Beat (The Beat and The Pulse #1) (21 page)

Ash spun on his heel,
looking like a beast covered in another man’s blood. “
What
.”

“Accidents happen,
but you do not go into that ring with the intent to murder, Fuller. You got
me?”

Murder
. The word slammed home and for the first
time I wondered if he could actually be capable of… No, not Ash. I couldn’t
believe it.

Ash shoved the ref
off him, clearly still agitated. “I got it.”

“Step out of line
again and you’re out. No second chances.” The referee glanced at me with a
warning glare and strode out of the room to help calm the chaos outside.

Two strides took me
within hitting distance and I raised my had to slap some sense into the stupid
meathead that was my boyfriend. Boyfriend. That seemed like a stupid way to
describe what we were.

Ash caught my wrist
before my palm could connect with his cheek.

“I protect what is
mine, Ren, and you are 
mine
.”

I shoved him off me.
“To the point of beating the guy to death?”

He nodded. “If that’s
what it takes.”

“Are you hearing
yourself right now?” I exclaimed. “There’s a line, Ash. You fucking crossed
it.”

“I warned them,” he
roared, turning his anger onto me. “I warned them and they didn’t listen. This
is what happens when you push me, Ren.”

“You’re not fucking
god
,”
I yelled. “You don’t have final say to who lives or dies.”

“You wanted him to
fuck you? You wanted him to hurt you, Ren, because that’s what he would’ve
done.” I flinched, but he wasn’t anywhere close to being done. “They know the
price for fucking with what’s mine. They know I will kill them if they try.
That was me delivering on my promise.”

What the hell had I
gotten myself into? I was falling in love with a beast…a monster.

I stared at him, not
knowing what to do. That day at Beat when he lost it the first time was mild,
it was easy to calm him down, but now? It was my fault, wasn’t it? If I didn’t
come to The Underground, if I didn’t give into my lust, then we wouldn’t be
here right now. Even as I thought it, I knew it wouldn’t matter one way or the
other. Ash was a ticking time bomb. He would’ve gone off with or without me in
his life.

“Don’t,” I whispered.
“Don’t say those things.”

“What things? The
truth?”

I stumbled back a
step, confused. Should I be afraid? Angry? I was caught in a web of I don’t
know fucking what.

“Fuck, Ren.” He ran a
hand over his face, his expression beginning to soften. “I didn’t mean to scare
you. Fuck.” He let out an awful wail and banged his head into the lockers.

“You can’t go around
and just beat people up because they did something fucked up,” I said. “It
doesn’t make it right.”

“I can’t control it,”
he whispered. “It’s there, inside me, and I don’t know how to stop it.”

I frowned, my limbs
starting to lose some of their tension. I didn’t know how to control it either.
He seemed to understand what he was doing was wrong, he’d given me enough advice,
but when it came to a solution? I didn’t fucking know either.

Reaching out for him,
I ran my fingers down the muscles of his arm before tangling my fingers with
his. “I don’t know either,” I murmured. “But let’s start with a shower, huh?”

“Ren,” he whispered
hoarsely. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“When I saw him-”

“I know.”

“It fucking kills me
watching you fight,” he murmured, stroking his fingers through my hair.
“Watching you take punches.”

“Now you know how I
feel.”

He laughed, a deep rumble
blooming in his chest.

I cocked my head to
the side.

He moved to take my
mouth with his. “Shower.”

“But-” I began to
protest.

“They won’t let
anyone back here,” he said, walking me back towards the stall at the rear.

I didn’t really have
a choice as he dumped me in the shower and turned the water on. We washed
together, this time I took care of him, cleansing his skin of his display of
fury in the cage. Then I took care of his cock, relieving another kind of
tension.

Shit, we had a lot to
talk about, but I didn’t even know how I was going to broach the subject.

Ash couldn’t go on
like this…and neither could I.

Chapter 33

Ren

The next day, Ash
prowled around Beat, his shoulders heavy with something I didn’t understand.

