by Skye Warren
“Last,” I say, my voice so gravelly I can barely make it out.
“What?”
“You said you’ll be trying my pussy for the first time. And it will be the last time too.”
A slow smile crosses his face. “We’ll see, gorgeous. We’ll just fucking see about that.”
* * *
I manage to get through my routine the same as always. The hoots from the men are just as loud. The tips are just as good. I keep up appearances because I’m too damn good at it.
Inside, I’m rattled.
When I exit the stage, I don’t even hit the floor. That’s where I can make the most money, but I head for the back. Maybe I’m a little freaked out after what happened in the VIP room last time. Or maybe I just don’t want to see Blue watching me, judging me, while other men paw at me.
My breasts bounce a little as I walk. I’m naked except for my G-string.
I should be comfortable this way. I’ve definitely walked this hallway naked many times before. Only this time I can’t help thinking about a certain man I’ve passed here before.
We’ll just fucking see about that.
A looming shadow appears before me, like something supernatural—only it’s no ghost that I bump into, bare breasts and all. I stumble, clumsy, and his hands reach out to steady me.
“Careful.” Blue.
It’s like I’ve summoned him just by thinking of him. He touches my arms, just my arms, but my skin gets goose bumps as if it’s more. My nipples harden into points. I cover them with my hands, somehow modest even though he would have just seen me onstage. He doesn’t release me, so I stand there, cupping my breasts, my arms held by his.
I’ve been fondled and spanked. I’ve been mauled in the goddamn VIP room. But this is the most intimate position I’ve been in for a long time. It’s the most intimate position I’ve been in since he last held me five years ago.
“I’m okay,” I say, my voice wobbling. Even then he takes his time releasing me. I stumble back against the wall. “I’ve been thinking about Saturday.”
“Me too, gorgeous,” he says, his voice low in the dark hallway. “It’s all I can think about.”
Shit. I’d been hoping it was some adrenaline-fueled fantasy, that he’d change his mind once we were back at the club. “I don’t think—”
“You’re not going to cancel on me, are you?”
The warning in his tone doesn’t give me much choice. Still I have to try. “It’s not a good idea to get involved with someone at work.”
He laughs. “We’re already involved.”
“Right, well.” I’m almost stammering—how does he do this to me? “This would be more involved. And Ivan wouldn’t like it.”
“Ivan doesn’t have to know.” He steps close, pressing me against the wall with his body, and I gasp. The concrete behind me is cool. His body is a furnace. “Besides, Ivan isn’t exactly focused on playing by the rules.”
“Maybe I like following rules.”
“That’s not the way I remember you.” He nuzzles my temple, almost the way an animal would scent another one. “I remember the wild girl I couldn’t get enough of.”
“That was me then. I was…troubled.”
“You’re working as a stripper. Most people would call that troubled.”
Hurt lashes me. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Oh, but you’re wrong. I know where you came from. I know what made you this way. I know why you like a man who’ll push you around a little.”
Shock and pain are like a cold fist around my heart. “How dare you bring my father into this.”
I hate that I ever told him. Honesty makes you vulnerable. Most foster kids would know never to share that kind of information. They’d know not to make themselves weak. But I’d lost myself when it came to Blue. I told him about my father, a member of a local MC gang and all around lowlife. He’d got himself locked up after an armed robbery. Things didn’t go much better for him after getting locked up. He got into fight after fight, ending up hospitalized more than not.
And my mother—she hadn’t been able to handle life without him.
Blue leans close. “Am I wrong?”
It makes too much sense to be wrong. It’s sick if I’ve been seeking out men like my father—common criminals and assholes alike. Sometimes I feel sick.
And sometimes I feel like pushing back. “Are you proud to be like him?” I ask. “A fucking criminal? He rotted in that jail cell until someone stuck a shiv in him. Is that what you are?”
He pulls back enough to let me breathe. I can tell I’ve shocked him.
No shock comes through his voice. He speaks in a lazy drawl. “No, sweetheart. As hard as you tried to get me locked up, it didn’t work.”
I never wanted him locked up. “You enlisted.”
I hadn’t known where he’d gone then, but I recognized the military bearing when he showed up again.
“They didn’t know what to do with me, so they shoved a gun in my hand and shipped me overseas. That’s kind of like what you did to me, isn’t it? I guess you were both hoping I’d get myself killed. That I wouldn’t come back.”
I love and hate that he came back. “Blue, I’m—”
“Saturday. No backing out.” He stalks off before I can answer.
It’s probably for the best that he interrupted. For the best that he left. I was about to say I’m sorry.
Chapter Eight
“Sugar?”
Honor shakes her head. “None for me.”
Mrs. Owens smiles vaguely. I think she’s already forgotten the question she asked.
I pour from the china teapot with the chipped lid. It’s a beautiful piece. Maybe it would even be worth some money—money that we desperately need. I couldn’t do that to Mrs. Owens, though. She’s so proud of them. They’re her one indulgence, the one thing she remembers every day.
Sometimes she doesn’t even remember who I am.
“Were these passed down to you?” Honor asks.
Mrs. Owens stares into space.
