Untamed by Emilia Kincade Read Free Book Online Page B

his hands still shake a little.
    He’s scared. I guess we all are.
    The difference is I like the fear. It gets me feeling amped, gets the adrenaline kicking through my body. I feel like my engine is revving, that I’m ready to go from zero to one-hundred instantly. My heart hammers so hard in my chest.
    I… I like this feeling. Really like it. Distantly, I wonder if there’s something wrong with me.
    The older boy is eighteen, has got nearly two years on me and maybe two inches. He’s stocky, wide, strong. He’s cocky, but not necessarily confident.
    He’s already out. Once they turn eighteen they’re on their own. That’s how it is, kicked out the door. No resources, nothing but a fucking guidance counselor and a bunch of ready-made emails and bare-as-fuck resumes that, if you’re lucky, land you menial work.
    Nothing wrong with menial work. I clean up a tattoo parlor part time. Mopping the floor is not above me if it buys me a ticket to the movies, an hour at the gym, maybe a seat at the game, nosebleeds of course.
    But these boys want glitz. They won’t mop floors. They talk about fat stacks. What little help they offered him, the older boy now squaring up against me, he threw it all aside, turned to recruiting kids from the same group home he lived in to work corners for him.
    He calls himself a manager. White-collar, motherfucker. His words, not mine.
    His name is Danny, and he’s got a reputation. He carries a gun, but he likes to use a knife. He likes to carve people up. It’s a butterfly knife, the kind that you have to twirl open, the kind people learn to do tricks with, and if they’re lucky, not lose a finger as part of their education.
    That’s the one thing keeping me from just wailing on him. I don’t know if he’s got his weapons today. If he does, it might be a short fight for me.
    “You owe me,” he says. “Pay up, bitch.” He pulls out his gun from the front of his jeans. I tense up, but he puts it on the lid of the dumpster beside us.
    “Don’t worry,” he tells me. “I ain’t a fucking coward. I’ll beat you with my fists. Like a man. ”
    Like a man . What the fuck does he know about being a man?
    What the fuck do any of us know?
    “I don’t owe you jack shit,” I tell him. “You want my money, you come and take it.”
    It’s not much. It’s twenty-five bucks crumpled up in my back pocket. He’s not doing it for the money – he carries around thousands, an inch-thick wad of cash that he keeps in a gold money clip. The bills are dirty, though, crumpled, once clenched in the shaking fists of addicts on their way down before they make it to him.
    He likes to take it out, wave it about. Some of the boys grovel at his feet for a handout.
    I don’t blame them. We have nothing.
    But I’ll never do it. I don’t fucking beg.
    So it’s not money he wants from me. He wants me to bend. He wants me to break. He wants to stand over me and thump his chest and shout that he was the one to beat me when nobody else before him ever could.
    He’s a bully. I’ve never backed down from bullies, and I’m not going to start now. As far as I’m concerned, the world could use less bullies.
    “You better give me that fucking money,” he says. “You want to disrespect me? Like Lucas did?”
    He’s talking about another boy from the home. Lucas disappeared after saying he was going to get Danny, going to fight back. Nobody ever found out what happened to him. That was two months ago.
    Danny comes closer, and his two friends do as well. They’re surrounding me. It’s crazy, but I feel this thrill. It’s… fun. It’s like energy is being pumped into my body and I’m about to burst.
    Down at the street, a limousine sidles past. It takes forever to cross the gap between the two walls of the dirty alley we stand in. Once it’s past, we hear it slow, then whine backward in reverse before stopping at the mouth to the alley.
    The limo has tinted windows. We all stare at it for a moment.