by Savannah May
“But the first position listed on my resume would be assistant in a sex club.”
“Look around- do you see any toys, people fucking. Just forget I ever offered, I wouldn't want to force you into anything you aren't comfortable with.”
Chapter EIGHT
Cole
I couldn't stand it when her eyes flashed with fury at my boneheadedness. Not because I'm a control freak, that's not it at all, I couldn't bear the agony of wanting her so much and not being able to have her.
Her flashing temper was such a change from her usual docile sweetness and showed such fiery passion for her beliefs that I rarely saw in the women at the club. My cock was a pole of steel in my pants and thank fuck I was behind the desk and she had no idea how horny I was to pull that baggy dress up and bury myself in her.
She's the only woman who could or would come to this club in a shapeless sack covering every curve and mound of her body and still exude sensuality that makes me rigid with desire. Those knee high shoe things she's wearing are the fucking sexiest footwear I've ever seen because of the innocent way she wears them, not trying to act all sexy come-fuck-me makes her hotter than anyone I've ever seen. She is dangerous provocative and she doesn't even know it.
But every time she starts with the family step-sibling shit a dart of murderous rage pierces my chest. It's as though she's purposely trying to put up a wall between us. She's forgotten what we had like her memory's been wiped and tried to run away from me without a word of goodbye, just tossed me aside and on to the next.
Murderous intentions surged through me when I saw her chatting to Cruz de Angelis, that fucking Adonis. She initiated the conversation, blushing like a coy English princess at his smart ass answers. I saw every fucking second of their tete-a-tete on my closed circuit and it was as much as I could do not to go down there and haul her out of the shibari room myself. And revoke that bastard's membership on the spot.
Yeah my jealousy is way out of bounds, just another emotion that's not finding any relief because it absolutely shreds me how she can put me aside for a bogus reason. I can only think that I was just a good fuck, a tough guy with rock solid pecs who took her V-card and gave her a better one- the entry to Illicit. That's the only possible reason I can come up with for her chill and I'd never tell a single soul in the world this, but it fucking hurts like fuck.
The heat between us as we fought over some bullshit nonsense that was nothing but an excuse for not saying what we really felt was desert storm blistering. I almost pulled her into my arms and smothered that delicious full mouth with mine. I wanted to taste her and entwine my tongue to hers in an endless smooth rhythm.
Oh that sackcloth nun's habit would be so easy to yank up her thighs and slip between them to toy with the juices I knew were pooling there. This battle of wills could not continue, even though I love to see her passion flare. Harley will be mine no matter what I have to do to get her.
Harlow
I stormed out of Cole's office and Strike went right in. He'd been waiting at the door like a gargoyle and must have heard our fight. On the way back down the stairs to the main club floor, I passed Rowan heading up. Jesus, speaking of the dominatrix costume, she was wearing a full on corset that compressed her waist to Victorian proportions. How could she even breathe?
She must have had to break a few ribs to get into that and it had to be agony on her stomach. The six inch span of her waist threw her breasts into high relief, mounding the tops almost completely. In fact the dark aureola around her nipples were visible at the edge of the latex. Shit, she caught me staring and gave me a knowing smile as I passed as though I secretly harbored desires to know her better. Yuck.
I looked back and watched her go into Cole's office with a bloom of- what?- I could not be jealous of Cole's activities now that our status was changed. He could do whatever he wanted but I just didn’t want him doing it with her.
I'd completely forgotten about seeing her talking to the man I was sure was Cole's father, Michael, in the alley behind the club. I went back up the sitars, maybe more stealthily that was entirely innocent, intending to ask her about that when she emerged.
“...situation critical.” I heard Strike say when I came close enough to the door to hear the three having a pow-wow. Then the crack was closed off and I had to either press my ear up to the wood or walk away. There was only one choice.
“We've had a security breach.” I heard Cole's voice clearly through the heavy door. “Our dear Texas Senator called me yesterday to say he'd had a letter. He was just in here now and told me the fault lies with us.”
“What was in the letter?”
“The person was here, saw the Senator at his preferred game-” I heard a chorus of groans from Strike and Rowan that drowned out details of the senator's play. “-and demanded a hundred grand by Wednesday or the media.”
“That will not play well for his Presidential bid in '20,” Rowan, Ms Networker breathed.
“So how do we handle this?” Always to the point Strike asked. “We gotta figure out who it is and stop up the leak permanently.
“I vetted everyone so tightly,” Rowan said, slightly on the defensive. “I can't think who it could be.”
“I'm pretty sure I know who it is but that's not the worst yet.”
“You think it was the breach from a couple weeks back?” Strike was on page with Cole immediately, the reason they were glued at the hip after years.
“What breach?” Rowan asked, she sounded peeved at being out of the loop in the threesome.
“Cole's old man got in here, using the family connection for an in,” Strike said, his voice petering out as he spoke, like he suddenly thought better of giving up all the intel. Maybe he didn't trust her either.
“Was that when he was looking for his daughter?” Rowan snapped, displaying that she was in the loop on my sordid tale.
