by Mary Potter
Yet someone managed to tame her appearance. Instead of the wild warrior that she had seemed not that long ago, she suddenly looks otherworldly. Her long, dark hair has been twisted at the back of her skull, wisps of hair framing her face, and pins that catch the light dot around the bun. Her makeup has been removed and redone heavily, making her look unapproachable. She’s wearing the same outfit as the other girls around her, which shows off the curves she’s been hiding. She almost doesn’t look real. Part of my mind whispers that I’d almost preferred the fierce warrior look from before.
Then Kyra catches sight of me. Something that looks like relief crosses her face, and she hurries toward me, obviously intending on ducking out with me as soon as possible. As she crosses the room, however, a man steps in from the side and catches her in his arms. I’m on my feet in seconds and striding toward them. Kyra has stiffened and leaned away, looking shocked.
“‘Lo, beautiful,” the man says, leering at her.
“Excuse me,” I say, stepping up and putting a hand on his shoulder. “Sorry about this, but you might have to find someone else. She’s with me.”
“Eh?” the man says, glaring at me through small, watery eyes. “Don’t think so, man. I’ve paid for her, good and proper.”
Paid? I glance at Kyra, but she looks as lost as I do.
“He’s not wrong.” I look up to see Jessica approaching. “This man has hired Kyra for the night, so I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait to see her until tomorrow, sir.”
This can’t be a coincidence.
“Are you serious?” Kyra bursts out, shocked. “Jessica, you know who this guy is!”
“Yes, but he pays extra,” Jessica says with an unconcerned shrug. “A night of service is hardly too much to ask in return for his continued patronage.”
Is this their plan? Give Kyra to another guy for the night and snatch her away while no one else is looking? Is the customer in on the plan? No, he looks too drunk. He probably has no idea that he’s being played. I glance between the three of them. I have to play this right.
“Is that all this is about?” I ask, forcing myself to relax. “Why didn’t you just say so? I’ll pay double.”
It feels like all the air has been sucked out. Kyra is gaping, and Jessica is glaring, though there’s a greedy gleam in her eyes.
“With tips,” I add before she can say anything.
Greed is the winner. She is a woman who has sold out all the women in her care. I knew that money would be the talker.
“If that’s the case, there’s no problem,” she says with a nod. “Very well. Kyra, you can have one of the private rooms in the back for yourself and this customer. Dave, perhaps tomorrow?”
The man doesn’t look impressed, but he’s wavering on his feet, too drunk to care as he releases Kyra. One of the girls on stage strips her top off, and he staggers in that direction.
“Easy,” Jessica says briskly. “Follow me.”
I try not to look at Kyra as we silently follow the manager. I don’t want to know what she thinks about all this.
Chapter Ten: Kyra
On the one hand, Reaper just bought my time. On the other, he definitely saved me—again.
These thoughts war within me as Reapers closes the door behind us. The room we’ve been given is decently-sized, bedecked in reds and pinks. There’s a comfortable couch in the middle with a glass table before it and a bucket of wine to the side. This is a room for high-paying customers.
Which Reaper just became. By buying me.
“So,” Reaper says, finally breaking the silence. “Sorry about that.”
“No, it’s fine,” I say, clearing my throat. “I know you don’t mean anything by it.”
At least, I hope he doesn’t. I don’t know anything about this man, other than the fact that he snatched me from the mansion and is determined to take Chains down. Now that we’re here, in this room alone…
Reaper sighs and sits heavily on the couch, digging in his pockets.
“Want to play a game of cards?” he offers.
“What?” I ask, taken aback.
“Cards,” he repeats. “It will fill the time.”
I glance up at the corner. There’s a blinking camera there.
“They’ll think it’s suspicious if we don’t do anything,” I warn.
“Yeah, fuck them,” Reaper says easily, pulling a box from his pocket. “I’ve paid for the time, so I can do whatever the hell I want with it. Besides, if Chains looks at the footage, he’s going to recognize me, so it’s pointless to act.”
