Boston Avant-Garde 5: Bellicoso

by Kaitlin Maitland

  “But you can’t settle down like that?”

  “Could you?”

  Selena stared outside at the white shifting like salt on a black canvas. “I thought so.”

  “Jackson was never going to be the man for you.”

  “Mom thought so.”

  He snorted. “Excuse me, but your mother has zero experience with lasting relationships. If I were you, I’d take a page out of Erik and Desiree’s book.”

  There were certain things about Erik and Desiree’s relationships that appealed—fidelity was one of them. However, she was far more intrigued by what she’d seen the night she’d finally managed to get Jackson to sign their divorce documents. Who would have thought the two notorious owners of a club like Asylum could be involved with one woman? That moment had changed her thinking for good. Selena didn’t want an average relationship. It wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t fill the giant hole eating her up inside.

  “What now?” Lars sounded wary.

  “Could you see yourself in a relationship with a woman and another man?”

  He cranked his neck so far in her direction that the little car swerved. He steadied his hands on the wheel and took a deep breath. “We call that one a devil’s three-way.”

  “We who?”

  “I don’t know. Men?” He looked oddly uncomfortable, like he was deliberately concealing something from her.

  She was disappointed that her cousin was so stereotypically predictable, especially when it seemed as though he was parroting someone else’s ideas while hiding his own. “I bet you wouldn’t turn down sex with two chicks.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not really that great.”

  “Oh my God. You’ve done that?” Her pussy tingled as she contemplated the idea of being with more than one lover at once.

  “Money buys everything but love and happiness, Se. It should be about the relationship, not the sex.”

  “What about letting someone tie you up?”

  “Curious, are we?” The sardonic expression on his face wiped away any resemblance he had to her brother. Erik was cynical; Lars was just hard. “I wondered why you were going back to Triptych. Apparently you’re interested in what’s below the club level. Gee, that doesn’t scare me at all.”

  “So you know about the Underground?” Her nipples peaked beneath her dress. Fabric that had been soft as silk a moment ago now felt like coarse sackcloth. She clenched her hands, remembering the sensation of gripping the handles on the table. Of Malachi’s hands in her pussy, making her come.

  “The Underground isn’t some euphemism for playground, kiddo.” There was a layer of tension beneath his words that gave her goose bumps. “They do illegal shit down there, Selena.”

  She thought about Malachi stepping in to keep James What’s His Name in line, about two men who’d risked their lives when Jackson pulled a gun. “They have rules.”

  He scoffed, the sound making her bristle.

  “Malachi wouldn’t let just anything go on down there.”

  His hand closed around her wrist in a painful grip. “Are you talking about Malachi Kingston? How the hell do you know him?”

  “What is your problem?” She ripped her wrist out of his grasp. “We met the other night.”

  “Son of a bitch!” He was muttering almost incoherently beneath his breath, growling like a rabid dog. “Of course you know him! Fuck! First the Demon of Triptych and now Malachi Kingston. Why am I even surprised?”

  Lars was insane. That was the only possible explanation. “I don’t know if his last name is Kingston. He never said. And who the hell is the Demon of Triptych?”

  “Yen!” Lars burst out. “Yaojing Yen is the Demon of Triptych. His name means demon in Cantonese.”

  The exited the freeway, heading toward South Boston. The wipers doggedly pushed snow off the windshield as they drove.

  Her brain was spinning, trying to connect the dots. She could reconcile the idea of Malachi belonging to Triptych in some sort of managerial capacity. She’d met him there. But Yen? How could some random guy she’d met at an arts school be linked to Triptych? Surely stuff that coincidental did not happen in real life.

  He was the other hero in the street that night. A man called Demon risked his skin to save mine.

  She thought about Yen, about the way her body had reacted to his presence. Heat licked over her skin, culminating in an ache between her legs that made her womb clench with hunger. She’d half jokingly imagined a fantasy involving him and Malachi. Apparently that night at Asylum had really affected her. Especially since she’d discovered the hot head of security was unavailable to her because he was screwing the club owner and one of the dancers. Being rejected out of hand like that had made her burn with one goal. To be unconditionally wanted.

