Bastards & Whiskey (Top Shelf Book 1)

by Alta Hensley

  No!

  No!

  I had fucking lost my mind.

  “We just had sex! And you are telling me we have to rush out the door!” Yeah, her hurt was quickly changing to outrage.

  “I told you we had to get back to New Orleans.” I looked at her face for the first time since fucking her. Her voice may have been filled with rage, but I could see the pain in her eyes. Tears burned behind the beautiful brown. I knew it. She felt used. I could see that. I had seen it before many times before with all the other women I’d fucked.

  Had I used her? No. Yes. No. Fuck. I didn’t know.

  “What the hell? We just had sex! I’m not asking for cuddles and kisses, but maybe a fucking moment to breathe before you are tossing clothes at me and telling me to get out the door.”

  “Let’s not make this a thing.”

  “A thing?”

  “Yeah, I don’t have time for emotions.” I was such an asshole. A fucking asshole. I wouldn’t blame her for one second for hating my ass.

  I was dressed, things were gathered, and I reached for her shoes and passed them her way. She snatched them from my hands shooting daggers at me.

  “Why are you doing this? You are a powerful man. You could fix this if you wanted to. I know that you could. You don’t have to do this.” Her face, and her words pained.

  “It’s what is right. I’m a man of my word. Spiked Roses will always be trusted. If I bend the rules for you, then I set a precedence that will be the end of the club. Do you think I should risk everything for you?”

  Anita bit her lip nervously, her stare lowering away from mine as she stood from the bed. She too was finally dressed with shoes on, so at least we were moving in the right direction.

  “Would that really be so awful? You know damn well what is in store for me. You know Marco. He may even kill me just to set the precedence as you call it. Please, Kenneth. Stop for a second and listen to me. I understand you are a man of your word, but what about decency? Mercy? I mean, Jesus! We just fucking had sex. You had your cock buried up my ass last night. We’ve kissed. There is more going on between us, and you can’t just treat me like a package that means nothing to you. I know there is something inside you that is agreeing with me. You didn’t just fuck me and not care. You may be a bastard, but I could see it in your eyes. I could feel it as you kissed me. You don’t want this. You don’t want to deliver me to Marco and you know it. You don’t want to see me dead.”

  I watched this woman before me, her words stabbing at my heart because I could see the fear in her eyes, and I could hear the slight tremble in her voice as she tried to reason with me. “I’m not going to allow him to kill you.”

  Anita looked up at me as she took a step forward, our gazes meeting. “But as long as he doesn’t kill me, you don’t care what he does. No matter how awful it is? Is that what you are saying?”

  “I’m saying it is none of my business what happens behind closed doors. You knew what you were signing on to. And if you really do fear for your life, then why the fuck aren’t you giving back the money? Did you spend it already?”

  “Not really,” she mumbled, looking back at her feet.

  “What does that mean? Do you have the money or not?”

  “Yes, but I need it.”

  “Are you in some kind of trouble? Drugs?”

  She looked up at me, clearly offended. “No, of course not. I’m not a fucking junkie if that’s what you think.” She took a deep breath and continued with less venom laced between her words. “I have a dear friend who will be in need of money soon. I have to plan for it. It’s why I agreed to go to The Tasting Room to begin with.”

  “Why does your friend need the money?”

  “She just does. Does it really matter to you?” she snapped.

  “No. You’re right. I don’t give a fuck.” I slung my bag over my shoulder and walked into the hallway, needing to breathe air that didn’t have the intoxicating smell of Anita Kyle.

  “Where are you going?” she yelled after me.

  “New Orleans.” I yelled back, my steps quickening. “Come on. Make sure you have all your stuff. Let’s get going.”

  I heard the sound of the hotel door closing and the pitter-patter of her feet running after me down the hallway. When she caught up to me at the elevators, she looked at me with pleading eyes. “I’m asking you to not do this.”

