Page 63 of Fearless
Too many people. Too many weird smells. Too much bullshit.
This market was seriously lacking compared to the other ones I’d been to. Or maybe it was just my sour mood.
Nothing brought me out of my funk, no matter how much flying, riding, or swimming I did. Only seeingherlifted my spirits. Mari. She didn’t need to kiss my wounds, just her voice and her soft touch was healing enough. Even I had to admit she seemed much happier in the past week than when we first brought her home. I always knew she belonged in the club, whether or not she was with me.
Then Jandro or Reaper would kiss her, sometimes they both did at the same time, and my mood took another fucking nosedive. If three was a crowd, four would be downright suffocating. I guess for them it made some sense. Jandro and Reaper were already best friends when I met them. They did everything together. I never saw it, but certainly wouldn’t be surprised if they shared a woman before.
It wasn’t just that they both had her, but how easily the three of them seemed to connect as a single unit. Mari and Jandro would share a joke at Reaper’s expense, he’d grumble about it, then she turned around and was all cute and silly with him. They acted like this three-way relationship was completely normal, natural even.
But it wasn’t. And after some time, they would see that. The whole thing would come crashing down and I refused to be caught in the middle when that happened. I refused to be a reason Mari got hurt.
You’re hurting her right now, douchebag. You saw those fucking tears in her eyes when she left you in her office.
I shook my head as if to clear away the dissenting thoughts and threw back another beer. I found the brewer’s stall right away and had been parked here for a good hour, but I was nowhere near as fucked up as the night I fought Big G. That was a mistake. An even bigger mistake was letting Jandro see right through me. I didn’t know how he caught onto that, but that fucker was nothing if not perceptive.
Shutting my eyes, I let my consciousness slip in Horus’s. He was sitting on a cactus just behind the market, watching for rabbits and ground squirrels. A sound rattled through his mind and my own, pulling me back into my own body with confusion. It was hard to make out over all the noise in the market, but I cocked my head and listened again.
“Gunn…!”
I swore I heard my name being shouted but something wasn’t…
“…rus! Gunner! Help me!”
“Fuck, Mari!”
I ejected off of the barstool and started running, slipping into Horus again to use his eyesight. There she was, being dragged off by two slimy-looking fuckers toward a box truck.
“Stop them, Horus!” I pumped my arms and legs as fast as they would carry me, but no animal on earth was faster than a peregrine falcon diving for an attack.
He came down like a bullet just as I turned a corner and saw them with my own eyes. The big guy carrying her got a neck full of talon from my loyal bird, forcing him to release Mari with a bloodcurdling scream.
“Gunner!”
“Come here, baby girl! I got you!” I held my arm out to her while drawing one of my guns with the other. She curled into me, trembling as she clutched at my cut. I wrapped a protective arm around her back while scoping out what I was up against with a sinking feeling of dread.
The other guy had a gun on me, standing over his big friend, who was still bleeding profusely from the neck. Horus was nowhere to be seen, but he’d done his job. The big fucker was growing pale and would be dead within an hour. But more of their crew started coming out of the woodwork—from behind the truck and hiding places between crowded stalls. All of them armed.
Fucking sex traffickers. They must have been scouting this place for fresh merchandise. I had no idea how they managed to touch Mari and get her jacket off, but it was too late to dwell on that now. My only hope for her safety was to convince these shitbags she was already my property.
Literally.
“Sorry for what I’m about to say,” I mumbled into her hair before raising my head to address the men closing in on me. “This woman belongs to me!” I declared, keeping my shooting arm outstretched. “None of you had a right to touch her.”
“She’s not tatted, Demon,” the scrawny guy with a gun on me snarled. “Where’s your proof?”
“She’s a new purchase, so I haven’t inked her yet, but I have a receipt. It’s on my bike.”
“What, and let your club gut us? No, thanks.”
Damn it. Mari must have told them we were all here. They weren’t buying it and my hope started to dwindle. Thankfully, she caught on and made a convincing actress.
“It’s true!” She peeked back fearfully at the trafficker as she molded her body to mine. I clenched my teeth against the sensations of her hips and and hands on me. This was the wrong time to enjoy it. “This is my master. My body is his.”
“Prove it,” the dipshit said again while a dozen guns cocked. Mari flinched at the sound and glanced up at me with terror in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, bringing a trembling finger to my jaw. “I know you don’t want this, but—“
Her lips tilted up to mine with the softest ghost of contact. How I wanted to savor the warmth of her breath on my mouth, to taste her slowly and explore her kiss properly. To do so with no one else around us, just me and her learning about each other this way. But our very lives were on the line, and I had to play the part of a callous slave owner.
