by Roma James
Well, I wasn’t going to pass that offer up.
To my shock, the second he shut the door behind me, he started kissing me. My instincts had been right. This was exactly what he’d been after. And he was pretty forceful in the way he took me.
The sex was incredibly different from what I’d done with Axel, but not in a bad way. Neither one seemed worse or better, they just both seemed… hot. Indescribably sexy. I couldn’t get either out of my head.
When Ryker asked me to stay, I really wanted to oblige. But I told myself I had to hold the same rules with him as I did with Axel. I couldn’t let myself get attached. I couldn’t keep getting to know these guys. It was sex or nothing. I wouldn’t let my heart get in the way, only to be disappointed.
Not again. Not this time.
Liza would tell me I was keeping walls up, but was that so wrong? I believed I was playing things smart. Life is tough, the world is cruel, and you have to protect yourself.
That was all I was doing by keeping my distance—protecting myself.
I was walking on air after my time with Ryker. It was weird, I would have thought that I’d have had some second-thoughts about the whole situation.
But I didn’t. And why should I? It was just sex.
I was an adult woman with desires. It wasn’t like I was two-timing anyone. I was having my fun, and so were they. It all felt really harmless… and really enjoyable.
Not to mention it had been great for my writing. I’d written more in the last week than I had in months. And to think, it all happened because I went to a sex club with my best friend.
But Liza had been right. To write, I needed to go out and live my life. They say ‘write what you know,’ and lately, it felt like I didn’t know much. After my last breakup, I had retreated into myself and had spent my time alone, just me and my work.
I thought I was happy for a while. At least, that was what I told Liza. Hell, it was what I told myself. But I wasn’t happy. I was just… bored.
I couldn’t say that about my life now.
There was a spark inside me that hadn’t been lit in a long time. I felt like a whole new woman.
Sure, I supposed I had the same fears as before. My last relationship ended badly, and I didn’t really want another one. At least, I didn’t want to be hurt from another one.
But that didn’t matter, because none of that was going to happen. This was all fun. Sex wasn’t going to get me hurt as long as I remained emotionally unattached.
I could do that, right? My heart wasn’t connected to my vagina.
I was making my way back downstairs, about to rejoin Liza on the dance floor. I was actually in the mood to dance, for a change.
But when I saw Liza on the dance floor, I could see she was practically dry humping some dude I didn’t recognize. Ah, well, probably best to leave her to it, then. I had just gotten mine, I didn’t want to rain on her parade.
I was just about to turn away when I felt someone coming up beside me. My heart raced.
It must be Axel.
I turned around slowly and a little flirtatiously as I tossed my hair to the side, but when I saw who it was, my jaw dropped a bit.
I did not know this man.
And whoever this stranger was, he looked slimy as hell. He just had that look. It was a woman’s intuition… I always knew when I was dealing with a creepy-ass man.
My smile faded, and he noticed immediately. “Aw, come on, baby, don’t be like that,” he said as he put his arm around mine.
I attempted to pull it away, but he grabbed ahold of it tight. “Hey, let go of me!” I snapped at him.
He wasn’t having it. He started dragging me into a dark corner of the club, and I began to panic. I was trying to wrestle my way out of his grip, but he was way bigger than me and clearly much stronger. I didn’t have a chance.
Dammit.
I started yelling, but we were far away now. Nobody was going to hear me over the loud music, nobody was going to see me in the dark. I was completely fucked.
But I did not stop fighting this guy.
To my horror, he didn’t stop when we reached the corner of the club. I assumed he was gonna push me up against the wall or something, but instead he kept on pulling me toward an exit.
Fuck, fuck, fuck! Where could he take me if he got me outside? What if he was able to drag me into his car? I could not overpower this man! I was filled with anxiety like I’d never felt it before. I was in fight or flight mode, and I couldn’t successfully do either.
“Please, just let me go!” I started to plead with him. But he didn’t listen. He opened the door and I began to kick at him, one of my heels flying off in the process. It didn’t have much of an effect.
We were outside now, but I had gripped the door of the exit. He was doing his best to keep pulling me away from it, but I was dead set on getting back inside.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the man who was dragging me was being punched in the face. He let go of me, so I backed up immediately, got out of his reach, and ran back into the club.
I was immediately full of relief. Just a moment ago, I felt that I was in a life or death situation. And now… I was out of it. It was so surreal.
I stumbled, which reminded me that I only had one shoe on. I looked around the floor by the door to find it, but it must have landed outside. I was a little hesitant to go out there… it felt safer in the club. But then again, that guy had taken care of the creeper. He wasn’t going to let him drag me off again. So I stepped out tentatively to look for it.
To my horror, the men were still fighting and they were now grappling on the ground. My savior was underneath the creep, who was throwing punch after punch at him.
Oh, hell no. Not today, you fucking asshole. Not to the man who helped me.
I looked around on the ground and saw a pipe lying there—one that was probably used to prop the door of the club open. I grabbed it immediately and walked up behind the creeper who didn’t even hear me over the sound of his own heavy breathing. He had gotten hold of a nearby beer bottle and was about to crack my savior over the head with it.
