by Harley Slate
“Hey,” I say.
“Can you stop talking for a minute?”
“You don't have to carry me.”
“I don't want your bare feet in the dirty street.”
Her body was hot and musky that close to mine. Shooting out some pervert's knee is sweaty work, I suppose.
“How did you know to come looking for me?”
She shrugs again, and I can feel all the muscles working under her expensive clothes. As we approach the bright lights of Las Vegas Boulevard, a long maroon limousine glides up next to us and pulls over. The skinny-legged assistant I met before hops out of the passenger side to open the back door. Jessica lowers me carefully on one of the wide seats.
“The doctor's waiting at the cabin,” he says.
“OK.” Jessica keeps looking at him. “You're another one who needs to watch his ass. Anybody that's important to me, they're a potential target. You know that. Be very careful. This could be just random coincidence, but it could be the first shot over the bow.”
“Yes, Ms. Blaire. It's all arranged, Ms. Blaire.”
“Did I introduce you before?” Jessica gestures, and the guy puts out a hand, and now we're shaking. It's all very civilized. Quentin is not the name he was born with, I don't think. It's too-too old English valet for a Vegas personal assistant. And yet it fits him just fine.
Anyway, we all get in, and Quentin puts up the barrier, and then we're sailing like a yacht through the late night traffic. The leather inside is a darker shade of maroon than the exterior paint job, and there's a little smell of something that reminds me of Aramis but tweaked a little. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a custom fragrance.
Jessica's fragrance, that is. Not Quentin's fragrance. He's cute, but I don't care what the twink's fragrance smells like.
She busies herself in the drinks cupboard and mixes me something that's mostly Sprite spritzed with a little bit of bourbon. “It'll help you feel better.” The glass is Waterford crystal, which surprises me, but I suppose you can't have paper cups in a fucking limo.
“I don't think so.” I lift the tumbler to study the gold of the drink with the lights of Las Vegas Boulevard shining through the crystal. “I'm fine. And I don't need that doctor you guys were talking about either.”
“You've had a shock. Anyway, I need to stash you somewhere safe until I'm sure you're no longer a target.”
“I'm not anybody's target. I was stupid and got grabbed by some random perv. It won't happen again.”
“I have no reason to believe this was random.”
“Course it's random. I've only been in Vegas ten minutes, how could I already have enemies?” Then I think of something. Maybe I've got other people's enemies. My mom has borrowed a lot of money over the years that didn't get paid back. But I can't see any of those old fools hiring some criminal to go after me. What they usually hire to go after us is a lawyer. Good luck with that, honey.
Jessica strokes my bare knee with the pad of her thumb. Does she realize how sexy that is? It seems like an absent-minded gesture, like she's thinking, so I can't really tell. “I have enemies,” she says after a moment. “They see you coming out of my private club, they might think you're my girl.”
For some reason, that phrase gives me a shiver down the spine. Remembering that I'm not wearing panties, I slide my knee out from under her hand, the better to keep my thighs clamped firmly closed. “I'm not your girl. Why would they even think that? And, anyway, why do you care what they think?”
She glances at the place where my knee was a moment ago and doesn't say anything. Those ice-blue eyes are hard to read, but my heart skips a beat anyway. I've gotten to Jessica somehow. I'm not something to use and lose.
She wants more, and maybe all this drama is just her excuse to get me alone. Well, my little Sugar Mama Seekers club has its rules. I can't make it too easy for her, or she won't respect me for long. Especially since I was so fast to lose my pink panties back there in the VIP room.
“I need to get home.”
“It's out of the question. You need to get somewhere I can keep you safe for the duration.”
“My mom will worry.” Fuck. Too late, I feel stupid about mentioning my mom. Jessica's a mature woman. She doesn't want some baby girl still living at home with her mother.
“We don't want your mom to worry,” she says. “Go ahead and call her to let her know you're OK.”
I start to, but honestly? It's really too late, especially since she thinks I'm over at Dakota's. Which reminds me to take the opportunity to leave a quick update for the Seekers.
>U won't fuckin believe what just happened. Talk soon!!!!
If Jessica suspects I didn't text my mom, she doesn't say anything. Instead, she pulls something out of her pocket.
My candy-pink thong.
“Lost something?”
“Um, yeah.” I don't take it, though, remembering how it went flying across the floor of the club. I don't need to be wearing that until it's gone through a few laundry cycles.
“It's OK. I'll keep it.” She makes it disappear back into her pocket.
I flex my bare toes in front of me, and she smiles.
“I'll take you shopping tomorrow.”
“I think you have the wrong idea, kinda. I don't need you to take me shopping.”
“Oh, I think I have a very good idea.”
She has a way of playing with the hair at the back of my neck that surprises me. A lot of women would already be trying something, but she has the maturity to sense that I'm still shaky about what just happened back there on the street.
All shootings are supposed to be reported to the cops. Everybody thinks Vegas is the wild west, but it's the same in Nevada as any other state. I know that, but I realize I don't fucking care. As far as I'm concerned, it's a good thing the creep's blown-out knee means he won't be moving so fast in the future. Justice has been served. Who knows how many girls he hurt in the past?
