by Bella J.
“Okay. I’ll just—”
“Go?” Yes, please.
“Yeah.” She gave a few small reluctant steps until she reached the door. “Goodbye, Hunter.”
“Goodbye, Britney.”
“Courtney.”
Ah fuck!
When she closed the door behind her, he was once again happily his lonesome self in his apartment. Bliss.
Hunter let out a sigh, finally feeling like he could breathe. He hated the morning after almost as much as he hated it when his best friend, Adam Masters, gloated about all his sexcapades. Even though he had known Adam almost all his life, his friend still had the talent to irritate the shit out of Hunter.
Just as he was about to grab a folder off his desk, he caught sight of the two dates inked on his left inner forearm. Two dates that had ultimately changed his life forever.
For a moment he allowed just a sliver of pain to grab hold of his heart, to squeeze another ounce of life out of him. This always happened afterward. The pain and regret would always be worse after he’d been with a woman. Yet he kept on feeding those soul destroying emotions every chance he got. It was the only way he was able to feel anything.
He closed his eyes for two seconds, pushing back the pain, fighting the memories as he always did before he grabbed the yellow folder. As he took a seat on the couch, he winced and instinctively reached for his side, clutching it as he waited for the sharp pain to fade. Yup, thirty-three and a half shades of fucked up.
Leaning back into the couch, he pulled out a picture and held it up in front of him. He had been doing this private investigating gig for years now. He liked it, and the money was excellent. Amazing what some people would pay to find, well, people.
Whether it was ex-wives, ex-boyfriends, cheating husbands, sisters, or mistresses, there was always someone willing to pay his or her last dime in order to find people who most of the time didn’t want to be found in the first place.
The picture was taken at an awkward angle, only getting the side of the girl’s face while she looked down, tucking her hair behind her ear. Apparently, it had been taken years ago when she was only sixteen—the last photo anyone had of her.
While staring at the young girl in the picture, he wondered what kind of trouble this one would be. Even though she didn’t look like much trouble, he had been searching for her for weeks, and it was obvious she knew exactly how to disappear off the radar—successfully. It never took him this long to find someone. He prided himself on a turnaround time of two weeks, max. But this one? This one was taking much longer than expected, and that pissed him off. Luckily, after following his last lead, he found her two weeks ago hiding away as a bartender in a strip club. He had been scouting her ever since, following her, making sure he had the right girl since she looked a hell of a lot different than she did in the picture he was holding.
He had to be absolutely sure it was her before he contacted his client with the info. This client was already no happy camper since it had taken Hunter this long to find her in the first place. He couldn’t risk giving him the wrong girl and pissing the guy off even more. There was a large amount of Benjamins dangling in front of Hunter’s face like a fucking carrot to a donkey. There was no margin for error with this case.
But Hunter couldn’t stop wondering why she was making it nearly impossible for anyone to find her. Why was she running? Why was she hiding? And why was this guy willing to pay a small fortune to find her?
His gut told him there was more to this girl in the photo than he was told, and hopefully he would get answers soon.
Hunter placed the picture back in the folder and closed it. “You’d better be there.”
Chapter 2
Scarlet stood in front of her open closet trying to decide what the hell she should wear. She didn’t exactly have a vast choice of attire since her wardrobe mostly consisted of tights, leather jackets, mini-skirts, and knee-high boots. And besides, her current employment didn’t require her to dress up in anything that required blouses, high heels, and pencil skirts.
Thank God for small mercies.
Her black skinny jeans, black strapless leather top, and brown boots won the what-to-wear-to-work-on-Saturday-night lottery. Sure, she didn’t have to wear those diamond studded star-shaped nipple patches and rollerblades the other waitresses wore, but she still needed to look the part of a bartender at a strip joint. Hence the leather top that made her well-endowed cleavage look like it might be served along with a very overpriced drink of bourbon. And while her cleavage was part of the package, let’s toss in a Cuban cigar while we’re at it.
Being a bartender at a strip joint wasn’t exactly her first career choice. But given her current circumstances, she was in the stripping industry’s very well-known position of she had no choice.
Scarlet’s life lacked a lot of things, one of which was enough money to survive without serving drinks to perverts or assholes looking for a place to get hard and jerk off while having tits shoved in their faces. Yeah, she didn’t like her job very much. But it was a job, which was what Scarlet needed. And besides her obvious need for survival, she also had to keep a low profile. A bartending gig at a strip club gave her the means to do just that.
She zipped up her boots, gave her reflection one last glance in what once was a full-length mirror, and wiped away a little smidge of black eyeliner that decided it no longer wanted to stick to her eyelid. Her blue eyes looked cold and hard with all the black surrounding it. Thick eyelashes framed her eyes, and her lips were painted a deep cherry red. She preferred the stone cold bitch look. It kept all the boys who went around calling themselves men from thinking they stood a chance and then actually approaching her. She didn’t have time for so-called men who pretended to have bigger than average sized balls.
