by Eros, Marata
Yes. I sign anyway. After thirty signatures, Faren Mitchell is a parody of who I am. White pages with blue mock me.
I slip on another work outfit. They all blend together now. I twirl in front of the mirror with no admiration for how it makes me look. Deliberate calculation stares back as I go through my mental tally.
Is it short enough? Does it show just enough skin? Did I remember to coat my nipples with edible strawberry lotion in anticipation of a stranger’s suckling?
Can I shower fast enough before Mick arrives to scour the filth of other men's mouths and fingers from my body? A burn begins behind my eyelids. I widen them, and the feeling passes.
I will not cry. I will work, dance, and collect money. Above all else, I will not contemplate what it means if Ronnie Bunce is psychotic enough to reappear.
I drop my cell inside my purse, along with my keys and lip gloss. I slip through my door and turn the bolt with a swift click. I turn and scream, my hand flying to my neck.
Mick stands there, a wicked look on his face. My startled gaze drags over him. His outfit is impeccable but more causal than I've ever seen.
I'm in my stripper outfit. Thorn is expecting me.
Shit and double shit.
Mick had told me he'd be here at midnight, not nine. I moved heaven and earth to get off work early, and here he is.
I'm so mad that Mick can't keep to our arrangement.
I get a physical reaction of pleasure that he ignores it.
My nipples harden, and a sliver of his neck holds my eyes as his heartbeat pulses in the exposed hollow. My body remembers him perfectly, reacting in a predictable, pulse-thudding surge of desire that hits my core like a typhoon. The fingers of lust touch every intimate spot on my body. Awakening it for him.
“Surprise,” he says, his deep rumble threading through my body.
~ 8 ~
My hand lowers from my chest, my heartbeat undaunted as we stare at each other. “I thought we agreed on midnight...”
Mick's deep auburn eyebrow arches. “You agreed.”
I swallow, and his eyes catch mine.
“Where were you going?” he asks, his eyes driving up my body like a whip of heat.
Oh god. “Out of milk.”
“Really?” He folds his arms.
My gaze shifts to his bulging biceps. He probably gets those sleek muscles from counting his money and throwing the extra into his built-in incinerator. I realize how uncharitable I'm being and laugh at myself before slapping my hand over my mouth. I'm living a surreal existence, and I keep finding pockets of humor at the strangest times. At least it gets me out of my insta-lust problem.
Mick strides to me, and my mouth closes. His athletic fluidity makes all of my other senses step back as my vision narrows to only him. His shirt sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. The material stretches taut over his chest and arms. The fine muscles in his forearms ripple as he puts one against my locked door and presses against me. I feel his hardness through the thin material of my outfit. It should trigger every alarm I have from the soulless job I perform... but it doesn't. Everything to do with Mick seems too real.
“Are you laughing at me, Miss Mitchell?” he whispers, pressing against me deeper.
I gasp when his mouth moves from my earlobe to the soft skin underneath it. His mouth swings back and forth, making me shiver uncontrollably. I lose every thought of work, timing, and my inappropriate milk-fetching outfit.
In his arms, I come alive.
My hands creep to Mick's broad shoulders as I beg with my mouth, rasping against the stubble that peppers his jawline. He doesn't make me wait, taking my mouth in a sweep of brutal ownership that makes me stop breathing. He ravishes me with a kiss so simultaneously deep, hard, and tender, I let go of him through sheer self-preservation. Mick sweeps his arms behind me and draws me into him, disallowing my escape. When his fingers plunge into my hair and my lipstick is worn away, Mick finally lifts his head.
We stare at each other, our ragged breathing the only noise that fills the hall.
Mick grins. “Now that's the only look I want you to wear, Faren. Naked would be better, but I'll take this too.”
His deep voice vibrates against my body, and I shiver from that subtle vibration, from his scandalous words and the images they provoke. I swim to the surface of my mind. I'm in the hall of my apartment building making out with Mick in my lap-dancing outfit.
