"I fit no such bill," I said firmly. "I don't know where his girl is, but she isn't me."
"Right. Yeah, Fox can be kinda caveman about the things he wants. And he's got you living in his cave, so as far as he's concerned you're his girl now," JJ explained, saving Lucy from my glare.
"What?" I asked, not bothering to hide my feelings on that bullshit. "I think I must have just had some kind of brain aneurism, because it sounded like you just said that that asshole told these people I'm his property."
"Not just us," Lucy said, giving me a shrug. "He spread the word last night to everyone within the Harlequin Crew's reach. He said you're his girl and if anyone so much as looks at you the wrong-"
"No," I growled. "Just, no. Not me. I’m not his anything."
"Roll with it, sweetheart, it's not worth the headache of trying to deny him," JJ advised.
"Well what the fuck does being his girl mean?" I demanded.
"Nothing really," JJ said placatingly. "Just that no one can hurt or harass you, that he's got your back and you have free rein around here to do what you like."
"I guess that doesn't sound that bad," I muttered, glancing around the lavish room again.
"And no other dude can look at you, talk to you, touch you or fuck you unless they wanna get a bullet between the eyes for it," JJ added, winking at me as my mouth fell open and the complete and utter fucked-up-ness of that statement washed over me.
"He's taking control of my sex life?" I demanded. "Who the fuck does he think he is to tell me I can't have sex with anyone?"
"I think the point is that you can only have sex with him..."
"Fuck. That. I'm out." I turned away from JJ and stormed towards the door at the front of the salon, intending to walk my ass out of here, steal a car and drive the fuck away from this place and Fox Harlequin's bullshit for good. After popping back to grab Mutt of course. But then, I'd be gone.
I pulled the door open but instantly found my way blocked by two big ass guys with bulging muscles and tattoos on their tattoos.
"Move," I snarled, but they just exchanged a look and refused me.
JJ caught my hand and tugged me back into the salon with a sigh. "Just forget about that for now, Rogue," he begged. "Fox has got his boys keeping an eye on you even if you wanted to run and you came here to get your hair done, so why not just enjoy it and you can call Fox out on his shit when you get home later? You could even get your nails painted all nice for when you need to claw his eyes out."
I cursed colourfully enough to draw a gasp from a woman getting her hair styled by the window and Lucy shushed me as she smiled brightly and tugged me over to a pastel pink hairdressing chair on the far side of the room before pushing me down into it.
A display of fake pink and white roses curved over the mirror in front of me and I couldn't help but feel like I didn't belong here one bit. I was like a donkey at a horse market. I almost looked the part, but I just fell short of the line when you gave me a closer look.
"Did you want a bit of colour in your hair?" Lucy asked brightly, clearly deciding to ignore my outburst in favour of doing her job.
"Isn't that like stupid expensive?" I muttered. I'd never really done anything like that with my hair because there had always been better things to spend my money on, but I wasn't against the idea of getting a fresh look. I had come back from the dead after all so if I was going to be re-born then maybe I should do it with fancy new hair.
"I told you this is on me, sweetheart. Get whatever you want," JJ said, taking a seat in the chair behind the reception desk and throwing his feet up as he looked at me in the mirror.
Well, if JJ wanted to make sweeping statements about paying for whatever the hell I wanted done then I was happy to test the limits of his wallet for him. I was really pissed at Fox, but I was happy to take it out on his errand boy if I had to. Fox would get his later.
"What was it Fox called me?" I asked sweetly as an idea occurred to me. "A pretty brunette? Maybe he won't like me so much if I'm blonde then."
"His last girl was blonde," JJ supplied as he began flicking through a magazine on hair extensions. "And the one before that was a redhead. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's hooked up with girls with every colour of hair you can think of, so I doubt you're gonna land on one he's not had before. Not unless you wanna just go all out with rainbow hair." He laughed at his own joke, but my eyes met Lucy's in the mirror and her lips twitched in a way that said we were thinking the same thing.
