Beneath This Ink

by Meghan March

  “How in the world do you know that?”

  “I study things. People. Habits. Reactions.”

  “That’s not creepy at all,” I mumbled.

  His lips quirked to the left. “But I’ll admit: I don’t quite get you.” He leaned back in the chair, lifting the front legs off the ground and balancing, the way the nuns scolded us for at school. “I would’ve bet good money that a guy like Con Leahy was a no-go zone for the perfect Ms. Frost.”

  I pushed down on my desk, bolting to my feet.

  “I’m not having this conversation with you.”

  “Sit your ass down, Vanessa.”

  My mouth dropped open. “What did you—?”

  The green of his eyes seemed to freeze. “You heard me. This conversation isn’t over until I say it’s over.”

  “Fuck you, Titan.”

  This time his smile bared teeth. “If you talked like that more often, I’d have been a hell of a lot less surprised when he dragged you into that coat room.” He shifted forward and the chair landed on its front legs with a thud. I glared, hoping my eyes were just as frosty as his.

  “I’d think you’d be happy about it, considering it played right into your plans.”

  Titan pushed out of the chair and loomed over my desk—and me.

  “Honestly, it really didn’t. Kind of fucked up my plans, if you want to know the truth, Vanessa.”

  I didn’t understand, and my confusion must have shown in my drawn brows because Titan continued, “You see, he stole my play. Although I hadn’t planned on dragging you into a coat room, but if I’d known you liked that sort of thing… I could have worked it in.”

  His meaning crystallized in an instant.

  “You were going to try to seduce me? To help you?”

  He laughed, and as much as I hated to admit it, his chuckle was a good one—although it should have sounded evil given the conversation we were having. “Sweetheart, I don’t have to try to seduce women.”

  I shook my head and grabbed my note pad and a pen. “Whatever you say, Mr. Titan. I’m leaving. Please feel free to stay and enjoy the comforts of my office until the meeting begins. Although I’d prefer you didn’t.”

  He stood, dropping the stress ball on my desk, and followed me toward the door. “So polite. You think those manners are going to be able to keep Leahy in line? Because there’s still time to toss him aside and fall in line with my original plan.”

  Somehow his hand had found its way to the doorframe, and he was close enough to me that I could feel the heat of him on my back.

  And once again, that was all I felt. No flare of attraction. No rush of excitement.

  The logical side of my brain said that my life would probably be easier if I wanted someone like Titan. He might raise eyebrows in certain circles, but he wasn’t persona non grata without any hope of reversing that status.

  But logic wasn’t ruling whatever I was getting into with Con—and that fact was scary as hell.

  I wobbled on my heels, and Titan steadied me.

  “Whoa. You okay?”

  Am I okay? Do I want to be okay? Or do I want to be off balance and recklessly, foolishly not okay?

  Clearing my throat, I grasped the door handle. “I think we’re done here, Mr. Titan. I’ll see you in the board room.”

  This time he didn’t protest. Rather, he stepped back and allowed me to pull open the door and make my escape.

  But for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I was running from something. I was finally running to something.

  I was officially too old for this shit.

  After finishing my last tat, I’d been ready to head up to my place and call it a night. Alone.

  But instead, my manager had called in with a family emergency, and now I was sitting in the office at Tassel, wondering why in the hell I’d thought buying a strip club would be worth the trouble. I reminded myself that the best lead I’d had in over a year had come out of this place. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t turning into a giant fucking pain in my ass.

  “That was my shit, and she wore it on stage without asking! I want half her tips from that set, because we all know her skanky ass wouldn’t have brought in nearly as much if it hadn’t been for my glitter G-string!”

  What. The. Fuck.

  “Bitch! Don’t you dare—”

  “Both of you, shut it down,” I barked. Five minutes of this bickering was giving me a fucking headache. “Get the fuck out my office and back on the goddamn stage for your sets.”

  I looked at Ginger, or whatever the fuck the redhead’s name was. “Keep your mitts off the other girls’ shit. And if I have to deal with this crap again, you’re both out on your asses.”

  “That’s not fair—” Glitter G-string started.

  “Out. Now.”

  They both turned and marched their mostly-naked asses toward the door. My dick didn’t even perk up and take notice.

  I rested my elbows on my desk and dropped my pounding head into my hands. I had to find an assistant manager and quick. I did not want to be handling bullshit like this—ever again.

  I dug my thumbs into my temples and rubbed. The pressure receded slightly, and a cold, hard fact slid into place: The reason my dick hadn’t perked up at the ass-tastic display I’d just witnessed was because there was only one ass I wanted to see.

  Totally pussy whipped, and I don’t even remember tasting that pussy.

  I cringed at the knock on the door. This interruption had better not involve glitter G-strings.

  I pushed up from the desk, and one of my bouncers popped his head in.

  “Need you out front, boss. Got a brawl.”

  Other than the furniture that might get busted up, and the tips the girls were losing, the idea of a fight didn’t piss me off too bad.

  I would never be too old for cracking skulls together. A little bloodshed never hurt anyone.

