You, Me, and the Secret: A Club Stigmata Novella

by Elle Luckett

  I glanced down at my phone currently sitting under the bar and tapped the screen, annoyed when there were no messages. Asher had told me he would message me when he got back to New Orleans. Excited and impatient, I made sure no one was headed for a drink and unlocked the screen typing out a quick are you here yet? Before trying to find myself some busywork.

  Everything was fully stocked.

  All the inventory paperwork had been filled in, and I had nothing to do but wait.

  “You want to go home?” Thomas asked, leaning against the bar with a yawn. “It’s quieter tonight, but we expected that after July.”

  Chuckling quietly, I leaned against the mahogany surface opposite him with a grin. “A whole month of sex tends to do that to people, Sir.”

  “It’ll pick back up soon. Why don’t we put a notepad on the cooler for the runners to mark the waters they take? They’re more than capable of getting what they need. There’s only three of them on shift now. It won’t take me long to relay the message, then you can go home.”

  “Are you sure, Sir?”

  “You and I have nothing to do here. Go home, sleep, enjoy the early night.”

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  Thomas winked at me before heading toward the back area with the rooms. More than likely to look for the runners and explain his plan for the evening. I waited for him to disappear through the door before moving again.

  Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I shut down everything I could and took the bar tablet back to the storage room before changing into my street clothes and checking my phone. There was still no message from Asher, so I shot off another.

  Thomas sent me home early because it’s quiet.

  I’m heading home now. Text you again when I get there.

  Digging for my keys, I headed out the back entrance toward the small lot where I’d left my car. We usually had a bouncer walking us out, but they were down to a minimum tonight as well, and I wasn’t willing to take Dave away from the door. Thursday may have been quiet for Stigmata, but it wasn’t for New Orleans. This was summer, and Bourbon Street was in full swing.

  I listened to the Creole music and the idle chatter, the hints of jazz coming from another bar farther down the street, dancing as I made my way around the corner only to stumble to a stop.

  My smile bloomed so widely that I felt it everywhere.

  Asher was standing against my car.

  We did nothing but smile at one another across the lot for a full minute, the butterflies turning to doves as my body burst to life. Dragging in a breath, all pretense was lost as I sprinted across the distance and into his arms. My enthusiasm sent us both crashing against the car as my lips met his. He took as hungrily as I gave, his hands sliding to my hips and dragging my up his body as he rolled us, pressing me against the car and pinning me with his hips. There was no missing his erection.

  “Miss me?”

  “A little.”

  He smiled, seeing right through the lie.

  “Will you come to my hotel with me tonight?”

  “Hotel?”

  “Wanted to stay in the city tonight so I could see Ash in the morning.”

  “I—”

  “Say yes,” he growled the command. “I want to show you how much I missed you.”

  I stared into his eyes—the eyes he’d given to our daughter and blinked back any attempt at denial.

  “Okay.”

  Asher drove my car to the hotel. It was only a couple of blocks away from Stigmata, but he had it shuttled away by the valet guys even at that time of the night. We walked into the lobby of the building, hand in hand, the silence that had embraced us since my agreement still a companion that was reluctant to leave us.

  After weeks of flirting and saying everything we couldn’t say in person through texts, I was nervous. I wanted this and I wanted Asher. I’d thrown myself at him in the lot by Stigmata through raw emotion I hadn’t expected to feel. Now, I was following him to a hotel room. The swarms of beasts running rampant inside me were in conflict. Fear and excitement warred against need and arousal. The confusion made me miss the moments of those last two weeks, sitting behind the phone and telling him what I was feeling.

  When the elevator doors slid to a hushed close, Asher studied me in the rose gold mirror that faced us.

  “Have you changed your mind?”

  “No,” I said, meeting his eyes, feeling the truth of the words roll through me. “Just nervous?” It came out like a question that brought his lips curling to a smile.

  “Nervous?”

  Grinning, I kept my inner monologue to myself and squeezed his hand, but he saw right through me. Reaching out with his other hand, he angled my face, the heel of it warm against my skin as he studied my eyes.

  “You still don’t trust me all the way.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but he silenced me, pressing his lips to mine in a tender kiss that was opposite of the one we’d shared by the car. That had been full of passion, need, and want. A fire that scorched the edges while our desire ran uncontrolled through our veins. This kiss was soft, tender. Full of emotions and promises. It was gentle and hungry but didn’t lack passion either just a different kind.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered against his lips as they slowed.

  “Don’t be sorry for telling me how you feel.”

  Asher stepped into me, sending us crashing into the elevator’s mirrored wall with a grunt as our mouths fused together in another kiss. He’d barely started when a soft ping informed us both we’d arrived on his floor, and we tore apart. Asher glanced at the empty space of the hall on the other side and back to me, studying my face again.

  “Are you sure? If you’re not ready, I can take you home.” He paused, slapping his hand on the door to stop it from closing. “I’m a patient man I want to do this right.”