Real men. That was what Scarlet liked. Real men who weren’t afraid to take what they wanted by fighting dirty and then giving in to what they needed without worrying about being seen as weak. Bottom line, Scarlet liked control. And she liked men who weren’t afraid to give her the control she needed. Men who were brave enough to be controlled.
She didn’t have the time or the patience for men who were still on the journey of self-discovery, trying to discover what exactly it was they liked in women—in sex. She liked fast men who didn’t pretend they were looking for anything more than a good lay—which was exactly what Scarlet wanted. There was no chance of her committing—ever. But she was a real woman with real needs, and she indulged herself every now and then by tossing her inhibitions to the wind and just taking what she wanted. It didn’t happen often. She didn’t go around flaunting herself at the nearest, most willing bastard. But once she zeroed in on a target, it was an all systems go for Scarlet the little harlot.
While she searched for her keys in her dump of an apartment, she thought back to a time when she lived in completely different surroundings. When her life wasn’t nearly as messed up. If someone had to ask her back then where she saw herself in five or six years, living in a shoebox with a single bed, torn up couch, and a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s would not have been her answer. But alas, here she was…living in a shoebox with a single bed, torn up couch, and a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
After a ten-minute cursing fest and a half bottle of Jack turning into a quarter bottle, Scarlet eventually found her keys in the freezer. Hardcore Scarlet had the tendency to be I-lose-my-shit-in-the-weirdest-places Scarlet every now and then. Not often, but it did happen.
When she closed her freezer door, she stared at the only picture she had displayed in her apartment. It was a picture of her with the two people she had cared most for in her life. She was standing next to her sister, each holding a basket of freshly picked strawberries, while their grandmother had her arms around them both.
Scarlet was thirteen years old back then, her sister, Willow, was sixteen. Scarlet was wearing the red coat her grandmother had given her for Christmas that year. Even though it was spring and her sister
was wearing a beautiful yellow sundress that day, Scarlet had insisted on wearing her red coat. She still remembered sweating like a pig in that thing, but she wanted to wear it for her grandma.
It was a good day. A day that gave Scarlet a whole lot of memories that she would cherish for a very, very long time. Too bad that only a few years after that, her entire life got shot to shit all because of one selfish, evil, manipulative bastard who thought he was special enough to screw with the lives of those around him.
Scarlet traced her finger over the image of her sister and her grandmother. She allowed herself a brief moment to grieve, to miss those who had been taken from her. To mourn the innocence that had been stolen from her all those years ago. But along with the grief came flashes of memories she worked so hard to push back, to forget. Those memories were the reason Scarlet never allowed herself to dwell on the past, to think back to what once was. She had made peace with what her life had become, and she would not think of what could have been or how it would end one day. All that mattered was the here and now. Yesterday couldn’t be changed. Tomorrow couldn’t be controlled. But today…today’s survival was what Scarlet lived for.
She lifted her shirt and stared down at the tattoo inked down her right side. Torment. That was what her teenaged memories inflicted on her. Torment. And the dog tags inked just below the word were there to remind her of when her entire life had changed, and who was responsible for it all.
All her memories, good and bad, had brought their own degree of pain, their own degree of sorrow. But the word inked on her skin was also a reminder that she would never let anyone close enough to be able to inflict such torture on her again. No one would break down the walls her own torment had given her the strength to build. Her life was hers to live, hers to dictate, which was also why she had chosen to leave everything behind. She didn’t want anything from her previous life. All she wanted was to be free. But after years of being on the run, trying to escape the past that just kept on finding her no matter what, she had come to terms with the fact that she would never be free.
She would never be free of him.
Not unless one of them…died.
***
“Hey, Harvey.” Scarlet stepped up to the security guy standing guard at the back door of the club. For the last year Scarlet had been working at Twisted Fable, good old Harvey’s presence could always be depended on. He took his job protecting each and every girl working at the club very seriously.
“How’s things today, pretty girl?” He reached to open the door for her.
“Same as every day. Stoked to be here.” She faked a little excited thrill and then gave him a peck on the cheek as she walked past him and into the club.
“You take care now, you hear?”
She turned and gave him a one finger salute as she walked backward. “You know I always do, Harvey.”
“That’s my girl.”
On her way down the corridor, she passed all the private booths. Scarlet never mingled with the other girls much—especially the strippers. But apparently every booth had some or other fairy tale theme. There was Tinker Belle, the little petite blonde girl; Snow White, the pale, dark-haired girl who supposedly had the voice of an angel and the breast size of a porn star; and there was also Mulan, the strong as nails, hardcore Asian girl who apparently had more balls than some of the men who entered her booth. There used to be a Cinderella as well, who was a favorite among men with high heel fetishes. From what Scarlet heard, she was quite the popular one with her display cabinet of stilettos. But word had it that Cinderella had found her Prince Charming and gave him his own VIP show every night in the privacy of their own bedroom in their multi-million-dollar mansion somewhere. Cinderella’s booth was still vacant, waiting for the next fairy tale princess to come along.
