by Nicole York
Silence echoed in Marcus’s ear and he wondered if he’d blown it and Cooper had already hung up. Marcus couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. Not right now. They only had one shot at this, and if things fell through, Cole and Marcus would be pursuing more dangerous ways of bringing down their enemy.
Finally, Cooper spoke. “I’m listening.”
Relief rippled through Marcus. He turned back to Cole, who’d pushed himself off the wall and was watching with the same unease Marcus felt in his gut. He tipped his head to Cole to let him know he had some traction.
“I can’t talk about this over the phone,” Marcus said. “Too many people are watching my every move. Are you still in town?”
“Perhaps.”
“There’s a rave in the underground. No security. No surveillance. Cash bars only. Lots of people. The perfect place for you and me to blend in and not raise suspicion.”
Cooper sighed. “You understand the position you’re putting me in, don’t you, Marcus? I don’t trust you. Why the fuck should I? And you certainly don’t trust me. I’m no fool.”
Marcus knew he was playing with the big boys, and he knew he needed to leave the man wanting more. He had to hook him—bait him like a fish. A big, mean, slippery fish with razor sharp teeth.
“Listen,” Marcus said firmly. “I’m the one who has everything to lose here. Not you. If D knew I was even talking to you…” He trailed off and let the silence linger for as long as he could. “Fuck it. If you find your balls, I’ll be at the rave on Saturday. If not, best of luck to you in the days ahead.”
Marcus dropped the call.
He and Cole locked eyes. Neither of them spoke for what felt like thirty seconds as the rain pattered against their shoulders and tops of their heads.
“Nicely handled,” Cole said. “Do you think he’ll bite?”
“We’ll see.”
“The fact that he stayed on the phone for more than ten seconds suggests he’s more than a little curious,” Cole noted.
Marcus wasn’t sure about that. Cooper was a mastermind at playing games. For all they knew, Cooper had been waiting for Marcus or one of Drake’s allies to make first contact. If that was the case, Cooper would already have a response plan in place.
“Where’s this other cop friend of yours?” Marcus asked. “I thought he was supposed to meet us here.”
Cole shrugged. “Looks like he couldn’t make it.”
“You’d better not be jerking me around.”
Cole’s eyes narrowed. “We’re on the same side.”
Marcus prickled. “I don’t like the idea of working with someone I’ve never met, especially when we’re all trying to bring down a man like Cooper. It’s messy. I need to know who has my back.”
“I have your back. The only person you need to trust is me.”
“Yeah,” Marcus grated out. “That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
Cole rolled his eyes and turned to the emergency-exit door. “You can’t micromanage every facet of this job, Marcus. Dimitri wants us working it together. Let me pull my weight. You can trust this guy. He wants Adam Cooper just as badly as we do and he’s willing to put his life on the line to do it. What more do you want?”
A face and a name, Marcus thought as Cole opened the door. They stepped into the warm, muggy depths of Kadia. Vance stepped aside to let them pass, tipped his head, and moved off down the hall to resume his post for the evening. Cole and Marcus followed, both men consumed with their own thoughts.
It was only a matter of time before things hit the fan and everything changed. Marcus had been up against the boards before, and he’d tangled with men just as bad if not worse than Adam Cooper, but he couldn’t deny there was a sour taste in the back of his throat and an uneasy kink in his gut.
He needed a distraction. A release.
And he knew exactly where to get it.
12
Keesha
Keesha blinked rapidly after attaching one of her glue-on lashes. “Damn it,” she cursed as glitter fell into the lash and her eye.
Ashley, who sat beside her at her own vanity, winced. “Shit, girl, I hate that. Here, use this.”
Keesha squeezed her burning eye closed and accepted the Q-Tip Ashley handed her. With her lips pursed together, Keesha leaned in close to the mirror, pulled gently on her lower lash line, and used the cotton end to wipe all the glitter pigments out of her eyeball.
“You’re a lifesaver, Ash. Thank you.”
Ashley finished applying her eyeliner in a dramatic wing. “Us girls have to stick together. Apparently, it’s rough out there tonight. You don’t need perverts and a bad eye all in one evening.”
Keesha snickered.
How bad was a bad night? At Kadia, Keesha was learning her definition of bad didn’t necessarily align with that of the other girl’s. Keesha could handle the front-row pervs and the guys who wanted to get a little too up close and personal. But if bad meant the club was full of men doing behind-closed-doors business with Marcus?
Well, she wanted no part of that. Last time, Marcus had lit her up and made her feel like a fool. She didn’t want to go through that again. She might very well quit on the spot and tell him to stick his attitude where the sun didn’t shine.
No, she thought to herself sharply. I can’t quit.
Her paycheck from the salon sat folded in half in one of the side pockets of her bag, which held her change of clothes for after her shift. She’d picked it up on her way to Kadia this evening right before Bloom closed, and the amount written on said check was almost laughable compared to what she was making at the club.
Eight hours of work at Bloom worked out to what she could pull in two at Kadia.
Ashley got up from her stool and fluffed her hair before passing behind Keesha’s chair. She put a hand on her shoulder. “Break a leg out there tonight, babe. Lots of fat wallets in the house. See you for a shot or something later?”
