Hansel 2(An Erotic Fairy Tale)(6)

Another woman drapes an arm around him, and my body burns. It’s as if my lies—the lies I told myself tonight—are seeping out my pores.

That I don’t want him.

That I don’t need him.

That I could forget him.

This man is mine. No one else’s. Only mine.

I watch his eyes sweep the crowd, as if he hears my thoughts and wants to find me.

He wraps his arm around the woman’s waist, rocking his hips slightly against her. Then he moves her arm off him and walks toward the metal door.

I watch him hungrily, wanting him so much it hurts.

At that moment, he falls.





CHAPTER FOUR

Leah



The second he hits the floor, everything is pandemonium.

The crowd around him is shooed away, and those referee-looking people in the black pants and gray jackets swarm him while the crowd around me, in the built-in bleachers, goes insane.

I quickly notice that the guy, Howard, is still lying on the mat, surrounded by support staff and someone in a medic vest.

My eyes fly between Hansel’s body and the man in the vest, who ducks out of the ring and sprints toward Hansel.

I start to sweat. My heart races. I can’t gulp down enough air, so my head spins.

Why isn’t he moving? What the hell happened?

Everyone is hissing, whispering. Their chatter rises to a dull roar, and I want to scream.

My legs move on their own, carrying me to the stairs, where my feet fly. I’m pushing people out of the way to get down to him, and when my feet finally hit the smooth cement of the lowest level and I lock my eyes on him, someone grabs my elbow.

“Hang on a second! Who the fuck are you?” a male voice asks. My eyes collide with angry brown ones half a second later. It’s one of those referee people in the jackets, looking at me like he thinks he’s going to have to Mace me.

“Let go!” I throw his hand off my arm. “I’m his sister! What’s going on with Edgar?” It pops out so easily, so naturally. As I try to push past the barrier of the man’s arms, he locks his eyes onto mine, assessing.

“Sister, what’s your name?”

“Leah,” I cry. “What’s wrong with him?”

He rolls his eyes, and then we’re striding side-by-side toward Hansel. He’s lying on the ground, turned on his side, and I can see a tiny pool of blood below him.

“Shit,” I cry as I sink to my knees behind the row of fight staff.

I reach between the bodies crowded around him so I can touch his arm. I flatten my palm against his skin and drag it gently down the inside of his forearm, the way I always used to when I wanted to comfort him from the other side of the wall. His eyelids flutter in response.

“Don’t know what’s going on,” the guy beside me says. “We’ve called an ambulance.”

“No.” I jump as Hansel we wrenches his upper body off the cement floor. “No—” I see blood drip from right behind his ear, where it runs down his nape. He coughs into his hand. “No hospital.” He pulls himself full up into a sitting position and looks woozily around. “I got…a car,” he rasps. “I’m…fine.”

He looks like a liar. His face is stark white, his hazel eyes appearing almost brown. The left one is ringed by various shades of purple and black, and swollen half-shut. His mouth is bleeding, and his cheek is bruised up by his temple.

“I can drive.” He slurs the last word.

“I don’t think so,” one of the guards says sternly. “I’m an EMT and I can see you’re either drunk or suffering the side-effects of a concussion, sir. You were hit repeatedly in the head and chest. You need to take it easy till the ambulance arrives.” The EMT raises his brows at me, and I nod quickly.

Hansel’s eyes roll back a little in his head, but he manages to shift his shoulders, and his gaze, my way. When he sees my face, his eyes bulge. “Leah?” I watch a shudder ripple through his arms and chest. His face loses a little more of its color, and for a moment, his lips tremble. “Leah?” He swallows one time; twice. “Leah?” he whispers. He looks around, at all the people crowded around him, then back at his lap before he lifts his eyes to me. “Leah—help.”

My whole body heats. I push through two of the men around him and look into his eyes, search for the echo of significance of what he just said—my name—but his eyes are wide and glossy, panicked.

“Leah.” He grabs onto me, and shocks me by getting on his hands and knees and standing slowly up. I rise with him, reaching for him as he wraps his long fingers around my arm. “No…hospital. Just need…to sleep it off,” he says, looking around him—but his words are slurred.