by Nikki Bloom
“Wouldn’t that just make things more complicated?”
“It’d be less complicated than vowing to be celibate your entire marriage or explaining to a third party why you’re sleeping around.”
I could well imagine that Dom would want the particulars of our marriage kept confidential. Me too for that matter. “Mm, good point.”
“Besides, don’t even act like you don’t want to.”
“I don’t!” I could feel my face flaming at his accusations. Just because Domenic Cliff was considered one of New York’s sexiest bachelors did not mean that every girl was dying to drop their panties for him. At least I wasn’t. But there was an argument to be made for keeping our relationship monogamous. Discretion most of all.
I wonder if Dom would see it that way.
If I was a betting woman, my money would be on nope.
“Also, if you need him to do specific things for you, then you should stipulate that.”
“Specific things like what?”
‘Well, if you need him for your grant, I assume you’d like to parade him around? Maybe dinners or benefits? I don’t know how these things are done.”
“Well, there’s the annual FDA dinner at the end of the month. I suppose it couldn’t hurt if he was seen with me there.”
“Exactly. Those are the kind of things you should include in your contract. Also, if you want to have separate rooms, an allowance, and of course, the usual provisos for any prenup.”
I leaned towards him pleadingly. “Would you write something up for me?”
Chaz shook his head. “I don’t think I could do you justice. But I could give you a recommendation.”
I didn’t think I could go through this again with someone else. “I trust you.”
“Fine. You want to put your fate in my inexperienced hands, it’s your funeral.”
I straightened up with delight and threw my hands around his neck. “Thank you so much, Chaz!”
5
Domenic
I felt the need to go out and celebrate, seeing as this might be my last week of freedom. The Red Room had no regard for which day of the week it was; every night was a party night. I didn’t normally indulge in the midweek shenanigans whatever Leyland might say, but like I said: last week of freedom, possibly.
I hadn’t spoken to Nicolette yet, though she’d texted me that she’d taken some legal counsel and he was drawing up an agreement. I hadn’t yet told Leyland. I thought it best to wait and see what she came up with.
It all felt rather surreal to me still.
I changed out of my work clothes into black jeans and a black leather jacket. A Led Zeppelin tee completed the look. Pushing my hair back, I smiled at my reflection. “Well, aren’t you a handsome son of a gun?”
“Well, aren’t you a conceited son of a gun?” Morgan said as he leaned against the door jamb, arms folded, smiling at me.
I turned to grin at him. “I’m nothing if not self-aware.”
“Where are you off to?” He straightened up and came to sit on my bed.
“We. Where are we going?”
“Okay, I’ll bite; where are we going?” He smirked at me.
“The Red Room.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “What? It’s Tuesday.”
“And?” I picked up my wallet and put it in my back pocket. “Let’s go.”
Morgan sighed but made no demur. We took the elevator down to the garage and got on our motorbikes. We might have left the club life behind, but the Harleys are forever.
For a Tuesday night, the club was jumping. I had expected only the hardcore partiers to be present, but there was quite a crowd. I guess a lot of people had the same idea.
I pointed to my glass and the bartender promptly refilled it. As I lifted it to my lips, my hand froze halfway as I caught sight of someone in the bar mirror. Morgan’s sister was on the dance floor, clad in a tiny leather miniskirt, thigh-high boots, and a black vest, shimmying down some guy’s torso.
Well, I guess we had the same idea.
My lips twisted wryly as I watched her. Her asymmetrically bobbed, silky smooth chestnut hair was falling across her face, obscuring it from sight and so I couldn’t see her expression. By the way her svelte body swayed with liquid grace, I deduced she was having a good time. I took a look at the guy she was dancing with and snorted.
Surely she can do better than that.
He was a big, bear-like guy, wearing a patch on his black leather vest. His paunch stuck out in his white t-shirt while his long, curly hair was tied back with a kerchief. What the hell he was doing in the Red Room was the question. As far as I knew, New York motorcycle clubs tended to stick to their own haunts, just like they did in New Orleans. I cast my eyes around, looking for Morgan. He’d spotted likely prey some time ago and had gone a-hunting. I suppose it was none of my business what his sister did (yet), but I wanted her away from bikers.
I shrugged, getting to my feet, and used my height and breadth to cut a swathe through the crowd on the dancefloor. I grabbed her arm as I came up alongside her and pulled her away from him.
The biker dude narrowed his eyes at me, a beefy hand stretching to stop me from pulling her away. She looked up in surprise, hazel eyes widening as she recognized me.
“Dom!” she exclaimed.
“Nico. What are you doing here?”
Her eyes narrowed at me. “As far as I know, it’s a free country.”
“Yeah, but I’ve never seen you here before.”
She shrugged, pretending nonchalance. “So?”
The bear pushed me away from her. “Hey, find your own girl,” he growled.
I waited for Nico to protest this blatant misogyny, but she said nothing. “Nico?” I prompted.
“If you’ll excuse us, we were dancing.” She turned away from me and continued to rub herself against the man. Yeah, okay, I saw red. If I was mad, if I wanted to kick his ass, it was only because I’d inherited some of Morgan’s protectiveness.