  Yen knew about me and Malachi. That’s why he seemed so interested in me.

  So if Yen was Lars’s ridiculous Demon of Triptych, did that mean he was Malachi’s boss? Was he mad that they’d used the special training room? Was that against the rules? What if Yen wanted to share?

  Let’s be honest here, I’m totally hoping that’s a possibility.

  It was on the tip of her tongue to ask Lars why he knew anything about the Underground, but she was too focused on the possibilities waiting for her at the illicit club. Malachi was so bold. She couldn’t imagine him submitting to anyone. Yet, there’d been a softer side she’d only barely begun to sense. He’d understood her, the weird longings she barely grasped herself. He’d known how much she’d get turned on by bondage before she had. It was as if he’d experienced those same emotions.

  There isn’t one submissive fiber in Yen’s body.

  The man probably sweated pure power. It was what had drawn her so forcefully to him. She craved it. Not to possess it, just to be near it, as if by being in close proximity it might somehow help her make sense out of her own life.

  Fuck! I’m as crazy as Lars.

  Which brought her back around to how bizarrely well-informed her cousin was about Yen and Malachi. Selena was starting to wonder if she knew Lars as well as she’d thought. For a guy who’d stopped in for a random, unexpected visit to the city, he had a lot of information about what she’d thought was an obscure Boston club.

  “Look.” Lars was really laying on the forced calm. “I just don’t want you mixed up in illegal stuff. You have enough problems as it is.”

  “I do have problems,” Selena agreed. “My life has been completely destroyed. My now ex-husband—who had to be blackmailed into signing papers, by the way—tried to fuck a musician at our wedding reception. This after he’d already fucked a waitress in order to win a bet with his groomsman about who could bang the most chicks at the reception. Then we got into a very public fight where I threw cake at him, only to have some asshole wedding guest upload the video to YouTube.”

  “That’s just fluff, love.”

  It didn’t feel like fluff. “The clip made it onto a list of the top ten horrible weddings, Lars. Do you have any idea how humiliating it is to be out with Mom and have people mention that? I stopped leaving the house just so I didn’t have to hear them laugh at me.”

  Lars swung the car into the parking garage at Triptych. The old brick building had once been the parish school. When the renovations took place, the club owner solved the longtime parking issues by making the school into a parking garage. Pricey, most definitely, but it had earned the club major goodwill points with the community. Worthwhile when you were asking them to look the other way on a lot of business practices.

  Lars pulled the brake and put the car in first gear. “How about we forget about everything and go have a good time? I promise not to bitch about your new friends, and you promise not to brag about your Internet fame?”

  She pulled her wrap off and threw it into the backseat. “Fine, but you’re buying the first round of drinks.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Demon paced the narrow walkway that traversed the length of what used to be the nave and now h
oused Triptych’s main dance floor. A stage occupied the apse, and there were bars in both transepts. He’d heard a few of their patrons make horrified comments about the blasphemous nature of the setup. Having been raised without the hang-ups that accompanied religious training, Demon thought it worked nicely.

  As far as he was concerned, the galleries provided in the original architecture were damned convenient. They’d been built for maintenance but worked well for observing the hordes of people spinning and gyrating to the sounds of the hard-rock band that had taken the stage only minutes before. A line stretched halfway around the block despite the snow, and life was good.

  Or it would be when Selena put in an appearance. He had no doubt she would. Her curiosity would demand it. She’d only had a taste of what Malachi had to offer, and he’d been able to sense her frustration as if she’d shouted it from the rooftops.

  Demon’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He kept his peripheral vision on the floor thirty feet below and pulled his phone out to view the new text. He glanced down to read Lucas’s message. Apparently Seraph had checked into the Trump Tower Hotel for two nights. Mei-ling was with her.

