by Nina Levine
Without sufficient cash flow to throw into advertising, I was left having to suck it the fuck up. I didn’t hold out hope for an improvement any time soon, but I wasn’t a quitter, so I’d see it through. I shoved my feet into my Vans, then went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and do my hair.
I’d just placed my hairbrush down when my phone rang.
Putting it on speaker, I said, “Tell me you’re coming over with copious amounts of alcohol tonight,” I said to my best friend, Darcy.
“I’ll do you one better. We’re going out tonight.”
I stared at the phone. “Going out?”
“Yeah, you know, getting a few drinks, maybe getting you a few numbers? Please tell me you haven’t forgotten what fun is. I worked really hard to get you to lighten up.”
“I know what going out is, Dee, but tonight? I thought it was date night for you and Baron on Fridays.”
“Baron has to work late.”
Baron was her husband of five years and the only man Darcy had ever loved. They’d been high school sweethearts, and they were so perfect for each other it made me sick to my stomach.
“Come on, Wren. You’re my only single friend. You’re my only excuse to go out anymore.”
Rifling through my makeup bag, I pulled out my foundation and shook the bottle. “I don’t want to be used, Darcy.”
She laughed. “You’ll be using me. I’m the best fucking wing-woman you’ve ever had.”
I snorted, applying my foundation efficiently. “We can have one drink.”
“Yes! I knew I’d wear you down.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Temptation in West Hollywood.”
I whistled through my teeth. “I hope you know someone who knows someone who knows someone because getting on that list is hard.”
“Oh, we’re on the list, babe. Don’t you worry.”
Applying some mascara, I asked, “How in the hell did you manage that?”
“Baron manages their books. All he had to do was ask.”
Fuck, I knew I liked Baron for a reason. “What time should I meet you?”
“Nine?”
“Done. I’ll see you then.” I hung up and finished applying a clear gloss to my lips. Taking one final look at my reflection, I decided it was as good as it was going to get. Besides, I was going to get splashed by shaking dogs all day, anyway. I looked as tired as I felt, but I wasn’t going to earn money without actually heading to work. I could worry about Hawk later. Hell, maybe this would be the wake-up call he needed to start getting his shit together.
Grabbing the keys from the hook by the door, I said over my shoulder, “Lock up the windows and door when you leave, please, and for fuck’s sake, don’t go getting yourself into any deeper shit.”
When I got downstairs, I turned to the right to walk the two blocks to my dog grooming shop. From memory, I had at least ten dogs coming in for a wash and another three for clipping. Then when I was done, I could look forward to going out with Darcy.
As I rounded the corner onto the street of my shop, I stopped dead and blinked. Bane Rivera was standing against the front window dressed in an expensive black suit and crisp white shirt. Sunglasses shaded his eyes, but I knew the moment when he saw me. I could feel his gaze on me like it was a visible caress. I began walking again, approaching him with my keys out.
“What are you doing here?” I pushed the key into the front lock and opened the door, not waiting to see if he would follow.
As I flipped on the lights, he sauntered into my shop, looking all sorts of misplaced while I turned off the security alarm.
“So this is where you work, huh?” he asked, amusement coloring his tone.
“If you’re here to make fun of this place, you can fuck right off now.” I went to move around the counter to drop my bag, but Bane stopped me by wrapping his fingers around my wrist. I glared at the offending digits then back at him. “Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”
His mouth turned up into a cocky smile. Like he was used to getting everything he wanted. Like the world would drop its panties for him. And why was I thinking about dropping my panties in his presence?
“What would you do to me if it is?” His question was a bare rumble of a purr, a buzz deep down low in his chest. I stared up into his dark eyes, my gaze tracking from his mouth to the tattoos on the side of his neck, back to his eyes.
I swallowed, praying my voice sounded strong when I answered, “I don’t know.”
His brows rose. “You don’t know?” Jerking me closer, I was forced to drop my bag and place my hands on his chest to stop me from crashing into him. He wrapped his arms around me, pinning my arms to my sides. Dipping his head to my ear, he whispered, “Don’t tease me, Little Bird. You will not enjoy the punishment, although I know I will.”
Shoving free of his arms, I tried to get my breathing back under control. My brain was firing a thousand different thoughts in a thousand different directions. Slowly, I scooped up my bag and walked behind the counter. I took a few minutes more than necessary to stow it, and by the look on his face when I stood back up again, he knew. He knew he’d messed with my equilibrium.
“What do you want?” I asked again.
“You.”
I blinked, sure my hearing was on the fritz. “Me?”
He leaned against the counter, folding his arms across his chest. The movement revealed the gold Piaget watch on his wrist, which winked in the overhead lighting. “Last night, you came to beg me to let your brother’s debt go. Not once did you offer me an alternative to the money.”
I frowned. “Alternative?”
“An alternative.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a business card and handed it to me. I took it, finally glancing down at the thick stock. It was black with his name embossed on one side and a number in gold on the other.
“What’s this?”
“An offer.”
My heart lurched into my throat as the implications of what he was saying hit me with all the finesse of a semi-trailer careening out of control. “You want me to work for you?”
