A side door opened, and two guards rushed out, running towards us with guns drawn. I heard Ilya screaming about not shooting Sergei, his prized fighter, and I leaped in front of him to protect myself and Ryker.
“You’re fucking nuts. What are you doing in here?” he asked, his laughter edged with madness. “God, I fucking love you!”
“I love you, too!” I exclaimed and grabbed his face for a kiss. “That’s why I’m in here! We’re leaving. This is all too fucked up for us to survive.”
The guards approached carefully, and we dodged behind Sergei, who was still roaring in agony. I almost felt bad for him, especially now that he wasn’t going to be Ilya’s best fighter. I wondered what would happen to him.
“Come around, and we’ll take you alive,” one of the guards said in a heavy Russian accent. “We’ll keep you alive.”
“Yeah, until your boss wants us to die,” I spat. “Fuck that. Come and get us.”
“What’s your game plan here?” Ryker asked. His face was strained with pain, and dark bruises were forming to join where his skin had been split by Sergei’s powerful blows. His voice was raspy, too, from Sergei’s chokehold. I could see blood vessels in the corner of his eyes broken from where he’d strained to suck in a breath.
“Kill them, get the Kings and Amara, and get out,” I said. “Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.”
Ryker chuckled and shook his head in disbelief. “We didn’t think we’d ever see you again.”
“I’m here now,” I said with a wry smile. “Let’s do this.”
He was still chained to Sergei, but he could pop out from behind Sergei on that side while I took the other. We didn’t count down. We just knew when to do it because we were that in tune with each other. God, I’d missed this in the days I’d been away from my Kings. They felt like breathing to me, unnoticed but vital to my survival.
The guards were taken by surprise, and we disarmed them quickly. I held my gun up, pointed it at their heads, and ordered them to get the key.
“I could cut his foot off, but this knife is tiny. It would take hours, and it would be gory,” I said. “So give me the key and save us all the sounds of Sergei screaming as he bleeds out on the dirt.”
“Never!” one of them yelled. I aimed the gun and shot him in the foot, a quick pop pop of semi-automatic fire but enough to get my point across. He screamed in pain, and I aimed the gun up this time, directly at his crotch.
“Now, what do you say?” I sneered. “Are you ready to comply?”
“Ilya’s sending others,” the second guard said with an arrogant curl to his lip. “You won’t make it out alive.”
“I have to try or die anyway,” I said and shrugged. I cocked the gun towards him, and as I began to squeeze the trigger, I noticed a dark stain spreading from his pants zipper.
“Did you just piss yourself in fear?” I asked.
He nodded in shame. Somewhere outside one of the pit’s doors, I could hear a commotion. More guards were coming, and we needed to speed this up.
“You’re smart to understand where I’m going to shoot if you don’t give me the key,” I said, gesturing the end of the gun towards his dick.
“She’s serious,” Ryker said, swaying on his feet as he fought to stay standing. “I’ve seen her shoot off many dicks in my day.”
The guard blanched and finally reached into his pocket, fished around, and handed me a keyring.
“There, now, was that so difficult?” I asked brightly and unlocked the chain on Ryker’s ankle.
All of this felt stretched out across time like it had taken hours to complete, but from the moment I jumped to the second I unlocked Ryker, it was only a few minutes. Time moved differently when you were hell-bent on killing and escaping.
We moved fast, though, knowing we were two targets in open range here at Ilya’s villa. We ran through the door where the guards had come through, and I asked him, “Do you know where you were being held?”
“I think so,” he said and began to lope as fast as his body would allow. He was hurting and desperately trying to hide it, at least as long as we were on the run. I knew he didn’t want to burden me with the knowledge of his pain, and I loved him for trying to protect me.
We made it down a long corridor, and he turned right at the end. “Up there,” he said, pointing to the end of the hall where there were passageways on the left and the right. “I’m sure it’s this way. I’m positive, in fact.”
We went left this time, and a few feet into the new passage, Ryker reached out and grabbed my hand. He tugged at me and whirled me around into his arms. He held me for just a heartbeat and let his eyes scan my face as if still not believing I was in front of him. He smiled at last and bent to kiss me properly this time.
There was something about kissing while on the run for your life. Your senses were heightened, and walking the fine line between life and death did something to desire. It inflamed the need to be touched and touch another, to plunge into the sensual world and leave this one behind.
We couldn’t do anything about it, though, so our kiss was brief and intense and left the taste of blood on my lips. I licked it off and tasted Ryker’s lust for life, his bigger-than-average desire for everything he could get his hands on, and his need to love and be loved.