“Are you sure you want your bachelor party here?” Elliot rubbed his face.
My mouth must have popped open in shock, because Julian laughed and after he out the tray down on his desk, used his index finger to close my mouth.
“I’ve kept my engagement a secret, Elliot.” Julian turned to his brother, his voice held a razor’s edge.
Elliot shrugged from where he was sprawled on the loveseat in the corner. “It’s not my fault you want the best of both worlds. You hear that, honey?” He glanced at me. “Your boss is engaged. Stop with the doe-eyes.”
Something stabbed at my heart and I reached behind me with shaking hands to unlatch the door so I could escape.
The rest of my shift was uneventful. Except for one regular who grabbed my ass and gripped it hard enough to leave a bruise. He was spotted immediately and thrown out.
Julian and Elliot stayed tucked away in the office. It wasn’t until I came back from the staff bathroom that I heard voices coming from Julian's office.
I didn’t want to listen, but some morbid part of me wanted to know more about their lives.
I couldn’t imagine the Golds having the same kind of issues that plagued us mere mortals. Elliot had looked like he wanted to pound whiskey until his problems disappeared. The masochist in me wanted to know what those problems were.
“So, you're back in Goldryn Bois?” Julian's voice was hard to make out through the thick wooden door.
“It’s been in the works for months.” Elliot replied.
“It has nothing to do with...”
“Fuck. Julian, I can’t.”
“I can’t believe Sarah Mallory managed to catch you.” Julian said in awe.
The sound of a glass smashing made me jump but I was careful not to make a sound.
“What the fuck do I do, Jules?” Elliot's voice was muffled by something.
“She's married.” Julian said. “There’s something you're not telling me.”
“This wasn’t my plan.” Elliot sounded broken and I didn’t blame him. My heart felt like it had been ripped in two the second that Sarah Mallory had gotten her claws into him.
That was prime gossip. Rina would love to hear it. I touched my face, it was flushed. I felt hot as hell and cold as the Arctic in one second flat. My stomach churned in jealousy even though I had no claim to the man.
“What did you PI say?” Julian asked.
“Not much.” Elliot laughed without humour.
“Are you sure you want to get involved with someone right now?” Julian asked.
“I did. Before Sarah dropped this load of shit in my lap.”
My fist clenched and my nails dug into the palm of my hand. I took a step back on unsteady ankles and began to walk back to the floor. I didn’t want to hear anymore.
Life was cruel that way.
It gave you just enough to have hope before it ripped it all away.
Tito, one of the bouncers at the Pink Sleeve, walked me out and ensured that I got into a cab safely.
It was a short journey to my shoebox apartment, but I didn’t want to risk walking.
I paid the cab driver and stepped out into the warm night air. It was mid-Fall but the Summer heat still clung onto Louisiana like an over protective mama bear.
I had just pulled my keys out of my handbag when I saw him in the corridor outside of the door to my apartment.
The lights were on timers, because my landlord was a cheapskate, so I didn’t recognise him at first.
My heart gave a little jump and my lungs felt like they were full of ecstatic bees when my brain entertained the idea that Elliot Gold was on my front doorstep.
Life wasn’t that fair though.
It was Daniel Davis. The man to whom my Mama owed money.
He had found me.
8
I had fifteen missed calls from Sarah and twenty-eight text messages when I finally crawled out of Julian’s club.
Sarah Mallory had arrived at my house on Goldryn Row the second that I’d driven into town. Ringing the bell on the gate like a shark in a summer dress.
I had the ultrasound in my pocket. I'd taken it out so many times that the small piece of paper was dog-eared at the edges.
I was going to be a father.
I rubbed my hand over my face until it rested over my lips and sat back on my bed. I watched the overhead fan as it went around is sluggish circles.
I always imagined that I'd have been married by the time I was thirty. I'd always assumed that I’d have kids but the daydream always included eagerly waiting at the bathroom door for the love of my life to emerge with a white stick and a beaming smile.
The first words that Sarah said to me when I got back in town were: I'm pregnant. It’s yours. What are you going to do about it?
There wasn’t much I could do.
I was a Christian man living in South Louisiana. It was my duty to make sure that the baby wouldn't be born out of wedlock. That I married their mother.
But Sarah Mallory-Kellerman was already married.
I'd worked hard all my life to be the one of which my parents were proud. I went along with my mother’s wishes. I went to law school to follow in my father's footsteps.
My sacrifices allowed my brothers to be who they wanted to be without the pressures of the Gold name.
Elliot Gold knocked up a married woman.
Sarah clearly didn’t care about the scandal that would drag our names through the dirt. A link to the Gold fortune and an heir would be enough of an incentive to put up with the gossip and scorn.
Me? I'd be hung drawn and quartered.
I had only ever met one woman with whom I could envision having a child.
For months, I’d paid extortionate fees to keep a personal investigator on retainer. All the information my masked lover had given me was fictional.
Standing up, I walked to my adjoining bathroom and turned on the shower.
I needed to wash the filth of the day away.