“Nico!” I reached for her, but she danced out of my reach. Immediately, the bear was in my face.
“Fuck off before I make you.”
I almost laughed. It had been years since I’d been in a street fight, but I was pretty sure I could take him, no problem. “Oh, you’re gonna make me, huh? Let’s see you try.” I fisted my hands and suddenly, Nico was between us.
“Could you excuse us for a moment?” she told the bear before dragging me to the edge of the dance floor. She rounded on me, hazel eyes sparking. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
I opened my mouth to snark back but then couldn’t think of anything to say. “He’s a biker!”
“And?”
“And? And?” It was my turn to get in her face. “Those guys are dangerous.”
She crossed her arms in a rather mutinous manner. “I thought you and Morgan used to be bikers.”
“Used to be. As in past tense. So I know exactly what I’m talking about. Besides, what happened to wanting to marry me?”
She turned away, lips pursed. “We haven’t agreed to anything yet, so I’m still a free person.”
“Yeah, okay, but could you spend your independence in a less stupid manner?”
“You’re calling me stupid?”
I could see that this conversation was going nowhere fast. Taking a deep breath, I tried again. “Listen, could you come with me? We could go upstairs where it’s not so loud and have a conversation. Morgan’s here. You can say hi.”
“I didn’t come here to hang out with my brother.”
“Fair enough, but…can we talk?”
She was already shaking her head before I’d finished. “Not today. Right now, I’m here to celebrate the prospect of crushing defeat. As a matter of fact, I might back out of this whole marriage of convenience thing. It might be too late to help me.”
She made as if to return to the dance floor and I tightened my hold on her wrist. “What does that mean?”
I noticed that while
she was gaily made up, all dark eyeshadow and ruby red lips, her eyes spoke of misery. Taking a step closer, I met her gaze earnestly. “Hey, talk to me.”
“My advisor called me this evening.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “And?”
“He told me he was very impressed with the work and any other year, I might have had a good chance. But this year…” She stopped biting her bottom lip clearly to keep it from trembling. She dashed away tears. I found myself curiously wanting to slay all her dragons for her. “This year, one of the entrants is the child of a huge benefactor of the awarding body and so the grant is likely to go to them.”
“Likely to, which means it hasn’t happened yet.”
She tried to pull her arm out of my hand. “Just let me go, Domenic.”
No.
I tightened my hold on her hand, which I admit was a mistake. From one moment to the next she went from upset to annoyed. Next thing I knew, she’d kneed me in the groin, snatched her hand out of mine, and walked away.
By the time I straightened up and stopped seeing stars, she’d disappeared with the biker. I crab walked to the bar and dug out my phone to text Morgan. “Hey, man, you alright?”
I looked up at the bartender. He looked somewhere between amused and concerned. “Yeah, I’m great. Hey, did you see where that girl went?”
“The one that got you in the nuts?” He grinned and I glared. “Yeah, she left with the huge biker dude.”
That had me stiffening, the pain in my groin forgotten. I sent Morgan another text and limped as fast as I could to my bike. Hopefully, I could catch up to them soon. Nico was a stubborn cuss, but even she wasn’t ready for one of the Satanists. I had recognized the guy’s patch, including the fact that he was a sergeant-at-arms. Those guys were bad news. They controlled the gun and drug trade all along the Eastern seaboard with connections all the way from Canada to Mexico.
To rise up to sergeant-at-arms in such an outfit, that guy had to be some bad news. I rode around looking to pick up their trail. Luckily, they didn’t have such a long head start and I quickly spotted them heading towards Queens. I heard the roar of an engine behind me and turned slightly to check who it was. My shoulders slumped with relief to see Morgan’s broad-shouldered, stiff-backed silhouette quickly catching up to me. He slid alongside me and we exchanged glances even through our helmets. We needed to find a way to extract Nico from this situation without starting a war.
Nicolette might think she was just making some stupid point, but these people did not play like that. They also had a minimum amount of respect for women and would likely not care about her wants and needs in any situation. It wasn’t just her virtue that was in danger, but also, very likely, knowing how smart her mouth was, probably her life.
We let the throttle out and rode faster.
6
Nicolette
Almost as soon as I stepped out into the cool night air with the big guy, I knew I’d made a mistake. I might have been reacting in upset inside, not really thinking, but I wasn’t stupid. Domenic was right; bikers were dangerous and I didn’t even like this one. I don’t know why I left with him.
Okay, maybe I do know why.
Maybe I wanted to get under Domenic’s skin for some unknown reason. And maybe I was tired of having everything out of my control. Waiting for other people to make decisions which might affect my whole life.
When my advisor had called earlier, I had expected that he would have some notes on the project, maybe a way for me to tweak it in order to make it better. I hadn’t expected for him to summarily tell me that although my work was good, there was no way in hell that the committee would grant me the scholarship.
I’d called Jacinda to give her the news and she’d suggested we go dancing.
“Look, this sucks right?” she’d said. “And maybe you feel as if all your work has been in vain. But the truth is, the fat lady hasn’t sung. So shake it off. Let’s go dancing. Tomorrow we’ll go in to work and make the project a thousand times more awesome. They won’t be able to resist.”
