by Claire Adams
“That wasn’t why I laughed. I laughed because I have at least one drink pretty much every day. I couldn’t imagine going a whole year without drinking.”
“That seems like a problem to me,” I said with a smile as I tried to calm the tension between us.
“Don’t go getting all sarcastic with me. I’m trying to be nice,” Jackson said as he stopped eating and just looked at me. His sly smile melted my agitation and I decided to try and be nicer to him.
His eyes were dangerous. I felt it. Not just dangerous to other people – he was dangerous to me. I felt safe around him, and I felt myself putting my guard down. I certainly needed to be careful how far I let him into my life. The danger wasn’t from harm he might do to me, the danger I felt from Jackson was my wall coming down. The wall I kept up around me was the only thing that prevented all my emotions from spilling out like some silly girl. I didn’t have the luxury of emotions and I couldn’t let Jackson break through that barrier.
“Sorry,” I said in a lame attempt to apologize.
I was comfortable with sarcasm around guys. Anything that was necessary to keep them at a distance. I couldn’t even let in the nice guys I had met outside of work. There were two sides to me and neither of them made sense to the other side.
When I was at the club, I could seduce any man. I knew exactly what he wanted and I knew how to get him to want me so badly he would do anything for me. I was vibrant and seductive on stage. Then off stage, I was intimate and real with the guys. Many of them came back every single night I worked and waited for a chance at alone time with me. They liked to talk. It seemed weird and yes I took their money, but a lot of them just wanted to talk.
Then, there was the person I liked to be outside of work. I dressed conservatively, and I spent time at the local bookstore. I loved to cook and watch cooking shows on television. The people at my gym all knew me by name and thought I worked as an investment consultant. It still made me laugh to think of how the front desk girl had told a guy I was an investment consultant when he asked what I did. Of course, I never corrected him.
“I’m going to head to bed, catch you in the morning,” Jackson said as he went to his room.
“Would you mind if we left the door open? I would feel safer.”
I saw a bit of surprise cross Jackson’s face, but he just smiled. Underneath the brooding muscular surface, I suspected there was a really nice man there. It was probably buried really deep underneath, but I could tell he was a good guy.
“I can do that. Goodnight.”
“Night.”
After I had cleaned up a bit, I slid into bed and let myself finally relax. It was easy to relax with Jackson on the other side of the wall. He made me feel safe. It was nothing that I was going to tell him, of course. But just having him there with me made me feel like everything was going to be just fine. I really hoped we would find Ana safe and sound and that this job we had taken would turn out well for the both of us.
Sleep never came easily for me, but on that night, I hardly remember closing my eyes before I was totally in dreamland. Well, at least, my version of dreamland. I had a corrupt mind that often went back to horrible memories while I slept. It was something I had fought with throughout the years and had never really been able to get under control.
Having Bull around had helped me, though. I knew he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me while I slept, so I always fell asleep better with him around. But it was interesting to find out that my body had the same reaction to having Jackson around.
My dreams weren’t that of fairytales and happy endings. When I dreamed, it was more like nightmares filled with familiar people from my past. Some nights were better than others, but most ended with me in a fit of screams and my loyal Rottweiler calming me down.
I felt the man’s hands around my throat. It was hard to breathe and I wanted to scream for help. His grip got tighter and tighter and I reached to my own neck to try and pull his hands off of me. It was such a familiar moment. I had played it out in my nightmares over and over again. But on that particular night, I couldn’t seem to get his hands free from my neck.
“Roxanne! Roxanne!” I heard a man’s voice from outside of my dream.
“Help! Help me!” I screamed.
“I’m here. You’re alright,” Jackson soothed as I opened my eyes and looked up at him.
My own hands were wrapped around my throat tightly and Jackson gently pulled them off. He sat next to me and just waited there. I assumed he wanted some sort of reason for my nightmares. But I wasn’t ready to share that.
Nightmares were my norm, but having a hunky guy there to wake me up was very new. I made a point not to be too sarcastic as I tried to think of what I should do next. I actually really wanted Jackson to stay there with me until I fell asleep, but I feared he would think I was hitting on him or something.
“I’m okay. I’m okay,” I said quietly.
“Yes, you are. Okay, I’m going to head back to my bed,” Jackson said as he started to stand up from my bed.
“Stay. Please,” I said as I grabbed his hand and wouldn’t let go.
The touch of his large hand as it wrapped around mine was simply perfection. I felt safe with him. It didn’t matter what I dreamt about, with Jackson there I felt at ease and willing to try sleeping again.
There was a tug and pull going on in my mind, though. Jackson was seeing my exposed wall. The one I put up to keep everyone out from knowing the real me. But as he stood there and I held onto his hand, I felt like he could see right through me and was about to know my defensive wall right over.
