Maestro heaved a sigh. “I hope you’re right, Ice, but maybe she really was as drunk as fuck. I didn’t think so. I thought she was playing you. Getting you drunk. We all did. We thought it was funny that both of you were looking to do the other. But then you really went through with it. What’s going to happen tomorrow morning when you have to face each other entirely sober?”
“I’m taking her back to Caspar with us.” Ice made it a statement. “I have to keep her. She’s my salvation.”
Maestro shook his head. “Face it, Ice, you’re not exactly Mr. Romance. You look like it, and the ladies think you are. They want to be with you, but you’re not called Ice because you’re sweet. That woman doesn’t have a clue you’re cold and calculating and you’re going to rule her life.”
Ice shrugged. “Doesn’t always work that way in the end. Look at Reaper. He’s a cold, scary son of a bitch. Anya’s got him wrapped around her little finger. And Breezy with Steele. He might be nuts when it comes to knowing where she is every minute, but she still gets her way in almost everything.” He looked at Maestro. “What about you? What kind of woman do you need?”
Maestro avoided his eyes. He jumped from the table and walked across to the blacked-out window, as if he could see outside. “One who makes my cock work all on its own. I’d be happy with that.”
“Yeah, wouldn’t we all,” Savage said, coming out of the bathroom. He carried a plastic bag with his bloody clothes in it. “Just once I’d like to be close to a woman and have my cock go on full alert without me forcing it to.”
“We’re talking about what we want in a woman,” Maestro said. “I’m not sure, beyond fucking her twenty-four seven, Ice knows what he’s going to do with his brand-new wife.”
Savage sent Ice a small smirk. “Sounds good. Keep her busy, especially her mouth. She won’t say anything to annoy you. Me, I want obedience. The others say that, but they don’t mean it. I would have to have it. And she’d better stick damn close to me.”
Maestro nodded. “I like certain things from a woman. If she were mine, I’d expect them. Not going to get what I need from someone I pick up.”
Savage raised an eyebrow. “I do. When I need it. When the rage is so built up, I’m going to fuckin’ kill someone. I get what I need. I find a willing woman to give it to me. Lay it out, so there’s no mistakes. She knows what she’s getting into.” He gave a half smile that never reached his eyes. “She never comes back. There’s no going there twice. Fortunately, it isn’t all the time.” He shrugged his shoulders. “You reach a place where you know you’re so fucked up there’s no redemption. No way out, and you accept it. I can’t change what they did to me. I’ve tried. It’s not happening. So, I live with it same as everyone else.”
Maestro headed for the shower. “Sometimes, Savage, that living doesn’t feel like I’m alive. Czar brought feral jungle cats to civilization and expected us to be tame. There’s no taming us. Sometimes I need shit like this just to breathe.” He indicated the dead bodies rolled in the tarps. “How fucked up is that?”
Savage watched him disappear behind the shower door. “We have to clean that drain,” he reminded Ice. “The thing is, Ice, you don’t need this fucked-up shit. You can get it out by beating the shit out of an opponent. Maestro, he’s more like I am, although just cutting that fucker’s throat would have satisfied him. He has to know he’s making a difference for some little kid. Me, I need to make them suffer for what they did. To me. To you. To everyone I care about. To all those kids out there we haven’t found yet.”
Ice hadn’t heard the man talk so much in his life. Savage tended to sit back, watchful, lost in the shadows. When he came out of them, he’d explode out and annihilate anyone in his path. Savage was a very scary man and the best to have on their side.
“This woman really does it for you?” Savage asked.
Ice thought it over. Soleil’s laughter warmed him when he thought nothing could. She moved something inside him, things he thought were dead or never there in the first place. She brought out his desire to be better. She chased his demons away. She was gorgeous, willing, and seemed to be able to put up with his proclivity to expose her body to others. That aroused him unbelievably. And she was the best lay he’d ever had in his life.