Beyond Addiction (19 page)

Under normal circumstances, she’d have agreed in a heartbeat. Mad was one of the most decent people she’d ever met, with a solid, unshakable code of honor that made Dallas’s look lax sometimes.

But these circumstances were anything but normal. “Would you feel that way if he had hurt Lex, even if he hadn’t wanted to?”

Inside the cage, Mad took his first punch, moving with lethal speed. He connected solidly with Finn’s jaw, snapping his head around, but Finn shook it off and swung back.

Dallas tightened a hand on Trix’s shoulder and turned her away from the fight. His eyes were deadly serious, his expression unusually grim. “Honey, I feel that way because he hurt
you
.”

She had never explained, never talked to anyone about her life in Five. “He’s the only reason I’m not dead, Dallas.”

“And that’s the only reason
he’s
not dead.” Dallas sighed and pulled her into a loose hug. “You’re too new to remember, but this is how it goes, darling. You think the boys were eager to hug Bren when he first showed up? A goddamn MP in the heart of our compound? Everything we hated and fought against.”

The dull thud of fist hitting flesh behind her made her wince, even as the rest of the gathered crowd cheered. “It’s still hard to watch.”

“Because you think it’s hurting him.” Dallas shook his head. “Some people have a darkness in them. They don’t want it, don’t want to give in to it. But it comes out, one way or another, and it feels
good
to let it out. Ask Six sometime why she keeps climbing into the cage. She doesn’t have to. She doesn’t have shit to prove. But it feels good to let it out without hurting anyone who isn’t asking to get hurt.”

She’d never know if this was what Finn wanted, not really. Even if it wasn’t, he’d hide it from her, just like everything else.

The cage rattled loudly, metal scraping metal as two bodies thudded against it a few feet away from her. She turned in time to see Finn slam Mad into the steel mesh, and he wasn’t smiling this time.

Neither was Mad.

He wasn’t holding back, either. With a quick twist of his body, he broke Finn’s hold and jerked him off balance, sending him staggering back with a rough punch to the gut. Finn regained his balance and straightened, but he didn’t advance on Mad.

So Mad punched him again, driving Finn to his knees.

And Finn let him.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “He might need this, but I can’t watch it, Dallas.”

Dallas didn’t answer. His brow furrowed as he watched Finn climb to his feet and hold both hands out to his sides.

When Finn spoke, his words carried beneath the shouts of the crowd, digging hooks into Trix’s heart. “Here I am, Maddox. Whatever debt I owe, you keep collecting until it’s paid.”

Mad flexed his fingers, his face twisted with anger. “Stop fucking around and fight.”

“If that’s what you want.” Finn shrugged and took another halfhearted swing. Mad slapped it away and drilled Finn again.

“Stop it.” Another whisper, one she knew was too low for Mad to hear, but that was okay. It wasn’t meant for him, anyway.

“I don’t have to,” Dallas said, looping his arm around her shoulders. “Finn’s got this.”

The words sounded ridiculous as she watched Finn drag himself to his feet and hold out his hands. Mad growled and shoved him. “Fucking
fight
.”

“You don’t want a fight,” Finn replied, his hands still loose at his sides. “You want some righteous vengeance. So take it.”

Mad trembled, and his chest heaved as he clenched his fists. But he didn’t move, and Trix realized that he
couldn’t
. It went against that code of his to beat on a man who wouldn’t fight back, and she watched as he spun and shoved the cage door open with such force it rebounded and slammed into his shoulder on his way out.

Dallas squeezed Trix’s shoulders. “Go kiss some bruises, darling. I’ll deal with Mad.”

At first, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She felt raw, exposed, like one false step or word could cut her, and that sort of vulnerability scared the hell out of her.

Then Finn looked at her with the same rawness, as if he wasn’t sure of his welcome, and she held out her hand.

Ignoring the shouts of the crowd, he stepped from the cage and slid his hand into hers. “Wanna get out of here?”