“Sounds good,” Keesha said, trying not to think about how miserable Bloom was making her and how it wasn’t worth any of her time. Sure, the work itself wasn’t terrible. But Ricky was. And so was the pay. It was getting more difficult by the day for her to keep perspective and appreciate the job that was more of a front to convince her mother she was still capable of being a stand-up, classy girl.
Keesha snorted at herself. “Classy my ass.”
The beads hanging on the door clicked together softly and Keesha glanced in her mirror, spotting Marcus stepping through them.
She found her red lip stain and pulled it out of her bag before staring at her reflection and pouting her lips to paint the color on.
Marcus moved up beside her vanity before she touched the wand to her full lower lip. “Come with me,” he said.
He didn’t seem to notice the way the other girls were staring at him or how they’d started giggling amongst each other like a pack of hyenas.
Keesha put the wand back in her tube of lip stain. “What do you want, Marcus?”
“Come with me,” he said more firmly.
She rolled her eyes, dropped her lip stain back in her bag, and rose to her feet. “I’m not one of your doe-eyed bimbos,” Keesha muttered over her shoulder to him as she stepped through the beaded doorway. “You can’t just come in here and boss me around.”
“Actually, I can. I’m the boss. You’re not.”
She prickled at his words. Couldn’t he ever just give her a win? Just once? She could really use one tonight.
Fuck, for all I know, he’s going to sit me down in his office and fire me because of what Robert did the other day.
Keesha was still furious with her brother and they hadn’t spoken thoroughly about him showing up at the club the other night and acting like he could call the shots. She didn’t know what she’d say to him. How could he possibly understand the danger he’d put himself in?
If Marcus hadn’t known he was her brother, there was no doubt in Keesha’s mind that Marcus would have dragged him out int
o the alley by his ear and beat the holy hell out of him. She’d seen him do worse for less, and that was back in the day when Marcus was a much smaller fish in a shallower pond back in New Orleans.
They emerged on the dance floor of the club and began making their way to the stairs to the second level. She wanted to ask Marcus what this was about, but there was no sense in asking right then. The music was too loud. So she kept her chin up, put a sway in her hips, and treated it like her normal walkthrough at the beginning of her shift. She could feel the eyes of strangers on her, sliding up and down the length of her legs and lingering on the spots they liked most, like her breasts, lean stomach, pierced navel, and ass.
She felt powerful as she drew the eyes of men and women alike who bowed their heads together, pointed right at Keesha, and muttered things to each other. She picked out faces and made a mental note of who saw her and who might show up front and center at her platform later in the evening. She’d make sure they wouldn’t forget her so easily and would come back next weekend wanting more.
And the one after that.
There was a reason she was so profitable in this club.
Hopefully, Marcus wasn’t about to rip that all out from under her.
They climbed the first staircase and reached the second floor where servers were bustling from standing table to standing table, delivering cocktails steaming with dry ice. It created a dark, moody atmosphere that reminded Keesha of a noir film. All that was missing were the old broad-shouldered suits, fedoras, and cigars.
Her foot hit the first stair to the third floor. She kept right, letting clientele and servers pass her on the staircase. One man paused midway down and looked her over.
“Damn, baby,” he growled as he let his eyes slide down her body to the tips of her toes. “I like what I see. Where will you be later?”
Keesha reached for his navy blue tie, pulled it out of his suit jacket, and pulled him toward her. “Third floor. You’ll see me. And I’ll see you.”
He was a cute guy. She’d give him that. He had a lopsided smile and startlingly white teeth, and there was something disarmingly charming about him despite how boldly he’d hit on her. Perhaps his confidence came from the fact that she was a stripper and he was the one with the money.
“I’ll find you.” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. He pressed it into Keesha’s hand. “There’s more where this came from.”
Keesha smelled the bill and put on a show of being turned on. He was hooked by her every move, transfixed by the way she slid the folded bill into the front of her emerald suit, right against the side of her tit. Slowly, she trailed a finger up his stomach from his navel to his chin, which she lightly scratched with a flick of her nail.
“I’m worth every penny,” she promised.
Without waiting for his jaw to hit the floor, she spun and continued up the stairs. Marcus, who hadn’t said a word during the entire exchange, patted the young man on the chest in a “thanks for your business” sort of way.
She wondered if the exchange made Marcus jealous at all. Had he thought even for a second about how he wished she wouldn’t flirt so boldly with a stranger? Had he wished she was treating him that way, not the young businessman?
It doesn’t matter. Business is business. Nobody understands that better than Marcus.
They reached the third floor where the party was in full swing. It smelled like sweat, tequila, leather, and pussy. Ashley was already up on one of the platforms and spinning herself dramatically around her pole. Her outfit, a bondage inspired criss-crossing of black elastic straps, made her look like the female lead in a shoot ‘em up film—just with less clothes on.
Keesha admired the other woman’s work for a moment, getting absorbed in the way Ashley performed down to the point in her toes. There was probably a thing or two they could learn from each other, and Keesha made a mental note to see if Ashley would ever stay late with her on a Friday evening after Kadia shut down so they could run through some routines together.