A judge coming back to second-guess the woman who rescued me wouldn't help anybody. That was one justified shooting which would have to go unsolved.
We've been driving a long time. The strip is gone, a twinkle of lights vanishing behind us, and we're farther out into the mountains than I expected.
When she hugs me close, I smell that expensive fragrance again. “Something told me I needed to come after you. There's a link between us.”
I'm crying. Well, sniffling anyway. I'm sure Jessica considers it crying. It hits me again that something very, very bad almost happened. Until she put a stop to it.
Maybe I'm shaking. Maybe I'm crying a little harder than I mean to. Her arms tighten around me like two strong bands to hold me close.
“It's OK, you're safe now. I'm going to keep you safe. I was there, I'll always be there for you, little girl.”
Those are the words I want to hear, and yet it feels like we're moving awfully fast. “Not a little girl.” My pride makes me say it. “Not.”
“You're my little girl.” When she kisses me, the night feels hot and black.
Chapter Seven
Jessica
The way Emily snuggles into my side is giving me a lot to think about on that long drive up the mountain. No panties. Fuck. I'm so aware of the pink scrap balled-up in my pocket. Which means no panties under that teeny, tiny skirt that has a way of drifting up when she starts to fall asleep.
Those thighs gripping my face. The sugar syrup pouring out of her depths. My taste buds tingle. Some deeper nerve endings further south tingle too, but I don't want to get grabby so soon after the perv had his paws all over her.
She needs to feel safe. More than that. She needs to be safe. It isn't fair to pull a good girl like her to my side when I know all the crap that's coming after me. That grubby street trash with his bad breath and broken teeth. He touched my Emily.
That can't happen. Never again.
I've been many things in my life. A criminal, a soldier, a banker, a casino owner. No one knows about the criminal
conviction. It was a year or two out of my life, no more. Allegedly expunged. But somehow the state of Nevada knows about it. There was somebody I missed paying off back in the day, and it's pretty fucking clear somebody else found out about it.
The federal investigators. The ones siccing Dario on me. Could be they're setting a trap for me, looking to get me with a gun, any little excuse to stick me back inside while they take their own sweet time about snooping through my bank accounts.
Or maybe that came from Nick Gavrolovic too. Maybe he was already after me by the time I tried to renew my license to carry. He's known for his delight in taking apart his rival's lives piece by piece. And he's the kind of guy who takes an especially fiendish delight in taking apart a woman's life. The girlfriends and wives of his competitors have never been off-limits. And he's never been entirely easy about dealing with an actual female casino and club owner.
Whoever's behind the bullshit infesting my current existence, the net result is the same. Ever since I've come back from Macau, I've been denied the basic all-American right to possess a firearm. Hell, I'm not even licensed to own any businesses that sell alcohol. If I want to keep my clubs and casinos open, I have to hold them through various shell companies.
A nuisance, but the kind of nuisance you can work around, given enough money. Nothing and no one ever slows me down. I won't give them the satisfaction. It is what it is‒ another fucking tax on my business that I'm happy to pay as long as I'm raking in the mega-bucks.
There's another tax I've paid, a more painful tax. Emily, trembling in my arms, is the living embodiment of the price I've paid. As a teenager, I joined the Selkelskie crime family because I had no family of my own. After the betrayal, after the prison time, I didn't allow myself to have another family. I can't let anyone else get that close. It's too dangerous for me. And― I touch a finger to her face to brush away a loose curl― it's far too dangerous for them.
The tour in the Army helped turn my life around. Taught me more about improvised weapons and creative violence than a woman could ever learn from the fucking Selkelskies. The Army respects brains and guts. I got my pride back. My confidence. Including the confidence needed to seek vengeance for how the Selkelskies used and discarded me as a pawn.
They thought I was weak because I was a mere female. Fuck weak. Fuck them. The best revenge is living well. This mere female is a billionaire, and the Selkelskie family has been broken apart and shipped off to various federal prisons all over the country. And I may, or may not, have had a tiny part in assisting that outcome.
If the Gavrolovics want to fuck with me, if they want a piece of that, bring it, fuckers.
Safe choices aren't for me. But it isn't fair to put my girl on the line. Especially not a sweet girl like this.
I need to stick to playing no-strings games with party girls. That's safer for everybody all around.
I don't need a steady or a wifey. I have a personal assistant to organize my life. Quentin can take care of that stuff just fine. Intelligent and detail-oriented, he's the kind of person I can work with and still keep at a distance. A couple hundred years ago, with his keen sense of people and place, he would have been some duke's butler.
Yes, Quentin's the one I need at my side. A man as sexually unavailable to women as I'm sexually unavailable to men. A man without emotions, a human robot, that's what I need.
Not a sweet little angel girl only weeks out of high school. Not a girl who smells of sugar, vanilla, and the creamy center of my favorite bonbons. Why does Emily have to feel so warm against me?
I should have more self-control than this. I need to distract myself from certain fantasies that spring to mind every time I draw in another breath of her sweet scent.
The barrier is up between the front and the back of the limo‒ the barrier between the help and the helped. The driver has no idea what's going on back here. He has a professional disinterest in whether or not I'm fucking some girl in the back of the car.