He’s not wrong. I can’t help but feel a little relieved as I sit beside him, and I jump when his leather jacket lands in my lap. I glance at him, but he isn’t looking at me as he shuffles the cards, so I tug it around my shoulders and sink into the warmth.
Reaper is definitely an enigma. He’s tall and strong and gruff, but there’s definitely a soft interior there. I find myself watching his hands as he deftly moves the cards around, mesmerized by his flexible fingers and the twists of his wrists. I can almost imagine his hands playing along my skin.
I cough and shake the thoughts away. No, I’m not going there. Reaper is good looking, without a doubt, but I can’t afford to start fantasizing about him when so much else is going on.
“Did you get anything from the workers?” he asks.
“No,” I say with a grimace. “None of them wanted to talk. Did Rick say anything?”
“Not really,” Reaper says. “He’s been helping the girls, apparently, but he wouldn’t talk about Griffin.” He glances up at me. “He said something about them having something over everyone to keep their mouths shut.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” I say.
I cast my mind back to one night several weeks ago when Chains approached me. I had been working, and he had started to talk, casual despite the subject matter. He had questioned me about Emma, despite the fact that I had never told him I had a daughter.
He hadn’t said anything specific, but the threat had definitely been there.
Chains is loud, brash, and rude, but there’s a side of him that can manipulate and threaten with the best. He knows how to get under the skin of everyone at the club to make sure they won’t run to tell tales. He knows where to strike to ensure our silence without a word.
It’s one of the reasons why I want this so badly. I need Chains out of this club and out of my hair. If he’s still around, my daughter will always be in danger. More so now that I’ve escaped his clutches once.
Reaper drops a card and bends to pick it up.
“Put those away,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I’m not going to play cards with you.”
It seems so stupid to play a game of cards in an intimate room at my place of work. It makes me nervous, as though I’m doing something wrong, even though the last thing I want is to touch Reaper right now.
Right?
“Whatever,” Reaper says, rolling his eyes and tucking the cards away. “What do you think of Jessica?”
I frown. If he’d asked me that on the way here, I would have said I trusted her. After all, the only reason I’m here is that I was certain she would help us. But she had dodged all my questions, refused to allow me to leave, despite my disheveled appearance and the evidence that I had been through quite a lot, and had tried to sell me to someone else.
No, make that had sold me to someone.
“I think…she might be involved,” I say reluctantly. It’s annoying to have to admit that, especially since I was the one that had convinced Reaper that I would be safe if I came with him. “She was acting too weird.”
“Rick didn’t say much, but I think he knew she was involved, which is why he tried to tell you to leave,” Reaper says.
I stand, suddenly restless. I don’t like feeling like I’ve hit a wall, but that’s how it feels right now.
“I’ve got a guy trying to hack into Chains’s sources,” Reaper continues. “I’d hoped we could get more here, but I’m
not surprised we can’t. A place like this, people keep their mouths closed, no matter what happens.”
I scowl. I wish I could refute that, but I’ve known there was something going on for some time, and I, too, did nothing about it. Maybe that’s another reason why I’m so eager to help. I’ve stood by and allowed people like Nancy to be taken and used, without doing a thing.
Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door.
“Can I get the two of you anything?” someone male asks, his voice dripping with syrupy sweetness. “If you would like to give up your time, sir, we can definitely negotiate.”
They’re definitely spying on us. My mouth goes dry. If we just sit here and talk, Jessica’s probably going to have him dragged out by security, and then I’ll be here alone, ripe for the picking once more. No, I wasn’t going to let that happen, no matter what.
“We’re fine,” I call back.
I pour myself a glass of wine and tip it back, not caring to savor the taste. I’m simply chasing the warm liquid that makes its way through my body, steadying me.
“Sorry, Reaper,” I say flippantly. “But I’ve got a job to do if I want to get paid.”
