The ugly room echoed with their combined heartbeats.
“Fuck. How did this—? What did you do?” Roach uttered. “Why do you have that?”
“How the fuck would I know?” Zane asked, swallowing gasps of air that made his head spin. “It was there when I woke up one morning with a way worse hangover than my three beers warranted!”
Roach hummed. “I got it during a week-long bender. How about this?” Roach poked at the wounded cheek with his tongue, causing unexpected pain in Zane’s mouth. Blood trickled down both their faces.
“Stop doing that! What the fuck is wrong with you?” Zane roared, about to push Roach hard, so he’d fall and crack his skull open, but as they eyed one another and Zane spotted the swelling on Roach’s jaw, in the same place where he also felt tender, he kicked one of the boxes instead. “Fuck!”
Unbelievably, still holding his bleeding stomach, Roach smirked. “You can’t kill me.”
No, he could not.
Fuck.
“You really are like a cockroach. Couldn’t even die with your damn pack,” Zane uttered, but his voice was laced with panic, and he rubbed his face, pacing in the messy labyrinth of stacked boxes.
Roach’s gaze was straight-up confrontational. “What was that?” He pressed his thumb to the wound on his stomach, and Zane was ready to rip the bastard’s goddamn head off when pain seeped into his nerves.
He didn’t want to be in any way associated with this disgusting, cowardly dog, but here they were—physically tied in a way that escaped reason. Roach had been the one to mark his flesh with ink, and all this time he hadn’t even known. Zane was going to be sick.
Taking a deep breath, he bit his lip and grabbed his own balls. Hard.
“How do you like that, huh?” he wheezed when agony tossed Roach to his knees. It hurt like a motherfucker but was totally worth it.
Roach yelped, but the impact of him falling only caused shocks to go through the wound they shared, creating a vicious cycle of suffering.
“Truce, okay? Truce! We need to find out what’s going on.” Roach shook his head, cupping his balls as if that could save him if Zane chose to attack again.
But the need to make Roach suffer made him unleash mayhem on himself too, and that ball-busting move left him with damp eyes—the last thing he wanted Roach to see.
It wasn’t like he could kill Roach now.
“Fine. But it’s not over!”
“Well yeah, ‘cause we’re bound by… something. Just leave my balls alone unless you wanna suck them. Come and sew me up. We could see if that heals you as well.” Roach disappeared into the bathroom and came back with a first aid kit.
Zane scowled. “I don’t want to be anywhere near your balls,” he said but stayed put, watching Roach move uncomfortably close. He wasn’t planning to attack, was he? Unpredictable bastard.
“Too bad, cause this fucking cut is not far away from them.” Roach spread a blanket over the bed and laid down, showing off his bloodstained torso. The dense hair growing on his pecs would have been sexy if it wasn’t for the fact Roach wasn’t worth knowing in any capacity. “Unless you want me to do you?”
Was that a fucking innuendo?
“Try to touch me, and I swear I’ll slit my own throat just so that I can see you die,” Zane growled, approaching the bed as if it had poisonous spikes growing all over.
Roach rolled his eyes and stared at the ceiling, presenting his wound. “Wow. You must have really hated that blowjob I gave you.”
The blood on Zane’s lips tasted bitter, and as he took in Roach’s half-naked form, he was back staring at the ceiling of the biker club, then at the stars, and then feeling the sudden impact of three concrete steps hitting his head one after another as his body was being hauled outside.
His head was starting to hurt, as if his skull had been split open. “I almost died because of you, you piece of shit, and you’re worried what I think about the way you gave me head?”
Roach stayed silent for a while, but then sat up, causing Zane pain with the abruptness of that move. “Fuck off then. I’ll do this myself. Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to out me to them.” He grabbed the first aid kit and opened it in a hurry.
“Give this to me,” Zane demanded, taking hold of the thick wrist. The tickle of forearm hair gave him a pause, but he focused on the items inside the little pouch. “I won’t be left with an ugly scar because of you!”
“You think you’ll be so much better at this? I’ve had the weirdest feelings in the last years. Cuts and bruises from nowhere, weird headaches. Now I’m thinking that was your fault in some fucked up way.”