I didn’t understand
because he wouldn’t talk to me about what happened in the cage. He’d had his
way with me in the shower at The Underground, then we’d come back to Beat and
fucked some more, then fell asleep in my closet. There was no time for talking
other than the dirty things he whispered into my ear that got him off. He was
using sex as a distraction again and this time I let him. I didn’t want to
admit it, but I welcomed the change of thought patterns.

Seeing Ash like
that…I never wanted to see him break again. I made myself a promise the moment
I woke up in his arms that morning. I wouldn’t give up on him. I’d do whatever
I could to help him come to terms with whatever made him so angry. That was a
promise I kept to myself and would bring up at another time. Right now though, Ash
was still in his dark place.

We hadn’t heard from
anyone at The Underground. I made the head referee take our numbers to call and
let us know about the other guy. If he was going to live…or die. He’d been hurt
pretty bad and sometimes people didn’t wake up after a beating like that. They
just pulled the plug.

“What’s up with
Fuller?” Dean asked, sitting beside me on the bench. “Did something happen?”

“It’s complicated,” I
replied. He didn’t need to know. I couldn’t come clean about what we were going
through, not without revealing what we did practically every night.

“If he’s hurt you,
Ren-”

I held up a hand to
stop him. “It’s complicated, but he hasn’t hurt me.” My subconscious was about
to add,
yet
, but I stopped my lips from following through. That was
the risk I ran by standing beside Ash, wasn’t it? That he might accidentally
hurt me? Thinking about the way I felt about him, it was glaringly obvious what
I should do. I’d made a promise and I was sticking to it.

He wouldn’t abandon
me and I wouldn’t abandon him. We were in tune. We belonged together.

There was a muffled
ringing and Ash snapped to attention, totally oblivious that I was sitting
there with Dean. He rustled through his gym bag and snatched out his mobile
phone, pressing a big thumb against the screen.

“Yeah?” he barked
into it. He saw me staring and turned his back, walking across the mats to the
empty gym.

Snorting, I leaned my
elbows against my knees and rubbed my eyes.

“Are you sure, Ren?
It looks like something big is going down.”

“It’s fine, Dean.
It’s not my place to discuss Ash’s business.” It was mine as well, but
something like this becoming public knowledge…the life of a man he may or may
not have taken…Dean didn’t need to know about that.

“Okay,” he said with
a sigh. “You know we’re-”

“Yeah, yeah.” I waved
him off. “I appreciate it.”

He put his hand on my
back and rubbed before standing and going back to pick up his set on the bags.

I glanced up and
watched Ash talking on his phone through the window. He was waving his hand, clearly
worked up about something. I hoped it was good news and he was just getting a
tongue lashing from the referees. If he got kicked out of a championship
again…I wasn’t sure how that would go down. I wasn’t sure how it went the first
time. There were so many things that Ash hadn’t confided in me.

He hung up the call
and stared at his phone for a full minute before coming back out into the
studio. Standing, I went to meet him halfway, desperate to find out if the news
was good or fucking terrible.

“Was that?” I asked,
coming up beside him.

“He’s going to be
fine,” Ash said, shoving his phone into his bag.

I let out a whoosh of
air, the relief almost overwhelming me.

Ash grunted and
picked up his bag and went to stalk off to the showers.

“Ash,” I called after
him.

He didn’t reply as he
kept walking, disappearing into the back. I got that he was worked up about it,
but did he even feel remorseful? That’s what set apart the monsters from the
humans, wasn’t it? Ash wasn’t a monster. He had his issues, but I’d help him.
I’d-

“Trouble in
paradise?”

My head snapped up as
Monica sauntered past me in a waft of some disgusting flowery perfume.

I glared at her.
“You’d fucking love that, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course,” she
declared, smiling sweetly.

“Keep your filthy
fucking hands off of him,” I snarled, anger rising hot and hard in my chest.
Maybe I understood more about what Ash went through last night more than I
wanted to believe.