Mick scrutinizes my morphing emotions as they blaze across my face. His brows pull together. The dip of dark red hair at his forehead is near-black in the shadowed hallway. “Tell me where you're really going, Faren.”
Mick demands, not with his words but with the gentle kisses he lays between my breasts and I shudder, sinking my fingers into his hair.
He groans.
“No.” My face turns, and his fingers tighten into my hips as he drags me deeper into the stiffness that presses between my legs. “You don't own me, Mr. McKenna,” I say in a voice low with need.
“God, I love your defiance,” he says, his tongue against my flesh. “It's such a turn on.”
My eyes seek his. “Only because it's true.”
He raises his eyes to meet mine. I can feel each of his fingers blazing like spots of heat through the slinky material of my dress as he cinches those fingers tighter.
“I could find out,” Mick says. His words are light, but his eyes are dark with intent.
I nod. “You could,” I challenge.
Mick cages me with his arms, the heat from those hands beside my face, and sighs. “It's not good enough. I want you to want me.”
I laugh, and his brows jump above those dark eyes. His expression makes my heart race. I want him to dominate me, control me because I don't want the control I have to own. In this one thing, he is the antidote to my situation. The perfect opposition to my decisions.
“I do,” I answer. The truth is almost painful.
He surprises me by cupping his large hand over my sex, his thumb pressing against my clit. I buck against his hand, sucking in a breath that he captures with his mouth.
“I know that you want me.” He lifts his mouth and meets my eyes.
Mine are half-closed with lust. Mick moves his thumb, and moisture surges down against where he touches. I whimper at the swirl of that soft pad against my most intimate of areas. I can't argue because what he says is true but...
“Okay,” I gasp as that dexterous thumb swirls faster, harder. “Then what are you saying?”
His hand leaves me, and I slap my door, my bad hand steady as a rock. My core throbs for a finish he doesn't provide. It's not blue balls; it's blue clit .
His finger moves to my jaw, running the length of it. “I don't know.” His stare never drops as his finger slides a trail of heat between my breasts.
I sigh, moving my face away from him. He steps back, and my body is cold without his. “You do know, or you wouldn't have said anything. You've made yourself into a billionaire.” I glare at him with uncertainty and sexual frustration. “You're not going to let one woman get under your skin, screw up your agenda, your easy life.”
Mick's expression darkens. He slams his hand next to my face, and the door rattles as my eyes widen.
“You're scaring me, Mick,” I whisper.
“Good,” he says, an inch from my face. “You don't seem like you know what you want or how to protect yourself. Keeping me at arm's length because you're scared of what's here between us isn't working.” His eyes move to my mouth. “It isn't going to work.”
I move into his body, and his hands drop, clenching to keep from touching me. His body leans toward me, a physical tell of his desire and forced restraint.
But I keep pressing. “It is working.” I plead for neutrality because I know what I can reasonably give. And there isn't one speck of reason within our entire relationship. A casual meeting was lost the second he took my hand in the middle of the street. Neither one of us would admit it. We still won't.
He loos
ens a hand and touches a tendril of my hair, spreading it to thinness between his fingers then tucks it behind my ear. “It's not going to work for me.” He drops his hand.
“I don't know what to tell you.” I want to tell him everything.
Mick is telling me that he wants sex, that he wants more. But he wants the Faren he thinks he knows. The martyr who has been through hell and survived, who takes care of her mother. A woman who is an enigma. A fixer .
Not the Faren who performs illicit dances at his clubs. Who is a dead girl walking. No, he doesn't want her.
I change the subject like a gutting. “I'm meeting Kiki later. We need a little dress-up girl time.”
I can see he doesn't believe me.
“Fine,” he says with a casual shoulder lift. “I don't offer this to most women.”
“I feel so special, Mick.” My sarcasm echoes in the hall where kisses did moments before.
Mick rakes a hand through his hair. “That's not what I meant and you know it.”
