WIth a Twist: (The Club #9)

by Stratton, M.

“Aren’t we supposed to wait for Jet?”

  She looked back at me over her shoulder. “Do you love her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you really want to wait for him knowing what Ricky might be doing to her right now?”

  “No.”

  “Then come.” She flung the door open and took the stairs two at a time. “Jet seems to think he’s the only one who can take care of business.”

  “I’m sure he just wants to make sure nothing happens to you.”

  Tally stopped and turned, looking down at me from the stairs above. “I’m going to ignore that statement and chalk it up to the fact you’re worried about Starr and you have no idea who I am. But you should never underestimate what a woman is capable of, especially when she is pissed off.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I wasn’t too much of a man to admit the look in her eyes was actually a little scary right now.

  “Good, now, can we please go save my employee?”

  Without waiting for a reply, she spun back around and continued up the stairs. When we got to the door leading to the third floor, she stopped and turned around to me. “What is the rule here at The Club?”

  “Keep your mouth shut.”

  “Good boy, I don’t need to tell you that this club means everything to me, and I will do whatever it takes to keep my employees, customers, and integrity of the place safe. It is who I am to the core.”

  I nodded, I knew exactly what she was saying. And if everything we suspected was true, I had no problem keeping my mouth shut with whatever happened after we walked out of this door.

  “We know they are on this floor, we were able to trace them this far, but just to be sure, I had Preston check every other room on every floor to make sure he didn’t somehow double back. We’ve checked the cameras on this floor and most are working properly, but there are a few that aren’t. We’re going to start there. I have Liam, our security tech, going back through trying to figure out what happened. I want to play this all casual. If nothing is going on, I don’t want to tip our hand that we know about his past.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Good.” She pulled a Taser out of her back pocket and checked it. “Follow me.”

  The place looked totally different with the lights turned up and no one around. It was eerily silent. Tally walked through the place, her eyes scanning everything. Carefully, we checked every room. My tension building with each one, my imagination going wild about what we might find behind the door. It only took us a few minutes to check the rooms down the hall. My eyes kept going to the last door on the left.

  When Tally reached her free hand out to turn the knob, holding her Taser up in the other one, I knew this was it. I tried to brace myself for what I might see inside the room, and I hoped we were wrong. That we were jumping to conclusions.

  The knob wouldn’t turn in her hand. Our eyes locked. This was it. She pulled what I assumed was the master key out of her pocket and unlocked the door.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Starr

  “Masks, masks, everywhere there’s masks,” Ricky sing-songed as he moved around the room. “We all wear masks, Starr, some of us just have prettier ones. But you know what?” He spun around, clutching one of the clown masks to his chest. “We are all monsters inside, and you are my mate. You will make me invincible.”

  “Why?” I cried. “Why are you doing this?” I had no idea how long I had been tied to the bed. I was sure it wasn’t as long as it felt. No one was supposed to show up to The Club for hours. I could be long dead before the first employee even stepped foot inside the door. As much as I hated the thought, I knew I had to string things along. Maybe someone would show up early, or Bryant would look for me. I had to hold onto hope.

  Ricky turned away from where he was hanging another clown mask on the wall. I was surprised at how quickly he had hung them up. My vision was filled with evil clown faces.

  “Because, Starr, we were meant to be together. From the very first moment I saw you, I knew you were my soul, you were what was going to make me whole again. But I couldn’t make the same mistake as last time.” He came over and sat down next to me on the bed. Carelessly, as he talked, he tracked a finger along my body, casually flicking at my nipples or shoving his fingers inside of me. “I thought I had found you before, but I was wrong. I now see how she wasn’t worthy. You…” He leaned down close to me, still hidden behind the mask. “You are perfection.” His tongue darted out and he licked the side of my face. “We are going to be perfection together. Us. The two of us. Not him. Not Bryant. I can’t wait to see his face when you become part of me.”

  He jumped off of the bed and stripped down. His massive cock was hard and ready. I didn’t want to think of that thing anywhere near me. He went over and opened a large jar and dipped his fingers in, they came out pure white and he started smearing it all over his body. His eyes rolled back in his head as he rubbed it all over his cock.

  “God, I can’t wait to rub myself all over your body, spreading my pure white on you.” He came over and roughly grabbed my thigh and kneaded it, his fingers digging in deeply. “Oh yes, just look at that. Perfection. More.” He went back over to the jar and finished painting himself white.

  I couldn’t think of what else to do, I was truly at a loss. When he went over and pulled the bar up and over the bedpost, there was nothing I could do as he flipped me over and dragged me off of the bed. My arms were outstretched in front of me. He secured the bar to something on the ground. I felt something like satin come around my chest, under my arms. He weaved it around my breasts and my back. Pulling it tighter and tighter, he was making it hard to expand my chest to breathe. I tried not to panic as he came up behind me, his white hands pulling down on my nipples. I could feel his cock right there on my backside, and I knew what was coming, but I couldn’t move.

