Page 70 of The Bonding Games: Part 1

Hissing, I throw the damn barbell carelessly over my shoulder, its collision with the taalk floor shaking the entire room and the loud BOOM! rattling my eardrums. Then I reach out and fucking grab The Bonding Games Champion, unyielding as I dump her on top of me. Wrapping myself around her like a monkey to a tree, I make sure she can’t move an inch.

“Tate!” Scotty barks from somewhere, but I don’t acknowledge him in the slightest, all of me focused on my girl as I feel her delicious little body up against mine.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was caught off guard.

Letting out a groan, I punch my hips up greedily, grinding against that hot cunt. Growling, she moves the only part of her available, and her helmet comes rushing at my unprotected head. Thinking fast, I move one hand and quickly catch the glossy taalk before she can knock my lights out. But now an arm is free, and she doesn’t hesitate to slam her fist into my face.

Oh yeah, that’s sexy as hell.

My cock agrees, pulsing with my need for her.

“Fuck’s sake, Tate.” With my neck forced to twist to the side from the power of my sweet Havoc’s blow, I see Scotty in my line of vision, standing a few feet away with an agitated hand messing up those usually tidy blond locks on his head. He looks as though he’d been preparing to intervene but thought better of it.

Which is good for him because I’d throttle him to his early demise if he dared to try and interrupt mine and my baby’s foreplay.

“Again, my tantalising little Havoc,” I purr.

She snatches up my chin in an unshakable grasp, keeping my vision filled with nothing but her. As if I’d ever want to look at anything else. “Do that again, and I will kill you.”

Her cold, robotically modified voice has a pleasurable shiver rolling through me, yet simultaneously a slice of annoyance. No one will take me away from the woman I love. Not even Havoc herself.

“I’m yours. You will not throw me away.”

She stills.

My eyes narrow. What is this? What emotion is this, dammit?

A low rumble like an avalanche builds up from my chest and into my throat. I need to know what she’s feeling. Why can’t she let those maddening mental walls down and feed me everything? And why can’t I see her face? I want to know every part of her, see every part of her. Own every part of her.

I need more.

“Why do you wear that helmet? Why do you wear a different one than the rest of us?” I interrogate abruptly, unable to hold back the curiosity anymore that I’ve been harbouring for years. The sudden rigidness in Ezla’s body should warn me off the subject, but I don’t let up. “Tell me why. Is it just a fashion choice? Did the Game Master choose it for you?” My voice grows harsher, more forceful. Frantic. “Or are you hiding something? Is something wrong with your face? I don’t care if there is, I love you! Let me see!—”

A sudden, overpowering, ruinous fury soaks all my senses through, and cries sound out distantly in my ringing ears from the other Evots in the room as they experience the same.

I should be happy, ecstatic even, that I’m finally feeling Havoc through the bond again.

But all I can feel is her crushing emotions that become my own when I feel pure, unbearable agony.

My baby is in pain. So, so much of it that bile rises up my throat. It infects every cell, every tissue, every bone, until it’s all I am. Because that’s all she is inside: unforgiving wrath and pain, pain, pain.

Until it’s sucked away all at once in a violent yank, dragged back into the source as she rebuilds her walls.

Harsh gasps are wrenched from the men around the room, and I struggle to breathe myself, throat tight.

That’s what she’s been hiding.

“Havoc, baby,” I rasp, a trembling hand coming to rest on the side of her helmet where her cheek would be beneath.

But she pulls away aggressively, and it’s so immediate that she’s just . . . gone. Vanishing out the door before I can process it.

I want to follow, but I can’t move. My entire body feels unstable. My stomach is writhing in protest, my breathing is too rapid, and my heart rate has reached a dangerous level, the thump-thump-thump of it banging against my eardrums.

“Gods,” Tiger’s choked voice finds me through the haze. “She’s hurting. Our Bonded is hurting.”

It doesn’t even cross my mind to correct him; that isn’t a concern right at this moment. There’s still that unrelenting need to have Ezla and keep her all to myself, but now, standing strongly beside that is my need to heal her, to take care of her and make sure all that pain inside her dies an excruciating death with no chance of resurrection.

And if I need these men to help me do that?