“Yeah.” She swallowed hard. “Yeah, I do.”

Finn let her lug him back to her rooms. He let her examine the cuts and bruises, let her clean the blood from his face and hands with a warm washcloth. But when she reached for the med-gel, he caught her wrist in a steely grip and shook his head. “Let it be.”

She thought about the darkness Dallas had mentioned and sighed. “Why?”

“Because it’s nothing.” He dragged her closer, until she stood between his knees. “If you want to kiss everything better, I won’t argue. But if you want me to stay here, you can’t be so damn worried all the time. This is still some soft living.”

“I’m not worried about the fighting, Finn.” Her lungs burned as she fought to breathe. “I’m scared, okay? I don’t know what it means. Because you keep saying you don’t give a damn what anyone here thinks of you, so maybe you’re self-destructing, and I can’t even
tell
.”

“Hey.” He used his grip on her wrist to press her palm to his bare chest, over his heart. “Feel that?”

Her fingers curled hungrily, as if she could capture the quick, reassuring thump of his heartbeat and hold on to it.

“That’s me waking up, doll.” His palm slid up her arm, all the way to her shoulder, where he brushed his thumb over the sensitive spot on her throat where her pulse raced just beneath the skin. “Dallas O’Kane isn’t a saint. He’s a sinner like all the rest of us. A dark man with violence in his heart.”

She tried to pull away and his fingers tightened, curling like steel around the back of her neck. “He’s a sinner,” Finn said again. Lower. More dangerous. “But he made a choice, didn’t he? He does bad things to bad people. I don’t have a hope in hell of being a saint, but maybe I can make a choice, too.”

Mac Fleming had attracted violent men to his organization, but even the ones who didn’t start out that way had sometimes embraced the opportunity to indulge their darker urges. There was no one with the power to stop them, no one who cared as long as the job got done.

Finn was different. Every day she’d known him, he had defied Mac’s authority. Some of those rebellions had been tiny, but others had skated the edge of what Sector Five’s leader would tolerate.

Still, every day, he’d fought.

“You made your choice a long time ago,” she murmured. “I know you did, Finn. I was there.”

“I made a choice not to be as evil as Mac told me to be.” He tilted her chin up, baring her throat. Even watching him lean in didn’t prepare her for the heat of his mouth over her pulse, his teeth scraping a dangerous counterpoint to the tease of his tongue. “Now I can make a different one—to be as good as my lover believes I can be.”

His touch sparked the same heat as always. It swirled together with her anger and fear until the battling emotions coalesced into something as dark and dangerous as the look in his eyes. “Only the truth from now on, no matter what.”

“The truth? Sometimes I like to fight. And win.” He closed his teeth on her skin again, streaking fire through her. “Sometimes I like to take.”

She could barely breathe, much less speak, but she managed to whisper, “Show me.”

He moved fast, flowing to his feet, crowding her space. His hands landed on her shoulders, and he spun her in a dizzy circle, stopping her when she faced the bed. “Put your hands on it.”

Her hands sank into the mattress, and she anchored herself by clenching her fingers in the coverlet.

He gripped her hips first. His fingertips found the edge of skin between her jeans and her corset, blazing heat along them. “You’re the only person in any damn sector that I’ve never wanted to hurt. Not in my darkest fucking fantasies.”

He had never been able to stand the sight of her in pain, even when it was necessary. Inevitable. “I know that.”

“But I always wanted this.” Warm fingers traced around her side to tug open the button on her jeans. “You. Under my hands.”

Trix shivered.

Her zipper rasped, but he didn’t tug her pants down. Instead he stroked upwards, fingers tracing the chains crisscrossing the front of her corset. “Is that where you want to be?”

Don’t you want to be more than an enforcer’s woman?
The words echoed in her memory, but her body reacted as if they’d been whispered in her ear. Her skin crawled, her heart thudded, and her upper lip grew damp with sweat.