  Ducking under his arm, I slipped out into the muted silence of the hotel corridor and smiled in invitation as I started out to my left with a quick step. I squealed when strong arms folded around my waist and turned me around to face the opposite direction. It had been a fifty/fifty chance at getting it right, but a wrong turned out to be more fun. Asher pressed his lips to the nape of my neck, his arm loosely around my waist as he walked us down to a set of double doors at the end of the corridor. He didn’t fumble for his key when we reached it, but he pressed my front against the door as he pressed his erection between my ass cheeks, forcing my eyes to slide closed.

  “You remembered.”

  I smiled. “Predators like the chase. That doesn’t change.”

  Biting the stretch of skin between neck and shoulder, he rocked his hips, his chest flattening me against the second door. Any doubt that had been in my mind faded—the last stragglers chased away by arousal and the fire consuming everything inside of me. I’d forgotten what it felt like to be wanted by the man you were emotionally connected to. To feel those pieces fall into place, the rightness taking over.

  “I don’t think I have the patience to make you beg this time, kitten. I want to bury myself inside you.”

  He’d said it quietly, but one of his hands was on my stomach, popping the button of my shorts so he could slide his hands between my thighs. My legs were jelly before his fingers slid through my wet folds with a grunt of approval. He was an exhibitionist by nature, and the danger of being caught in this corridor by the fancy security guard made his cock pulse between my ass cheeks. It awoke that slither of the same in me, an inclination I’d buried long ago when I discovered I could never entirely lose myself to Doms I’d played with… after him.

  “I want—” I never got to finish the sentence because he obliged me. All it had taken was those two words, and he thrust two fingers deep inside, stroking and exploring. He rocked his hips in time with the movement of his fingers, bringing me high enough to teeter on the edge of all reason.

  Everything else was forgotten.

  I couldn’t have cared less where we were or who could have been
watching, because Asher was in control, and he held every bit of my attention now.

  “What do you want, kitten?” he whispered, lips now nibbling my earlobe.

  “I want you to fuck me, Asher.”

  “Tell me again.” His fingers curled, stroking the spot he’d conquered long ago, making my legs buckle and my forearms push against the door to keep me upright. The blunt head of him pressed to my ass, stealing any semblance of self-control from my mind.

  “Fuck me, Sir.”

  The click of the door opening dazed me, but Asher moved us both in one swift movement. He had me inside the door, pressed over a half wall as he kicked the door closed behind him with a thud. One hand on my shoulders, he pushed me down and ripped my shorts and underwear down my legs with the other. I helped as much as I could, but he wasted no time. The pressure of his cock sliding between my tender folds had all the breath leave me with a gush.

  “One more time.”

  “Fuck me.”

  He filled me in one thrust, pushing me into the half wall until the pressure on my ribs added to the pleasure of feeling him everywhere as he paused to take it all in. Our breaths sawed in the quiet room.

  “Maybe I do have time to make you beg.”

  “Fuck me.”

  He rocked back and slammed us both into the wall again as he pounded into me. I felt the tremor in his arms as his need overrode his control. He wanted to play the game, but his body was demanding satisfaction. I understood that because I could feel the same reflected in my soul.

  “Fuck me, Asher,” I said the words he wanted to hear as rapidly as I could until my voice went hoarse and faded, and he drove into me without pause or reservation. When he wound my hair around his hand and arched my body back, the wall was the only thing preventing my collapse. Asher took and took, hard and constant, long strokes of his body coming against mine until I stopped feeling and just experienced. My ass pushed back, accepting him deeper, the friction between our bodies hot enough to set the room alight.

  My orgasm roared to life inside of me when he found that sweet spot. It galloped through my veins, ignorant of my intentions to stop it. I was helpless against it, something Asher still had the awareness to notice as between one moment and the next, he was gone.

  I cried out in agony as the orgasm fell away and left me empty and aching in denial. Asher pulled me up from the wall as though I weighed nothing at all. I would have a bruise against my ribs, but the thought drifted away when he swung me down, my back against the carpet as he knelt between my thighs, his erection pressed to my pussy. I watched hungrily while he dragged his shirt over his head and discarded it taking in my body for a heartbeat. Admiration shone in those eyes I loved so much.

  “I want to watch you come.”

  With an iron grip on my hips, Asher pounded into me again. It was a wave of pain and pleasure as he took me with an edge of violence, and I met him halfway, his hips sliding home again when our gazes caught and held. He didn’t break the connection between us now. He thrust hard and deep, rocking his hips, so I felt him everywhere, bringing me higher and higher until euphoria rose again and demanded to be fulfilled.

  “Come for me, kitten.” His words were punctuated with his hand slipping between us, his short nails grazing my clitoris as he made it a command. “Now.”

  I did as I was told, falling apart around him, holding him inside of me while my world shattered apart with shards of pleasure and pain pulsing through my veins. White lights burned around me, but the blue of his eyes held me anchored, and I watched as he let himself go, following me over that ledge. Blue fire blazed to life as he buried himself deeper and released, and I only allowed myself to close my eyes when he collapsed against me with a huff of breath and flutter of his lips against my shoulder.

  “Can you breathe?” he whispered, his lips fused against my shoulder. My skin was damp with sweat, slick against his. When I ran a palm up his back, the beads gathered there, telling me he was just as sweaty and worn out as me.

  “I don’t care. I don’t want you to move.”