“He wasn't looking for her, he was out for his son and didn't even know they were, er, acquainted,” Strike informed her.
So Cole hadn't told Rowan he and I had once been more intimate.
“Was this before or after he jacked her?” Rowan snapped harder.
“Look, the bastard has a thing for young girls okay,” Cole slammed into the mix. “This isn't his first foray into abusing teenagers and I'm to blame here.”
“How are you responsible for your father's fucked up deviancy?” Rowan asked.
“I saw it before. He got a thing for a girl in the neighborhood, one I'd had a bit of a crush on when they first moved in and I realized that every girl I'd ever liked or dated, he somehow got up in her face soon as he got the chance.”
“That doesn't make it your fault, Hon,” Rowan's voice was all soft and I hated the way she called him Hon.
“That's not all. I caught him in the garage with her, his mouth on her face, his hands inside her top and she didn't look as though she was relishing his caress. He went ballistic when he heard me call her, gave her the chance to run and he beat me to a pulp. But at least she got away, that time.”
“What do you mean 'that time'?” Rowan asked.
“Boss, you don't have to-” Strike interrupted and I pressed my ear harder in as the door downstairs was opened and the sound of music and voices smothered those inside the office. What did the right hand man know that the left hand girl was unaware of?
“He kicked me out, I was leaving anyway and took a bus that landed in Vegas. All that you know. But that girl disappeared and was later -”
Approaching footsteps forced me to step back from being pressed against the door, plainly eavesdropping on the owner.
“Hi there, Harlow. You having a good night?” It was only one of Cole's minders, Branson I think his name was, way more forward with me as though he knew me better than he ought.
I had no idea how many of Cole's people had been party to my abduction and rescue so maybe this one did know me well. I greeted him and said I was waiting for Cole, then melded with the wood immediately he'd passed on
his round.
“- because I ran away and never said anything.”
Dammit, I missed the most important part of what happened to the girl, what his father had done to her that Cole had not spoken out about. Whether it had been the same he'd done to me and might jostle my memory.
“And now that silence not only put Harley in danger, everything we've built here is likely to go to shit.”
“We can fix this. I'll talk to the senator,” Rowan said. I had an idea she'd be willing to use all her charms to rescue Cole.
“No, he's already made his position very clear and there's no way out of this.”
“What does he want?” Strike the man of few but very direct words said.
“He told me to meet him at the drop. I'm to come out of retirement for one more job.”
What? Retirement and one more job? My mind jumped about like a cricket picturing Cole whipping his father for trying to blackmail one of his members.
“Like I said, permanently,” Strike said.
“He's my old man. He may be an asshole but he's my father.”
“You remove the problem, you get two solutions,” Strike said.
Two solutions- two? What did he mean? Oh jeezus, Strike would know that we were steps but without the father...Oh my god who were these people?
“I'll take care of this one if you want the job done,” Strike continued.
“I can't put that on you. He's married to Harley's mother.”
“I didn't know you'd developed such sensitivity for people who should be eliminated,” Rowan said. The perfect commandant for all the genocide camps in the world. “You said just the other day that you wished you'd fixed the bastard when you found your sister in his basement.”
“But Harley just told me to go easy on her mother. The woman's not a dolt, she suspects something's up with her ideal marriage but she's also of a certain age that she's terrified of being invisible and all alone for the next thirty years.”
“So you're going to risk everything because one old woman is desperate for a man even if he's an asshole rapist?” Rowan said.
“You don't know how family changes shit, Ro,” Cole said and I could hear the desolation in his voice.
I wished we could be alone, just he and I holding each other through this endless crap and at the same time I was horrified at the man I thought I knew discussing murder like it was breakfast.
“If this is family life, I'm glad I've never had it,” Rowan said. “Is that it then, because you know the Senator will take us apart with barely a flick of the wrist. This club will be finished, LA, all the new openings around the world.”
“What choice do I have? You want me to order the kill on my father?”
“I'd do it.”
There was a pause then Strike finally said, with reluctance, “Knowing what you've told me and what I saw in that basement, sorry boss.”
With a great surge in my chest it was all I could do not to crash through the door and rip into this threesome casually discussing the murder of a human being for the sake of their stupid sex clubs. I was the one who'd been tortured and abused, not them. They had no right to use me as an excuse for their kill.
My whole world collapsed in front of me. Not only did I have nothing left and no future to live for, the man I'd idolized for my entire adult life was nothing but a psycho who relished the thrill of the kill for his own benefit. Psycho. I hated him with every pore in my body and ruefully regretted having loved him to distraction, wasting six years of my young life for a shadow.
I careened back down the hall back towards the club. I wanted Lil. The only person left in the whole world I could count on. The tears were set to erupt in hot streams and I needed my friend to help me hold it together.
Chapter NINE
Down and down I went to the shibari room, feeling like I was descending into Hades. My eyes adjusted to the dim light and scoured the room for Lil who was no longer in the position I'd left her. Of the close to a dozen women in rope bondage, I was sure none was Lil.
