Liam & Tria’s gritty love story concludes in RELEASED!
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Released (Book Three) Caged Series
Blurb
Oblivion is a sweet, sweet place.
No pain. No disturbing thoughts of the past. No guilt from my recent actions.
Deep down, there is still a part of me that knows how screwed up I am. I don’t see a way out, not now. Tria’s gone, and the possibility of her forgiving me in my current state is exactly zero. I know I have to pull myself together, accept my responsibilities, and try to make amends, but I have no idea where to start.
No job. No apartment. I’m living on the streets with the other junkies. As little as I had to offer Tria before, I have nothing to give her now. The only way out is to come clean and tell Tria the truth about my past, but the idea of reliving the memories is so painful, I can’t think about it long enough to figure out a solution.
I’ve hit rock bottom, and I don’t even know which way is up any more.
Excerpt #1
I reached out and touched the edge of the pillow. It was insanely soft and warm. I stroked it, and images of Tria’s breasts crawled through my head, making me smile. I stroked my cock as I thought about her, but I couldn’t come.
I could hear a voice in the other room, but it didn’t concern me, so I didn’t move. Through heavy eyelids, I watched the piles of dirty laundry all over the floor. I found shapes of animals in the patterns, just like cloud pictures.
“The beans are gone.”
I rolled my head to the side and looked up at Krazy Katie’s face. I smiled and tried to say something, but my tongue wasn’t cooperating. I focused on her eyes as they stared down at me quizzically.
“Trains need an engineer,” Krazy Katie said.
“It’s okay,” I said. My tongue still felt weird, all numb and heavy. I twisted it around in my mouth, and it tickled my teeth. I blinked a couple of times before looking back at my neighbor. “I got the helm. I’m all good.”
Did trains have a helm, or was that just boats? I laughed.
Krazy Katie covered her eyes with one hand. I could see her chest rising and falling as she took long breaths. I started counting slowly in my head but quickly forgot the number.
“Left the station,” she said quietly. “No engineer. Kicked in the caboose. Nothing but tracks.”
She turned in slow motion, and I watched vapor trails of her dull blue T-shirt swirl around the room as she left. I heard the window slide shut and then silence.
“I’m all good,” I whispered.
There was no reply.
Even though my arms and legs were way too content to be bothered with moving, I shoved myself out of bed anyway. My rig was sitting on the kitchen table, all ready to go. I was still pretty high, but I could feel darkness closing in around me, and I didn’t want it.
I wanted warmth and happiness.
Plastic tube, arm slap, needle prick.
“Like a fucking pro.”
I lay my head on the table as the fluid sensations rippled through me. Tria didn’t matter. She’d forgive me in time. In fact, she was probably already over it. How could she not be?
“I’m good. Really, I am.”I was never one to lie to myself, but it was getting easier all the time.
Excerpt #2
I watched Yolanda walk out of the cage. Apparently, I kept looking in her direction too long. I took a blow to the head before I realized the fight had started.
I stumbled back, shook my head, and regained my footing. I raised my fists up in front of my face, and danced lightly on my toes, waiting for his next move. We circled slowly, jabbing but not finding our marks. My head swam again.
I needed to put an end to this. I needed to get it over with so I could take my winnings and get more smack. I had come down too hard and too fast. I had to get straight again.
I rushed him, striking out with my right and then my left. I took an elbow to the face, and felt my neck snap back.
The next thing I knew, I was on my back, and the guy was straddling my chest. I registered my head being thrown from side to side with punches, but I couldn’t focus enough to get him off me. I jabbed at his sides, but it was ineffective.
With my head spinning, I slammed my hand against the ground three times.
“Woo hoo!” The challenger jumped off of me and started running around the small cage.
I could hear cheers, boos, and people screaming at me, but I couldn’t comprehend the words. I rolled over and pushed myself up before stumbling out of the cage.
“Jesus, Liam!” Back in the locker room, Yolanda fussed around the cut over my eye and my bloody lip as I tried to push her hands away and get my jeans back on. “What the hell is wrong with you tonight?”
“Just forget it!” I yelled. “I need to get going.”
“Oh yeah? Why’s that? You got nothing waiting for you at home.”