"Ah, here we go," JJ muttered, but as I looked back at him, I found him ducking down beneath the desk, pushing himself underneath it and disappearing beneath the pink tablecloth.
"What the-" I began but Lucy pressed a finger to her lips to silence my questions a moment before the door swung open and a woman strode in looking like a movie star with three big men flanking her.
Lucy hurried over to greet her and she started making a big fuss of saying hello as the two biggest dudes moved past them and began looking around the salon. They opened the doors to the treatment rooms, checked out the back and generally seemed to be looking for something.
"You see, nothing and no one here besides me and the ladies," the woman said with a frustrated huff. "Honestly, I come here to relax, not fraternise with anyone."
"I'll be back in a few hours," the man who I guessed was her husband announced as he leaned in to place a kiss on her cheek. "Ronald and Duke will be right outside if you need them."
"Oh, at least let them go and sit in that little cafe down the street," the woman complained. "They can watch the door from there to make sure I'm not accosted and the ladies here can relax without them peering through the windows."
"Of course, my love," the husband agreed, jerking his head at the two men who dutifully headed outside before he handed a roll of cash to Lucy and left behind them.
Lucy led the woman to the room with the words massage parlour scrawled across the door and a few moments later, JJ appeared from beneath the desk.
He caught my gaze in the mirror, tossed me a wink then disappeared into the room behind the woman as Lucy closed the door after them and approached me again.
"I've got a nice selection of pastels," Lucy said like there was nothing weird about that whole situation at all. "Pink, blue, lilac, yellow, we can totally do that if you want?"
"Wouldn't a job like that require me to bleach my hair before beginning on the rainbow colours? That sounds expensive,” I pointed out.
"It is," she agreed. "It's the most expensive colour job we do."
"Perfect. I'll have that then." I grinned at her in the mirror and Lucy chuckled, seeming to be onboard with my anti-ownership move. Girl power was alive and well in this place at least.
"I can get Carly to come do you a mani/pedi at the same time if you'd like?" Lucy offered but just as I was about to answer, a lusty moan came from behind the door where JJ and that rich woman had disappeared to.
"What are they-"
"Don't worry about that. Mrs Broadale pays extra for additional services when she comes in here," Lucy explained, winking at me in the mirror as my brain scrambled to keep up with that.
"You mean...he's...with her, in that room, alone-"
"Screwing her brains out? Yeah. She pays top dollar for him too. It's the perfect cover for rich married women to come and spend a few hours at the salon. JJ set this whole place up for me, fronted the cash for the salon to be fitted out and everything and all he does is show up from time to time to give a certain few clients the special."
"That’s...innovative," I said as Mrs Broadale's moans came again, louder this time and drawing the attention of the woman getting her hair done at the front of the salon.
"Maybe I should come in for what she's having next time," she said with a chuckle and I laughed along as Lucy beckoned to the girl who was going to be doing my nails before heading off to find the hair dye she needed for my new look.
While she was out the back, she turned up the volume of the pop music that wa
s playing throughout the salon and effectively hid the moans of the married woman who JJ was currently servicing.
I frowned down at the choice of nail polishes I had to pick between as I tried not to feel weird about what JJ was doing. It wasn't like I had anything against whores. I'd had plenty of friends who worked the sex trade in my lifetime, but there was just something about trying to marry my memories of the sweet boy who used to blush when I sat beside him with this sex god for sale who I saw in him now. Their confidence and attitudes to their bodies were like polar opposites and yet when he laughed or teased me, I could still see that boy I'd loved shining out from within his eyes. I guessed I just didn't like to think of him as being too different from the boy I'd known because I wasn't sure what that meant as far as who he was now.
