you dare lecture me on letting * go to my head, you goddamn hypocrite. Not when that bitch has your balls locked up tight inside her skank hole. All I’m gonna say to you is I know I f*cked up, and I’ll pay you back for that gate.”
Pushing past him, I headed straight to the Cave, needing a drink or three and a nice hard f*ck in order to put all this bullshit behind me.
When I entered, I found Dori in the back, seated by the bar as usual. Spotting me, she waved happily, a smile curving her lips. She was a striking woman, or at least she had been before the rotters had gotten to her, forcing our sham of a doctor to take her legs. But she was still alive and infection-free, and that was more than most people who’d been bitten could say.
Taking a seat, I held up two fingers, signaling for the man behind the bar to bring me my usual—Dori’s homemade concoction. Smelled like shit, tasted even worse, but it did its job in taking me from point A to point B. And I couldn’t ever seem to reach point B on my f*cking own anymore.
As soon as it was handed to me, I tossed it back and swallowed it all in one gulp, enjoying the burn it ignited inside me, the warmth that swelled in my stomach. Signaling for another, I could still feel Dori’s eyes on me, waiting for me to tell her what happened this morning, to give her all the dirty details of what had gone down and why the camp was in such an uproar.
When I didn’t, she changed tactics. Rolling her wheelchair across the floor, she parked it next to my seat and placed her tiny hand on my arm.
“The wildcat?” she asked, her voice soft and husky.
“Gone,” I replied, swallowing back my second drink. Raising my fingers, I signaled for another.
“For good?”
Snorting, I nodded my head. Of course she was gone for good. Even after her man died, which he would, there was no way she was going to come back here—to me. And two women out there alone, no man to protect them… They’d be eaten up and spat back out before the next nightfall. By rotters, or whoever else happened on them. They were done for.
And it was my f*cking fault.
“I don’t know,” I ground out, hating the guilt I was feeling. Part of me thought I should have gone after them and dragged them back here to safety. But the other part of me, the part of me that liked hearing women cry, the part of me that liked watching my fist obliterate the face of my opponent, the part of me that got off being a king in this cold, dead world, that part of me knew she’d fight me tooth and nail, if not outright kill me, before she’d ever come back here…back to me.
“E,” she said, sounding hesitant. “I know you liked her. I know that you wanted her to stay, I did too. She would have been good currency around here. The mousy one too. God knows the men around here love that innocent act.”
Turning to Dori, I took her slender face in my hand, squeezing her cheeks until she yelped in pain, pulling her toward me until it was only me keeping her from falling straight out of her chair. I was fully aware of the several men in the room who were now staring at us, waiting to see what was going to happen and probably wondering if they should help Dori. But I already knew none of them would say a word, let alone make a move against me. They weren’t that stupid.
“You don’t know shit, woman,” I spat. “And that wildcat would have been my property. No way would my property have been working in a shithole like this. As for that other one, she’s about as innocent as they come these days. Why do you think they wanted to leave? Nobody worth a damn wants to live their lives in a shit pit like this, around people like you.”
And me, I added silently.
Beneath my fingers, her chin trembled while her eyes filled up with tears. The sight of her, so weak and pitiful, only made my mood worse. My upper lip curling with disgust, I released her face, thrusting her backward into her chair.
“I thought I was your property,” she whispered. “You said before—”