I flip the switch on the stereo. The music from the main room is distant, so each room is equipped with its own sound system. The music that instantly escapes is slow and sultry, and in the dim lighting of the room, I can almost feel the temperature rise.
Reaper looks uncomfortable, but he sits up straight as I prowl toward him, swaying my hips as I do. I’m not surprised when his eyes drop before wrenching themselves back upward. I make a living doing this, and I definitely know how to attract attention.
“So,” I purr in a low voice, and I hear his breath hitch as I move in, slowly sliding my hands around his neck as I swing a leg over his hips. “What did Rick say, exactly, about Jessica?”
“Rick?” Reaper asks and then shakes his head. “As I said, very little. He was very upset when she dragged you off. Why didn’t you pull back?”
“I figured it would be the easiest way to get information from the other girls,” I say, leaning back, exposing my bare stomach and throwing my head out so that I’m staring at the ceiling, only my grip on his shoulders keeping me from falling. “But it doesn’t matter since I got nothing. Did you get a chance to talk to any other customers?”
His hands fall on my hips. They’re large and warm, and it makes a shiver go up my spine to feel his palms on my skin.
“No,” he says. His expression is blank, but there’s a small twitch in his right eye that tells me he isn’t as unaffected as he wants to appear as I roll my hips on his lap. The idea gives me a thrill. “It wasn’t worth it, in case they were involved. You don’t know who bought you.”
True, I have no idea who they were going to give me to before Reaper rescued me. It could have been anyone that I’ve seen or danced for here at the club.
I spin on his lap and lean back against his strong chest, my head on his shoulders as I look up at him. I can see the tendons straining in his neck, but his eyes still look down, following the line of my throat and to the dip of my breasts.
“Like what you see?” I ask with a grin.
I know I do. Two sleeves of tattoos wrap around Reaper’s arms, a clash of darkly-colored skulls, bright red roses, and thorns that twine between them all. A black crow is tattooed over his heart, and a heart with an arrow is splayed over his left hip. I run my hand over that one. It’s different from all the others. Reaper stiffens beneath me.
“What’s this one?” I ask.
He puts his hand over mine. It’s warm as he pulls my fingers away.
“That one is for a love that was taken away,” he tells me quietly.
My heart aches at the soft pain in his voice. I lift my arms and slide them around behind his neck again, dipping my head back even further so that I can press my lips to his neck. I can feel his pulse jump, instantly dispelling the somber mood, and it’s exciting. I can feel his temperature rising, and his interest in my antics is starting to become clear in his pants.
Part of me knows that I shouldn’t do this. In a lot of ways, I’m still trying to deal with what happened to me, and I’m making stupid choices because of that. Reaper is still a complete stranger to me. But I want to feel something other than the anger, fear, desire for revenge, and desperation that has dogged my footsteps for almost twenty-four hours. So much has changed in that time, and the thrill of having Reaper beneath me now manages to get through the haze of negativity that has started to cloud me.
I release him and turn around on his lap again, straddling him. I roll my hips on him, and his body jerks against me as I lean in so close that our lips are almost touching. I can feel his breath on my skin, and I can hear the hitch as he arches beneath me, caught by my touch.
He isn’t pushing me away. He isn’t stopping me. I’m not sure if I want him to or not. I’ve spiraled out of control in very little time. I don’t know Reaper beyond our association today, and I know I don’t want to have sex with him right now. He’s good looking, he saved me, and he’s protected my daughter, but I still know nothing about him.
I can’t stop, though. His skin slides under my palm, and his jacket is still heavy on my shoulders. His hands grip my hips as he groans, tugging me closer, and I lean in, ready to taste.
I don’t know Reaper, but I know that he bought me.
The thought is like a bucket of cold water being poured on my head. I jerk backward, overbalance, and tumble to the ground, scrambling backward before I realize what I’m doing. All I can hear in my head is the woman from the mansion telling me that someone had bought me and would be along the next day to take me. I was so close to becoming a slave for someone who thought that my freedom had a price.