She wasn’t looking at her own bed anymore, but the papers strewn across Mac Fleming’s desk. She was small, helpless, and her brain stuttered to a halt, paralyzed by her options—make herself smaller, fold in until nothing could break through the shell at the center of her being.

Or fight.

Trix struck out with a whimper, panic eclipsing everything but the need to flee. She scrambled over the bed and slid off the other side. Pain exploded in her side as she fell, hitting the wall on her way down.

Floorboards creaked under soft footsteps. A huge figure crouched a few feet away—but didn’t touch her. Only his voice, low and gentle. “Trix. It’s okay.”

The words swam in a haze, and it seemed like an eternity before she understood them. Finn’s voice, her new name. Safety.

“Oh, God.” She still couldn’t breathe, but she covered her face and gasped out an apology. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, that was stupid—”

“Shh.” Careful fingers brushed her hair. “You hit the wall pretty hard. Can you get up?”

“I’m okay.” But when she tried to rise, her knees wouldn’t hold her.

“Let me—” He touched her arm, but pulled away when she stiffened.

“No, I’m...” She caught his hand. “I’m okay.”

“I’m gonna get you off the floor,” he said, moving with heartrending caution. One arm behind her back, one beneath her legs, until she was cradled against the heat of his chest. He rose and carried her not to the bed, but to the couch.

He sat, leaving her on his lap but dropping his arms to his sides. Trix swallowed hard and leaned her head against his shoulder. “It’s not you,” she whispered.

Finn wrapped her in a hug then, sinking his fingers into her hair to hold her head. “Something happened to you.”

She winced. The straightforward words were undeniable, a statement of fact. She’d spent years telling herself that nothing much had happened, nothing special, just the inevitable violations that came along with being a junkie whore on Mac Fleming’s compound.

Now, she said it aloud for the first time ever. “Something happened to me.”

“After you left Five?”

She couldn’t look at him, so she squeezed her eyes shut. “The day I left.”

“The day Fleming gave you the drugs.” Every muscle in his body tensed, every part of him except for the fingers stroking gently though her hair. “I should have killed him then.”

“I had to get out of there.” The confession burst forth, a flood of words she couldn’t stem. “I didn’t take anything with me. I didn’t even go home. I knew I could sell the drugs anywhere, so I walked out and I didn’t stop. And you—” She bit her tongue.

He tilted her head back. “And I would have shot him.”

He would have gotten himself killed going after Fleming. It was the truth, and it had been one of her reasons for leaving without him, but only one of them. The smallest one, because she could have begged and pleaded and Finn would have left it alone.

But he never could have stood by and watched while she struggled to get clean.

Christ, it was tempting to lock that down, keep on hiding it, but she’d made him swear—only the truth from now on. What kind of a hypocritical asshole would she be if she couldn’t give him the same?

“That’s not all.” Her eyes burned, but she forced herself to form the words anyway. “I had to quit, Finn. I couldn’t do that with you around, breaking down when things got bad.”

All the stoic strength in his expression shattered as he closed his eyes. “You were dying on me. I didn’t know what to do.”

“I know.” Her throat ached. “Mac said I made you weak because I made you feel, and then you couldn’t get your shit done.”

“Bullshit.” He tucked her cheek against his chest, wrapping her in his warmth again. “I wasn’t weak, and he knew it. I was more brutal than ever, because I had someone to fight for. It just wasn’t him, and that scared him.”

“Everything about you scared him, Finn. Maybe even some things about me, too.” That was the thing about tyrants. They’d always be terrified of people they couldn’t control.

“But you’re the one he hurt.”

She straightened and looked down to meet Finn’s tortured gaze. “He raped me. Sometimes I still have nightmares. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t hurt you, too. He had enough cruelty to go around.”

“You should have told me,” Finn said, his voice rough. Fractured. He shifted his hand to cup her cheek, skin barely making contact with hers. “I scared you.”

“It happens. Sometimes it’s a word or a sound, or I’ll remember something new, but it—” She wove her fingers into his hair. “It’s not about you. I swear.”