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  Military Ink – Book One

  Amelia Fox

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  Copywrite © 2014 by Amelia Fox. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be used without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction and contains explicit material that is for adults only. All characters portrayed are fictional but the themes this book explores are real. If you are easily upset or offended, this book may not be for you.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  More from Amelia

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to the heroic men and women who risk their lives everyday for their country. Soldiers, firefighters, police officers, ambulance services – these people are everyday heroes. They do not receive enough recognition for their actions. I value them greatly and wish to thank them for everything they do.

  Chapter One

  Blake

  The hardest thing about the army is leaving it. Correction: deserting it. They tell you how to kill a man. They teach you how to blow stuff up. They make you kidnap and torture – although the correct word is ‘interrogate’. But what they don’t teach you is how to live with yourself when it’s all over. They don’t tell you how to handle the guilt.

  Many red-blooded Americans may struggle to understand what I have to be guilty about. The media has forced this nation to see things in black and white. That man is our enemy. He has dark skin, a beard, and a different religion to me. He is a terrorist. Well, that’s just not so.

  You can’t convince me that an entire nation of people are my enemy when I have to kill a man in front of his children. You can’t tell me that they are my enemy when I am killing in their country. Do you want to know how many innocent men I have had to subject to torture under the premise of ‘information gathering’? I don’t want to say.

  That’s why I left Afghanistan. I won’t go into the details of how I deserted my comrades and left the country just yet. For now, I’ll just say that my method of leaving was as illegal as the war itself and it was the longest journey I have ever taken. And the nightmare is just beginning.

  I didn’t get one night of sleep in that dreadful desert but back in New York the nights are even longer. I walk the streets at night and nothing scares me. My neighborhood is one of the worst around. I couldn’t go back to my real home. Not with everyone looking for me and my name in all the papers. But nothing scares me in the ghetto. I wander around at three in the morning and people leave me alone. I guess they can tell I’m not one to fuck with.

  Although there is something that scares me and it’s not what you would suspect. Whenever I walk past a school at recess, I can’t help but shudder and feel a cold sweat take over my skin. Those screams of laughter. Innocent children playing. I remember the time when a blast came out of nowhere. Screams of laughter turned to screams of fear. And then the gunmen were upon them. I saved a few but it wasn’t good enough.

  Now I spend my days trying to forget and stay hidden. I pound the bag and wrestle on the mat in a shitty little gym in the hood. I help train kids who managed to escape the gangs. It’s rewarding work and it keeps me occupied. It also helps to vent my frustration and aggression. Trust me, I have a lot of anger to get rid of.

  The gym belongs to a couple of ex-conmen who call themselves the Wolf Brothers. I don’t know if they’re actually brothers but they sure don’t look like each other. They cast an intimidating figure, standing at over six feet and six inches tall, muscular, covered in scars, and covered in prison tattoos. It screens out the pussies from joining the gym.

  As you can imagine, with two people like the Wolf Brothers running the show, the gym is filled with many characters you would not want to fuck with. The kids who train there may have escaped the gangs but they are still thugs. They are all products of a broken home with violent and drug-filled pasts. They would not think twice about cutting your throat if you so much as looked at them. But when you get to know them, like I have, you realize that they’re not bad kids. Society just gave up on them.

  It has been almost a year since I deserted the army and about eight months since I first started teaching kids the correct way to beat people up. My days look identical to one another. When you have insomnia as bad as I do, the days blend together seamlessly. Day in, day out, this is what I see: tough kids training to hit harder, grapple better, and lift weights. The gym is a hive of dirty cussing and grunting. There is solidarity and team spirit in the air. These kids are family to one another. But when they step outside it’s gone. You step out onto the streets and you’re back in the wild. I no longer bat an eyelid when I see drugs passing hands on the corner or prostitutes searching for marks or pimps beating on some guy. Gunshots fill the air at night. Just like in Afghanistan.

  I live in a man’s world. It’s full of tough guys and dogs. It’s no place for a woman. That’s why when Emily entered the gym, everybody took notice. She was this shy, incredibly delicate, little flower. She was clearly fragile and close to breaking. I looked up from holding the punch bag when she entered and started talking to one of the Wolf Brothers in the front. She was trembling like a cornered animal. In a gym full of sweaty, badly dressed hood rats, Emily stood out because she spoke with a posh voice and was wearing a suit.

  “Hello,” she squeaked. “I saw in the window you do martial arts classes?”

  “You wanna join?” The Wolf Brother cocked his eyebrow.

  “Maybe,” she said. “What do the classes entail?”

  “Lady, I don’t know what that word means.”

  “Oh, oh,” she looked around nervously. “It means…”.

  “You’re not welcome here!”

  One of the boys, who had finished sparring in the ring, shouted across the gym. Emily jumped and I swear she gave herself whiplash when she turned to the boy shouting at her. Her face colored a deep red and her hands trembled like crazy. Another guy, heavily muscled and tattooed, yelled at her too.

  “No bitches!” He yelled. “You wanna get raped?”

  Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. I could actually see her lips trembling from where I was standing. She raised her hand to her mouth and looked back at the Wolf Brother who just shrugged. Her eyes filled with tears. She didn’t know what to do. I felt a surge of sympathy in my gut. These guys were basically heckling at a baby or a little puppy.

  “Look at that shitty suit!” Another heckled.

  “I bet she’s got a good body though,” another chimed in. “Nice tits!”

  She grew even redder and burst into tears. She blubbered like a little baby in front of all the dirty-talking scoundrels. I walked towards her to offer some comfort but I wasn’t fast enough. She ran out of the gym like her life depended on it. I smacked one of the guys who had shouted at her around the head.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I growled. “That’s how you talk to a lady?”

  I walked towards the door and went out onto the street, still reeling with anger from the guys’ outbursts. I looked around but she was gone. I heard the quick clicking of high heels on pavement around the corner. I hoped that she slowed down and composed herself. She was making herself an easy target. I went back into the gym and punched a boxing bag with full force,
cracking the skin between my knuckles. Blood trickled out of my hand. I spat on the floor and went to collect my stuff from the locker room. I was clocking off early.

  Chapter Two

  Emily

  The day was over. I was relieved and scared at the same time. I was fresh out of law school and had already been recruited by a top law firm. I was assigned a place shadowing one of the lawyers there. My dream of becoming a top lawyer was well on its way. The only problem was that the lawyer I was shadowing was working a case in the worst part of town. He didn’t give one shit about me and didn’t even have the courtesy to walk me through the rough neighborhood. I stepped out of the courtroom and breathed a deep breath. It was getting dark. I didn’t want to be hanging around this area much longer.

  The neighborhood gave me the creeps. I had to walk past rows and rows of dilapidated buildings and houses with barred-up windows. The place was basically a ghost town with burned out cars and a few huddles of gangs here and there. They mostly stuck to their own business and left me alone but this night was different.

  “Would you look at that?”

  I walked past a small gang. There were three guys sitting on a porch, smoking something that smelled funny. Three is big enough number to be intimidating to a small woman like me. Heck, just walking past one guy in these streets is enough to scare me silly. These three guys were big and ugly and I knew from the tone in their voice that they were looking for trouble. It was just my luck that right then it seemed as if I had a sign over my head that said ‘trouble’.

  “Whoo, baby,” another yelled. “Walk that fine ass over here.”

  I crossed my arms, holding on tight to the fabric of my suit, and kept my head down. I picked up the pace and kept walking. I didn’t know what to do in this situation. No one had ever given me any adequate advise. Everyone tells you to just ignore men who catcall and keep walking. But what are you supposed to do when that pisses them off?

  “Hey! This whore deaf? Yo, bitch! Don’t you dare ignore me!”

  My teeth chattered from fright. I wanted to cry. Just leave me alone, I thought. Please, God, get them to stop. I could sense they were walking slowly at a little distance behind me. My heart was pounding like crazy. I wondered if the fight or flight response would give me enough adrenaline to outrun them. I looked into a car window and saw their reflection behind me. They were a lot closer than I thought. I could hear them sniggering and whispering stuff to each other.

  “Last chance to show some respect, bitch.”

  I bit my lip and tried my best to stifle a sob. A tear broke free and ran down my cheek, taking my mascara in an inky line with it. I hated that word. Bitch. My dad used to call me that word when I was a kid. He used to say that I was a bitch just like my mother. Hearing this scumbag behind me using that word so freely filled me with anger. What have I done to him? I don’t deserve this. I took a deep breath and decided that I had to run right then while I still had the chance. I just had to outrun them to the convenience store around the corner where there would be more people.

  “No you fucking don’t!”

  I pumped my legs as hard as I could. My ankles strained from the pressure of running in high heels. Adrenaline coursed through my body like a narcotic. I had never ran so fast in my life. Lactic acid built up in my calves and thighs almost immediately. It had been years since my gym membership expired. I was not used to exercising. I heard the men screaming behind me but I didn’t know how close they were. I could hear them laughing as they chased after me. Why the hell are they enjoying this?

  “You’re gonna fucking regret this, bitch.”

  The voice was loud in my ear. They must be close. Just a little further, I told myself. Almost there. Just keep going. I let out a cry as pain shot through my ankle. I landed on it in a weird way. I could tell that it would hurt like crazy if I didn’t have so much adrenaline going through my system. I kept pumping my legs. I put one foot in front of the other, convinced that I would make it to freedom. But then I tripped. My foot came out of my high heel and I fell. I flew forward and skidded across the dirty pavement, scraping the skin off the palms of my hands. Then I felt several gruff hands yank me to my feet.

  “We got you now, cunt,” one said. “We fucking got you.”

  I howled at the top of my lungs but one of them immediately clamped his hand over my mouth. His hand smelled weird. It was like cigarettes and something else I didn’t recognize. There was alcohol on each man’s breath. Cheap beer. I tried to kick and free myself from their grip but it was no use. Each man was at least 200 pounds. I was half that weight. My bones were thin and frail. I feared that my wrists would snap if I pulled against their grip.