Without a word of warning, I took that pipe and hit him over the head first.
He crumbled like a sack of potatoes, knocked out cold. Served him fucking right for the way he went after me.
My own breathing was a little heavy as the man who had punched him began to get up. This was my first good glimpse of him, everything before this was a blur. He was a little bloody, a little swollen, but oddly still handsome underneath all that.
“Oh my God, thank you!” I said, as I extended my hand to him so he could grab it and help himself off the ground. “You might have just saved my life. I have no idea what that man would’ve done to me if he was able to take me where he wanted to go.”
He grabbed my hand and I got a good look at him for the first time. It was Axel!
Except… no. It wasn’t.
“Looks like you might’ve saved my life, too.” He smiled. His face was nearly identical to Axel’s, but his hair was different and so was his voice. “Maybe the others were right about you. You are special.”
I raised an eyebrow. The others? Was my mind playing tricks on me? Had someone spiked my drink again?
“I think you’d better do some explaining,” I said, my eyes darting toward the pipe I’d just discarded. “Before I start screaming.”
Chapter 11 - Diesel
Harlow looked frozen at my words for a moment. It took me a while to realize why. Didn’t she recognize me?
But then I realized I probably looked like a goddamn mess. I knew my hair was mussed up with dirt from the ground, and I could taste some blood on my lips. I was probably a sight.
“I’m Diesel, majority owner of Crave. Axel’s twin brother.”
Her eyes widened with understanding and she appeared to relax. “Oh, right! We danced together a week ago, didn’t we?”
I smiled at the thought that she finally seemed to recognize me. “Y
es, we absolutely did.”
I put my hand on the small of her back. “Here, let’s go inside. I need to call the cops on this one and alert my security team.”
“Right, of course.” She looked at the creep, who was crumpled on the ground.
I propped the door open with the same pipe that she’d used to bang him over the head before pulling my walkie-talkie out of my jeans.
“I need all security to meet me at the bar immediately,” I said into it. “And whoever is on security cameras tonight, please call the police. Tell them we had an attempted sexual assault and we’ve apprehended him.”
She was staring at me, wide-eyed. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking… but I hoped they were good things. At the very least, I hoped she wasn’t scared anymore.
“Here, take a seat.” I pulled out a stool for her as my security team began to make their way to me.
“Steve, I want you to stay here with Harlow,” I told one of my guards. “Do not leave her side. She just had a very stressful incident. Make sure she’s safe and okay until I return. Everyone else, come with me outside.”
Steve nodded and it looked like Harlow was comforted by this. So I led the rest of my team outside to collect the guy who was beginning to stir and cuff him as we waited for the police to arrive.
When I returned, Harlow was sipping slowly on a glass of water.
“Doing okay?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Yeah… I think I’m fine now. Better, at least.”
“I’m going to take you home,” I told her.
It wasn’t a question. I didn’t ask.
But she nodded. I knew she’d have no issue with it.
I walked her out of the club as the music bumped away loudly. I saw a few women that I normally hooked up with check me out, but I had no interest.
My only interest was in Harlow now.
I’d be the first to admit, when it became obvious how interested Ryker and Axel were in her, I was suspicious. No woman could be that good. I’d never found a woman that I got hung up on.
But I was starting to get it. It went beyond the fact that the woman was a goddamn stunner. Nah, there was something else there. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but this girl was special. She was different. I was incredibly interested in her.
Now that she had caught my attention, I wanted her. It really was that simple.
I wanted her. I had to have her.
I texted my driver to come pick us up. I lived just down the road so I expected he’d be here in a few minutes. I always had him on standby on weekend nights I spent at the club. I knew that at any time, I could find a girl I wanted to go home with.
Obviously, tonight I had.
I just had to make sure she felt the same way first. The woman had just been through a hell of a time, after all. I felt a surge of anger knowing that this was the second time in as many weeks that she’d felt unsafe in our club. That just wasn’t acceptable.
But while I would see to it that we did something about that, she was the only thing I wanted to focus on at the moment.
My driver was outside when we exited the building, and he got out to open the car door for the both of us. She slid inside, and I slid in after her.
“What’s your address?” I asked her as my driver got back in his seat.
She rattled off the street name and my driver nodded that he’d heard as he started to pull away from the curb.
“I’m so sorry that something like this has happened again,” I told her. “We really do try to keep everyone safe. We try to make it a fun, welcoming place.”
“I know you do. I’ve been told by your brother and Ryker,” she responded. “I guess I’ve just been unlucky… but then again, thanks to you guys, I’ve also been pretty lucky to be saved from the awful situations. I really don’t feel unsafe there.”
I laughed. “That’s good to hear.”
I knew I hadn’t personally done enough, though. I needed to be more proactive in keeping our customers—and Harlow, in particular—safe and secure. Maybe I needed to be more like Ryker. He frequently spent time staring at the security cameras and making sure everything was going according to plan.