  Demon texted Lucas a quick confirmation and then slipped the phone back into the hip pocket of his jeans. The good news? Seraph was out of their hair for at least twenty-four hours. The bad news? She was up to something she didn’t want him to know about. Throwing Mei-ling into the picture only made things more serious.

  As Sun Tzu would say, “He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot fight, will be victorious.”

  There was nothing to be done about Seraph right now. Demon was a patient man. He’d been waiting years for karma to right itself. If it were only his life hanging in the balance, he would have ended Seraph and to hell with the consequences. Risking Malachi and Allie wasn’t an option. The time had to be right, like a game of chess played on a board so big it encompassed the world.

  A splash of bright pink drew him from the dark direction of his thoughts. He smiled in spite of himself, unable to quell the inexplicable response of his mind and body to the blonde seductress who pushed her way onto Triptych’s dance floor.

  Her cousin had come along, trailing in her wake as she navigated the writhing mass of humanity on a track toward the Underground. Demon gazed at the bouncers stationed at wide intervals around the room. They were oblivious to the wolf invading their territory. Of course this was partly because their positions on ground level didn’t afford them much of a view.

  Demon grabbed the carved balustrade and jumped up to gain a better vantage point. Balanced on the narrow rail, he walked to an alcove created by the joining of the nave to the south transept. From here it was possible to see the second level of security situated on the balcony below his position. Their job was to spot possible conflicts on the ground and relay the information to the bouncers.

  Had the staff been part of Malachi’s Underground dungeon master squad, they would have sniffed out the cop immediately and ejected him from the club. The security on the upper level was a little more lax—a condition Demon wasn’t going to tamper with just yet. He was curious what angle Lars Aasen was working. Was he simply watching out for his cousin? Or was he using her to gain entrance to the Underground?

  Demon shifted on the stone barrier, the soles of his combat boots flexing as they gripped the surface. The dizzying view wasn’t one many could tolerate. He’d tried to station another guard up here at one time, only to discover none of them could abide being suspended above a three-story drop with no safety harness.

  He gauged the distance between his position and the stonework of the arched entrance to the transept. Leaping lightly, he found familiar hand- and footholds and began working his way quickly to the floor.

  SELENA PUT ON her the haughtiest expression, the one that had gotten her into every exclusive gathering given by Boston’s most prominent families. “I’m Malachi’s guest. Certainly that’s enough credentials just to get in.”

  The man standing with his arms crossed over his broad chest gave her a lingering gaze from ankles to tits. “We’ve got rules for a reason, honey. You want in? You find someone with a pass.”

  “You’re telling me I need a season pass? This is hardly an amusement park.” Selena tossed her head to make her hair settle against her bare shoulder. If the guy wanted to stare, she’d give him something to stare at.

  “It’s not a country club either, princess.” The obtuse man wasn’t going to budge. “No pass, no entry.”

  Selena’s temper was about to boil over. It was cold and damp in the stairwell, and she was tired of standing here like a loser waiting in line. She’d walked right past this same idiot not two nights ago when she and James What’s His Name had descended the steps and presented a pass to get through the heavy oak doors. Now this troll was going to act like he didn’t recognize her? Well, he wasn’t actually a troll. His obvious Native American heritage had given him too much natural beauty for that. Still, he could damn well let them in. She’d opened her mouth to rip him a new one when Lars touched her arm to shut her up.

  “Come on, man.” Lars kept his tone congenial. “Every club needs another pretty piece of ass to liven up the scenery.”

  The bouncer’s heated gaze raked Lars from head to toe. “That’s her excuse. Is it yours too?”

  “Hey, if I’m your type, we can discuss it. Not usually my thing, but I’m flexible.” Lars didn’t seem bothered by the other man’s regard. Working in a place like Triptych, the bouncer had probably been propositioned more than once. He certainly didn’t seem to mind it from Lars.