Girls who stuck together made more money, plain and simple.
Marcus closed a hand over Keesha’s shoulder. “Are you trying to take your sweet-ass time? Move.”
Asshole.
She soured at his pissy attitude, but she savored the warmth of his grip on her shoulder and how he maneuvered her through the thinning crowd as they approached the hall to his office. Eventually, they broke free of the people, but he kept a hold on her as he steered her down the hall to his door, which he shouldered open.
He released her before kicking the door closed behind him.
He locked it.
Keesha turned to face him and planted her fists on her hips. “What’s this about, Marcus? I’m supposed to start my set in five minutes, and if I’m not up there, you’re going to have an empty platform. I know how you feel about—”
“Stop talking.”
Her temper flared. “You’re such a self-serving prick, you know that?”
Marcus moved toward her. In three paces, he’d closed the gap and he was so close she had to tilt her head back to continue glaring at him.
He reached up and took her chin in his hand. “I said stop talking.”
Keesha considered wrenching away and telling him off, but there was a fire in his eyes she’d seen before, and it drew her in like she was a heat-deprived moth. Her pulse fluttered at her throat right beneath his thumb, and he pulled her even closer by her chin until all she could hear, feel, and smell was the big mean motherfucker in front of her.
She didn’t dare speak. Not again. But she had questions.
Marcus dropped his head. His lips crashed against hers with such force her lips pinched against his teeth. She let out a surprised whimper and his grip on her chin tightened. Slowly, he walked her backward. She maintained her balance on her six-inch heels until the back of her knees hit the sofa cushions. He released her and put a hand on her chest to give her a gentle shove.
Keesha fell down onto the sofa but never looked away from him.
Marcus undid his belt and moved on to the zipper of his black pants. She watched his fingers work, thick and strong, and already ached to have them inside her.
Had something happened? Had Marcus changed his mind? Did he want her for just a night, or was there more to his rough desperation?
More questions she didn’t dare ask him.
He pulled his cock free of his pants. He was already rock hard.
Keesha glanced up at him and he reached down, took a fistful of her hair, and pulled her toward his crotch. She opened her mouth and he pressed his cock to her tongue before sliding in deep. He knew she could take it.
And did she ever want to take it.
Her insides squirmed with heat and need as he slid in against the back of her throat and held himself there. Keesha gripped the edge of the sofa cushions and held his gaze as her eyes began to water. Marcus didn’t relent and she knew exactly what kind of night this was about to turn into—the kind of night she’d been dreaming of for years.
Yes, use me.
Marcus let out a deep, satisfied growl that Keesha could have sworn rumbled in his cock. She moaned in response, her throat tightening around him, and his eyes rolled back in his head. He released her hair and she came up for air, sucking in great gulps before descending on him again to work him over the way she knew he liked, slow and deep at first and a little sloppy.
She didn’t hold back. When he was pulsing against her tongue, she held him deep again, let him calm down, and spoiled him with licks and flicks of her tongue as she worked her way down his shaft to his balls, which she sucked on and played with until he shoved her back against the sofa.
He slapped the inside of her thighs, demanding she spread her legs for him.
She did.
Marcus wasted little time. He gripped the front of her outfit and pulled it open to the sides so her tits spilled over the thin fabric. The hundred-dollar bill she’d stored away for
safekeeping fluttered out. Marcus plucked it off the floor and set it on the coffee table before turning his full attention back to her. He went to one knee on the sofa beside her and rubbed her pussy over the narrow strip of green that disappeared between her ass cheeks.
Keesha was out of breath already. She watched his eyes as he rubbed her. He stared at her tits and her stomach and her legs, which she spread even farther, desperately and silently aching for him to give her more.
Finally, he nudged the fabric out of his way, exposing her dripping-wet pussy. Marcus let out a low, satisfied groan as he ran his fingers through her wetness.
“Fuck, baby,” he growled.
She rolled her hips against his touch and flinched when he slapped her between her legs. A gasp fell from her lips and was followed by a delighted sigh. He slapped her again. Little jolts of pleasure rippled through her. Her thighs trembled.
Marcus pressed two fingers to her clit and slid them down between her folds until he pressed them inside her. He repeated this motion, sweeping up and in, teasing her. Her breathing quickened until she was a whimpering, quivering mess beneath him, and Marcus took his opportunity.
He closed his free hand over her mouth.
Keesha would have cried out if she could when he pressed both fingers deep inside her and fucked her hard, flicking up against her G-spot until she lost control. She bucked and came hard, slicking the inside of her thighs with her juices and covering his sofa.
Marcus didn’t seem to give a damn. Quite the opposite actually. He licked his fingers clean, told her she was a good little slut, grabbed her by the hips, and flipped her over onto her knees.
Like this, with her forearms resting on the back of the sofa, she faced the windows of his office that overlooked the club down below. They were tinted, so nobody in the club could see up into his private room, but Keesha could see the strobing lights and the DJ on his platform above the first floor. She could see people milling around on the second and third floors, and she even spotted the young businessman who’d given her the hundred-dollar bill.