  I ignored her, struggling to not stare into those hurt eyes that ripped my heart in two. Watching the numbers above the elevator climb at an agonizingly slow pace, I could feel her gaze burning into me.

  “You don’t have to be Marco’s bitch you know.” She huffed. “And here I thought you were a powerful man. Someone to fear, respect, and maybe even admire. You aren’t nothing but a pussy, doing the bidding of a truly powerful man.”

  The elevator doors opened, and I shoved her not so nicely inside.

  “I hate you,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

  “Good.”

  Hate was far better than whatever the fuck else was happening. Yes, I choose hate. Hate.

  16

  Anita

  I quietly sat in the back of the car and stared out the window as we passed the highway markers at a rapid speed. I was unsure what I should say to Kenneth now. I had never allowed such passion, hunger, and unrestricted lust with any man before. Now that I had, I wasn’t sure what was next. He didn’t seem to even care that we had just had sex. It was a fuck and nothing more for him. But did I really expect anything more? And what did I really want from Kenneth? Cuddles and sweet words of love? No. No, I definitely didn’t want or expect anything sentimental, or caring from this man.

  I refused to give even the littlest part of me to a man, or at least I always had believed that in the past. Every day of my life, every single moment was forced. People forced me, the universe forced me, life forced me to count on me. Me alone. No man ever would enter my heart. Impossible to have a broken heart if you never opened the heart to be broken in the first place.

  Yet… there was nothing forced about what just happened. No, I’d wanted it. I’d begged for it. And even now, with his seed still seeping out of me, I wanted it again. Harder, longer, and with more domination than before. Oh God… I craved his control over my body that willingly surrendered.

  “You can talk to me you know,” Kenneth said to me as he righted himself in the seat beside me. “This is going to be a long trip if you insist on a childish silent treatment.”

  “I have nothing more to say. I said it. You chose to not hear me.”

  “I heard you.”

  “Fine. You chose to ignore me.”

  “Yes, I chose to ignore you.”

  Silence surrounded us again as the day passed us in a whirl of fast landscape, and my thoughts drifted back to the wild sex that still lingered between my legs. Having been held by Kenneth’s arms hours before, his lips on my pussy with such skill, driving me to pleasures I never dreamed existed, I ached to again feel such intense animalistic pleasure.

  We had been on the road for hours, my thoughts and memories of what had happened with Kenneth tormenting my mind. But he was still a bastard. Kenneth Saxon was a goddamn bastard. I had to remind myself of that fact.

  “Why?” I finally blurted out, not being able to sustain my vow of silence.

  Kenneth looked over at me to quickly meet my eyes. “Why what?”

  “Why do you care so much about Spiked Roses and its reputation? You have all the money in the world, so why do you care about a damn club?”

  “First of all, how do you know I have all the money in the world?”

  “Don’t you?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “I suppose.”

  “So do you really need Spiked Roses? Aren’t you a big shot lawyer or something? Why don’t you focus on that rather than this shitty club that forces women to return to monsters to get pissed on?”

  He laughed and shook his head.

  “What’s so funny?”<
br />
  “Remind me to never pee on you. It clearly traumatized you.”

  “Wouldn’t it you?”

  He laughed again. “I mean, it’s not the end of the world. It’s just piss.”

  “Just piss?” I nearly choked on my own spit at the absurdity of what he’d just said. “You can’t be serious. Have you ever been pissed on?”

  Still laughing, Kenneth said, “I will make a deal with you.” He started laughing even harder. The thin laugh lines around his eyes seemed to accentuate the deep brown. If I weren’t so appalled at his belief that being peed on was no big deal, I could have found myself lost in their depths.

  “What kind of deal?”

  “I will tell Marco that he can’t kill you, and he can’t pee on you again.” Kenneth barely was able to say the last words of the sentence because a deep belly laugh escaped his mouth.

  “I’m glad you find this so funny,” I said as I crossed my arms against my chest and stared out the window.