I shake my head. “No.” I press my finger into his chest, and his scent wafts between us, cinnamon, spice, and male. I suck it in greedily. “What I do know, is that you're used to getting what you go after.” I fight my instinct to fling myself in his arms and wrap my legs around him.
His face falls into grim lines. “True.”
“Then why are you telling me you want more? That my 'defiance' gets you off? We both know it's some kind of flame that'll burn bright only to snuff out. What's the point?”
I shouldn't say those things. I had planned to give Mick that precious part of myself, and now I think, worse than my approaching death, that I might have given more than I meant. Having sex with him might slowly kill who I am instead of being the easy experience I wanted to mark off before I'm gone.
Mick grabs me, his fingers desperate against my bare back. He breathes against my goose-pebbled flesh, and his steady words sink like talons of truth into my psyche. “What if it's not?”
What if the flame doesn't burn out but more brightly than before?
That's the question that presses between us, understood all too well.
Mick gently pushes away from me, and I look at his face, gorgeous and serious. He walks backward, his eyes pinning me as time stood still between us. So much unrequited.
“Midnight?” he asks, like confirmation.
I nod. I know what’s on the table. I know how it'll end. It's the journey that scares me.
~ 9 ~
I wait until my racing heart returns to normal and then slowly walk to the freight elevator. I slap the down button. After the elevator lumbers to its aggressive stop at ground floor, I push the metal door aside.
I look around the foyer. It has been recently cleaned, and I watch my footing on the hex tiles that gather like a sea of white puzzle pieces. I throw on my unattractive puffy coat and move through the dark, narrow sidewalk to the off-street parking, shivering as I fumble with my keys. I slide into my mom's rattrap VW.
I try not to cry because I have half a dozen dances to slink through. I tip my head back, and hot sadness leaks down the sides of my face, dampening my temples. I gulp and bear down on my emotions. It's unnerving how smooth I’ve gotten at that. How numbingly simple.
I drive to the new venue after tapping the address into my GPS. The arrow rotates as an iconic race car appears on the screen. I follow the directions given by the sexy British voice and park where it tells me.
My eyes take in the skyscraper as my hand clutches the gearshift. I can't count the stories. The building seems to disappear into a sky polluted by the light of the city.
In glittering silver neon, the name blinks at me: Rose Enterprises.
Of course, Thorn’s venue would be one of Mick's buildings, though I’m surprised he's so careless after the big raid. I thought he'd be more cautious. Embarrassment seizes me. What kind of woman wants a man who peddles what Jared McKenna does? He’s hiding behind being a self-made billionaire when he gets a hefty kickback from young, desperate women.
It's sick, and I wait for the justifiable shame to strangle me. A wheezing exhale escapes my lips. My moral compass no longer points true north. It's guided by circumstance and fate, neither conferring with the other.
I sit inside my car, hands gripping the wheel. A second cell chime reminder sings in the silence of my car and I jump. Sighing, I slide out of the cold darkness of the car's interior that held me like a cocoon and walk toward the gigantic sleek glass doors. A bellman greets me with a secret smile I want to slap off his face. I brush past him as though it doesn't hurt that he knows what I do.
I wait until I get into the elevator before I slip on my back up mask, both hands trembling tonight. I can't remember where I left my original. The altercation with Mick, the surprise of him showing up. It's too much to hide. But somehow I must.
I walk through the elevator doors as they slide open.
The venue is the nicest I've attended, if I think on those terms. Hand-cut glass chandeliers drip their elegance like an upside-down wedding cake, five tiers tall in a triangle formation. The table is dead center underneath them and holds a group of ten men.
I approach, thinking the “clients” are in short supply tonight. My eyes seek every corner for who else might be here, what other anomalies are present.
Thorn rises like a Poseidon in a deadly sea, reaching out to me. I want to run from that outstretched palm.
Instead I move nearer and slid my damp palm into his dry one.
“Faren,” Thorn says, giving me a smile that doesn't reach his eyes.
