Untamed: The Savage: The Complete Series (10 page)

T
he place was buzzing
when I came out of the restroom. It took me a moment to realize that all eyes were on me and I turned around, checking my dress to make sure I hadn’t accidentally tucked it into my underwear.

And then I caught a glimpse of Alaric storming to the exit, two security guards right on his tail. I turned to follow when a hand wrapped around my arm. “Don’t you dare go after that animal,” my father said between his teeth.

“Why? What happened?” My head swiveled back and forth between the two men.

“He attacked Ethan.”

I twisted away from his hold. “I’m sure Ethan deserved it.”

There was no hesitation in my heart, in my step, as I made my way to the exit. I found Alaric pacing in the main lobby of the hotel, hands folded behind his head, looking like he did the day he’d torn his clothes off in the middle of the living room.

I touched his back. “Hey…”

He spun around, a black look on his face. Every part of him vibrated with fury, his eyes dark orbs.

I didn’t give him a chance to speak. I just took his hand and led him to the front, past the valet, and into the waiting car.

O
n the drive home
, Alaric finally broke the silence. “I wasn’t the only savage one in that place tonight,” he said with an edge to his voice. “Your people are just as brutal. But instead of a machete, they cut you with their words, their judgment. They cut you and cut you until you’re nothing.”

My throat tightened. Tears stung my eyes. “Those are not my people.”

He turned away, looking out the window. “Yes, they are.”

A
laric was still brooding even
after we arrived at the apartment. But what had I really expected? He had lived half his life in seclusion and here I had taken him to a goddamn gala. As if cleaning and dressing him up would change his nature and allow him to fit into my world.

“I shouldn’t have taken you there,” I said as we undressed in the bedroom.

He stood at the foot of my bed, unmoving, the anger still radiating off him. I didn’t know what Ethan had said, but whatever it was, it had surely hit its mark.

Alaric glared down at me, saying nothing.

“I’m sorry.” I reached up and started to undo his tie, pulling it away from his neck, and pushed the jacket off his shoulders. “I shouldn’t have tried to make you something you’re not.”

Still he said nothing.

I kept undressing him, acutely aware of his gaze. When he was down to his pants I walked him backwards until he fell into a cushioned armchair. I stood between his legs and unzipped my dress, allowing it to glide down my body. I stepped out of it, leaving me in only my heels. His eyes slid down, flashing momentarily at the realization I hadn’t worn underwear, but that was all the reaction he gave.

I sank down to my knees and unbuttoned his pants, pulling him free.

“Chloe…”

I wrapped my fingers around his shaft, feeling it harden, lengthen. I held his gaze and lowered my lips to the tip. He jerked when I dipped my head and took in as much as of him as I could.

Before I could do it again, he held the sides of my head. “No Chloe. You don’t need to do this.”

“But I want to.” I ran my fingernails along his thigh. “I need you.”

“I can’t be gentle right now.”

“Then be rough.”

He shook his head. “I would only hurt you.”

“Then hurt me.”

His looked at me sharply then stood up, stepping over me. “I won’t do that.” He went to the closet and was gone for a long while. When he finally came out, he wore brand new running shorts and shoes, his upper body bare.

Fear clamped my throat shut. “Are you…” I swallowed. “Are you leaving?”

He paused and I was sure he’d say he was done with the city. And me. “I’ll come back,” he said instead and left.

H
e was gone
for a long time. I tried to sleep but couldn’t get the image of him pacing out of my head. I could see that the city itself was strangling him, smothering his spirit, but I had no idea how to help.

He finally came back around three in the morning. He came in huffing and sat at the edge of the bed.

“Chloe,” he whispered, brushing hair away from my face. “I need your help.”

I smothered a yawn and blinked up at him. “Anything. What do you need?”

“I need to find someone,” he said and swallowed hard. “I need to find Barry Martin.”

“Okay. Who’s that?”

He didn’t say anything for a long time. Until, finally, “My father.”

C
hloe sat up
. “You want to find your father?” she asked with wide eyes. I had never told her about my past—she didn’t even know my last name—so to drop this in her lap was a surprise.

I had spent the night running aimlessly. I’d had no real direction, only ran and ran, opened up my lungs and tried to breathe through the suffocating air of this place. In the beginning I was trying to escape Chloe’s world, but it wasn’t until several miles later that I realized I was also running from my past.

I couldn’t hide in my cave anymore. I no longer wanted to.

“Yes.” I twisted around to better face Chloe. “I couldn’t find him myself. You don’t have a phone book.”