I didn’t want to fuck him, not in that moment. I didn’t want anything from Jackson at all. The only reason I wanted him to stay in my bed was purely so I could get back to sleep again. I didn’t want to explain anything. I didn’t want to fight anymore. All I wanted was a truly good night of sleep.
Jackson didn’t answer me, but as I pulled the blankets back for him, he reluctantly climbed into bed with me. We didn’t make eye contact and he laid flat on his back as close to the edge of the bed as he could get. Something about his quietness made me think that he knew nightmares himself, that he knew them very well.
I turned the opposite direction of him and then closed my eyes. I truly just wanted to get a good night of sleep. I didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable and I certainly didn’t want to fuck him. Well, at least right in that moment, I didn’t want to fuck him. I had had many thoughts about what it would feel like to have his body thrusting inside of mine.
It felt good to have a man in my bed, though, even if he was just there to protect me from my dreams. I needed all the protecting I could get. My brain wasn’t the kind of place I could fight off very well, especially in the haze of sleep.
Chapter 5
JACKSON
Her hand was on my cock and I didn’t know what to do. She seemed like she was asleep, but how could a person be asleep and still moving their hand up and down the shaft of my cock? Obviously, my body reacted to her touch. There was nothing I could do to stop it. Alright, I could have pulled her hand away, but it had been so long since my cock had been held by a woman as beautiful as Roxanne.
“Roxanne, are you awake?” I said to wake her up.
But she clearly wasn’t awake. She continued to move her hand up and down my cock and I heard her start to moan slightly as she worked on my body. It took everything in my power not to grab a hold of her. But that would be bringing things to a different level because I was clearly awake and she wasn’t.
“Um, Roxanne, maybe we should get up?” I said as I slightly shook her to wake her up.
I genuinely made an effort to wake her up. Things had started to get out of hand and I was either going to roll over and fuck her or go back to my room. I couldn’t take the feeling of her hand stroking me very much longer. Everything in my body was enticed by her and all I could think about was how sweet it would feel to be inside of her.
As her hand slid u
p and down my cock, I felt my hips press in motion with her, urging her to move faster and faster. I loved the touch of her fingers around me.
“Okay, I’m out of here,” I said as I jumped up and made my way back to my room. I pulled my sweatpants up around my throbbing cock.
Of course, just as I was getting out of the bed, Roxanne woke up.
“Thanks for staying here with me,” she said as she started to wake up.
I turned and looked back at her with my hips still facing away toward my room. I didn’t want to let her see just how hard my body was after she had played with me.
“No problem,” I said. “Let’s get some breakfast in fifteen minutes or so.”
“Sounds good, thanks.”
It was clear that she didn’t have any memory of the playing she had done with my cock that morning. I certainly wasn’t going to tell her about it, but it was a good memory to keep to myself.
“How do you feel about going downstairs to talk about our strategy and eat, instead of getting room service?” I asked through the closed door between our rooms.
“Yes, that would be good.”
Within fifteen minutes, Roxanne and I were both dressed and ready to head down to the lobby restaurant for some breakfast. Surprisingly, we had dressed almost identical with jeans and black t-shirts, although her t-shirt was filled out much better than mine. For a brief moment, I actually liked having her there with me. No, it wasn’t because of the fondling that had occurred. I had spent many years waking up in hotels and having breakfast alone. It would be nice to have someone sitting across from me for a change.
My animosity toward her coming along had died down a bit and I actually thought she could help with the investigation. Well, that was if she stayed out of my way and listened to me. Otherwise, she was going to get herself into some pretty deep water with Stephano. I suspected he was already a little curious as to who the man was that she had brought home from the club and if I showed up at the club again, he was likely to get pretty involved in her life. We had to devise a plan that would work well for the both of us and still allow us to gather the information we needed.
Chase had left me with a ton of cash to help with the operation and I could find plenty of ways to get people to talk even without it. My field experience with the Special Forces Army team had left me with highly honed fighting skills. My concern wasn’t any type of hand to hand combat, it was a gunshot to the head when I wasn’t paying attention.
Unfortunately, having Roxanne around did make it much harder for me to pay attention. She was tough and savvy, though, and I liked that. If she hadn’t been so damn tough, I would never have agreed to let her help out on the search for Ana. It wouldn’t have mattered how much money Chase was throwing at me, I wouldn’t have allowed it.
“I think I should go to work tonight and see if any of the other women know where Ana might be at. It will be too hard to find her if we have to search around at all of his different locations.”
“I agree. But I can’t let you go alone. What if he feels like something is up? He’s not going to let you leave. It’s too dangerous.”
“Believe it or not, I can actually take care of myself.”
“When a gun is pointed toward your head?”
“Oh, don’t be a jackass. You know what I mean.”
“I do. I also know what men like Stephano are capable of and I don’t trust anyone alone with him. We will need to make a story and a plan for me to be in the club.”
“You could be an admirer, I guess. But you’re going to have to look different.”