  Until I stepped into the main room and caught a flash of a blond head ducking behind the bar.

  No way. She wouldn’t be stupid enough to come here.

  A chair swung toward my head. Any answers would have to wait.

  I bobbed and weaved, letting the chair fly over my shoulder and coming up to land two solid jabs and an uppercut that put the asshole on the ground and the chair skidding across the carpet. I stepped toward the bar, but halted when a huge motherfucker downed Nick, the biggest of my bouncers, and rushed toward the two girls cowering on the edge of the stage.

  “Watch out!” The words and the voice grabbed my attention, and I glanced over my shoulder. A skinny fuck with a broken beer bottle swung it at me and missed. He blanched when I charged him. Grabbing him by the upper arms, I tossed him aside. The crunch as he hit the floor would have been satisfying, except I didn’t have any time to enjoy it. Another jackass was heading toward the bar—where my little society princess was hiding. I dodged fists and elbows as I crossed the room.

  I reached the jackass before he could zero in on his target. All it took was a single hit to the jaw, and he crumpled to the ground. I jumped over the edge of the bar, uncertain of what I would find behind it.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Con landed on his feet in a crouch. His voice was hoarse, and his chest heaved with exertion. From what I’d seen, he’d taken on about a half dozen really unfriendly looking guys, all by himself.

  My eyes must have been the size of dinner plates. What I’d just witnessed was so far out of the realm of my experience I didn’t even know how to begin to process it.

  It hadn’t even been a bar fight. I’d witnessed a strip club fight.

  When I didn’t answer, Con gripped my arm and shook it.

  “Vanessa, what the fuck are you doing here?”

  The adrenaline that had been pumping through my veins began to dissipate. Con’s hold relaxed, and his equally horrified and pissed off expression faded.

  “Jesus Christ, you’re shaking,” he said.

  I blinked several times befor
e staring down at my arm. Con’s wide fingers were wrapped around it, his thumb skimming back and forth over the vein at my wrist.

  I didn’t know what to say, but I opened my mouth anyway, and words tumbled out. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” My voice trembled and had never sounded quite so small. I cleared my throat and tried again, “Are—”

  Con’s head lifted as the sound of sirens filled the air.

  “Shit. Time to go.”

  He twined an arm around my shoulders and under my knees, lifting me off the ground as if I weighed nothing—which was certainly not the case.

  “I can walk. Put me down.” I struggled in his arms, but he didn’t slow his stride as he crossed the room.

  He jerked his head to one of the bouncers and paused at the threshold to a hallway. “You got this?”

  “Yeah. No worries, boss.”

  “Make sure Hennessy gets the report. I’ll catch up with him later.” Con looked down at me. “I got more important things to worry about right now.”

  The bouncer may have smiled, or frowned, or burst into flames for all I knew. Because I didn’t want to break Con’s stare to check.

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  Con finally looked away and headed into the dimly lit passage.

  “Where’s your car?”

  “I took a cab.”

  “So you did at least one smart thing tonight.”

  He shouldered open a door, and the humid night air hit my skin. A single bulb was mounted on the brick wall next to the exit, and the yellow glow glinted off the chrome of Con’s Harley. He settled me on the bike and strapped a helmet to my head. It didn’t occur to me to ask where we were going—because I’d already made my choice tonight when I’d walked out of the house and hopped into a cab waiting at the corner.

  Con took his place in front of me and started the bike.

  I wrapped my arms around his waist even before he tossed the words “hold on” over his shoulder.

  Pressing my cheek against the soft cotton stretched over the hard muscles of his back, I let the vibrations of the bike calm my still-racing heart and focused on the lights rushing past me. When we didn’t head toward Voodoo and Con’s apartment, but away from downtown, I should have been worried. I should have smacked his arm and demanded he tell me where we were going. But I didn’t. I just held on tighter, closed my eyes, and enjoyed the ride.

  Because that was exactly what I’d decided to do with Con. Grab hold of this craziness and let myself enjoy life for once without worrying about every which way it could go wrong.

  With the exception of following Con home that night two years ago, I’d never stepped off the carefully planned path that was my life. I’d never thrown caution to the wind. Thirty years old, and I’d never done anything else remotely spontaneous and wild. I felt like the clock was ticking—the proverbial sand trickling through the hourglass—and I was letting my life pass me by without doing anything memorable. My greatest fear was waking up, ninety years old, swathed in my lace nightgown, waiting to die and regretting that I hadn’t lived every moment of this life to its fullest.

  So right now, when it was the absolute worst time for me to even consider straying from my regimented life—when I had the most to lose—I felt this insane compulsion to take a risk. To jump.

  My arms were wrapped around the sole reason for that irresistible insanity.

  I did the math in my head. Yep, there’s a strong chance that this is a mid-third life crisis.

  When I finally opened my eyes again, my confusion levels hit the red zone. Why would we be here?

  Con turned down the driveway of a house that wouldn’t have been amiss in the duPont Registry.

  Solar lights highlighted six square columns fronting a wide covered porch that split into two giant curving staircases.