Quentin, on the front passenger's side, is giving me a blurred impression of the back of his neck. He's working silently on the phone with his thumbs. Running down information, I think.
We're far out beyond street lights by the time we reach a certain private road with a guard shack and a barrier. There's a second guard shack farther in. We don't stop for either one. They know the limo, and they know the driver, who has his window partly down to make it easier for the cameras to match his face.
There's a device somewhere in the engine. If the driver ever doesn't match the driver who's supposed to be there, the engine stops.
There's a second device, a back-up plan for the ultimate emergency. But I don't want to think about that one with Emily in the car.
“We're here,” I say.
She wiggles and looks up, her jaw dropping slightly. It occurs to me that she knows my name but she still doesn't really know who I am. When she heard the word “cabin,” she probably imagined something closer to Abe Lincoln than Bavarian palace.
And by Bavarian palace, I mean the one that inspired all those Sleeping Beauty palaces you're seen in theme parks and movies. Except, you know, a lot bigger. There's an abundance of rooms and spires and turrets. Everything you need to live a life of painted luxury.
It's as far from the average person's image of a country cabin as it gets.
“I can afford it,” I say. My little joke.
“Wow. I mean, wow. I don't doubt you can afford it, I just didn't, you know, expect it.”
She sounds so young. I want to wrap my arms around her and squeeze her forever.
There's a lot of security on the outside, but a skeletal staff on the inside. Nobody expected me to be dropping by for a couple weeks. Well, Quentin would have to arrange for a cook and some extra housekeepers in the morning. For now, he and the driver are heading over to the carriage house after making some vague excuses about looking over the car before they turn in. You'd think the limo was a horse in need of being curried.
It's an excuse to give us privacy, and I take it with gratitude. Sweeping a sleepy Emily into my two arms, I walk up the steps to a front door that's already coming open. This electric eye scans for my face and my face only before it opens automatically. Anybody else, they need a few codes to get in.
Codes that are damn hard to come by, even for the oldest and most trusted members of my staff.
“Wait,” Emily says. “What is this?”
“We're here, we're going inside, we need sleep.” I know she's exhausted, but surely that much is obvious.
“No, but I mean... you're carrying me over the threshold like...” She doesn't complete the sentence.
Like a bride.
That's what she started to say.
Like a bride.
It gives me a funny feeling. I'm not a woman who gets married. Otherwise, I'd be like the rest of the billionaire's club, a different wife for every decade. At forty-one, I'd be just starting with number three, I suppose. But I'm not like that, the marrying kind. It only leads to grief.
Money and marriage don't mix. Never have. Never will. So why am I even thinking about that stuff? Oh, right, the threshold comment.
She laughs. “Sorry. Did I scare you?”
“You can't scare me.” I go ahead and walk in, my stride long and resolute. The weight of her feels warm and lively in my arms, and her hands tighten around my neck.
Her legs, around my waist, tighten in even more interesting ways.
“Yeah, I did, Jessica. I scared you. But it's OK. I don't mind if you're a little scared. I think I like it.”
“Little girl, I'm not in the least bit scared of you.” The bedrooms are all on the second floor. There's an elevator, but somehow I don't feel like putting her down and I find myself walking up and around the spiral staircase. Her feet curve to avoid kicking the wall on the tight turns. The way her toes dig into my back...
I'm stronger than I look, and I work out with a trainer who knows my idea of fitness involves way more than Pilates
. Still, the long muscles in my thighs and shoulders tense as I carry her up. Her pelvis, bare under the skirt, is making tiny little digging motions against my belly. A deliberate tease. Is she trying to make me drop her?
“Don't make me spank you,” I say. When my hips shift with every step, when my arms sway slightly to pull her closer, her pelvis shifts too.
“Why not? It might be fun.”
“Are you daring me? Don't dare me, little girl.”
She nips at my chin, and we're at the top of the staircase, and I nip back, except the nip turns into a longer kiss, and there's a lot of tongue and wet involved.
Then, squirming, she's out of my arms and into the nearest bedroom and the door's slamming, and I'm on the wrong side of it.
In my own fucking house.
A tease. A game.
Oh, yeah. I recognize the fucking game. Hard to get, that's the fucking game. It isn't a game girls usually run on me, because it isn't going to work.
I rattle the crystal doorknob, but she's already locked it.
I knock.
“It's enough excitement for one night.” There's a giggle in her voice, but there's tension too. “Go get some sleep.”
I can't leave it like this. Something's wrong. I don't want her alone in an empty bed, with no one there to hold her tight if nightmares hit her in the aftermath of the perv's assault.
“We both need sleep,” I say. “But if I'm not very much mistaken, it's your first shooting. You won't settle down as fast as you think. It just doesn't work like that.”
A pause. Then the crystal knob turns, and she opens the door. Somehow, she's already wearing one of the long white gowns hanging in the closet. Fast work. Even her hair's all fluffed out and ready for bed.
I touch that luscious hair. So soft against the pads of my fingers.
“Maybe just hold me.”
“Of course, Emily. Of course.” I shouldn't call her by her real name. She isn't supposed to know I know it.