I let Jacinda propel me along.
She came over, dressed me up, called an Uber and took me to some club in the meatpacking district. At first, I just sat at the bar, wallowing in misery while Jacinda plied me with drinks. Once the alcohol had a chance to loosen me up though, I got into the spirit of things and waded onto the dancefloor.
Bear guy pretty much pushed his way into my personal space. Any other time I’d have socked him in the jaw and told him to fuck off. Tonight, I just didn’t have the energy to fight the patriarchy.
Having Domenic try to ‘rescue me’ did give me the strength for some sass. Now here I was, hurtling down empty dark roads without so much as a helmet, wondering how I was going to get out of this mess I put myself in.
As soon as he stops, I’m taking off.
I took one hand from around his waist and felt in my pockets for my phone. I texted my brother and asked him to use his super-duper high-tech security to find me, though I figured that by the time he managed to, biker guy might have caused some damage.
I remembered a passage I’d read in a book where the woman was kidnapped and she kept thinking that her job was to stay alive until her husband found her. Not to be melodramatic, but I suppose I’d have to do my best to escape as much damage as possible while I waited for Morgan to rescue me.
We turned in at a bar that was brightly lit and loud. A whole slew of bikes were parked outside and I could only conclude that we were at the guy’s motorcycle club headquarters.
He parked at the end of the lot, where it was a lot darker, and I got off. Looking towards the gate, I contemplated just running for it, but he grabbed my arm and dragged me to the clubhouse.
Shit.
My heart was beating triple time as he pulled me along and I couldn’t help looking around, searching for anyone who might look likely to rescue me. The bear dragged me right to the bar and slapped his hand on the counter.
“Two Coronas here, probie!” he yelled.
A pimple-faced youth with curly hair turned and smiled at the bear, before reaching below the counter and emerging with two beers. “Sure thing, Rooster. There ya go.”
Rooster… I gave him a sidelong glance, seeing how it might suit him. His feathers could be ruffled way too easily. He looked from me to the beer bottle with a raise of his eyebrows and I knew he expected me to drink. I took a tentative sip, wondering if it was roofied. The probie had opened the bottle in front of me, but who knew how they might have adulterated it before. I let the first three drops sit on my tongue, alert for any lingering bitter taste. All I could detect was hops and bitters, but that didn’t mean I was safe.
Frankly, I was scared out of my mind. I took another small sip even as I watched him down his own bottle in like three swallows. Someone passed him a blunt and he took a hit before offering it to me. I shook my head, almost stumbling backward in my haste to get away from it. He grinned as if it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen before taking another hit and passing the blunt to someone else.
His hand closed on my wrist and he began to drag me towards the back rooms.
I wondered if screaming might help.
I looked longingly toward the doorway and was somehow not surprised to find Domenic filling it. The relief I felt could not be described in words. He strode into the roomful of bikers, Morgan at his flank, cutting a swathe through them to block Rooster’s way.
“Hey, douchebag, we meet again. Get your hands off my fiancée.” His voice was low, cold, and deep as he looked Rooster in the eye. I tried pulling my wrist out of Rooster’s hand, but he held onto it, tight.
“Hey, finders keepers,” he growled and I narrowed my eyes in annoyance.
This guy was grazing my last nerve. I truly hate to be objectified.
“She’s not a piece of property I left in a locker room somewhere!” Dom barked back and I silently cheered.
“She came with me, which means she doesn’t care about
being your fiancée. Move.” He tried to push past Dom and I dug my heels in. Now that I had some back up, I was ready to fight. Rooster turned and glared at me as if he could not believe a mere woman was trying to thwart him. I could feel Domenic’s anger rising from where I stood and didn’t understand how Rooster could not see how much danger he was in.
A strange man joined the fray, stepping between Dom and Rooster. “Alright, alright, what’s going on here? Who are you and what are you doing in my club?”
Domenic looked the new guy in the eye and didn’t seem in the least intimidated by him despite the man’s tattoos, the fact that he was surrounded by at least five goons in support, and he had what had clearly once been a knife wound running from his cheek down to his neck.
Dom lifted his hand in supplication. “Hey, I’ll leave your club right now as soon as your sergeant-at-arms lets go of my fiancée.”
The club president’s mouth twisted. “Your fiancée? All I see is a ho, who came here under her own steam. Like Rooster said: finders keepers.”
Domenic took a deep breath as if calming himself down. His hand was wrapped firmly around Morgan’s wrist as if to stop him from leaping at the guy and tearing him limb from limb. Nobody was paying any attention to me, so I decided to take a risk.
Rooster’s hand had loosened around my wrist as he argued with Dom and when his president joined the fray, his attention was more on him than me. So I pulled my hand out of his arm, grabbed a stool, and threw it at his head. Then I began to run towards the door.
There was pandemonium behind me, but I had to trust that Dom and Morgan could handle it if I got clear. Surprisingly, no one in the room tried to stop me or block me. I accepted the gift horse and sprinted out, only to find myself in the dark parking lot, with no means to get home. I saw two familiar Harleys parked right by the door and walked over to them, hyper-vigilant for any sound or movement that might indicate pursuit.