  He took the ends of the satin material and wrapped them around my neck, pulling it tight. The blood began to pound in my head and I couldn’t stop the panic anymore. I wasn’t getting enough air. “Stop.” My voice was so muffled. “Please stop.”

  “Oh Starr darling, this is just the beginning. Soon enough, you’re going to be begging for more.”

  He yanked back on the material and I gasped. I felt the tip of his cock starting to rip into me.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Bryant

  The sight that met me was more than I could have ever imagined. Starr on her knees, that bastard behind her. I wanted to scream out in anger, but Tally was faster. She Tasered him. When he collapsed on top of Starr, I knew she wasn’t going to be able to support his weight without ripping her arms out of their sockets. I ran over and violently pulled him off of her.

  “Help me.” I called over my shoulder to Tally. “Shhh… I’m here.”

  “Bryant?”

  “Yes, give me a minute and I’ll get you free. Tally!”

  “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

  “It’s not your fault. I’ll take care of you.” I turned around to see Tally dragging Ricky through a doorway at the back of the room. “What in the hell are you doing? Starr needs help.”

  “Do you think I’m going to let this rat bastard get away with what he’s done? No. Help me secure him, and then we’ll get Starr taken care of.”

  I hated to leave her, but I knew Tally was right. The last thing we needed was him getting away. I didn’t want Starr to live in fear of him showing back up. “Starr honey, I have to help Tally make sure Ricky doesn’t get away.” I pulled a blanket off of the bed and covered her up. “Just another minute, I’ll be right back and get you free.”

  “Hurry,” her voice shook.

  It just about killed me to leave her there, but I knew I had to help Tally. Going into the other room, which really was a bathroom, I watched as Tally expertly tied his hands together and looped the rope though a metal hook attached to the ceiling.

  “Do I want to know why it looks like you can hang a slab of meat in here?”


  “We like to make sure if someone wants to have fun in the water, they can. And it is going to work out perfectly for today. Help me raise him up. I don’t want his feet to touch the ground. Then go out and get me some more rope. He wants to try and play at something he knows nothing about. I’ll show him.”

  Seeing the look in her eyes, I was glad I wasn’t on the receiving end of her wrath. She quickly secured him and gave him a hard slap across the face. “Wake up, bastard.”

  “Umm… Tally, before you get started here, can you please help me with Starr for a minute?”

  “Of course, I wanted him to wake up first and start wondering what was going to happen to him next.” She turned and walked out of the room. I took a minute to look at him, the image of what he had been doing to Starr was burned in my memory. My fists clenched and I let all of my rage come through and I punched him as hard as I could in the stomach. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  Going back out into the room, I saw Tally there carefully helping Starr onto the bed. “Here,” she said. “Come here, I’ll show you what to do.” She began to rub Starr’s shoulder. “Her arms and legs are going to be very sore from the strain. Start by gently massaging them, focusing around the joints. Right now, everything hurts on her, so try to do a little bit at a time, keep moving to another place. Keep her covered up. The possibly of her going into shock is pretty high, keeping her warm and calm will help. I’ll go take care of the garbage while we wait for Jet to show up.” She got up and left us alone.

  “Hey Little Starr, how are you?” I picked up the arm Tally had started massaging.

  She looked up at me briefly, her eyes filled with tears and then she looked back down. “Embarrassed.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does. I don’t know if it is going to make anything better, but he’s done something like this before. His mind is twisted.”

  Starr shrugged and winced.

  “Here, let me help.” I started massaging the other arm. “We’ll get through this.”

  We both jumped when a scream came from the other room.

  “Tally,” I asked in a loud voice.

  “Oh, everything’s fine here, don’t mind the scumball’s screams. They’ll get weaker the longer I’m in here.” She hollered back to me.

  I turned back to Starr. “Do you want to move to another room? You don’t have to hear this.”

  She shook her head. “It might be wrong of me, but I want to hear him suffer.” Again, her eyes flitted to me and then away. “You say he did something like this before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she… did she live?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  Starr took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “That’s good.”

  We fell into silence and listened to Tally.

  “Do you understand how pissed off I am?”

  “Fuck you, whore,” Ricky spat.

  “That’s Mistress Whore to you.” We heard a thud and he screamed again. “You were my employee.” Thud. Scream. “I trusted you.” Smack. Scream. “You dared to do this in my club.” Slap. Scream. “Have you not been paying attention? I take this place very seriously.”

  I had no idea what she did this time, because there was no sound except a pain filled scream like I had never heard before.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it,” she barked. “You picked the wrong place to get caught.”

  As more screams filled the air, I looked down at Starr, who had tears falling down her face. “I can shut the door.” I started to get up, but her hand on my arm stopped me.

  “No. That’s not why I’m crying.”

  “Tell me. I want to help.”

  “I’m crying because you are here with me, taking care of me, and Tally is in there making sure he won’t hurt anyone else. I’m crying because I survived.”

  “That you did.” A voice said from the doorway.

  “Jet,” Starr whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Stop.” He walked over to stand by the side of the bed and looked down on her. “You are our employee, we are the ones who failed you.” He looked at me and raised an eyebrow, hearing Ricky’s screams coming from the bathroom. “I told you to wait for me.”

