tux, slicing away at my exposed skin, but I feel no pain at all.
All I feel is panic.
“Xander!” Charlotte screams. “Help me!”
I run full-force at the back of the guy who’s straddling Charlotte on the couch. He has her on her back, her dress hiked up to her waist. And his pants fall just low enough for me to know exactly what he was about to do before I literally crashed his sordid party.
I pull him off of her, flinging his tall form to the ground as Char scrambles off the couch, weeping uncontrollably as she hobbles away from her attacker.
It’s not until he’s squirming under my foot that I see who it is.
Blaine fucking Montrose.
Seems like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Neither one of these pricks knows how to control himself.
I kneel into him, smashing fist after fist into his cocky, smug-bastard face. Blood spurts from his nose and mouth as I assault him with my rage. “What the fuck are you doing here, Montrose? Can’t accept the fact that you’re the fucking loser in this game, huh?” I pull him up by the collar and slam the back of his head into the glass coffee table. He lets out a loud groan and then rolls himself on top of me to get in a few punches of his own.
But pretty rich boys like Blaine aren’t trained to knock a guy’s teeth down his throat. And they’re never smart enough to stand down when they’re out...well, out virtually everything.
“Once a loser, always a loser,” he grunts, spitting blood out and throwing his full weight at me, knocking me off balance. “I told you you’d never win, Xander. That you can’t escape who and what you really are, that you’ll always be nothing more than the dirt on the bottom of my shoes. Trash,” he hisses. “Because that’s all your family will ever be, especially when we’re finished with you.”
I let out a primal roar and dive at him, grabbing his ankles so he crashes to the floor. I grab a fire poker and swing it at him as he crawls into a corner. Like he can huddle his pussy ass in a corner and think I’m gonna just walk away.
Not after he had his hands on my girl.
That is punishable by amputation.
“If you think you’re gonna get away with what you just tried to do,” I say, my voice coming in raspy pants. “You are wrong!” I bellow. “I’m gonna cut off your dick and shove it down your throat, you asshole!”
“You’re too late, Xander!” Blaine rolls out from the corner and jumps to his feet, edging toward the fireplace. His eyes are wild, his hair sticking up in twenty different directions as he darts across the great room and back again like he’s on something.
Or a lot of somethings.
He definitely doesn’t look like the usual, sophisticated pompous asshat whom I’m so used to wanting to ram my fist into. I straighten up, walking toward him, my jaw twitching. I sidestep large jagged pieces of porcelain...most likely lamps that Charlotte hurled at him just before I invaded. I lean down to pick one up, admiring the sharp points. I run my finger over them and smile at Blaine.
I can almost see his Adam’s apple bob.
Maybe I should cut it out of his throat.
My grin morphs into a grimace as I hurdle over the couch and throw myself at Blaine, tackling him into the piano bench. It cracks and collapses under our weight.
“Xander, watch out! Watch—”
I hear Charlotte yell out a warning, but the sound is muffled by the blood rushing between my temples. In this second, I can’t process anything other than what I’m about to do to Blaine Montrose. I reach back, ready to drag the thick piece of porcelain across Blaine’s cheek when my body is suddenly yanked backward.
I let out a muffled grunt as my head cracks against the leg of a table. I put my hand to my temple, pressing it to a warm, wet spot which is now trickling down the side of my face. I roll around and jump to my feet, hands in the air since dumbass that I am, I left my gun and box cutter in the car.
“Well, well,” a low menacing voice hisses. Whoever is behind me fists my hair, twisting me around so that I’m facing him. “The dark knight. In the flesh.”
I struggle against his grip, then spit at him. “Get the fuck off of