“What’s wrong with the way I look?”
I knew what she meant, though, it wasn’t likely that a well put together guy with lots of money would frequent a strip club in search of a woman. I needed to look more desperate. I needed to look like Roxanne was my dream girl and I couldn’t get her.
“I just mean that we need to dork you up a little bit before it will make sense for you to be in there searching for me.”
“I agree.”
“There’s a problem, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Your muscles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dork with biceps like yours,” Roxanne said with a sweet smile on her face.
It was nice to see her smile. I didn’t think I had seen her smile at all since she and I had first met. She was a serious woman, and I respected that. She had a tough life and it wasn’t something I understood at all. I could tell that her life was based around a lot of difficult people and probably a lot of hurt. I wasn’t prepared to ask her more about it or support any woman and her emotions – it just wasn’t something I was equipped to deal with.
My life was simple, I liked it that way. I liked to keep to myself, and I wasn’t about to complicate my life with anything that I couldn’t control. I had learned a long time ago that women were not something I could control.
“I can’t make my muscles go away,” I laughed.
“Maybe we could get you some glasses, buy you a different type of outfit?”
“Sure, we can give it a try.”
“Do you have any ideas what you would like me to say to the other women as I look for Ana? I don’t want to be too obvious about it.”
She had a good point. If Roxanne started asking around about Ana, people were going to get the wrong idea. They would worry that Roxanne was doing something different than she normally did.
“How long has it been since Ana was at the club?”
“A couple weeks.”
“Maybe instead of being concerned about her, you could say that you are pissed and you think she stole something from you. People tend to be less suspicious of anger than they are of concern.”
“That’s pretty messed up.”
“It’s human nature, though. People are angry more than they are helpful.”
“Wow, that says a lot about us as humans.”
It was true, though. People did get angry more often than they were helpful. As a general rule, people liked to think the worse of others much more than they thought about the good in people. Even as I worked on other investigation cases, I never went into a location and said I was looking for a friend. It was a tell-tell sign that I was not the person's friend.
How often did your friends actually come and look for you? Not very often at all. In comparison, if you owe someone money, they always came looking for you. There was no hiding from them. Same with if you had done something to piss someone off. It was inevitable that they would come looking for you.
“I agree, it isn’t always the best of our character traits, but we aren’t here to change the human race. Our job is to blend in as much as possible and figure out where Ana is.”
“You should order a private dance again,” Roxanne said.
I thought I saw a smile form at the corner of her mouth. She wanted to be alone with me in a private room and she wanted to dance for me. I would be more than happy to comply with her. The feeling of her breasts in my hands was a definite perk of the job.
“I’m fine with that.”
“Not that I want to do it. It would just give us a good opportunity to talk and review the information I have.”
“Sure, I totally get it.”
She just wanted to dance for me. After having her hand on my body the night before, I wasn’t about to turn away her offer. It was a logical way for us to communicate without everyone suspecting that we were talking about anything other than the dance.
“So, I’ll go into work a little early. I can talk with the other dancers and see what’s going on. But I don’t have a phone anymore, so I will have to just see you when you get there.”
“Yes, we don’t want to be seen arriving together or talking at all. Things will have to be totally professional between us.”
As we finished our breakfast, I had a renewed respect for Roxanne. She didn’t seem scared at all and, in fact, she was very focused on finding Ana and doing things the best way she could. Not many women
would be willing to get involved, even with the kind of money that Roxanne had been offered.
It was nice that she listened to me, as well. I knew what I was doing and I didn’t need anyone trying to tell me what to do or not paying attention when I told them how things needed to happen. She started to earn my respect with how she was handling things so far. I wasn’t willing to say it was an entirely good thing to have her working with me, but at least it wasn’t horrible anymore.
“Alright, the big question is, how are we going to get Ana out from wherever she is?”
“Oh, I don’t know any of that yet. Let’s do one thing at a time.”
“Too much thinking wears you out?” Roxanne said with a laugh.
Oh, she’ss wicked. She knew that the idea of me being worn out by thinking about a plan would piss me off, but what she didn’t know was that I was an expert at controlling my emotions. No one could get me worked up. That was something I had learned from my special forces training: be in control at all times.
“I prefer not to plan until I know what I’m planning for. We have no idea where she is or the kind of security that might be around there. For now, let’s concentrate on getting through today and getting the information we need to move forward.”
I could tell my even tone and lack of anger threw her off. It was fun to surprise people and I liked to see that look in their eyes. No one was going to get a rise out of me, especially not a woman.
“Whatever. I’ll do it your way if it will make you happy,” Roxanne said as she looked devilishly at me.
“Yes, it will make me happy.”
We finished breakfast and didn’t talk about the job for the rest of the afternoon. Instead, we moved to talking about the weather and other non-issue type of topics. It was safer to leave the conversation alone and not get Roxanne too worked up before our evening of work.