  “I don’t know Tally very well, but have you ever told her to wait?”

  A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “Fair point.”

  He turned and walked away toward the bathroom. The next sound we heard was a gunshot. We both jumped and looked at each other with wide eyes.

  “Damnit Jet, why did you do that?” Tally asked.

  “We really don’t have time for you to play.” His calm voice drifted to us.

  “There’s always time to play if you do it right.”

  We could hear his sigh from where we were laying and the silence that followed.

  “Fine. You do whatever it is you need to do about him and I’ll clean up. I’ll also see if I can shift the rooms around. I don’t want anyone in this one until we can make sure there is nothing left of this asshole in here. We’re also going to need a couple of bartenders for tonight.”

  “I’m sure we could find someone to fill in. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to have the suits more visible.”

  “I’ll work on it.”

  Jet walked out of the bathroom and looked at both of us. I knew this was going to be a defining moment for us.

  “No one will ever know.” I said to him. I wanted him to know that I fully understood the rules and I was fine with everything that happened today. If it ever came down to the safety of someone I love and having to kill someone to ensure they’d always be safe, I’d make the same choice over and over.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Starr

  One Year Later

  My hands shook as I attempted to secure the wings of my costume. I looked at myself in the full length mirror in the locker room at The Club. It had been one year since Ricky attacked me and was killed. The past year had been filled with a lot of healing and a lot of love.

  Bryant was by my side whenever I needed him. There were some dark times, but he was there, my knight in shining armor, my prince who brought me back into the light. We spent time going over the land and house he bought from Gordon. We decided to remodel what was there, keeping the history instead of tearing it down. We wanted to make it into our “castle” to live happily ever after in.

  One of the few arguments we ever had was the fact that I wanted to keep working at The Club. Obviously, we didn’t need the money, but I needed to work and it was something I was good at. Besides, even though Ricky was dead, I didn’t want him to win by getting me to never go back there. I also felt like I owed Jet and Tally for taking care of Ricky, for helping to protect me. They were great about me having all the time off I needed. One of my lasting scars was that I didn’t want to spend the nights away from Bryant. When he had to travel for business, I went with him. I needed to have him next to me if I was going to get any sleep. Every day, I became a little stronger, but it was a long process.

  Bryant didn’t want me to work tonight, but I had to. I had to come full circle. Taking a deep breath, I turned and left the locker room. Every time I left this room, for a brief second, fear would course through me, wondering if Ricky would be there waiting for me, like he always had in the past. But he was never there. As far as anyone knew, he had quit and moved on. His apartment was empty and his last check was cashed. I have no idea how they managed it, or what they did with his body, and I never wanted to know. I was just glad I never had to see him again.

  Walking into the bar area, I saw him waiting for me, leaning up against my end of the bar; my knight in shining armor, my prince, my everything. He didn’t know what I had planned for this night, I knew if I told him, all he would do was worry about me, tell me we didn’t have to do this. But this needed to be done. We both needed it if we were going to go forward.

  I had been watching the time and flipped the switch
accordingly. I hadn’t been back up on my hoop when customers were around in over a year. I had never taken my angel wings back home after that night, so they were here for me to practice working the hoop with them on when I was ready to take flight again.

  Slowly and carefully, I moved around the hoop to the music, my confidence growing with every beat. But still, I did not look at my prince. It wasn’t until the end when I moved, that I remembered where it all started. I arched backwards over the hoop, crossed my ankles and held onto one of my heels as I looked down into his gaze filled with pride and love. And just like that first time, I reached down with my free hand, needing to touch him. But this time, I already knew he was real. When he raised his hand and our fingertips touched, I knew I was home, with him.

  The hoop gave a little shake and I moved so I was sitting on the hoop. This time when my feet landed on the ground, they weren’t shaky. I knew exactly who he was and what came next. Tally came behind the bar and squeezed my shoulder.

  “Thank you,” I said to her.

  “Go, enjoy your man.”

  “I will.”

  I walked from behind the bar and held my hand out to Bryant. “Do you trust me?” I asked him.

  “Of course.”

  “Then come.” I led him back through The Club and down the hall to the last room on the left.

  “Starr...”

  Turning around, I smiled at him. “This, this is for us. I need to show you that I am stronger than I was before, that I can do this, and that he doesn’t hold that kind of power over me anymore. You,” I cupped the side of his face in my hand. “Your love has made me believe in fairytales.”

  We walked into the room. Tally had made sure it was completely remodeled after Ricky. The best way to get rid of evidence was to tear everything out and put something completely new in its place. They had recently redecorated some of The Club’s rooms, but after Ricky, they decided to finish the rest of them.

  “Bryant, I know even if you weren’t in my life, I would have survived the past year. But because you are in it, I didn’t just survive it, I became more, so much more. You’ve been here for me every single step of the way and there is no possible way you could ever know how much it means to me. Day in and day out, you slay my dragons for me, while at the same time helping me spread my wings and fly.”