  Con pulled the bike between two of the many stilts holding the massive house aloft and killed the engine. Settling it on the kickstand, he climbed off and removed his helmet. I got caught up in watching him and forgot that I should’ve been attending to my own. Not bothering to wait for me to get with the program, once again, Con undid the chinstrap and set it on the seat.

  He held out a hand. I didn’t hesitate to take it. I expected him to pull me along behind him, up the stairs and into the house. But he didn’t. He swung me back up into his arms and walked farther under the house until we came out the other side, facing Lake Pontchartrain. He didn’t slow as he walked down the dock to a pavilion and settled me on a wooden Adirondack chair. He hit a switch and tiny twinkle lights came to life.

  “Shit. Should’ve taken you inside where we had more light. Need to make sure you’re not hurt.”

  “I’m not hurt. I’m fine. Just…a little shaken up, I guess.”

  Con’s posture changed immediately. “Good, then I don’t need to hold back when I ask you just what the fuck you think you were doing coming to my club?” He jammed his fingers into his hair and tugged outward, giving him a wild and crazed…and incredibly sexy look.

  “Well? Because it better be good. So fucking good that I can’t even fathom a reason good enough that you’d walk your ass into a place like that.” He turned and paced toward the other end of the pavilion. “Jesus. You could have been recognized. Didn’t you even think about that?”

  Con’s pacing continued as I debated how to answer his question.

  I went with the truth.

  “I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t really thinking.”

  He spun and faced me. “That’s your answer? You weren’t thinking? You’re always fucking thinking.”

  I pushed off the chair so I didn’t feel quite so much at a disadvantage. Hands fisted on my hips, I said, “Maybe I don’t want to think anymore. I said I was ready to jump. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. So I guess that’s what I was doing. I just wanted to live for once in my life without considering every potential outcome.”

  Con stepped toward me, arms crossed over his chest. “And so you decided to live a little by coming to my strip club. How in the fuck did you even know about it?”

  I looked down at the planks of weathered wood beneath our feet. Lucas Titan’s taunt as I’d left the board meeting echoed in my head. “Bet you wouldn’t be so eager to fuck a guy like Leahy if you knew he spent most of his time staring at tits and ass at his club.”

  Stunned, I’d gone home, my newly formed plan to grab life with both hands already floundering. A glass of wine later, I’d decided that this development would not slow me down. New plan: go see what all the fuss was about. After all, I’d never been to a strip club before.

  “I heard about the club from…an acquaintance. When I didn’t see your bike at Voodoo, I decided to see if you were there.”

  His expression hardened for a beat before one side of his mouth quirked up. “You stalking me now, princess?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe?”

  The half smile fell when he said, “Don’t do it again. Tracking me down is a bad idea. Besides, that’s not how this deal works.” He stepped closer. “You’re supposed to be where I say, when I say.”

  Arrogant bastard. “What if I don’t like how that works?”

  “That’s the deal.”

  The tension between us was rising, and Con took another step toward me. Was I really ready for this? I looked around, gauging our surroundings.

  “Where are we?”

  The smoldering intent flaring in Con’s eyes died out.

  “Joy and Andre’s lake house. They’d been in the middle of construction when they were killed.”

  My mouth fell open into a little O. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Don’t think many people do. Or if they did, they’ve probably forgotten about it by now.”

  I glanced back toward the house. “You said it was mid-construction. It looks finished to me.”

  “Because I arranged for it to be finished.”

  “And you kept it?”

  He shrugged. “Didn’t seem right t
o sell it. They were so damn excited about it. This was going to be where they played with all the grandkids they’d hoped they’d have someday.”

  The mention of grandchildren surprised me. “Grandkids? From you?”

  Con’s expression twisted at the surprise in my voice. “So hard to believe that I might want kids someday?”

  “Do you?” I didn’t know why I asked. It was none of my business. But I couldn’t restrain myself.

  His eyes flicked up and down my body, and I had the urge to wrap my arms around my middle. I always felt like he was looking inside me and seeing all my flaws.

  “Maybe. But not until…”

  He trailed off, fist clenching.

  “Not until what?”

  His dark blue gaze, flashing with the blinking twinkle lights, caught and held mine. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you might end up on the witness stand at my trial.”

  The statement was so raw and ominous—not to mention completely unexpected—that I stumbled back to the railing behind me.

  “I don’t…understand.”

  “Let’s just say that I can’t move forward with my life until whoever ended theirs pays for it.”

  My hands gripped the railing to hold me upright, but his words cut me off at the knees. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Con planned to extract the payment himself. I was reminded that he was a veteran. A man who had probably killed before. Who might feel compelled to kill again.

  How the hell was I supposed to feel about that? In awe of his conviction or terrified that he could so easily end someone’s life? Even if it was justified to his way of thinking—which was completely foreign to me—it was still criminal.

  “Are you serious?”

  Con ignored the question, which was probably appropriate, because it was a stupid one. Instead he jerked his chin toward the house.

  “The booze is inside. And I’m not having this conversation without it.”

  With that, he stalked off down the dock, leaving me stunned and silent on the pavilion.