She got up and retrieved her laptop, smaller and thinner than the ones I remembered. “I don’t use those things anymore. Everything you need is on the internet these days.”

I watched the computer screen flick to life. I had vague recollections from school of this thing called the World Wide Web but I had never used it, only knew it was a way to connect with people across the world.

“And your mother too?” she asked.

“My mother is dead.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” She looked away and, judging from the way she bit her lips together, she was trying her best to keep from asking questions.

“She died when I was ten. Heart attack,” I said, tangling my fingers in Chloe’s hair to ease the pain in my chest.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why do you say that? It’s not your fault.”

She looked at me with soft eyes. “I know. I guess it’s just a way of saying I hurt for you.”

I slipped my hand behind her neck and brought her in for a kiss, thanking her for so many things. I held her face in my hands and kissed her lips, her nose, the skin between her eyebrows. “My name is James Alaric Martin.”

It was a tiny gift, but Chloe beamed as if I’d given her the stars. She covered my hands with her own and said, “It’s lovely to meet you, James Alaric Martin.”

After a while she turned back to her computer. “Where do you want to search? All of Atlanta or—”

“Marietta.”

“Did you live with him?”

I swallowed hard. “Yes. I had to live with him after my mother died.”

“Is he the reason why you left?”

My throat went bone dry. The last thing I wanted to do tonight was talk about my father, but I had opened the floodgates. Time to sink or swim. “Yes. He was not a nice man.”

She nodded, green eyes flying all over my face. “Did he hurt you?”

“He did.” I ground my teeth, remembering the nights he’d smack me around in front of his friends for fun. But those times were easier than when we were alone. “He was a piece of shit and he liked to take his frustrations out on his wife. And then later, his kid. Until I grew up and realized I could fight back.”

Chloe lowered her head, put a hand on my thigh, and told me once more how she hurt for me. “I wish I could have helped you somehow,” she whispered.

“No,” I said, making her twist around to me. “Because then you wouldn’t be you and I wouldn’t be me.”

She reached up and rubbed her hands on the scruff on my face. I closed my eyes, enjoying her touch. “There are five Barry Martins in Marietta,” she said.

Of the list, one particular address jumped out at me. I’d spent fifteen years trying to forget that address, but the place where you went through hell is never really forgotten. You absorb it, take it in you, until it fuses with your DNA.

“
A
re you sure
?” Chloe turned in the seat and looked out the window at the house across the street.

I kept my eyes straight through the windshield, not willing to look at that unassuming white house until I absolutely had to. There were few things in life I feared, but this place, and the memories it stirred up, came damn close.

“We should call first. Make sure he’s home.” She reached for the phone in her purse, but I stopped her.

“No. I want to see the look on his face when I walk.” I opened the car door and took a deep breath.

“Alaric,” Chloe said. Her lips parted and she let out a shaky breath. “Be careful.”

As I looked at her, some of my anger seeped out. Like it or not, Barry’s actions had led me to her. “I will.”

I took my time crossing the street. The house, a mobile home made to look like a regular house, was smaller than I remembered. The lawn had just been mowed, but the shrubs around the house were untrimmed. The colors were different now—the window shutters no longer blue but a dark green, the roof now the color of dirt.

My eyes traveled to the last window on the right, imagined a skinny kid climbing out of it every night. I had run away once, after the first real beating. After he’d caught me he’d put a lock on the door and window, thinking it would keep me in. He hadn’t known then about my talent for picking locks.

I walked up the wooden steps and knocked on the door. Then again and again.

“All right, all right. Hold your fucking horses.” A man opened the doors, first the hollow core then the glass. He stopped short when he saw. “What can I help you with?” he asked in a gruff tone.

He was shorter than I remembered, his beer gut bigger, but fifteen years had been kind to someone like him. I’d expected him to be a frail shell of a man, one step away from death’s threshold, but this man looked as if he could still throw a punch and, unexpectedly, that brought me some measure of relief.

I cleared my throat. “I’m looking for Barry Martin.”

He squinted up at me. The sun was in his eyes. “Yeah? Who’s asking?”

“His son.”

He staggered back just as his eyes widened. And he finally saw me. “James?”

“Alaric.”

“I thought you were dead.” He looked me up and down as I pushed past him.

I went inside, looked around. Very little had changed. “You tried your best to make that happen.”

He sighed, low and long. “That was a long time ago.”

I spun around, feeling the flames starting to lick at my toes. Hell was coming. “Fifteen years, actually.”