  Ignoring me, he rolled carefully until I was sprawled over his chest, my cheek against his chest. My ass and shoulders stinging enough to tell me I’d have some burns.

  “I wasn’t planning on going caveman on you.”

  “Don’t apologize,” I said to his nipple, circling the darker skin with the tip of my index finger. “I made you chase me knowing where it would lead. You could never resist the hunt.”

  “I could never resist you. Fuck the chase.”

  “I…”

  “You?”

  I didn’t want to say the words that had formed. I worried that if I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop, and I had to be smart, so I gave Asher another truth. One I could live with for now.

  “I missed you while you were gone.”

  I could feel his gentle laugh where my cheek was resting against his chest. I responded with a smile.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Just in case finger fucking you in the corridor of the hotel didn’t say it: I missed you, too.”

  Folding his arms around me, Asher pulled me tight against him and planted his lips on the crown of my head, his beard snagging the loose strands. I melted into him, lips brushing the dusting of hair that lay over his chest until they joined my fingers and brushed over his nipple.

  “You’re making me hard again. I was hoping we could have a conversation before I fucked you senseless.”

  “Conversations are overrated,” I mumbled, lips still against his chest.

  His fingers worked a trail up and down my spine as he hummed lazily. “But this one is necessary.”

  He rolled us again so we were on our sides, wriggling until we were face to face, where he grabbed his shirt to clean my thighs as he held my gaze. I’d forgotten how much he enjoyed taking care of me after sex. Whether it included a scene or was as vanilla as a quick three a.m. fuck, Asher had always made sure I was taken care of. He made sure any pieces of me that he’d bruised or chipped were set back in place. He was also procrastinating to take the edge off the conversation he wanted to have with me.

  “What’s on your mind?” I asked, tucking my arm under my head while he did the same, discarding the shirt he’d used to clean me.

  “I wanted to ask you how things with your lawyer are going.”

  “He should have the paperwork for you this week. He’d like to meet with me, you, and your lawyer, but he said that’s a formality unless you change your mind.”

  “I haven’t changed my mind.”

  “Then we can make an appointment sometime next week.”

  “Do you think he could fit us in tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “The sooner, the better.” Asher’s eyes darkened. “I left without telling them I was going. My secretary thinks I have a meeting in North Carolina, but they’ll eventually figure out I lied. I’m selling my condo, and I’ve moved the cabin into my private holdings. I plan to sell the shares I have in the family company sooner rather than later.”

  Asher had already explained this was his end goal when we’d spoken over the phone. He wanted to cut ties with his family and move to New Orleans to be with us, and no matter how many times I’d asked him if he was sure, he never faltered. That being said, it was supposed to be a slow progression—a couple of weeks here before going back and chipping away at his life there. Now he was telling me he’d severed every tie he had in two weeks.

  “What happened while you were there?”

  Asher ran his index finger down my jaw to my chin, his thumb brushing my swollen bottom lip.

  “My sisters happened.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means Audine was bored and decided to do some digging.”

  Audine was his oldest sister. Asher had told me she’d fulfilled her dream of becoming a trophy wife who sat in the club all day and gossiped about the women she didn’t like in their circle of friends. She enjoyed making h
is life hell and she spied on him for their parents. I’d managed to deduce that she resented him because he was the child their parents had wanted—the boy they’d continued to reproduce to conceive—and making him look like a disappointment was her favorite hobby.

  “What did she find?” I asked, pushing up on my elbow.

  “Only that I was active in Stigmata again. The trail went cold for her there because the club is a fortress. The problem is, she’s going to want to dig in other areas. She’s a piranha and won’t stop until she has something to give to my parents, so they’re annoyed with me.”

  “That’s why you’re speeding up the process?”

  “I’m planning on leaving as soon as those papers are signed, filed, and notarized. I want out before Audine enlists Sherilyn to help her dig too deeply. I don’t care about money, the family name, or the family business. I care about the family we’re starting, Shauna. I care about you and Ashleigh.”

  The pain in his eyes was genuine. I couldn’t tell if that was because he was making himself say goodbye to his family or because his sister was so hellbent on ruining him. Either way, it was unfair, and I didn’t want to be a part of that sadness for him. I didn’t want him to resent Ashleigh or me for this decision he was making.

  “You know I’m not making you choose, right?” I asked, reaching out and pressing my hand over his heart. “They’re your family, and I don’t want you to split yourself in half. You don’t have to choose one or the other here.”

  Covering my hand with his, he unleashed his eyes on me again.

  “I know, but you need to understand something, Shauna.” He paused and studied my eyes. “I would choose you. I do choose you. Given a chance, I would have chosen you then. You are mine. Both of you are mine. I’m not giving that up because I don’t want to give it up. That’s my decision, and it always has been.”

  “They’re your family.”

  “No. You’re my family. You and Ashleigh. I don’t need more than that.”

  A traitorous tear slid down my cheek, and Asher used the tip of his index finger to wipe it away.

  “That’s my choice. You understand? I wanted to do this right. Take our time to get to know one another again. To fall in love, build trust, and be what I felt we were always meant to be. I don’t want to lose you again.”