  Suddenly the bouncer came to attention, gaze locked on someone behind them. Selena’s neck tingled. The sensation danced down her spine and brought her pussy to full awareness. There was no question who had come to investigate her and Lars’s attempt to enter the Underground. She had no idea how this was going to turn out.

  “Can I be of assistance, Owen?” Yaojing Yen didn’t have to shout to be heard over the music booming down the stairs from the main floor.

  “The usual.” The bouncer nodded toward Lars and Selena. “They don’t have a pass, but they’ve been down before and want in again. No need to take your time with it. I’ll call a few of the bouncers and have them escorted out.”

  Selena might have protested had she not been stuck trying to process Owen’s words. Lars had been down there before? She’d known the door troll recognized her. She hadn’t dreamed he’d known Lars too. What was her cousin into? He’d supposedly been out of the country for years.

  The door behind Owen swung open, and Malachi stepped out. Thanks to Yen’s powerful presence Selena’s body had already been running on high. Adding Malachi to the mix jolted her system like pure pleasure unleashed. He looked even better than he had the first time she’d met him. Silky dark hair framed his strong face, and those piercing gray eyes cut straight through her.

  She squeezed her thighs together beneath the short hem of her dress. Her pussy felt swollen and achy. The satin panties intensified the moist heat building in her fiery center. The pressure between her legs made her nipples bead into hard little points, a fact that wasn’t at all hidden by the thin material of her skimpy outfit.

  Malachi didn’t turn from his obvious perusal of her body. “I’ll take her, Owen. The guy stays here.”

  “The hell I will,” Lars snarled.

  Selena touched his arm. “I’ll be fine. Really. I can catch a cab later.”

  “To Danvers?”

  “Back to Brookline if I have to. I don’t care.” She realized it was true. She was ready to risk the possibility of spending a night under her mother’s roof for one more chance to experience what Malachi had to offer. She understood why Lars thought she was crazy, but she couldn’t explain why she trusted a man she hardly knew. Malachi had already passed up more than one chance to cause her harm. In fact, he’d done the opposite. She’d known him a fraction of the time she’d known Jackson, and yet Malachi was more trustworthy than he
r ex had ever been.

  Lars made one last attempt. “Selena…”

  Malachi held out his hand, one eyebrow lifted in question. She had to smother a moan when she took it. The instant shock was so intense it was almost humiliating. She was stronger than that. She had to be.

  She had one last coherent thought. “Don’t forget to call Mattie and tell her I’m fine.”

  As she cast a look over her shoulder at Lars, Selena caught Yen staring. The fringe of hair covered his right eye completely, leaving the other to gleam like a dark shard of glass. She thought of asking him to come along. Playing Malachi’s games would be delectable. Doing so while Yen watched would have been erotic beyond endurance. The only thing she had to figure out was how to get what she wanted without it blowing up in her face.

  DEMON HID A smile as Selena’s gaze drank him in. Even while being bold, she showed her submissive side. Her gaze barely touched his, her eyes sweeping his frame before she hooded them beneath her thick lashes. He could smell her arousal, sense it in his body’s response. There was no doubt she wanted Malachi so bad she could taste it, yet she was determined to pretend mild interest.

  “I’m not letting you go down there alone.” Lars started to reach for Selena, but the door had already closed behind her.

  He lunged, and Owen moved to block his path. Demon wondered if he was going to have to subdue the guy or if Lars would be willing to listen. “You can either find yourself on the curb outside, or you and I can have a civil conversation.”

  “You want me to just leave Selena down there with those animals?” Lars pushed his fingers through his hair, looking nearly panicked.

  “You and I both know she was going down there with or without you tonight anyway.” Demon observed Lars’s behavior with interest. “At least this way she’s with the one man nobody would dare challenge.”

  “Sorry, that doesn’t help me any.”

  Demon gestured for Lars to follow him. He walked ahead, sensing rather than seeing the other man climb the stairs and begin threading his way through the crowd as they headed toward one of the smaller rooms kept for more intimate gatherings.