I let the girl choose the colours for the nail polish and tried to relax as the two beauticians got to work. I had bigger things to concern myself over than JJ's choice in occupation. Fox Harlequin had drawn a line in the sand today. He'd decided to come at me with far more bullshit than I'd been expecting with this ownership crap and dying my hair a colour he wouldn't like wasn't even a drop in the ocean of the shit I was going to unleash on him if he decided to persist down this path.
I may have stooped to many things in the years that I'd been away from this place, but one thing I had no intention of ever being again was a possession. I wasn't his. Wasn't going to be his. And I was going to teach him a lesson about the woman I'd grown up into. Because they might have all changed in the last ten years, but they had nothing on me. I'd been reborn in suffering, hardship and a determination that could only be won by clawing your way up out of the dirt with nothing and no one to rely on but yourself. So bring it on Harlequin boys. Because if they thought they could force me to fall in with their bullshit, they had another thing coming.
***
The unicorn hair colour job ended up taking hours which I probably shouldn't have been surprised by, but in the end, I was pretty damn pleased with the results. I looked like a whole new girl and I found that I was glad about that. I wanted to move on from what Shawn had done to me and start a new chapter of my life where I was my own woman, standing on my own feet and daring the world to do its worst, because I'd already survived more than could ever be thrown at me again.
Lucy was super sweet and even though I hadn't been meaning to spill my life story to her, I had managed to give her enough snippets for her to figure out that I basically had nothing to my name and was stuck living in Fox’s house until further notice. The complimentary champagne might have helped a little with loosening my tongue if I was being perfectly honest because I'd lost track of the amount of refills I'd had way back when she started adding the pink to my hair. She'd instantly figured out that my situation meant I had no makeup or hair products either and had given me the full works, expertly hiding the lingering bruises on my face and making my lashes look longer and fuller than should have been possible. Then she’d painted my lips a sugary pink colour that looked good enough to lick before putting together a huge bag full of all the products she’d used and more and adding it onto JJ’s bill.
JJ had eventually emerged from his job with Mrs Broadale a couple of hours ago, but when he'd realised I was going to be in here for the long haul, he'd left me to it and headed off down the boulevard saying he had errands to run.
Of course, I'd given it five minutes before asking for a bathroom break and had tried to make a run for it out the back door, but I'd come face to face with three Harlequins who were oh so conveniently hanging out there to make sure I didn't do exactly what I'd been aiming to do.
In hindsight that was probably a good thing because I'd been in the middle of a bleach cycle with my hair at the time and I was going to guess that if I'd left it in for too long while I ran, I would have really fucked up my long locks.
Just as Lucy was finishing up on styling my hair into loose curls which trailed down my spine, JJ reappeared looking really damn pleased with himself while carrying a butt load of bags from various stores.
"Fuck me, rainbow child, I really hope you didn't expect this look to turn Fox off of you because I can assure you, you’ve failed spectacularly. You make me wanna find out what the rainbow tastes like," he said, biting his fist in an over the top way and groaning as he took me in.
"Save it for your clients, big boy," I teased, rolling my eyes as I tried not to get all hot and bothered over the way he was looking at me, but he was making it all kinds of hard. "Where have you been anyway?"
"I had some business to attend to down the street and then I went shopping," JJ replied, moving closer to me and smirking as he placed the bags down beside me and indicated for me to look inside them.
I reached for one at random and found it full of lingerie, pulling out a tiny red lacy thing and arching an eyebrow at him.
"Is this scrap of dental floss meant to be for me?" I asked.
"No need to go overboard on the thanks, sweetheart. I got you everything you might need though - panties, bras, bikinis, shirts, shorts, dresses, shoes, a vibrator, socks, a couple of hats, a-"
"Back the fuck up there, did you just say you got me a vibrator?" I half yelled, forgetting in my ever-so-slightly-inebriated state that the salon had been filling up with clients over the last few hours and drawing more than enough curious looks.
