Free The Seek by Ros Baxter Page A

girl, and a volunteer.
    Avengers kill, and protect, and fuck.
    Avengers don’t get fucked.
    And even with all of that, it might not have mattered, except that it was this guy. This guy who was old and mean and charged on something that wasn’t as safe and lovely as Connect.
    What did he want from Mirren?
    Kyn pushed herself forward off her place at the wall and decided she had to find out.
    She padded down the corridor, scenes flicking before her eyes that were like a do-over of the last time she had been here. Bodies in all their shapes and permutations, coupled together in every conceivable way. Writhing, pleasuring, licking, moaning.
    Kyn conducted a full reconnaissance of the playrooms, but didn’t see Mirren. Her heart rate started to pick up, as she decided she must have missed something, and skipped as quickly and unobtrusively as she could back down the corridor. Again, no Mirren. Where the hell had they gone? Kyn’s eyes scanned the space — up and down the corridor, all the way to the bathrooms.
    Nothing.
    And then. Just behind the bathrooms, the slightest shadow of an entry hatch. Some kind of storeroom, perhaps. Not open, like the others. Impossible to see if they were there, and what was going on. But Kyn’s body was telling she had to go and see. And Kyn’s body was just about the only thing Kyn trusted in the universe. Especially now that Pietr was gone.
    Kyn sidled down to the door. Nothing for it. She lifted her fist and knocked. After a few seconds, a face appeared, and Kyn slid the hutanium toe of her boot into the crack he opened up. Not the ex-Avenger who’d carried Mirren away; another man. Smaller and darker, but with the same meanness wired into his circuitry. And no mask, which Kyn assumed meant he worked here at the club also.
    ‘What do you want?’ The little rat’s voice was flat and nasal.
    Kyn forced a smile onto her face, below her mask. ‘Just looking for a friend,’ she said carefully. ‘We seem to have become separated.’
    ‘Fuck off,’ the rat grunted, making to close the hatch.
    But Kyn’s toe was there. ‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘I just want to check if my friend’s in here.’
    The rat’s features darkened into a snarl, then just as quickly something sly and ugly slid across them. ‘Sure,’ he said, stepping back to let her in. ‘This the little bitch?’
    As Kyn stepped into the darkened room, all her senses alert for an ambush from the rat behind her, she saw Mirren. She was strapped to a black frame, her hands above her head, her dress hanging in two jagged rents on either side of her exposed breasts. Her mask had been removed and lay on the floor. A long red gash ran down one side of her face, and one eye was closed, a bruise forming around its perimeter. She had obviously put up a neat fight. The huge ex-Avenger who had carried her from the dance floor was fastening the buckles on the straps and he turned to greet Kyn like an old friend, a greedy smile splitting his tattooed face. ‘You want some of this action too, darlin’?’
    A third man leaned against the right hand wall, watching the action unfold, and he turned insolent eyes on Kyn too. He was tall, almost as tall as the ex-Avenger guard, but lean and bald. His skin was very dark. ‘She looks like she likes to play,’ he said, stepping towards her.
    And of it all, the very worst was watching Mirren’s face. It was closed and sad, like she was waiting for the axe to fall. Her head was turned slightly to the side, as if she had no intention of meeting the eyes of whoever this newcomer was, and was resigned that she had, somehow, ended up in a bad place after an evening that had started so beautifully. Kyn thought back to her clever, graceful moves on the dance floor when she had first seen her, like a butterfly finally permitted flight. Fury surged through Kyn’s blood at the sight of her bound and cheated. Hurt.
    ‘Let her go,’ she said quietly, turning slightly to kick the hatch shut behind