Scarlet had once considered taking on the whole stripping gig, even gave it a shot one night. But, unfortunately, the first guy who tried to cop himself a feel ended up with a black eye and a testicle as a tonsil replacement. Lucky for her, she didn’t get fired that night. She just got placed behind the bar, leaving a safe distance between her and all the horny, arrogant men.
As she rounded the corner on her way to the bar, she spotted him. She had seen this guy around the club a few times before, but for the last two weeks he had been coming to the club religiously every night, sitting at the exact same spot—right at the end of the bar. On occasion she would see him leaving the club with a woman at his side. But the following night he would return again—alone.
The only reason she noticed him at all was because…well…he was hot as hell. With blond shoulder-length hair and a body that seemed like it was put together by stone, steel, and concrete, he managed to grab Scarlet’s attention every night. But she never served him his drinks. Even though she found this stranger weirdly intriguing, there was something about him that had her on edge. So she kept her distance and made sure she worked the other end of the bar every time he was there.
Scarlet took her place behind the bar and started serving drinks. It was still relatively early, so the customers were all still relatively sober. Given two hours, that would no longer be the case.
The later it got, the louder the music started pumping and the more the alcohol started flowing. With a few subtle glances toward the blond guy at the end of the bar, Scarlet noticed that he remained unmoved. A few women had already made their move on him, but it seemed like he had given them all the cold shoulder so far.
“Yo, Scarlet. Can I see you for a sec?”
Scarlet turned around to face Warren, her manager, while wiping her hands clean with her apron before taking it off.
“Sure.”
She rounded the corner to the back of the bar. “What’s up?”
“Can you do a double tonight? Sarah just phoned in and said her son came down with the flu or something, so she can’t make it.”
“Yeah, sure, no problem.”
“Awesome. I owe you one.” Warren patted her on the shoulder. With dark hair and bright blue eyes, he was quite the catch. Word had it that he and Snow White with the porn star tits enjoyed each other’s company every now and then.
“You owe me ten already, Warren.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Scarlet leaned against the wall, trying to catch a few breaths without inhaling smoke and having the smell of lust fill her nostrils. Normally, her shift would be four hours. Now she had to mentally prepare herself for another six before she could blow this joint. But it was all good since a double shift meant double pay.
Without looking up, she walked back out and turned her back toward the customer while tying her apron back on. “What can I get ya?”
“Beer.”
“Coming right up.”
She bent over, grabbed the beer from the bottom fridge, turned around, and froze. Standing in front of her was the stranger she had been sneaking glances at the entire night. Not only was he even bigger up close than he was from across the room, but he had the most beautiful green eyes she had ever seen in her life. She thought of every shade of green known to man, then scrapped that thought altogether, because this green was unlike any other shade she had ever seen before.
He kept her gaze while she struggled to remember what she was supposed to do.
Serve him his drink. Right.
As she placed his beer in front of him, he slipped the money toward her. She reached for it, and her fingertips lightly brushed against his. He didn’t loosen his grip on the money, and their gazes were locked on each other for about an extra three seconds before he eventually allowed her to take it.
“Thanks for the beer.” Good Lord, that voice. It sounded like the promise of every sexually gratifying act known to woman was hidden in that voice. Low, deep…rough.
“No problem.” She swallowed.
He held out his hand. “I’m Hunter, by the way.”
She looked from his eyes to his hand, and back up to his eyes again. Hesitantly, she placed her hand in his.
“I’m S—”
“Scarlet.” He narrowed his eyes, and tightened his grip on her hand. “I know who you are, Scarlet Woods.”
Chapter 3
Holy fuck.
Her eyes. Those damn eyes. They were…they were fucking blue. The only way to explain it was by comparing it to the ocean under the full moon at midnight, and looking down at the water from the highest cliff. And he knew this exact comparison because he had stared into eyes like those before, and they were hauntingly beautiful.
While he held her hand firmly in his, he noticed the way her face had paled. He knew she was secretly squirming on the inside, contemplating whether she should run, hide, or do nothing. By the way her eyes had zeroed in on him, it was like she was prey waiting for the predator to strike. And to tell the truth, with those eyes staring back at him, he wanted to bolt as well. But he smelled the stench of secrets all over her, which incited the PI in him to find out exactly what she was hiding.
According to his client, this was just a simple search and find job. There was supposedly nothing complicated, dodgy, or questionable about it. When he agreed to find her, his sixth sense of being able to smell bullshit from a mile away didn’t give him that tingle of warning as it usually did when something wasn’t right. So why the hell was he getting a completely different vibe now that he was staring at the face in front of him?
He let go of her hand and shrugged. “I’ve been hearing a lot about you from that guy.” He nodded his head toward the bartender at the far end of the bar who just so happened to wave at Scarlet like a total goofball the minute she looked in his direction. “I think Joe over there might have a crush on you.” He winked.
Her shoulders relaxed and she started wiping her hands on her apron. “Well, that’s unfortunate…for Joe.”
Hunter smirked. “Not your type?”
“Let’s just say that I’m not his type.”
