Feel My Pain (Curse Bound 1)

The pixie boy didn’t spot him, chatting to Roach with his back to Zane, but Roach’s gaze kept straying Zane’s way over the guy’s shoulder. His lips opened, his tongue tickled the bottom lip, his broad nose casting a shadow on the entire left side of his face.

A deathly trap in the firm body of a handsome man soaked through with the scent of bourbon and leather, but Zane wasn’t afraid of the lure, because his teeth had gotten sharper, and Roach’s—had rotted.

Yet as he stopped just behind the hooker’s bony ass, his voice got stuck in his throat, so he raised his chin in greeting instead. What did he want to do? He hadn’t thought this through. His head really was starting to ache.

He’d need to be alone with Roach, since it wasn’t like he’d stab the fucker in the gut in the middle of a crowded bar.

“Gale?” Roach said in that cigarette-roughened rasp that Zane had never forgotten. “I’ll catch you later, okay?”

The guy must have gotten the hint because he looked over his shoulder at Zane. He was young, but the reddened whites of his eyes and dull skin suggested Gale was a crackhead. Appropriate company for Roach.

Words floated in Zane’s skull with no pattern, refusing to make sense, so he remained still, taking in the features that were undeservedly symmetrical, shoulders that were broad, even though that scumbag likely didn’t have to work too hard for them, the thatch of dark hairs emerging from under the collar.

Zane had remembered him being taller, but they were almost the same height.

Gale assessed Zane for a few seconds longer than he should have, but ended up patting Roach’s arm. “I’ll be around,” he said before walking off.

As soon as he was gone, Roach stepped forward, taking up the space where Gale had just stood, and Zane wouldn’t back off, even though his heart rattled like crazy. As little sense as it made, the proximity made the air between them spark. This hadn’t been Zane’s plan, but the unwanted excitement already choked him.

“Long time no see,” Roach said, pinning Zane with green eyes. Had their color always been so saturated? Meeting that gaze was like staring into twin ponds somewhere deep in the woods, a murky green with the blackest black in the middle.

The cliff beneath his feet was steep, and Zane leaned over it so he could see whether there was a soul somewhere inside the monster who'd fooled him with the sex-starved guy act.

“Two years,” Zane said before he could have bitten his tongue. He did not want Roach to know he remembered or cared what happened that night. There was one way to get him alone. Vulnerable. Throat bared.

Roach cocked his head, tapping his fingers against a damp beer bottle. “Never thought I’d see you 'round here again.” His leather vest no longer had patches stitched to the front, even though some spots on it were faded where the pieces of fabric used to be. Did this mean the Rabid Hyenas MC really was no more?

Was Roach the only survivor?

“And why would that be?” Zane asked, forcing his lips to crook in that roguish way that always scored him eager mouths.

Roach moved that bit closer, his heavy boot inching between Zane’s feet. Something felt off about the atmosphere between them and Zane couldn’t put a finger on why. His heart swelled with hate, but his skin itched with excitement. Why on earth would his body betray him like this?

“Maybe because you got the shit beaten out of you for stealing my wallet? I’m guessing you split town before the fire started.” Roach had no visible burns, so maybe he simply hadn’t been there anymore either. Slipped out of death’s grasp like the cockroach that he was.

It was almost amusing. Maybe fate had saved his pathetic life so Zane could extinguish it with the heel of his boot. He’d always felt that bit underwhelmed that he had no one left to take revenge on now that he’d healed after his ordeal. This would be his closure.

Zane used to be afraid of fire, like any normal person, but after that night, the sight of flames had become a drug, and he always carried a lighter on him. The dancing heat was cathartic to watch, even in this miniature form floating above his fingers. He liked to think the flames that had engulfed the Rabid Hyenas clubhouse left a permanent mark on his eyes, because he had the most beautiful dreams about screams tearing out of the building, about the arms reaching toward him helplessly through bars installed for protection, which ended up keeping the bastards in.

“I’m like a cat. Seven lives,” Zane said through the choking sensation in his throat.

Roach snorted with the most careless laugh. As if he’d had no part in what happened. “Nine. Cats have nine lives.”