I answer for her, hoping the words will bring her back to the present. “These came from an estate sale thirty years ago. That’s where she got most of her sets. She used to check the obituaries to see if someone rich had died so she could get the best stuff.”
“How mercenary,” Honor says. “I approve. And the china is beautiful.”
Mrs. Owens doesn’t even blink.
I’m losing her. I feel her drifting farther away every day. That’s bad enough, but I worry about her safety when I’m gone. I unplug the stove, taking away her only comfort—her ability to make tea. But I worry that she’ll figure out how to squeeze back there to plug it back in. I worry that she’ll find some other way to light a fire in the cooktop.
I worry that she’ll wander down the street and never come back.
“How are you two doing?” Honor asks softly, breaking me from my reverie.
“I don’t know. Some days it’s just like before, when I was a kid. They were the best six months of my childhood.” Except for my time with Blue.
“And other days?”
“Other days I know she needs to be in a facility with nurses who can care for her around the clock. Who have locks on the doors and a button to press if she needs something.”
Sympathy is clear on Honor’s face. “Can I help? I have some money saved up from the Grand.” Her mouth twists in a wry smile. “Kip still refuses to let me help pay the bills with it. I think he’d rather burn it.”
A few months ago she was just like me, stripping and struggling to get by. After she met Kip, things changed quickly. Her past caught up to her—and Kip was there to protect her. She was there to protect him too. Since then they’ve been living together in his home.
“Oh hell no,” I say. “You worked your ass for that.”
She laughs. “Literally. I’ve gained a size since I stopped dancing.”
“Well, you look fabulous.” It’s not a lie. Sh
e’s practically glowing. It could just be general happiness—or maybe a kind of sex glow, since I know how much Kip was into her. Her stomach still seems pretty flat, but I wonder if there is another cause for that happy glow.
Her shoulder lifts. “Well, it’s just sitting there, so if you needed…”
I make a face. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think so. I looked into a few places, and the costs are just crazy. I could work at the Grand every night for a year and just cover the cost of a month.”
“Damn.” She glances at Mrs. Owens, who seems to have drifted off to sleep. “And she didn’t…”
Have savings, she means. “Just the house, which she owns. But it was in major disrepair when I found her again and moved in. I’ve been fixing things up when I can and keeping up with the bills, but that’s about it.”
I’ve been drowning, that’s what I mean to say.
From the sober look on Honor’s face, she knows it. Her next words come out slow and careful. “What about Blue?”
Alertness zings through my body, just like every time I hear his name. “What about him?”
“It seemed like you two had a thing.”
My laugh is hollow. “Yeah, I guess you could say we had a thing. A long time ago.”
“Oh.” Her gaze hits the table before meeting mine. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“There’s nothing really to talk about. I ruin everything good I ever have. Which was really only him. He was the only good thing I had, and I broke him.”
Her eyes fill with concern. “He doesn’t seem broken to me.”
“Not anymore.” I remember how he looked the last day I saw him five years ago. Hurt, angry. Like a man vowing revenge. I had a feeling he’d be getting that someday soon.
“I don’t think you could have hurt him, Lola. Not if you cared about him. That’s not you.”
“I didn’t want to hurt him,” I say, my throat raw, my chest tight. “But I did—and the worst part is, I wasn’t even sorry. Even now, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
* * *
“Hold still.”
The words are whispered into my ear, hot and faintly wet. I close my eyes. Tears squeeze down onto my cheeks. I’m bent over the bed, inhaling the dank scent of the bare mattress. There are stains I don’t want to contemplate.
Some of them probably came from me.
There’s a hard thrust, and I can’t help but whimper. I clamp my mouth tight and taste blood.
“Do you like that?” comes the breathless voice from behind me. “Does your boyfriend do it like that?”
I shudder at the stabbing pain, holding myself still and closed. I only have to get through this. I only have to survive.
“Hannah?” The voice comes from outside the room—familiar and beloved. No.
He can’t come in here. He can’t see my like this. I try to call out, to tell him not to come inside, but only a croak comes out. I’m too broken to even speak, too lost.
The door opens, and I only have seconds to glimpse the surprise in his eyes. And the rage.
Then he’s flying across the room. There’s no more invasion in my body, no more hands holding me down. Only the smack of flesh on flesh, the grunt of animals locked in battle.
I know this is a fight to the death.
Chapter Nine
I stare at the glass doors that open and close. Of all the places I could imagine Blue living, it’s not here.
I would have thought a run-down apartment building with rent by the week. I would have imagined sour milk and a stack of empty pizza boxes for a coffee table. Not that I think he’s broke. Ivan takes good care of the bouncers, just like he does for the girls. If my money wasn’t getting sucked into dialysis and a gas bill for a forty-year-old house with no insulation, I’d be rolling in the dough too. As it is, there’s a twenty in my pocket that’s going to be cab fare home.
It’s just that Blue seems like the quintessential bachelor—down to work and to fuck.
Not the kind of man who has a doorman who nods to me as I step up to the desk. “Ms. Bowman?”
My heart jumps in my throat, and it doesn’t go back down even when the kind-eyed old man smiles.