I pulled my shoulders close together and bit down on the pad of my thumb. I didn’t remember telling Yolanda about Tria leaving, but apparently I had. I was afraid to open my mouth now. I tensed every muscle to keep myself from trembling. If Yolanda noticed, she’d figure out why.
If she figured it out, she’d stop me.
Is that such a bad thing?
Yes, most definitely.
I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t have Yolanda knowing what I was doing and dragging me somewhere to clean up. She would take back the cash she’d just given me, and I’d be royally fucked. I couldn’t let that happen.
“I gotta go,” I said again. I shouldered past her and out the door, ignoring her calls after me. I didn’t stop at the bar or acknowledge the fans around me as I left.
I took the cash I’d earned to Max and traded it for all the heroin I could get. I returned to my apartment and banged up.
Bliss.
Everything was perfect.
CAGED: Takedown (Book One)
Excerpt #1
“Are you just stupid?” I probably would have gone on, but she wrapped her arms around herself and glared up at me.
“Stop yelling at me!” she screamed. She turned away, but I saw her reach up with the back of her hand to swoop underneath her eyes.
Shit.
I turned slightly away from her and practically bit down on my tongue to keep myself from saying anything else. I brought my fisted hands up against my stomach and tried to pull the tension inside of myself, work through it, and calm down. I could hear her crying combined with choked breaths and sniffles.
“Fuck,” I mumbled under my breath. I was starting to come off the fighting high I had been on—the tears might have helped with that—and my stomach felt tight.
After three long, deep breaths, I looked back to the girl on the ground and saw her frantically rubbing at her eyes and cheeks. She didn’t look at me as she reached out and pulled her mostly empty bag close to her. She looked inside and then looked around her at all her things on the ground.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. I wasn’t all that great at apologies, and I figured now wasn’t going to be much different. I’d obviously upset her with all my shitty comments, though. “I didn’t mean to…I just…”
I stopped talking. I didn’t know what to say, and I felt bad about yelling at her. She looked at me all red-eyed with tears staining her cheeks.
“Just don’t do that shit anymore.” I let out a big sigh.
She nodded once and then reached out to grab something off the ground near her and shoved it back into the bag. From the amount of stuff scattered all over the street, my estimate on the size of the so-called purse wasn’t too far off. There was an umbrella, a little flashlight, a bunch of tubes and bottles, and at least a half dozen pens. As I looked around some more, I saw a small notebook, a paperback book, keys, a bottle of hand lotion that was nowhere near travel sized, a stack of tissues wrapped up in a Ziploc bag, two sets of earbuds, and a checkbook. There was also a whole pile of ponytail holders, bobby pins, and those little hair-holder-things that looked like teeth.
There was shit from her bag from one side of the fucking street to the other.
She started crawling around, gathering it all up, and cramming it back inside, which gave me a fabulous view of her ass in the short-shorts style waitress uniform the place up the street usually demanded. I could kind of see how she might have thought she could use the bag as a weapon—there had been more stuff in there than really should have been able to fit. I looked around on the ground to see if there was an actual kitchen sink, or at least part of one, but I didn’t see anything metal. There was something that looked like a small rock, though.
“How do you even carry that thing around?” I asked.
“What?”
“That…that purse-bag-thingy there,” I said, pointing and shaking my finger at it. I wouldn’t have admitted it, but the whole idea of the thing scared me, and I wasn’t sure why. I felt like if I got too close to it I might get sucked in, never to be seen again. “It’s insane.”
Her eyes became little slits as she looked up to me.
“There is nothing wrong with my purse!” she growled.
“It’s huge,” I said.
“It has everything I need in it.”
“It has everything you and ten of your friends could need for a week,” I replied with a laugh. “I know there are people who carry Chihuahuas in their purse, but you could fit a Dane in there.”
Excerpt #2
When I got to the top of the stairs, I immediately saw a figure leaning against the outside of the fence and looking back and forth down the street quickly. Each time the head turned, a long brown pony tail bobbed around, and strands of hair got caught in the chain links. If the short-shorts and Fin’s logo on the shirt weren’t enough to go on, the gigantic, evil handbag gave her away.
“What the fuck?” I snarled through the fence.
Tria startled and looked at me, turning quickly on her heel and holding up her keys clenched in her fist. I tilted my head to one side and raised an eyebrow at her. What was she going to do, wave them around at me from the other side of the fence?