  “Well, it kinda is funny. Just think the stories you can tell your grandchildren. It’s not everyday you get pissed on by a ruthless mafia king.”

  I tried to hide my smile. He had a point. A disgusting and twisted point, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing I agreed. My experiences since starting to work at Spiked Roses would certainly make for an interesting story.

  “So why did you come after me and not send someone else. Surely you have staff or someone who could have done the drive.” I still wasn’t satisfied with his response. Why did he care so much? Didn’t he have better things to do than worry about where I was, or what I did or did not do?

  “If I didn’t do it, someone else would have from Marco’s camp. I didn’t want your life at risk. Plus, I learned a long time ago, that if you want something done right, you need to handle it yourself. We already had enough of a fuck up with you bailing. It looked bad for the club. I didn’t want any other fuck ups to add to the mess.” He paused and looked at me. “Reputation is everything. I wasn’t going to allow you to fuck with the reputation of a business I worked really hard to build.”

  “I still don’t know why you care so much about that damn place. It’s just an overpriced bar and whore house,” I blurted.

  “Maybe so. But it’s mine. It belongs to me and my friends, and that means a lot to me. I don’t fail at anything. I succeed. So the last thing I need is to have people talking about a staff member taking the client’s money and running. The Tasting Room and the parties would be over for good. And if we lose The Tasting Room, it would just be a matter of time until we would indeed become an overpriced bar and whore house.” He looked out the window and released a deep breath. “But that’s not going to happen. Because like I said, I don’t fail at anything.”

  “Do you think it is right? What happens in The Tasting Room?” Why I asked or cared what Kenneth believed I wasn’t sure. Who cared what this asshole truly thought… but I did.

  “It doesn’t matter what I think. It matters to the men who are doing the purchasing, and the women who are doing the selling.”

  “But what do you think? What do you think of the men and the women?” I prodded on.

  He looked at me and studied my face for a few moments before answering. “Is this your way of asking if I think you are a whore?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t care if you think I am.” But I did care. I really did care. I didn’t want to be a whore. And somehow I had convinced myself that as long as I wasn’t agreeing to having vaginal sex, that I wasn’t truly selling my body. I had only agreed to be Marco’s pet—whatever that meant—but sex wasn’t in the contract. So, I wasn’t a prostitute. Or so I kept telling myself.

  “I think you do care or you wouldn’t be asking.”

  “Fine. Do you? Do you think I’m a whore?”

  He shook his head slowly as his eyes locked with mine. “No. I don’t. But that doesn’t mean that I like what you did. You never should have agreed to the things you did with Marco. It’s not who you are.”

  “How do you know who I am?”

  “I’m good at reading people. It’s how I made a shitload of money in the courtroom. Not that it is hard with you. You think you hide your feelings, but I can see them. I can read them easily. From the moment you walked into the office interviewing for the job, I could tell you weren’t right for the club.”

  “Then why did you hire me?”

  He shrugged. “A lot of women hired aren’t right for the position. But I also knew you needed a job. Call me a bleeding heart. I don’t know. And I liked that you were honest, you were sober, and you were easy on the eyes. What you did from that point on was up to you. You didn’t have to go into The Tasting Room. And you definitely didn’t have to sign one of the harshest contracts with Marco.”

  “Have you ever contracted someone?” I asked, not wanting to think of Marco and my awful fate signed with my blood any longer. I still had some time on this trip to not think of the devil waiting for me, and I wanted to take that time to pretend I wasn’t going to hell.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I haven’t felt the need.”

  Jesus, the man was a closed book.

  “You don’t want a woman who you can have do whatever you want?”

  “I’ve had plenty of women do exactly what I want. I just don’t need a contract to make that happen.” He gave me a wink. “I got just what I wanted last night and today. No need for a contract.”

  “Ass,” I mumbled, hating that he had that over me. Such an arrogant ass.