I force myself to chill the fuck out. No matter where Blue lives, whether it’s on the streets or a goddamn skyscraper, Blue is just another horny guy. I’ve known so many of them. Too many of them.
“That’s me.”
“Mr. Blue is expecting you.” The man nodded toward the elevators. “You can go on up. Twelfth floor.”
I don’t meet his eyes as I murmur my thanks. I can’t imagine what this man thinks of me, showing up here at night when I’ve never visited before.
Actually, I can imagine. I’ve heard the words flung at me a million times since I was a teenager. Slut. Whore. At least those times I did what I needed to survive. In a way that’s still what I’m doing now.
My red heels click on the smooth tile surface. Gleaming elevator doors reflect a woman in a pretty dress and a cheap jacket. All flash and no substance. It’s a relief when the doors close behind me, locking me in, leaving me alone as the elevator whooshes up. I shut my eyes against the mirrors around me and focus on my breathing.
There’s still time to back out.
I could go downstairs, hide my face and my shame from the kind-eyed doorman, and walk back onto the street where I belong. Blue wouldn’t follow me. He wouldn’t force me.
At least, I think he wouldn’t.
He’d been pretty forceful in that damn locker room.
The truth is that I owe him. He knows it. I know it. The only question is whether I’m going to pay up. Five years ago I was the kind of girl who’d shove him out the door without even a goodbye. Now I’m the girl who returns his wallet when it would be easy to shove it in the garbage and pretend I never saw it. I’m the girl who pays what I owe—I need to know I’m not the girl I was before. I need to know I’m worth anything at all.
The elevator doors slide open with a hushed sound. The quiet of the hallway rings in my ears. Everything is grayscale—the muted walls and the plush carpet. The silver knockers on every door. This place is a kind of bachelor pad, one made for wealthy men.
The kind that don’t need to be working security at a strip club, no matter how much Ivan is paying.
I’m standing there, confused¸ paralyzed, when a door opens.
“Hannah?”
My heart bangs against my chest. His voice sounds so sweet, so familiar. God.
I can’t take it. I can take his hands on me or his dick inside me, but I can’t take his voice saying my name. I can’t stand him thinking I’m that girl, the one too innocent and too broken, the one who loved him and the one who sent him away.
I turn and run for the elevator, which slides closed, just out of reach. My heel snags on the carpet, and I stumble. I’m falling, flying, the world a blur of gray and silver and tears in my eyes.
Strong hands catch me.
“Watch it,” he says in that same voice he uses to threaten me, to compliment me. They’re the same thing when they come from him. Everything about him warns me away and draws me close. I’m tearing apart just to be near him, breaking under the weight of my fear and desire.
“Let me go,” I whisper.
He doesn’t. His hands tighten on my arms. “Where are you going?”
“Away from here.” Away from you. “This was a mistake.”
“Ah,” he says. Just that, and then he tugs me gently toward him. The heat of his chest is solid against my back, supporting me and holding me in place. “Are you afraid of me, Hannah?”
My teeth clench. “Don’t fucking call me that.”
He pauses as if I’ve surprised him. “Why does it matter, with just you and me here?”
I force myself to take a deep breath. Straightening, I turn to face him. His eyes are curious, his stance wary. And he isn’t wearing any shoes. That’s what strikes me about him. The gray T-shirt snug around his arms, the worn jeans. Th
ey’re more casual versions of what he wears at the club every night. But he always has on thick shoes, almost like boots, when he works. Even at the fight, with no shirt on, he had slipped into big, unlaced sneakers before coming into the locker room.
Only now, standing in the hallway of his apartment building, is he standing without shoes. It makes him seem somehow more real—a real man, with real hopes and dreams that I can never be a part of. The future is for some other girl. I’m just the tease he needs to fuck to forget, the bitch he needs to punish. I’m the sentence, and this night, this is a period.
My feet carry me backward. Somehow I manage not to trip. My hands grope the smooth wall and find the button—and press.
His eyes narrow. “Lola?”
I hate that he gets it right this time. That he respects me enough to call me what I want.
But not enough to let me leave.
He steps forward. “You’ve come this far, gorgeous. You’re going to finish this.”
I raise my head. Never mind if my whole body is trembling—I will meet his eyes, those dark pools of lust and resentment, like windows to the past. “And if I say no?”
The windows frost over. “That’s not an option.”
Elevator doors slide open behind me. I glance at the empty mirrored box.
“Don’t,” he says.
I close my eyes. I’m not sure how I found the strength to come here.
I don’t think I have the strength to leave.
He steps toward me slowly, casually. His hand is tight when it fists in my hair. I remember he used to love my hair. He used to stroke it, to play with it, to press the strands between his blunt square-tipped fingers. Now all he wants to do is pull it, use it like a leash to yank my head back. I stare at a chrome light fixture. Yellow light clashes with the stinging tears in my eyes, making a kaleidoscope, something pretty in the face of an ugly past, an ugly present.
His voice is low in my ear. “You’re going to walk down that hall and go inside my apartment. Then you’re going to strip. I don’t need to watch. I see you do that any night of the week. What I want is what comes after. You. On the couch. Facedown, ass in the air, ready to take whatever I give you.”
