Page 2 of Blood & Throttle

They’re throwing a woman into the next race.

I exhale smoke through my nose, my head tilting slightly toward the men talking a few feet away.

“Poor bitch doesn’t even know she’s already dead,” one of them snickers, tossing a crumpled wad of cash into the betting pool.

“Ah shit. I bet she’ll be roadkill before the first lap.”

A third voice laughs, low and cruel. “Nah, knowing Jace, he’ll get to her first. Probably fuck her against her own bike before she crashes.”

That gets a round of laughter, sick and knowing. I don’t flinch. This world isn’t kind. It never has been.

Women don’t last in The Gauntlet.

They’re either claimed, destroyed, or forgotten.

This circuit wasn’t built for them, and the ones dumb enough to think they can compete? They end up as nothing more than bloodstains on the asphalt.

Ifthey’re lucky.

If they’re not, they don’t die quick—they get used first.Rough. Forced. Right there on the track or dragged off into the dark, broken before they even hit the asphalt.

I don’t bother stepping in. It’s not my fucking problem. The Gauntlet eats the weak.

That’s the only rule.

But when I turn toward the pit, I seeher.

She’s standing just outside the garage bays, eyes sweeping the crowd like she’s already memorizing her executioners.

By the looks of her, the world has already tried to break her a few times.

But it hasn’t.

And for some stupid fucking reason, that stops me cold.

She’s small. Too fucking small to survive what’s coming for her. The men around her see it immediately. They close in, predatory grins flashing under the dim floodlights. She should back up. Should shrink away from the threat surrounding her.

She doesn’t.

No, instead, she holds her ground like she belongs here.

The silence stretches, thick with the weight of what’s about to happen.

The pit is loud, filthy, and charged with tension.

The kind of place where men bet with blood and settle debts with broken bones.

I lean against my bike, arms crossed, watching the new arrival.

Her long, dark hair spills past her ass in thick waves, wild and untamed, like it refuses to be controlled—no doubt just like the rest of her. Though all I see is a liability. An easy target. Something someone’s going to wrap around their fist and use to snap her neck in a place like this.

I don’t like it.

She’s not prey, though, she fucking should be.

But something in me tells me she’s not.

More of the other racers have noticed her, too, but they don’t rush her. They don’t have to. They circle like predators, leering, tossing vulgar comments back and forth like she’s not even standing there.