  17

  Kenneth

  Sitting next to Anita was fucking killing me. I tried not to focus on the closeness of our bodies, or the taste of her sex still on my lips. I knew I never should have laid a hand on her. I certainly should have never fucked her. But I couldn’t stop; I couldn’t fight the urge. At least now that maybe we had released all the sexual tension, I could go about doing my damn job, returning her to Marco safe and sound, and getting back to Spiked Roses with the most expensive whiskey I could find. I had fucking earned it.

  I hoped she hadn’t gotten any ideas in her head. We wouldn’t be riding off into the sunset like two lovebirds in a romance. We would never be together. And hopefully she didn’t think that one fuck would equal her freedom from honoring her contract. It wasn’t a possibility. I knew I was in no position to fantasize about the future nor try to take part in any form of a relationship. That just wasn’t who I was.

  I fucked.

  I did not love.

  I had nothing more to offer than her safe return back to New Orleans, and I needed to make that clear to this woman before I started getting her hopes up.

  I needed Anita to clearly understand that what had happened between us, the incredible sex we had shared, meant nothing. It would change nothing.

  But damn… it had been incredible sex.

  “Anita…” I started, pulling from my inner strength to remain firm, no matter what her counter would be. “About what happened.”

  I could see her stiffen against the leather seat, and I knew immediately that she was priming herself for my harsh but true rejection. It was my duty to make Anita understand that there was no other way. We both had our roles—expectations that needed to be followed through with. Even though she’d said she quit, until she completed her contractual obligation, as far as I was concerned, she was a staff member of Spiked Roses… period. I was a managing member and owner. We had roles. We had fucking roles. Lust-filled, starstruck lovers were not, and never would be our roles. And if I kept telling myself that line of bullshit, I might actually start to believe it.

  “Nothing happened. We fucked. Nothing special. Plain and simple. Now we move on,” she snapped.

  I couldn’t ignore the slight wound her words caused. She rejected me before I could reject her. And it was special. It had been mind blowing incredible sex. Fucking incredible.

  “About what happened.” I tried again, needing to clar
ify the situation. I felt out of control, and I didn’t like it one bit. There was no room for emotions in life. Emotions led to errors. Errors led to failure. “I shouldn’t have allowed anything to happen like that. I know a lot of men at Spiked Roses could care less who they fuck, and they fuck the staff all the time. But I have really been trying to change that. So it was never my intention to have what happened happen.”

  “Nothing happened, Kenneth,” Anita said. “A moment of passion. We’re human. Weak. Even stupid. But all is forgotten.” Her voice rang so cold, so flat. Apparently, Anita had no room for emotion in her life either.

  Her dismissal of what was by far the most intense sexual experience of my life angered me. I should be the one, not her. “Anita—”

  “Kenneth,” she cut off, her tone severe, slicing through the awkwardness like a knife. “This is a non issue. It was just a stupid incident that both of us can forget. Nothing worth discussing happened, and that’s exactly it. So let’s let this topic die, shall we?”

  “It wasn’t just an incident and you know it!” I barked, my fury with her constant denial attacking my ego. I should let it be and move on, but for some reason I couldn’t. And I was showing my cards. I knew better than that. Never show your cards!

  “It was nothing.” She shrugged and looked out the window. “Nothing to write about in my diary or anything.”

  “Oh I disagree. Your body betrays you, baby doll. I seem to remember your wet pussy desperate for my cock to be inside of you. I think I even remember some pleading to fuck you hard.”

  I smirked when I saw her eyes widen and her mouth open in shock as she turned to me. Seeing the vehemence in her eyes gave me the power back. I couldn’t stand her nonchalance before. Anger meant her emotions were mine. I was the puppet master once again. If she hated me, it meant I got to her. I was in her mind. I was in her soul. Now I could strike whenever I wanted. The predator and the prey.

  “You wanted me to hurt you. You wanted me to make you scream. I would say that our incident was definitely more than you want to admit.”