I undid my tie and tossed it on a pile in the corner. My eyes were glazed and unseeing as I imagined the brunette with her whisky eyes. Her biting tongue.
She was brave. Only my brothers ever called me out on my bullshit before. I wanted to know her name. Pepper didn’t fit her, now that I knew she was fictional.
I stepped until the hot spray, my breath hissed between my teeth as my body adjusted to the heat.
I shook my head to myself. I was fucking insane. Lathering up, I washed with a ferocity that bordered on abuse.
I had seen her across the room at the Masquerade and I had known. All of the checkboxes for my perfect woman, marked off in neat little rows as I had watched her.
Poised.
Demure.
Uninterested in posturing and money.
It didn’t hurt that her body set my own on fire. That her husky voice questioned me. She was the only woman I had known to stare into my eyes and not lose her sharp tongue.
My belly filled with heat and I looked down to see that my fist was wrapped around my cock, pumping my thick and fleshy rod with slow and teasing precision. I closed my eyes and rested my shoulder against the cool tile. My hand rested the red and angry mushroom at the tip of my cock and I jerked in pleasure. I imagined my perfect woman spread out on the table with her knees spread and my cum leaking out of her pussy and onto the table.
Proof of my claim on her body.
I thought about rubbing my hands on her breasts and feeling their fleshy weight in my grasp. The hard points of her nipples and the moans she would make if I sucked on them.
I pumped my cock faster, remembering the sensation of her fleshy channel as I surged to the hilt. The way my cock rubbed against the spongy wall at the beginning of her womb. Proof that she fit me perfectly. Unlike any other.
I cried out with a low and needy moan as my release fired in white ropes. It fell to the shower floor and washed away.
My perfect woman.
She was a lie. A fantasy.
But with the shit storm of my life at that moment, that was all she would ever be.
I was running on four hours sleep and even though I was fifty miles up the 603, away from the main building site, my morning had started early with a conference call.
I was running late when I walked up to the TeaSpoon Café on Main Street. I went straight up to the counter and ordered a latte. Lots of cream and lots of sugar.
I took my seat in the corner when I heard her laugh. Every muscle in my body stiffened and my eyes searched frantically for the source of the hyena-like laugh that made her so unique.
She was two tables away from me. Her long mahogany coloured hair hung in waves over the back of her chair. She was moving her arms erratically as if she was telling a story and she needed her whole body to do it. It was her.
My Pepper.
A sense of rightness settled over my bones. Like the accomplishment that you feel when you finish a thousand-piece Jigsaw puzzle.
I wanted to stand up and go over there.
What would I say?
Would I chastise her for her fake name? Or pull her up with a single finger under the chin until her mouth met mine.
I decided to listen, like the desperate voyeur that I was. Hungover and distracted by the beautiful brunette. Hanging on her every word like a dog sniffing for scraps.
“I can't believe you're marrying Julian Gold!” Pepper gasped through laughter. “Of all the people! Why did you pick him?”
Rina Langley.
She was sat with Rina Langley.
My fist clenched. Julian had known about my search for the masked girl at the party and he had never said a word, and yet here she was. Sat next to his fiancée.
The mood sobered immediately. The shift was jarring.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Rina whispered, her voice broke and she cleared her throat.
“I couldn’t. I knew what you'd say.” Pepper replied sadly.
Oh. They were comparing notes on the Gold brothers. My fist clenched and I took a scolding sip of my coffee. It tasted like ash in my mouth.
“I was ashamed.” Pepper told Rina.
My ears pricked up again, what?
Was she talking about me?
I couldn’t deny that her words caused an ache in my bones that made every inch of my body creak in pain.
“I work in a fucking strip club, Rina.” Pepper rubbed her hands through her hair. “I’m not going to shout it from the rooftops.”
“I meant the debt. Your Mama is such a piece of shit.” Rina snarled.
Pepper looked around, her dark hair swishing from side to side as she hissed for Rina to be a little bit quieter. But I’d heard.
I put my head in my hands.
My perfect woman was a stripper.
9
I needed money.
It wasn’t my debt. I shouldn’t have had to pay it, but like so many things in life, it wasn't fucking fair.
Yes. I said it. I cussed.
I arrived at the Pink Sleeve in the bright light of day. The cleaners were sanitising the poles and wiping down the tables. I went around the back and I marched right up to Julian Gold's office and asked him if I could strip.
He'd asked why, but I was too ashamed to admit to the tangled web of poverty and abuse that my mother had spun around me. Even though I didn’t live with her anymore, she still dragged me into her torrid sludge. I need cash and quick.
I stood on the stage with Marianne. Stage name: Scarlett as she grabbed my hands to place them on the pole.
“Are you sure you wanna do this, honey?” Scarlett asked with warmth in her eyes. “It’s a big step.”
“I need the money, Scar.”
The redheaded beauty rubbed my hands in a soothing way, her soft fingers caught on the scars on the palm of my hand. A ring on each one. From where Mama had taken my hands and held them against the stove until my skin melted.
I hadn’t been allowed to go to the hospital and the scars hurt almost every day, but I ignored them. They had become part of my existence.
