“Of course I’d choose not going to the fight nights,” I said. “But I’m not forced.”
“Coerced is forced,” he said. “I know coming from a guy like me a lecture on consent will seem like a meth dealer talking about drug avoidance. But you aren’t consenting if they’re making you do any of it. Are they making you?”
I thought about lying to him just to make it easier. I felt stupid for being forced, and maybe I’d feel better if I convinced him that I was just a wild and crazy girl who liked being the trophy to be won at the end of the fight season, that I wanted to be Tribute.
But I couldn’t lie to him, I had a gut feeling he’d see right through it.
“Not the Kings, if that’s who you mean,” I said with a sigh. “They would protect me if they could. Maybe not at first. At first it was a novelty to have me behave and listen to their every whim. But now, they would.”
“What changed?” he asked.
“Kingston changed,” I replied. “He was my first love, and he remembered how much we cared for each other after a long absence.”
“Lucky man,” Ryker said ruefully. “Who’s forcing you now, then?”
“The Organization. Do you know of them?”
His eyes grew dark again, and I saw a rope of muscle clench and unclench in his jaw the moment I said their name.
“Yeah, I fucking know them,” he spat with disgust. “They’re the reason I’m at Harrington. They’re the reason my life no longer belongs to me. I was stupid enough to think they recruited me for my brain, but in fact they set me up so I had no choice but to agree. I didn’t want to leave my home town to fight, but they also coerced me.”
“How did they do it?” I asked.
He looked at me for a long time, and as the sun went down and the light turned to dusk, he grew more fierce looking. Even more wild and untamable than before.
He drew a breath in, exhaled slowly and hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “Well, fuck, they caught me doing something I shouldn’t have been doing and they used it on me.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like running drugs for a cartel. I thought it was the Mexicans, but it turned out to be ruled by that branch of the Organization. They’re everywhere and control many things. They said they’d let me go if I agreed to fight in Dirty Kingdom.”
“I hate them,” I said quietly. “I want to watch them burn. I want to be the one to do it.”
“I’d like to see that, princess,” he said and leaned over towards me. For a moment, I thought he was going to kiss me. I wanted him to kiss me. There was something so chaotically attractive about his energy that I wanted him to force himself on me and make me do things to him, I wanted him to own me.
But all he did was hold his hand up until I took it in one of those buddy handshakes. He moved our hands back and forth like we’d agreed to a pact, and said, “Let’s make it happen. I’ll be your muscle, you be the brains.”
“As long as I get to kill something,” I said with a fierce whisper.
His eyes sparked with a brilliant light and he said, “Princess, I could fall in love with you right now for saying that.”
“Would that be a bad thing?” I asked.
“No, but it would be a dangerous thing,” he said.
And our hands broke apart, he started the truck again and backed up to turn around.
While we were driving down to the town, I had to agree with him.
It would be dangerous indeed, but I couldn’t help myself from wanting it to happen.