He draws me behind him, and every male's eyes are glued to my ass. I whisper by them. A hand passes through the fringe of beads that make a faint noise as I walk.
“No touching,” Thorn reprimands him playfully.
Tension sings in a taut line through my center.
The man from my first dance slaps a paddle on the table. “Enough of this showmanship, Thorn.” Jay shoots Thorn an angry glare, and Thorn smirks.
He has all the power. I am merely the puppet whose strings he manipulates.
I want to speak, and Thorn sees it in my expression.
“What is it Faren?”
I hate his face.
“I...” I feel the intensity of my blush and know it's bad. “Why am I the only girl?”
“That's an interesting question,” Thorn says.
Jay rolls his eyes, twirling his finger.
“Get on with it. Your attempt at foreplay grows tiresome.”
My eyes flick to Jay's then back to Thorn. I'm not sure what's going on. It can't be good. My gaze lands on each man, and I feel my shoulders drop. Ronnie Bunce isn’t among them. The laps are old. Jay is maybe thirty-ish, but the rest are over fifty.
The old pervs . I keep the revulsion off my face, but the effort's not pretty.
“Faren,” Thorn begins, running his eyes down my body like he knows it intimately.
I loathe his show. Jay narrows his eyes on Thorn, his assessing gaze moving between the two of us.
Thorn lowers his voice. “You've been selected for a bidding lap dance.”
His words are a sucker punch to my gut. The last auction had been won by my stepfather. I had escaped by a hairsbreadth. This one has all the trappings of some new violation.
An older man dressed as a butler flows out of a corner. His silver tray is ready and waiting with a single card on it.
Thorn said, “A predetermined figure has been selected for this dancer based on popular demand.”
I cringe at his words, my eyes hopping from one face to the next.
I watch the card pass to each man. Whatever they see causes them to look at me then each other. No one speaks. A silent acquiescence flows between the bidders. An excited but invisible buzz begins, and I cringe. What's on the card?
I realize they've all been my laps. That's the common denominator. I’ve tried to expunge the memory of dancing for them only to have their physical presence serve as a grim refresh
er.
“The winner of this auction gets all the extras as part of the cost and can pay an extra five thousand for a maskless dance.”
Maskless.
My head whips in his direction, my hair skating across my bare shoulders in a flurry from my response. “No!” I say, backing away. “Thorn, you promised.” I know it's pointless... like that man owns a shred of integrity.
I've never wanted to kill anyone but Ronnie. However, Thorn might be the exception.
He sees it and throws his head back, laughing.
“No one is going to want to pay that much to see my face anyway,” I say. I cross my arms, unconsciously putting my breasts on sharp display. All eyes follow the movement, and I fling my arms to my sides.
“You can always say no, Faren. No one here is about force.” Thorn looks around at the men's lascivious eyes. “Right, gentleman?”
They murmur their agreement, but their gazes reveal their lies. They want more than they have a right to.
It's laughable. Thorn hides behind his position, his criminal coercion. I look at the one client who might show me mercy. My eyes lock with Jay's, and I beg a silent plea.
Our stare is broken when one of the men stands, tossing his cloth napkin on the table. “This is absurd. No woman is worth that!”
The room falls instantly silent.
Only money has the ability to suffocate noise so completely.
Thorn inclines his head. His cufflinks are a parody of Mick’s. Thorn’s like a one-dimensional copy. He tries so hard that all a person sees is artifice, not the result he covets.
For me, everything circles back to Mick. Mental, physical—all of it.
The irate client stalks toward the door. Thorn makes no move to capture, wheedle, cajole or beg. He just lets one of the birds walk.
He turns back to the others. “One less man to take away this lovely, young... dancer.” Thorn says dancer like whore and winks at me.
My head dips and tears sting. They are not tears of sadness but pure, unadulterated rage. I hide it, casting my eyes to the floor like lures.
“Faren.”
I inhale deeply in an attempt to calm myself and lift my hate-filled gaze to Thorn.