Maelstrőm

by Michelle Love

  Arsen prided himself on his appearance which he used to his advantage whenever possible. He was a machine of a man, using everything he could to get the results that he was seeking, whatever they were.

  In law, he used his well-educated brain to find every last law or case to make sure he won his client’s cases. Arsen Sloan had never lost a case since he began his career as a criminal lawyer, ten years prior. Well, there was that one, but it had only been his second ever case.

  Arsen tended to forget about the first few cases, the first two anyway. He never mentioned the first two, as a matter of fact.

  When it came to sex, Arsen used everything in his personal arsenal to make sure that he stayed on top of that game. Love had played no role in his sex life.

  Love was a word he hadn’t used since he was a naïve kid in his late teens before the girl he thought loved him watched him become broken and near dead.

  Arsen kept his shoulder length waves in perfect order, accenting his dark brown, brooding eyes. Thick, dark lashes surrounded them, giving the slightest hint of a soft side to the hard as nails man.

  After the day of horrible accusations, Arsen just needed a drink. A stiff drink and to be able to unwind, and get rid of at least a little of the tension which filled his muscled body.

  As he got into the backseat of his Escalade the privacy window went down. His driver and long-time friend, Paul, looked at him through the rear view mirror.

  The tension Arsen felt radiated off him and Paul knew better than to ask any questions.

  “To the club, boss?”

  Arsen nodded and closed the door, then ran his hand over his face and rubbed his temples. He pulled a bottle of beer from the little fridge and took it down in one gulp. The evening sky was growing dark and a thin fog was already moving in as they made their way up the coastline of the San Francisco Bay.

  Arsen’s eyes followed the lights that were coming on along the edge of the road. He was wondering when it had gotten so bad. When had his world started to rule him rather than he rule it?

  After the first five years as one of the top criminal lawyers in the entire state of California, Arsen Sloan had not only managed to gain a reputation as a winning lawyer who would do anything to win his cases, but also had become a billionaire. His ability to make great investments proved to be yet another thing Arsen did with near perfection.

  Perfection was a thing he made great strides to achieve in every part of his life. Up until that day, he’d done pretty well at keeping his life near perfect at all times.

  The alley was already dark as they pulled up to one of the main clubs that he frequented. Though, if not a member of the exclusive club, no one could tell what type of social gathering was going on there.

  People tended to get dropped off at the clubs he went to. Clubs that catered to his tastes some considered to be immoral and worse. The rusted metal door was closed and only a small sign at the very top of the old door let on that it was a bit more than an old storage facility.

  ‘Fierce,’ was the word etched into a small metal sign and suddenly Arsen’s stomach was in knots. He knew he shouldn’t go in there. He knew that was why he was in the precarious situation he was in.

  “You know, Paul, I better find another place to go from now on,” Arsen’s deep voice called out to his driver and friend.

  Paul was a friend who knew all about Arsen’s past, and present, but he was being left out of why Arsen had been so moody when Arsen told him he had a meeting at the main police station in San Francisco.

  “Sure thing, boss,” Paul said and pulled out of the alley and headed back to the part of the city where the regular people went to get drinks and socialize with one another.

  “I’ll take you to the club my younger sister likes to go to, but if you see her in there, she’s off limits, bro,” Paul told his old friend. “Lots of young law majors in that place. You should find someone to your liking, boss.”

  Arsen’s throat was growing tight again, so he unbuttoned the two top buttons of his stiffly starched white shirt he wore under a black suit jacket. The tie came all the way off and he stretched his long, lean-muscled legs out. Another beer he grabbed and popped the top, this one he took a long drink of, but stopped short of downing the whole thing.

  “Paul, let the boss shit go for tonight. I need a friend, not another employee. Shit’s coming down on me and without any family to support me, I’m going to need you to keep me from jumping off a bridge.” Arsen looked out the tinted window and felt his eye twitch.

  The first of many physical signs his body was sure to start exhibiting, just like it used to do when he was young and things were out of his control. Things he worked hard to get under control, and here he was with things beyond his control again.

  His stomach hurt, another sign and another thing he’d left behind him, or thought he had anyway. Paul pulled along the curb and jumped out to open Arsen’s door. He gave him a clap on the back and said, “Arsen, things will work out, man. You’re beyond smart and whatever has you this worried I know you can figure out how to take care of it. You’re good at this shit.”

  Arsen wished he had the faith in himself his old friend had, but the truth was his marks were all over the accusations made against him. He’d represented tons of people that he knew were guilty and managed to get them off the charges.

  He just needed to figure out how to get himself off charges where the evidence pointed right at him and he had to tell the men who questioned him things he never thought he’d have to explain to anyone.

  “I need a drink and a piece of hot ass would do wonders for me,” Arsen said with a deep chuckle. “I’d ask you to come, Paul, and help me drown my sorrows, but one of us has to drive and I think I pay you to do that, so I’ll go in alone and hopefully come out with a wicked little thing on my arm to take home.”