She couldn't have finished up and left already, her niwashi or whatever the tie-upper was called was only just getting started on her chest. Maybe she got freaked and demanded to be let go? I headed for the door to the main area where I was sure to find her. No way Lil would have left without telling me.
“Hey Harl, you all good? You look completely spooked,” Cruz, the blonde bomb detonator exploded another in my heart with his divine face. “You're far to beautiful to be so distressed.”
“I've got to find my friend. Have you seen her? She was right here being tied in front of us.”
“You just missed her. She and her dom went to the private area.” With a nod of his head, he indicated the massive leather doors studded with iron tacks that were barred against casual entry, no voyeurs in the private rooms. I couldn't believe it. Lily had gone to a private play room with a man she'd never met who won her in an auction with a final bid larger than what I'd paid for my college car.
My final brick of support was pulled and the entire construction of what I could rely on crumbled to dust. Nobody was who I thought they were. Every person I thought I could count on, was sure I knew to a fault, had tonight exhibited behavior so completely out of character there was not a rock in my world and I was completely alone.
“I have to get out of here,” I mumbled, looking all around as though an escape hatch might open up before me.
“We were just about to leave,” Cruz said. “No one else tempted us after you turned down our offer.”
“I didn't turn it down,” I said. “I was called away right at the moment I decided to say yes.”
“Really? You want to experience shibari with me?”
“I do want to, very much,” I said. My nipples bulged through the soft fabric layers covering them to stand hard in his gaze.
“Now is not the time if something's upset you,” he said, a picture of concern for my well-being.
“I'm fine but I don't want to be in full view.” Now I knew Cole had closed circuit trained on the public rooms, there was no way I'd ever relax.
“There are private rooms.”
“Can we go to your house?” I blurted, with no idea where that may be and aware of the danger of going home with a stranger. But he'd been fully vetted by Cole and the indomitable Rowan. Nothing nasty was likely to get past her.
“Absolutely. Kenn isn't one for public exposure either. She was only up for it because of the blast of being bonded to someone else.”
He told me to meet him outside in ten minutes once he'd secured a car. Sweet that he didn't want to make me walk all the way to wherever he'd parked in the new shoes. I could have a dutch courage shooter at the bar with Kennedy. Brandy was supposed to be good for shock. I sank back into my first love seat and ordered alone because Kennedy had disappeared.
Cole
“What do you mean she's gone? Where has she gone?” I scream at Harlow's friend with the ratbox apartment when Strike brought her up to my office. “You came here with her and ditched her? Is that what you call friendship?”
“I was-” For a beat I'm sure she's going to say tied up in which case I might come close to slapping her. “-with someone,” she whispers. “But Harley knew and she was right beside me.”
Until I dragged her away and upset her. Had I pushed her into some bastard's arms?
“Where's Cruz de Angelis,” I holler at Rowan and Strike who are running the security footage from the cameras on the doors to the private rooms on the offchance she'd gone in to play.
“He left ten minutes ago,” Strike says. “With that girl he said was his sister although we have him listed as an only child, one brother, deceased.”
“You're sure they were alone?” I'm almost screaming with the explosion set to go off in my chest. “There were no breaches tonight? No one else got in claiming to be my uncle?”
“No boss, there were no breaches,” Strike replies with his usual quiet endurance of my mood, making me insta
ntly feel like the asshole I'm being, tossing shit out at my closest allies- my only allies. My frantic need to possess Harlow making me a monster.
Branson comes over the two-way that he has her. She's at the front door, waiting for a ride. I tell him to keep her there or else and I'm out of my office, down those stairs faster than sliding the rail like a superhero asshole.
“Where the fuck are you going?” I growl, yanking her by the wrist out of the doorway back into the reception area.
Her eyes enormous saucers of shock and – something that looks suspiciously close to loathing, making my heart wrench in my chest. I shove the velvet drape covering the walls and drag her through the hidden door opening to a service passage. She never once stops squirming out of my iron grasp for all the good that does her.
“Let me go. You don't get to ask me where I'm going or who with. You aren't my boss and you can't control me.”
“Oh yeah? Do you know how infantile you sound right now?” I throw her arms over her head, pinning her wrists under a single flattened palm and easily hold her motionless with her back arched from the wall.
“Let me go you bully.”
Fuck the way she bucks and writhes makes me half delirious with the need to rip that baggy sack from her body and bury myself all the way into her like I'd been aching to do every day for the last six fucking years. The fever she's built in me is way more ferocious than the malaria.
“Making new friends are you? Going home with some blonde bimbo asshole you've known for ten minutes? Nice.”
“Fuck you, don’t tell me you've never done the same. Now if you'll excuse me, brother.”
“Don't start with that step-brother bullshit. That's horse shit and you know it. You're using it as an excuse to hide the fact that you are fucking terrified of the feelings you have for me.”
“I don't have feelings for you. Not like that.”
The thickness of my thigh presses between hers and she lets out a whimper that untethers the wild man. I hold her pinned so easily under one hand, my eyes fixed into her terrified ones and pull that habit sack up her thigh until it reaches the top and my fingers slip beneath the edge of her panties.