“You’ll do great, honey.” Scarlett assured me as she taught me the basics of the pole.
I hoped so. I couldn’t afford to fail.
I was given one of the spare dressing tables in the back room with the other girls.
“Do you have a stage name, Sweets?” Bailey, one of the other girls leant over and held out her mascara wand.
“Don’t hassle the girl!” Scarlett pouted as she applied her lipstick.
Bailey laughed and shook her head before she resumed to carefully help me with my makeup. Bailey was eighteen, but acted much older.
“Why are you doing this again, Sweets?” she asked.
“Money.” I told her whilst chewing my bottom lip. “My Mama got in with some bad people.”
“You don’t need to tell us, honey.” Scarlett patted my shoulder. “We’ve all got reasons.”
Bailey capped the mascara and started to root around her makeup bag for something. “You want to do as many private dances as possible. That’s where the money is. I don’t know if you'll get any tonight, because you're new. But it’s easy. Always say yes. Even if you’re nervous, it’s a learning experience.”
“I won't have to...” I chewed my bottom lip.
Scarlett shook her head, “No sex. No touching. There is a pole in each private room but most of the men want a lap dance.”
“Just act like the sun shines out of their dicks and they'll love you.” Bailey said.
I couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled out of my chest.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a sunshine dick.” Scarlett said thoughtfully.
Bailey smiled knowingly. “Imagine if Marvel made that film?”
“On the subject of alter egos...” Scarlett wiggled her brows.
I thought about it for a moment. “You can call me Pepper.” I said with certainty.
“You have a private dance booked.” Julian told me with a frown as I stood on the wings of the stage and mentally prepared myself to perform in front of a crowd.
“What?” I whispered back, peeling my platform heel away from the steps.
Julian didn’t appear too happy about the whole arrangement but I didn’t ask why. “He's waiting for you in the third room.”
I nodded, confusion marred my face as Julian called for Bailey to take the pole in my absence.
Dressed in a translucent ivory bralette with matching stockings, suspenders and G-string, I looked like a perverse angelic virgin with the first-time nerves to match.
I resisted the urge to cover my dark nipples, visible through the fabric as I turned away from Julian Gold and weaved through the staff entrance to the private rooms.
My platform heels were a size too small, as they were borrowed, but I concentrated on the pinch and rub on the edge of my toes. I allowed my mind to drift. I needed the money. I needed to be safe.
It was stripping or having sex with strangers. I had made the choice with which I could live.
Before my one night with Elliot Gold, sex had been something I had done when backed into a corner. It hadn’t been for fun. Or attraction. I had never had the power to say no before.
My sexuality was almost non-existent. Taken from me at the hands of Mama and her revolving door of boyfriends. I had to own it.
I straightened my shoulders and walked into the room with pride.
One of the floor bouncers hovered in the corner and I forced my lips into a shaky but seductive smile.
Think of the devil, and he shall appear.
Elliot Gold was sat in a chair, in the centre of the room, with eyes like ice and a smile that would rival the devils.
10
The woman I’d been thinking about for three months straight stood in front of me. Dressed like my most perverse wet dream and most tawdry nightmare.
I clenched my fists.
What was I doing? Why had I come?
To see for myself? To see that I had been tricked into wa
nting someone that traded in the idea of seduction without release. A woman with no morals and even little pride? As her hips swayed, sexy and slowly, I could not help the smug smile that graced my lips. I'd been between her legs. I knew what she had to offer. I'd been ensnared by her body before.
It was my turn.
A flicker of unease crossed over her expression before it was erased and stretched into a placid but false smile.
Where had I seen that dimple before?
It was a strange divot, higher than a normal dimple. It rested on her left cheek bone as her lips pulled slightly to one side more than the other. Her eyes were the colour of cognac when her lashes shadowed them, but amber coloured whiskey when she looked directly at me. She dipped her head, in a movement that told me she was unused to eye contact.
I wanted to study her.
“I won’t bite.” I promised, gesturing to the pole behind me, and the bouncer in the corner.
She chuckled; it was low and fake. Unlike her hyena like cackle when her laughter was real. “I think that’s a lie.” She purred and walked towards me. Using the side of her ankle, encased in a platform heel, Pepper moved my legs open until the crotch of my trousers grew taut due to my position. She stepped in between my legs and dropped to her knees.
The flash of my fantasies, of her wrapping her rosebud lips around my cock and swirling her tongue around the tip, made me swallow my tongue as it grew twice in size.
“What do you want, Sweetie?” She leant forward, her breasts hung as she spoke into the shell of my ear. “Fast or slow.”
She knew who I was.
But did she know that I knew her?
It was giving me a headache.
As my cock rose and strained against my trousers, I didn’t know who was winning the game anymore.
“Tell you what?” Pepper leant back and licked her lips. “I’ll go slow. It’s my first time. You'll help me, won’t you?” She winked.
“First time?” I cleared my throat.
“I’ve never given a private dance before.” She whispered, leaning forward like she had a secret. “You’re my first.”
Heart of Gold Page 8