“I’d like to see you
try, Ren,” Monica said, flicking her hair over her shoulder. “One day Ash won’t
be here to save you and then where will you be? Fucked.”

I stepped forward, my
fists balled against my side and a thick arm wound around my waist.

“It’s not worth it,
Ren,” Lincoln said into my ear. “She’s just trying to piss you off.”

Monica laughed. “And
it’s working, too.”

“Bitch,” I spat.
“What the fuck did I ever do to you? You can’t make someone love you. Fuck, you
can’t even pay someone enough to love
you
.”

Her eyes darkened and
her smug smile fell from her ugly-beautiful face. “What did you do to me?” she
scoffed. “You really want to know?”

“Ren, don’t feed the
beast,” Lincoln said, trying to haul me away.

Monica wasn’t even
close to finishing. “You took everything that was mine. You want me to make a
list for you, Ren?”

I took everything from
her? No fucking way. She had a family who wanted her, a family who didn’t stuff
her in the closet like a dirty little secret. She was doted on and loved. She
was loved by everyone…just not by the man she wanted to give herself to. Ash.
This was about Ash.

“He’s mine,” I
snarled. “Lay one finger on me or him and I will fucking
cut you
.”

“You think I’m scared
of you?” she asked, looking me up and down. “You’re a fucking animal.”

I struggled against
Lincoln’s arms, letting out a roar.

“Fuck, leave it, Ren!”
Lincoln exclaimed, using his entire strength against me.

“What the fuck is
going on?” Ash exclaimed, coming out to see what all the noise was about.

“Your girl’s got some
strength in her, Fuller,” Lincoln said as Ash took me from him.

“Fucking psycho,” Monica
drawled, stalking off.

Ash glanced down at
me as I seethed, the question plain in his eyes. “What was that about?”

“The fucking usual,”
I hissed, wriggling out of his grasp.

“You got her, man?”
Lincoln asked and Ash nodded.

As he wandered off to
join his startled looking brother, I ran my hands over my face.

“You think I’m over
protective?” Ash murmured into my hair.

“Don’t say it,
Maverick.”

“Say what?”

“I told you so.”

“Didn’t say a fuckin’
thing, Spitfire.”

Grunting, I pushed
away, shaking out my trembling limbs. I needed a bloody cold shower, is what I
needed.

“It turns me on,” Ash
said with a grin.

“What?”

“You, protecting me
like a fuckin’ lioness.”

“You and your fucking
animal references,” I groaned.

“I like animal sex.”

“Who said anything
about sex?” I asked, staring to get worked up for another reason.

“It’s all you think
about.”

I slapped his chest.
“Is not.” My lips started to curl into a smile. It had been such a fucked up
day on so many levels. It was going to be okay. Everything was going to work
out fine.

“I have to go do
something after we finish today,” Ash said suddenly.

My ears pricked up in
interest. “What?”

He shrugged. “Just
some stuff I’ve gotta take care of.”

“What about tonight?
I don’t think we should-”

He pressed his body against
mine, placing a thick finger over my lips. “We can stay here tonight and train,
fuck, talk, whatever you want to do. Just us.”

I sighed, melting
against him. All he had to do was press his cock against me and I was a goner.
Cheeky fucker.

“I’ve got this one
thing to do,” he murmured, “then I’ll be back.”

“Okay,” I whispered,
leaning up to kiss him on the lips, selfishly hoping Monica was getting an
eyeful of our public display.

His tongue slid
against mine in one long stroke and he drew back, running a thumb up and down
my cheek.

“You’re somethin’
else, Ren Miller.”

I supposed that was
as good as I was going to get any time soon, so I smiled, pinching him on the
ass. “Cocky bastard.”

“Sounds about right.”
He laughed and let me go, picking up his gym bag.

I watched him
disappear out the door and at the last moment, he stuck his head in and said,
“I want you there again.”

He pointed to the mat
where we’d fucked that very first time like animals and I laughed.

“You better deliver
then, Maverick.”

He wiggled his
eyebrows up and down with a suggestive smirk, and then he was gone.