“Shit,” I hear Reaper say. “Kyra?”
“Don’t touch me,” I snap.
Logically, I know it isn’t his fault. He didn’t initiate that. I did. It also wasn’t his responsibility to stop me when I was coming on so heavily to him. But I can’t stop myself from being angry at him. Or maybe it’s myself or Chains that I’m angry at, and he’s just conveniently in front of me right now.
“Just go,” I say, scrambling to my feet. “I’m leaving.”
Jessica isn’t going to stop me this time. I’ll spin some story about feeling sick and leave, regardless of whether she gives me permission or not. I leave Reaper in the room, unsure whether he’s following me or not, and rush down the hall, toward the offices. That’s where Jessica will be at this time, either doing paperwork or watching the security cameras. That might be why she knew to send someone to knock on the door.
“Jessica,” I say loudly as I enter, banging the door open. “I need to…”
I stop and freeze, barely aware of what I’m seeing. Before me, Jessica stares back with blank eyes, slumped in her chair with a bullet wound in the middle of her head.
Chapter Eleven: Reaper
Kyra is out the door before I realize it, and I tilt my head back to stare at the ceiling, cursing myself. Of all the stupidest, most fucked-up things I could have done, that was probably right at the top.
Admittedly, I didn’t initiate it. I reacted, lost to the sensation of touch that I haven’t felt for a very long time. There’s been no one in my life since my fiance Lacey died, and I hadn’t expected to feel the trails of fire that Kyra drew over my skin. I should have pushed her back. I don’t want her. She doesn’t want me. We both lost all sense of reason at a moment when we needed it the most.
And I need, above all, for Kyra to trust me right now. She’s an essential key to my investigation of Chains and his entire backdoor empire. If I want to take him down, I need her knowledge and her understanding of this business.
It’s with this thought in mind that I pull myself to my feet. I’m frustrated at myself, but if I’m honest, I’m also a bit annoyed at Kyra. She reacted as though I was a leper, despite the fact that she had started it.
I shake my head. Now isn’t the time to
be pointing fingers at each other. We’re here to do a job. On top of that, if what Rick was saying was true, it might not be safe for Kyra to be by herself in this place right now.
Right. That’s the most important thing right now. I quicken my steps. Then I hear a scream.
The sound makes me freeze for a split second, my stomach dropping. Before I’m aware of doing it, I turn in the direction of the scream and run. That sounded like Kyra. My heart is pounding in my ears. Has something happened to her? Did I bring her back here, only to drive her back into the hands of the enemy?
Except, she doesn’t seem to have gotten very far. I see her up ahead, her figure framed in the doorway, her arms wrapped around herself. She’s staring into an office, and her face is chalk-white.
“Kyra!” I call sharply, and her head jerks up as I race toward her. “What the hell?”
I trail off as I finally see inside the office. I see blood running down milky skin, and for a split second, my mind flashes to that awful night so long ago, to the blood staining the ground and Lacey’s body. I breathe in sharply and shake the memory away. I haven’t had a flashback in a very long time. Now isn’t the time to start having them again.
“What happened?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Kyra says. She’s shivering uncontrollably, and her voice is tremulous. Her eyes are fixed on Jessica’s corpse. “I was… We just saw her, right?”
I shrug off my jacket and drape it over Kyra’s shoulders, making her start and look up at me. I gently pull her backward, turning her to face me instead of the body.
“I need you to listen,” I say. “You’re working tonight. You went out here to ask Jessica to send in some beer for me because I don’t like wine. We both have an alibi. There’s nothing suspicious about either of us being here tonight.”
“What?” Kyra asks, shocked.
“Just remember that,” I say, fishing my phone out of my pocket. “It’s close enough to the truth. We don’t need to talk about Chains or the mansion. I’m calling the police.”