But me on the other hand? Nah, I was always out on the floor, flirting. Drinking. Partying.
There was only one reason I saw what was happening to Harlow, and that was because I was specifically looking for her.
She’d been on my mind the entire week, ever since we had all danced together. She blew my mind that night, and I’d been thinking of her ever since. I’d come to the club every night this week hoping she’d be here. Every night I’d ended up disappointed, though.
I was starting to lose hope. I thought maybe she wouldn’t be coming back to Crave or something. But tonight, I saw her.
When I did, I saw what was happening to her and leapt into action.
If I hadn’t been watching her for my own personal reasons, I probably never would have seen her. And never gotten the opportunity to be her knight in shining whatever.
I looked over at her; she seemed to be admiring the inside of the car.
“So, tell me about yourself,” I said to her.
She looked surprised. “About myself?”
“Yeah, you know, tell me… who is Harlow?”
“Oh… I don’t know. I’m pretty unremarkable. I mostly just sit at home, do my work, and keep to myself.”
I had to laugh. “Keep to yourself, huh? That’s certainly not what I’ve seen of you.”
She began to blush. “Oh, well, um… to be frank, you’ve seen a very different side of myself than I usually show. In fact, you’ve seen a side of me I didn’t even know existed.”
“Well, I’m glad it does exist. Because it’s damn hot.”
She blushed again but didn’t say a word.
“I’m sorry, am I speaking out of turn?” I asked her.
“No, not at all. I don’t mind.”
Good, that was a good sign. Maybe she wasn’t too shaken up by tonight, after all.
“So, what kind of work do you do?” I asked her, hoping to keep the conversation going.
I wasn’t just talking to pass the time. I wasn’t even really flirting—not yet, anyway. For now, I was generally interested in knowing a little more about her. What did she do? Who was this mysterious, hot woman? I wanted to know anything and everything she felt like sharing.
“I’m a romance writer, actually.”
I couldn’t hide my surprise. “A romance writer? Really?”
“Yeah.” She nodded.
“Excuse me for being crass, but are there, uh… any steamy scenes in these romance books?”
She smiled. “Actually, there are.”
“And, uh, where do you get the inspiration for these scenes?” I leaned back against the door as I looked at her.
“Well, you know… all sorts of places,” she said. “But I guess most often… I get them from my own experiences. The encounters I actually have myself.”
I grinned. “Sounds intriguing. I’d love to read some sometime.”
“Oh, I don’t know…” she muttered. “I don’t really share my stories with anyone I know in real life. It’s just kind of embarrassing.”
I reached my hand to her knee and set it down gently. “You couldn’t make an exception?”
“Well… maybe, if you promise not to judge.”
“I think you’ll find, Harlow, I’m not a very judgmental person.”
She laughed. “I find that a little hard to believe.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Why is that?”
She motioned around the car. “Look at this! This is the ride you take to work? I mean… you’ve got to be the richest man I’ve ever met. And I thought your brother’s Maserati was crazy!”
“Axel and I have different taste in some things,” I said, shrugging before letting my eyes quickly roam over her body. “But sometimes we like exactly the same thing.”
She knew what I meant. “But I’m probabl
y the least flashy person you’ve ever met, and you’re loaded beyond belief.”
“And that makes me judgmental?” I asked.
“Doesn’t it?” she asked. “You have to at least admit that our worlds are pretty far apart.”
I shook my head. “Nah, I come from humble beginnings. I get it. I wasn’t just born rich, you know.”
She eyed me curiously. “Yeah? Then what’s your story?”
“Hm? My story?” I wasn’t expecting this.
“It’s your turn, now. Tell me about who Diesel is. Where did you come from? How did you get to be here?”
Man, that was a lot to sum up.
“Well, my dad was a plumber and my mom stayed at home. He was in the union, so, you know, I wouldn’t say we were poor or anything. But not rich either. I had a lot of rich kid friends growing up who would go on European vacations in the summer and always had the newest video games. I felt like me and my brother were always on the outside looking in. And I knew that when I got older, I wanted to be something more. I wanted to be someone, you know? And I didn’t want to have to want for anything.”
“So how did you make that happen?” she asked. “You know, coming from such humble beginnings?”
“Well, I always knew I wanted to run my own business, so I took a lot of business classes at the local community college because that was where they were cheapest. I’d heard something about buying things in bulk online from other countries—you know, so each individual object ends up being really cheap—and reselling the items both on the internet and at flea markets and stuff like that. I did that for several years, and it was actually pretty lucrative… and soon enough, I had racked up a pretty penny to invest in my own business. Eventually my brother copied what I was doing to make his own money and we met Ryker who was willing to invest in Crave, and that’s it. That’s where we are today. The club really took off.”
“Wow, I’m impressed,” she said, and she actually looked it.
“Not the story you were expecting, huh?”
“I mean… I’d always been one of those people that believed there are no self-made millionaires. But I guess you really didn’t get a leg up from anyone, huh?”