“Clever girl,” he murmured, his eyelids lowering. “Come and work for me, Little Bird, and I’ll wipe that debt of Hawk’s away. Forever.”
I rubbed my thumb over his embossed name, committing the shape of the letters to memory. This was one of those times in your life that changed shit forever. “And if I say no?”
Straightening, he stalked toward me behind the counter. I backed up a step, slamming into the wall. Bane crowded me against it, caging me in with his hands on either side of my head. He leaned in close, placed his nose at my neck, and inhaled. Then his words, words that trickled like a lover’s promise, found their way into my ear. “You love your brother too much to say no.”
My chest pumped as I tried to drag more air into my lungs. All I caught was the scent of his cologne—something deliciously spicy and dark. I swallowed raggedly, tilting my face up to meet his. “No,” I said the word with as much conviction as I could muster, but given his proximity, I was struggling to even perform the most basic functions like breathing and blinking. There was something so magnetic about him. He was savagery contained in a suit, an animal tamed only because he was in public. I had no doubt that when it came to sex, he would own my body. And I would give it to him.
He must’ve seen that realization in my eyes. Flexing his hips into mine, I had to bite my lip as his erection pressed into my pelvis. “Still thinking about me bending you over my knee?”
“No,” I whispered.
He clicked his tongue. “When you submit to me, Little Bird, I will make your ass red raw, and you will love every second of it.”
“I highly doubt that.” My words came out weaker than I’d anticipated, but Bane was twisting everything around in my head. I’d never had such a visceral reaction to a man before.
“Think about my offer, Wren Montana.” He stepped away from me and left the shop. I stared at the door, unab
le to catch my breath.
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
Diving into my bag, I called Darcy.
She picked up on the second ring. “Babe?”
“Hey. Ah… you’re never going to believe what just happened.”
There was a thump like Darcy had put something down—probably her coffee cup. “Spill it.”
“I just got offered a job.”
“A job? Why would you need a job? You have a job. A job where?” Her questions came out rapid-fire, just like they always did when she was multitasking.
“What else are you doing?”
“Huh? Oh, trying to type out this report for my boss.”
I picked up the card and looked at it again. “I’ll call you back then.”
“Pfft… no, babe. We’re talking now. I got this.”
I smiled. Darcy always knew when I needed her the most, and right now I needed her. And not because of Bane coming in here and offering me a way out of Hawk’s mess, but for everything life had ever thrown at me. “It’s a long story.”
“Stop stalling and tell me already.”
I inhaled deeply, then let the breath out slowly. I had about twenty minutes before my first appointment would arrive. “All right, here’s the long and the short of it, Hawk was an asshole and did something stupid. Now, that something stupid has come back to bite him in the ass.”
“Ooo, I love it when you’re all cryptic, but knowing your brother as I do, he probably pissed off the wrong person. And now you feel obligated to help him because he’s your baby brother, and that’s what you do. Am I right?”
Fuck, she was so right about that. “Pretty much.”
“Also knowing you, you also know how to fix it.”
My heart lurched in my chest because I hadn’t known how to fix it, but as I looked down at the black card on my counter, maybe I did. The question was, what else was it going to cost me?
5
Bane
Wrapping my hand around Syn’s long hair, I forced her down farther onto my dick bobbing in and out of her mouth. Seeing Wren and not being able to touch her like I wanted to had left my dick hard—too fucking hard to think about anything else. I had to have an outlet for that frustration. Otherwise, nothing would get done for the rest of the day.
She gripped my thighs, digging her false nails into the muscle. I sucked in a hiss and pumped harder, hitting the back of her throat over and over again. She groaned her appreciation of the rough treatment, so I upped the tempo. Slamming into her, I tilted my head and let my gaze drift to her breasts bouncing from inside the cup of her bra. She was in red today, the color clashing with her bottle-colored hair.
As soon as she tugged on my balls, they tightened with a release. With a roar, I slammed into her once more, spilling down her throat. She swallowed me down, sucking and licking and looking for more. She let go of my cock with an audible pop, and it came to settle against my lower belly, glistening with her saliva.
Running my thumb over her bottom lip, I murmured, “You love cock, don’t you?”
She nodded. “More than anything.” She stood smoothly, her spike heels evenly distributing her weight. “Need anything else from me?” she asked, running her hands suggestively over her breasts and down into her panties. “You got me all wet.”
“Go find someone to fuck, then,” I told her dismissively, tucking myself back into my pants. “I’m busy.”
I didn’t bother to watch Syn leave. Instead, I returned my attention to the screen of my computer monitor and tried to ignore all thoughts of Wren Montana. It was completely useless. Wren was so firmly stuck in my frontal lobe that I’d thought about nothing else since last night.
That was the reason for the visit this morning.
That was the reason I gave her my card and offered her a job.
It probably wasn’t the job she would be expecting as I had no desire to share her with any other man. The woman was a fucking hellcat. I liked spirit, especially when that spirit was directed at something meaningful. So many times, women were just bitches for the sake of being bitches, but with Wren, I could see what drove her—family and a sense of responsibility.