  “There’s no doubt you will, Arsen,” Paul said and gave Arsen a smile. “Get in there and get rid of that frown.”

  Arsen turned and walked into the door of the nightclub. The dance music was cranked up and a herd of young women were on the dance floor already, though the night was only beginning.

  He took a table near the dance floor so he could watch the people dance. Arsen was not into dancing, but he appreciated the way women could bend and move their bodies to the beat.

  He preferred a hard rock sound to the bubblegum pop that the DJ was playing in the social norm of a club. A pretty, young waitress came and placed her hand on his shoulder.

  “What can I get you, sir?”

  His dark eyes looked at the small, pale hand with perfectly manicured pink fingernails that was touching his left shoulder. In the clubs he went to, no female would ever approach him that way, and he had to fight the urge to grab her and toss her over his lap and teach her how to act accordingly.

  After swallowing hard, he answered, “How about a whisky sour?”

  The young woman with red-stained lips and blue eyeliner, her black hair pulled back into a tight and high ponytail smiled at him and said, “You should try our Eastern Sour. It has bourbon, OJ, lime juice, and Orgeat in it. It’s really popular. I think you’d like it.”

  He blinked at the dimwitted thing and thought about what would happen to a female who dared to suggest the thing a man wanted was anything but that. Through gritted teeth he said, “Bring me what I asked for.”

  She removed her hand from his shoulder as her smile quickly turned to a frown. “Touchy! Okay then. A whisky sour it is. Top shelf bourbon or does it matter?”

  His dark and now very moody eyes rolled with her endless questions. “Top.”

  She hurried off, and he hoped his attitude didn’t earn him a good bit of her spit in his drink as well. Arsen had a hard time dealing with normal women. He liked women who knew their place. Not that he was chauvinistic.

  Arsen knew strong women. Women who were smart and capable of doing anything a man could do. Those women he could respect and appreciate. But the little dimwitted thi
ngs like the waitress would be so much better off if they let a man take control of them, even if just in the confines of the bedroom, or dungeon.

  The song ended just as the waitress brought him his drink. She placed it on the table.

  “You wanna pay now, or run a tab?”

  “I think I’ll run a tab,” he said and took a credit card out of his wallet and handed it to her. “Keep ‘em coming and your tip will reflect my approval.”

  She laughed and made a low bow in front of him. “Thank you, Master.” She sauntered away, shaking her head as she went.

  “Okay, that’s ten bucks knocked off right there,” he mumbled to himself.

  He’d sat back one table away from the dance floor and was glad to see a group of about six young women had taken the table in front of him. Now he had a front-row seat behind a bevy of young beauties to pick from.

  He sipped his drink and let his eyes roam over each young woman at the table. One was tall and pretty in a Barbie doll kind of way. Her voice was high and a little squeaky.

  He thought about the kinds of sounds she’d make as he took her the way he wanted to. Maybe tied to his bed or the railing of the balcony outside his bedroom.

  He shook his head as she laughed and a snort came out of her mouth.

  On to the next girl.

  She was dark haired, plump, and wore little make-up. He noted how she could’ve used more and then when she spoke, her voice was deep.

  No, he couldn’t take a voice nearly as deep as his. That would make anything hard go soft in an instant. The next girl was intriguing as she had long, red curls that floated down her back.

  She showed promise, but he knew from experience that red heads could be feisty and it took a lot to get them to understand what he would and would not tolerate. He watched as a man approached her and asked her to dance.

  Her eyes ran over him like he was a piece of crap rather than a decent-looking man who was just being nice to her. “What do you want?” she asked with her nose squished up like he smelled bad or something.

  The guy kept his cool and even smiled at her.

  “Would you like to dance?”

  “With you?” she said and rolled her eyes to look at the other girls who watched her, most likely sure she was about to annihilate the poor guy.

  His laugh was getting a little nervous as was his demeanor as he switched his weight from one foot to the other.

  “Yes.”

  The red head’s hand ran over her too small for Arsen’s taste, breast, then down her small waist and landed on her too skinny ass, according to Arsen.

  “Does this look like something you’d like to get into your bed?” she asked the guy.

  The guy took a step back with her loaded question and should’ve turned and ran away from the obvious bitch. Arsen had to fight not to get up and take the young man out of harm’s way.

  “Sorry,” the poor guy mumbled and turned to leave.

  “Wait!” the red head called out.

  He turned back with hope in his eyes and Arsen found himself rooting for the poor kid. “Yes?”

  “What the hell made you think you could come over here and ask a woman who is clearly out of your league to dance?” The girl who now Arsen thought looked really ugly asked the poor guy.

  The guy spun around and took off as the table full of young women hooted and hollered at him vulgarities and put downs. It was more than Arsen could take anymore. The whole lot of them needed their asses spanked until they couldn’t walk, in his opinion.

  The waitress arrived with another drink and placed it on the table then picked up his empty one. Just as she began to make another bow, Arsen took her shoulder in his strong hand and stopped her. “Your antics are not lost on me, girl..”