“I’m pretty sure that was not meant to take the place of a ride,” I said, nodding toward the keys in her hand.
“You scared the shit out of me!” Tria yelled. She adjusted the mega-monster purse on her shoulder and ran her hand through her hair. “The girl who was driving me got another job. She just walked out today, and there wasn’t anyone else on my shift with a car.”
“So you’re walking down this street again?” I yelled. I slammed my palms into the chain links, making the whole side of metal rattle. She jumped away, stammering.
“I…I…”
I didn’t give her much chance to finish. I was livid.
“After what happened the last time? Seriously, Tria?” I paced over to the edge of the building and back to the fence again. My fingers wrapped around the links and yanked. “You do have a fucking death wish, don’t you?”
“I do not!”
“Then why are you being so stupid?” I screamed. I planted my feet right where they were, and my heart thumped audibly in my chest.
“I was trying to find you!” she yelled back.
“Well, why didn’t you come in the fucking bar?” I tossed my hands up into the air. “Is there not a big ass poster right there in your face saying exactly where I am on Friday nights?”
“I tried,” Tria said with a glare. “The bouncer wouldn’t let me in.”
“Why not?”
“I’m only twenty,” she said with a shrug.
There was something about that news that flipped a switch in my head. I knew she looked young, but I didn’t realize how young. The idea that she was out here on her own, trying to make a go in this place without even being old enough to get into a bar killed my anger and made me feel something a little odd as well. Respect? Maybe even pride?
Whatever it was, it also hardened my dick.
Caged: Trapped (Book Two)
Excerpt
I felt my body tighten at her touch, and my skin tingled as her fingers moved over my chest and down to my abs. She took one finger and slid it over the ridge of each muscle. I caught her under her chin with my fingers and brought her mouth back to mine.
Open mouthed, I moved from her lips, up the line of her jaw, to her ear, and back again. With my free hand, I crept from her hip up her side, and my thumb stroked the skin of her stomach. I felt her hand over mine.
I started to pull away, assuming her intent was to tell me to stop, but her grip on my fingers tightened. Opening my eyes, I looked down at her and watched her tongue dart out over her lips before she slowly pushed my hand upwards.
“You sure?” I breathed, hating myself for even asking the question instead of jumping on the opportunity. In response, Tria rose up just enough to pull her shirt up over her head.
My cock tried to jump right through the material of my jeans to tit fuck her right there in her bra.
I had to physically restrain myself from the action as she settled back above me on her knees. The bra itself wasn’t unfamiliar—I’d seen all of her clothes in the drawers before—but having the lacy white material wrapped around her smooth breasts laid out before me was completely different.
I sat up and moved her with me until she was flat on her back on the couch, and I was hovering over her. I moistened my lips as I gazed down at the pale flesh before me with only a slight curve visible at the top of the lacy front.
As slowly as I could endure, I traced her skin from the edge of the thin strap around her shoulder and down to the mound of flesh against the lace edge. Barely touching her, I outlined from one edge over the curve, down into the slight dip, and back over again. My fingertip completed the trek back up to her other shoulder, and then began to make its way down again.
Once it hit the center of the dip again, I fanned out my fingers—still keeping my touch ultra-light—and stroked slowly toward the outside of her breast. I could feel my own breathing increasing in tempo with hers as I touched her through the thin material. I mimicked the motion with my other hand and the other breast, leaning in to kiss her shoulder as I moved.
CAGED Series Reading Order
Takedown (Book One)
Trapped (Book Two)
Released (Book Three)
About the Author
Shay Savage lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her family and a variety of household pets. She is an accomplished public speaker, and holds the rank of Distinguished Toastmaster from Toastmasters International.
When not writing, she enjoys science fiction movies, masquerading as a zombie, is a HUGE Star Wars fan, and member of the 501st Legion of Stormtroopers. When the geek fun runs out, she also loves soccer in any and all forms - especially the Columbus Crew, Arsenal and Bayern Munich - and anxiously awaits the 2014 World Cup.
Savage holds a degree in psychology, and she brings a lot of that knowledge into the characters within her stories.
Giveaway
Signed Set of the Caged Series
Dawn might occasionally have a gator parked in her front yard there on the bayou, but it's the snakes that really scare the bejeezus out of her.