  “Daddy ain’t coming to save you,” one snarled. “Rich bitch.”

  I screamed into the guy’s hand but it was completely muffled. Nobody was going to come to my help even if I could scream. Night was falling and the neighborhood was not a good place to be. They pulled me down an alleyway, away from the few street lamps that still lit the street. Their faces were almost completely shrouded by shadows. One of the gang members grabbed hold of two big dumpsters and blocked any exit from where we came in. It was a one way alley with a chain-link fence on the other side. I was completely boxed in and trapped.

  “I’m gonna take my hand off you now,” one gangster said. “But don’t do anything stupid.”

  He pulled a knife out of his pocket and with a menacing flick, unleashed its blade. This can’t be happening, I thought. He took his hand off of me but the three men kept me locked in their grips. I tried desperately to look into their faces so that I could plead for them to stop but I couldn’t see anything. Their faces were just vague shadowy outlines. Still gripping me, they pushed me to my knees. The guy with the knife held the blade against my throat.

  “Please!” I begged. “What do you want?”

  “Oh, now she’s talking to me,” he laughed. “What do you have? What’s on the menu?”

  “W-what?” I stammered. “Excuse me?”

  “You got a problem, bitch?” The guy pushed his forehead against mine.

  “N-no! Sorry! Please! I don’t understand!”

  “Am I not speaking English? I’ll make this easy for you, whore. Suck my fucking dick.”

  Their grip was hurting my arm. Each man was squeezing me so hard that the blood supply was cut off. The guy with the knife pulled down the zipper on his jeans. He fumbled around for a moment. Although it was dark, I could tell that his cock was out. It was close to my face. I instinctively jerked my head away but he threaded his fingers into my hair and gripped hard, hurting me.

  “Suck it or die.”

  I had no choice. I had to take this scumbag’s dick in my mouth or get a blade in my throat. At that moment, I had never been more filled with anger before in my life. I felt manically homicidal. I held out for as long as I could. I prayed. But finally I had to resign myself to my feat.

  “What the fuck?!”

  Just as I was about to put his disgusting dick in my mouth, my attackers released their grips. The one with the knife, and his dick out, went flying backwards. I struggled to see what was happening in the dark. Another guy had joined the party. He had his hands around the attacker’s neck and threw him against the opposite brick wall. The attacker hit the bricks with a painful thud. It sounded like he had shattered some bones.

  “Help!” He screamed. “Fuck!”

  It happened so fast. The new guy unleashed a flurry of punches straight into the attacker’s face. I don’t know how many times he hit him but it was a lot. With every punch, the attacker’s head slammed into the brick wall. He was unconscious before he hit the ground. A second later, the new guy turned his attention to the other two. They had both produced knives.

  “You fucked up,” one of the attackers growled. “You’re dead.”

  He lurched towards the new guy, pushing the knife towards his stomach. The new guy side-stepped the attack and, in the same movement, grabbed and twisted the as
sailer’s wrist, creating a disgusting cracking sound. The knife dropped out of his hand and the new guy brought his elbow down hard on the back on his head. He dropped to the ground.

  “Hey, we’re cool,” the last guy standing said. “I’m done¸ okay?”

  He backed up towards the dumpsters, still with the knife in his hand. The new guy let out a loud growl that sent shivers over my skin. It was a battle cry. He ran towards the attacker, narrowly dodging a swipe from the knife, and threw an almighty right hook into the guy’s face. The guy went flying backwards, hit the dumpsters, and landed on the floor in a heap. He was out cold. I was trembling on the floor, hugging my knees, with tears streaming down my face. Three men lay concussed, or maybe even dead, around me. I had narrowly avoided getting raped. Who was this hero?

  “Are you okay?” He asked in a raspy voice.

  I nodded. I couldn’t get any words out. I couldn’t stand. My legs were no longer working. The guy stood over me and pulled me to my feet. His hand was strong and firm and wasn’t shaking one bit. Unlike mine. He took his leather jacket off and wrapped it around me. Then he put an arm around my shoulders and walked me out of the alley, pushing the dumpsters aside. We walked into the street and stood near a streetlight where I could see the details of his face better.

  “What’s your name?” He asked.

  His face was hardened but kind. He was incredibly masculine looking with a thick square jaw, covered with dark stubble, hard brown eyes and a solid nose. He was also incredibly muscular. His arms strained at the sleeves of his t-shirt. Most of the skin on his arms was taken up by a large array of tattoos.

  “Emily,” I said, still shaking. “What’s your name?”

  “Blake.”

  He pulled me in close to him and hugged me. I pushed my face against his chest, inhaled his manly scent, and gushed like a baby. I bawled my eyes out and soaked his t-shirt. He gripped my arms tight and pulled away, looking deep into my eyes. His eyes were filled with kindness, concern, and compassion. I stopped crying. His eyes flickered all over my face.