He scratched the back of his head. “So… do you want a beer?”

“No.” I sat down on the armchair, the same one he’d always used as his throne of power. I set my arms on the sides and leaned back. “Do you remember the time you caught me sitting here, watching TV? You came over, grabbed me by my hair, and threw me across the room. When I cried, you shouted at me and smacked me around until I stopped. You told me to man up and stop being such a pussy. I was eleven years old.”

“Ah.” He sat on the couch, perched at the very edge. He twisted his hands together. “I don’t remember that.”

“No you wouldn’t, would you? You were blind drunk most of the time.”

He was quiet for a while. Finally, he asked, “Where have you been this whole time?”

“Away. Living my life in peace.” Until recently, at least.

“You look well.” He sounded like he had glass in his throat and it actually hurt to say something nice. “Hair’s a bit long, but you look healthy.”

“No thanks to you.”

He took a deep breath. “What do you want from me, James?”

I leaned forward, setting my elbows on my knees. I’d been expecting a fight. I didn’t know what to make of this calm, contrite man. “I don’t want anything from you.”

“Do you want an apology? That it?”

In that moment I couldn’t remember why it had seemed so important to come here. What had I wanted, expected, when the man before me had never given me anything but bruises and broken bones?

“Because if you recall, you left me half dead.”

Barry’s words pulled me up short. Memories flooded my thoughts of the day I realized I was big enough to fight back. He hadn’t seen me coming, hadn’t known that a child locked in his room for over twelve hours a day might lift weights and plot revenge to pass the time.

“I was in the hospital for two weeks,” he continued, his voice gaining traction. “I had a concussion and three broken ribs. I lost my two front teeth. I couldn’t get up out of bed without assistance for a long time.”

“Good,” I growled. To have seen him flat out on the floor, bloody and writhing, had been truly satisfying. Even now the feeling of triumph lingered. “You deserved worse. You’re an abusive asshole, a woman beater, a child beater.”

He shot out of his seat. “Now you listen here, you little piece of shit,” he shouted, his face instantly red, spittle flying out. “Don’t think you can come in my house and disrespect me.”

Ah, there he is.

I stood up too, towering over him, at the ready. This was what I’d come for. “I want to do more than that,” I said with a sneer. My pulse quickened, my muscles clenched.

Barry’s fist came at me so fast, I didn’t have time to duck. But what once would have sent me falling backward now barely stung my jaw. I didn’t even flinch. “That the best you can do?” I asked with a smile.

He swung again, but I ducked and sucker punched him in the belly. He crumpled to his knees, groaning.

“I’m a little bigger now,” I said, cracking my knuckles. “Stronger too.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him roughly to his feet. “Come on. Get up and fight,
Dad
.”

He charged at me, the momentum of his size bringing us down. He hit me in the face before I twisted out from under him. We wrestled around, landing punches wherever we could. Thankfully, anger had lent him extra strength. I hadn’t come here to fight a wimp. We wrestled until I was sitting on his chest, my hands wrapped around his neck. It felt good. Satisfying.

“You worthless piece of shit,” he scraped out, his face starting to turn purple even as he tried to gouge my eyes out.

I pressed my thumbs harder into his windpipe. A few more seconds and this would all be over. The very ghost that had haunted me all these years would be no more.

And then I saw it in my head, a flash of the mournful eyes of my mother.

“I guess it was only a matter of time the violence got a hold of you too,” she’d told me the day after she’d picked me up from the principal’s office for fighting. “You are your dad’s son, after all.”

“I’m not like him. I’ll never be like him!” I’d shouted.

But she was right then, and she was right now.

I was no better than this man beneath me. I, too, embraced the violence inside me. The fact that I was enjoying the feel of his life ebbing away under my weight was proof enough.

But I needed to end this so I could move on with my life. A few more seconds and Barry Martin would be no more and the world would be a much better place…

I yanked my arm back with a shout. Barry clawed at his throat, gasping for breath, while I stared down at my shaking hands.

You think my hands are capable of murdering a human being?
I’d asked Chloe back in the caves.

Barry remained sprawled on the floor, still gasping for breath. “I was right about you,” he choked out. “You amounted to nothing. You can’t even finish the job you started fifteen years ago.”

I stood up, my righteous anger bleeding out. “But I’m still a better man than you,” I said before walking out the front door, down the steps, and across the street.

I had come here to fight my demons. And in the end, as I walked away with a clear conscience, I knew I had won.