I saw the same in myself.
Picking up my phone, I dialed my sister, Bianca.
“Baby brother,” she answered breathlessly. “To what do I owe the pleasure.”
Rubbing my eyes with my thumb and forefinger, I groaned out, “Please tell me you didn’t answer the phone while you were having sex.”
She snorted. “No. I’m out for a run with Valentine,” she replied.
I sat a little straighter in my chair. Valentine was her four-month-old daughter. “Should you be doing that?” I barked, then reined that anger back in. Bianca had never reacted well to anger, but I wasn’t asking out of anger. It was concern. Bianca had had a difficult pregnancy, topped off with a fucking difficult labor that had left her in the hospital for about a week longer than necessary after giving birth.
“Yes, brother, I’m fine,” she replied in a bored voice. “The doc gave me the all-clear. All he said was I had to take it easy.”
“And you goddamn will.” I looked up when Dagger came into the office, and I put my finger up to show him to wait a minute. “How’s my favorite niece anyway?”
“She’s good… misses her uncle, though. When are you coming over for a visit?”
“I don’t know.” I stared absently at the club through the window. Being that it was lunchtime on a Friday, it was slow right now, but in another couple of hours, members would be foaming at the mouth to get in. The working week was over, and they were looking to blow off some fucking steam. “Work has been busy.”
“How’s the club doing?”
There was no derision in her voice when she asked. She knew that the club wasn’t about being a chauvinist or a sex fiend, although I was a sex fiend too. She understood that I was a businessman first and foremost. She thought I only sold pussy. She didn’t know about the drug business on the side, and that was the way it was going to stay.
“It’s great. Profit margins are healthy. I might actually look at expanding like we talked about.”
“That’s amazing, Bane. I’m really happy for you.” There was a faint, tinny beep over the line, and Bianca said, “Shit, my heart rate’s dropping. I’d better get going. Thanks for the call. When should I tell James we’ll be expecting you?”
I clicked into my digital calendar. Weekends were out on account of that being the busiest time of the week, but we were closed on Monday for deep cleaning. “Monday for dinner.”
“I’ll make your favorite.”
I chuckled. “Love you, sis.”
“Love you, too, brother.”
I ended the call and looked at Dagger. “We have a problem,” he said.
I stood, buttoning my suit jacket. “We run out of condoms again?” I asked in a bored drawl. “Because that shit is way below my pay grade.”
“One of our guys got hit.”
I was instantly on alert, narrowing my eyes at him. “Got hit, how?”
Dagger’s expression didn’t change. At all. “Same as the last one.”
My hands balled into fists of their own volition. “Fuck!” A month ago, we lost one of my dealers to what we thought was gang violence. He’d been shot in the chest when he’d opened his apartment door. His cash had been taken, but the drugs had been left, which was fucking strange since he had about ten thousand worth in his house. I didn’t think anything of it. Until now.
Now, his execution made sense.
Stalking out from behind my desk, I began to pace. I was a caged tiger ready to swipe at anything stupid enough to get close to the bars.
“We need to find these fuckers and get rid of them.” Dagger watched me with his cold, dead eyes. “Do we have any leads?”
“Most logical choices are Manzetti or Sanderson.”
I ground my teeth so hard my jaw ached. I refused to be taken out of the coke game by anyone. “
Find out who it is, then bring me their goddamn head!”
Dagger said nothing, just turned around and left the office, leaving me with a fuck-ton of simmering rage. I was anticipating some retribution for cutting in on the East Coast drug trade, but I was thinking it would be more like my dealers getting beaten up or an easy warning. I expected to know where the threat was coming from, but this shit was fucked up.
I was in the fucking dark here.
I was not totally to blame, though. I’d known I was setting up a territory that fringed both Manzetti’s and Sanderson’s. I’d taken over their No Man’s Land and filled it with my own coke, slightly undercutting the bastards on price to ensure it would take.
Mancini had always taught me to take what I wanted, then fight tooth and nail to keep it, and that was what I was goddamn doing.
6
Wren
God, I hoped I knew what I was doing. Through the windshield of my car, I looked up at The Dollhouse, feeling my stomach churn. I felt like I was making a deal with the Devil here, although if I were honest with myself, Bane Rivera was one fine-looking devil. Glancing at the black card on the passenger seat, I tried to recall what he’d told me on the phone this afternoon after I’d finished with my last client. He’d said I could come through the front, that the bouncer would wave me through.
As I worked through washing dogs and clipping claws, I had time to think about Bane’s offer. He said he’d wipe Hawk’s debt if I worked for him. He never said how long, though, or doing what, although I suspected I already knew, so I’d reasoned with myself that this was just a meeting to discuss the particulars. I had not said yes to this. I was not committing to working at a fucking gentlemen’s club, no matter how exclusive it was.
Letting out one final breath, I got out of my car and locked it. I glanced around as I made my way to the front, feeling like everyone was staring at me.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” the bouncer asked, his bald head gleaming with sweat in the late evening heat that was still clinging to LA.