"Sure. You said yourself you don't wanna fuck Fox and he sure as hell won't be letting you fuck anyone else, so I thought I'd provide you the tool you might need to bolster your willpower." JJ's eyes sparkled with amusement, but there was something else he wasn't saying which I couldn't quite figure out. "So come on, don't you wanna get changed?"
"Gah, you're impossible," I growled, rummaging through the bags as I hunted for something to change into. Not because he wanted me to, but because these shorts really were too small for me and they were cutting off the blood supply to my ass. I'd unbuttoned the fly several hours ago and had been dreading forcing it closed again ever since.
I found way too much cute stuff in the bags and mentally cursed JJ for buying me shit I liked before selecting a navy sun dress with a halter strap and a pair of sandals to show off my new pedicure.
I stalked away into the small bathroom to get changed, taking a moment to appreciate my new look in the mirror when I was done. This girl didn't look like some asshole had nearly killed her. She looked strong and determined and damn fierce. And if I could look like her then I sure as fuck was going to be her. The Harlequin boys might have been aiming to break down my barriers and be testing me in ways I'd never expected to be tested, but I wasn't going to bow down to their desires. If they wanted to come at me, then I was going to be ready.
JJ was paying up when I emerged in my new clothes and I had to fight a blush at the look he gave me as I walked towards him. Goddammit, I wasn’t a blusher. I certainly wasn’t sweet enough to get flustered or innocent enough not to know what to do with that look he was giving me if I wanted to. But I was also repeatedly being made into a teenage girl again by these boys as my memories and reality collided in ever more flustering ways. I just needed to be sure I didn’t let them know it.
Lucy looked as pleased as pie as she took a crazy amount of money from his hand and I had to fight the urge to let my eyes bug out of my face while JJ didn't even flinch at the price.
"Give me a twirl then, pretty girl," he urged, his eyes light and full of mischief that made me want to play along.
I rolled my eyes then spun in a circle for him, only stumbling a little bit – because free champers and all – then gasping as his hands caught my waist, stopping my movement with my back to him.
"You forgot the tags," he murmured, the heat of his body caressing mine even though he wasn't actually pressed up against me.
I held still as he gently brushed my multicoloured hair over my shoulder, his fingertips dancing across my skin and raising goosebumps in their wake before he found the tag hanging from the tie at my neck and snapped it free.
&
nbsp; Instead of releasing me right away, JJ's fingers slid down my shoulder blades, making my breath catch as he caressed the ink on my skin.
"Why angel wings?" he asked in a low voice, his lips almost brushing my ear with the closeness of him.
"I liked the idea of someone having my back, even when I knew I was all alone," I murmured, not entirely sure why I'd offered him that truth, but the large pair of feathered wings which ran down my back always made me feel a little like someone might be watching over me.
I turned my head to look at him as his fingers continued to slip down my bare back and was surprised by the pain I found in his gaze.
"Rogue..." he began, his voice rough like he had something desperately important to say to me and because I was a damn fool, I just stayed there, his hands on my body, my heart thrumming with the closeness of him, my gaze locked on his as I waited for…what exactly? I didn’t know, but for one weak moment I wanted it to be something.
JJ glanced away from me, seeming to remember where we were and he offered me a tight smile.
"You look unbelievable." He pressed a swift kiss to my cheek which burned my flesh then stepped away from me, turning to grab the bags of shopping and leaving me breathless as I tried to figure out what that had just been.
I quickly regained my composure, smiling at Lucy as I said goodbye and following JJ to the back door again.
Fox's men all greeted him as we emerged from the salon, their curious gazes taking me in but not lingering too long.
I ignored them and walked with JJ back to the black pickup. He tossed the shopping in the back and opened my door for me like a real gent which we both knew he well and truly wasn't and before I knew it, we were driving back to the lions' den.
JJ was quiet on the way back, though he kept shooting me glances that I was pointedly ignoring while enjoying the fading buzz of my champagne. If he had something to say then he could damn well say it without me forcing it out of him.
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