  Her face went white, and she hauled ass away from Arsen who smiled as she fled. It was the first smile he’d made since he got the news the night before that he was a man of interest in some terrible crimes. The smile faded with his thought and he took a sip of his drink.

  The noise of the club faded as he thought about why it was he ever became involved in the seedy underworld that he’d become a part of. There was his first and only love at the beginning of it all.

  Beth was a sweet young thing. At sixteen, she was fresh and everything he wanted. Arsen had been a young seventeen and not as ready as he thought he was to delve into the romantic world.

  After a year of dating, Beth finally gave into him and the two lost their virginity to one another one fateful night in her bedroom. Her parents caught them and her father beat the hell out of him.

  As he laid on Beth’s bedroom floor, he saw it in her eyes as she looked at him. Her father had beat him into a bloody pulp. His jaw was broken and one arm was too. It laid out next to him at an awkward angle.

  Beth’s eyes held no compassion for the young man that she had just been claiming she loved, had just given her innocence to. No, the only thing there was disgust.

  Her words he could still hear, “Get up, Arsen! Defend yourself or something!”

  She held the blanket over her naked breasts as she sat up in the little twin bed they’d just made love on. Her blonde hair fell across her tanned shoulders and her blue eyes drooped at the outer edges as she looked at him with so much disappointment that he couldn’t believe it.

  “Help,” he’d managed to get to come out of his broken mouth.

  The same mouth that had lavished her with sweet kisses moments before her father came in and caught him on top of her. Arsen had been pulled away and slung across the room before he knew what was happening.

  He lay naked and twisted on the floor and all he could do was look at Beth and feel like a complete loser who let this happen to himself. She needed him to be so much more than he was.

  It was her mother who finally came to his aid. She’d found something and knocked her husband out as he wasn’t going to stop his assault on Arsen until Arsen no longer was drawing breath.

  Arsen was confused as Beth jumped off the bed, wrapping the sheet around her naked body and yelled at her mother, “What did you do to Daddy?”

  Her mother shoved her back onto the bed and shouted, “He was about to kill Arsen!”

  Beth looked at him with disgust again. “Get out! We’re done!”

  His body was in agony as her mother picked him up the best she could and took him to her car. She took him to the hospital and left him at the emergency room, alone.

  Arsen came back to reality and took the last of his drink which seemed to be disappearing way too fast. Another drink came, but a waiter brought it and left it for him.

  Shame filled him as he realized he’d scared the waitress. He was always doing shit like that. He seemed to have no real filter as to who he could talk to in his dominant way and who he couldn’t. It was a fine line, and he seemed to always be on the wrong side of it.

  A popular song came on and the table full of girls in front of him shrieked, making him cover his ears. They all grabbed each other and ran to the dance floor like a heard of elephants.

  Arsen looked around and saw table after table of young women doing the exact same thing and he shook his head and mumbled, “This is not going to work for me.”

  His drink was new, so he knew it’d take him until at least the end of the upbeat song before he was done with it. The night was still young, and he had no desire to go home all alone. The women in that club were not going to be anything he needed on that night.

  “Oh, hell,” he heard a young woman’s voice say as she walked past him.

  He turned his head and watched her take a seat at the table the women had vacated. She watched them for a moment then took her cell phone out of her back pocket and started looking at it.

  Arsen looked her up one side and down the other. She was tall and curvy. Her breasts were exactly the right size, a little bigger than most women’s. Her ass was round, and he liked the way that her tight jeans fit it perfectly. She had on leather cowboy boots that she had her jeans t
ucked into.

  Her hair was long and dark, falling in waves to the top of her plump ass. His mouth was watering already. Looking all over her, he noticed the absence of a drink and looked back to find the waiter near him. He motioned him over and told him to take the same thing he was drinking to the young woman who stood alone at the table in front of him.

  He sat back and watched as the waiter took the drink to her and when she asked who had sent it, he pointed to Arsen. She smiled and waved and mouthed a ‘thank you’ to him.

  He liked her manners already. She knew how to accept things and that was a thing he had to have in a woman. He believed in lavishing gifts on them. It had been years since he had a submissive that he had felt enough for to do that.

  The women in the last three years had all been people he felt nothing for. Just women who liked things the way he did, nothing more. The fact that three of his previous subs were gone was a thing which made him sad, only he wasn’t given the time to mourn them.

  His attention went back to the young woman he’d sent the drink to. She had gone back to looking at her phone and occasionally tapping the screen. She was too far away for him to see the color of her eyes, but the shape of them were like almonds and she had thick, dark lashes that fluttered occasionally as she smiled at her phone’s screen.

  The herd of bitches came back off the dance floor and the tall blonde Barbie hugged the new girl and started wagging her finger at her, obviously admonishing her for not being on time like the rest of the mindless young women at the little party.

  The red head lifted her arm high in the air and the waitress came to them with a lit up cake. It was the blonde’s birthday it looked like and the other women sang happy birthday to her then she blew the candles out. The dark haired beauty looked completely out of place with the mob of air heads.