Risk It All (Risqué #2)

by Scarlett Finn

  Blaser was at her side, he stroked down her hair and pulled her into his arms. Talking to Gary would fall to her, but when she peeked out of Blaser’s embrace she saw that Dax still had him pinned, and Gary wasn’t fighting as hard anymore.

  ‘Let him up,’ she called, shoving out of Blaser’s clinch. ‘Please, don’t hurt him!’

  ‘Don’t hurt him?’ Ivy said. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He’s my brother,’ Bri said.

  Dax either wasn’t listening or didn’t care because he held on until Ivy went over and crouched beside him to grasp his elbow and dip to break his eye line. She whispered something and Dax released his hold.

  Gary coughed and rolled to the side. Dax stood up and took Ivy under his arm. ‘Thanks,’ Blaser said to Dax, who didn’t react to the gratitude.

  ‘Someone might want to grab the gun before he does,’ Dax said, saying nothing more and taking Ivy out of the apartment.

  Blaser did as Dax suggested and retrieved the gun then emptied out all of the bullets. While he took it out of the room, she crouched beside Gary.

  ‘What were you thinking coming in here like that?’ she demanded. ‘Don’t you ever threaten Blaser again!’

  Gary fell onto his back, blinking tears from his bloodshot eyes. ‘Who the fuck was that guy?’ he wheezed.

  ‘He is Blaser’s new best friend,’ Bri said. ‘Bear that in mind the next time you come over to ruin our evening.’ Standing up, she kicked her foot into his ribs. ‘Why are you out of jail?’

  ‘New lawyer,’ Gary coughed and managed to sit up, rubbing his throat. ‘Cut me a deal.’

  Blaser came from the hallway and she jumped over her brother to run into his arms. ‘Love, I’m sorry, are you ok?’

  ‘Dax took care of business,’ Blaser said, embracing her. ‘Dude just came in and dropped to the ground. He assessed the situation in a second, did this sweeping move and took Gary’s legs out, boom, he was on the ground. The gun went off and by the time I realised I wasn’t shot, Dax had Gary by the throat.’

  ‘I was so scared,’ Bri said. Burying her face in his still bare chest, she closed her eyes and tightened her embrace. ‘If he had hurt you… if you’d… what would I have done without you, Love?’

  ‘This isn’t gonna happen.’

  Gary’s snarl made her turn around, but she remained in Blaser’s arms, using her body as a shield between the men. ‘This, what?’ Blaser asked.

  ‘You two. I fucking told you, Warner!’

  ‘He has looked after me,’ Bri said. ‘While you were going around waving guns and shooting people, Blaser got his life together. He took care of Rafe, and now we’re going to be together.’

  ‘No, not a chance,’ Gary said. ‘I took care of Rafe, me, not this piece of shit!’

  ‘You don’t need to take care of anything,’ Bri said. ‘It’s done. Blaser dealt with it!’

  ‘You can’t be with him,’ Gary spat. ‘His fucking family—‘

  ‘Accept us,’ Bri said. ‘They have helped me in ways you can’t even imagine. Colt listened, he took the time to listen, unlike you who is more interested in running his mouth, and Colt’s fiancée? She’s a therapist, she’s helped me process what happened last year, she has listened and praised me. We’re working together and you know? It’s working! Blaser and I made love last night, I am moving on, I am getting better. But you, you’re stuck in the past and won’t even think about growing as a person or developing any sort of maturity!’

  ‘He’s not different,’ Gary said, climbing to his feet. ‘He’s going to screw you over, he’s a prick!’

  ‘He took the rap for all of you,’ Bri said. ‘You should be grateful to him, he went to prison and kept his mouth shut about all of you! He took the rap and he could have taken you all with him, you, Marshall, Mattie, all of you! But he didn’t. He kept his mouth shut and he set me free. He told me to get away from you, from all of you, and he was right! Look how great his life turned out when he cut ties with you and all of your crew!’

  ‘He’s not a fucking saint!’

  ‘No, he’s not, but he doesn’t pretend to be! Don’t stand there and act like you are coming after Blase for my benefit. You’re not worried that he’ll hurt me, you’re scared that I won’t be dependent on you anymore! That’s what you need, you need the power and when you don’t have it, when someone doesn’t need you anymore… you can’t handle that.’

  ‘We’re family, I need to look after you.’

  ‘And if that’s what you were doing maybe I could cut you some slack. But that, what you just pulled, that wasn’t love, that was a power trip. You wanted to take control of me, and of Blaser by taking me away from him… If you were sure that I was going to choose you over him, then you wouldn’t have come in here with the gun… would you?’

  Holding Blaser’s wrists, she pulled them further around her. ‘I love her, Wilcox, all the way. Isn’t it time we all grew up?’ Blaser’s calm words were the final piece she needed, exhaling the panic, she relaxed her body to his.

  Some of Gary’s anger was gone though she wasn’t sure if that was through acceptance or embarrassment. ‘You’re gonna choose him?’ Gary asked her. ‘All we’ve got is each other.’

  Her heart broke a little, her brother needed her now maybe more than she needed him. ‘I don’t want to choose anyone,’ she said. ‘I want both of you in my life. But I wouldn’t stand by and let Blaser bully and threaten you, I won’t do the same for you. I can’t let you think that it’s ok to behave that way anymore.’

  Gary examined the whole scene and she anticipated his response, hoping that he would choose to stand with them instead of against them. But her brother said nothing, he turned around and walked out without saying another word.

  Her impulse to follow him was thwarted when Blaser tightened his muscles to hold her in place. ‘Let him go, Doll,’ Blaser said. ‘He’s out and we know where to find him. Give him time to think about this. Hopefully, he’ll realise that we’re not kidding around and accept us, but it’s not going to happen overnight.’

  ‘I guess,’ she said, listening to a vehicle engine rev outside, it flared a couple of times, then sped out of the parking lot and faded into the distance.

  Blaser’s phone rang, the startling sound made her draw back against him, he kissed her head then eased her out of his arms so that he could retreat to the bedroom and answer it. To distract herself, she went into the kitchen and opened the cabinet with the hole in it.

  Glass showered down, there wasn’t too much damage other than the broken glasses. The bullet had lodged itself in the back of the cabinet. They’d have to pick it out and mend the space, but time was getting on and she was due at Risqué for the start of her shift. She was covering for one of the other waitresses tonight.

  The reminder had her seeking out a clock and she gasped when she read the time. There was no more time to waste on Gary and this mess, so while Blaser was on the phone she grabbed her purse, ran out and up the stairs to her own apartment to get ready for her shift.

  In her own apartment, she jumped into the shower and out again within a couple of minutes. Freshening up for her shift, she ran a brush through her hair and opened the bathroom door to dash across the hallway to the bedroom directly opposite. Except as soon as she opened the door she saw Blaser standing in front of her.

  Fully naked and still glistening from the body butter she’d slathered over herself before brushing her hair, she smiled when words fled his lips and his hungry gaze did the talking for him.

  ‘I wasn’t running away, I was getting ready for work,’ she said, having to ease him aside so that she could pass to get into her bedroom.

  ‘You don’t have to work at the club anymore,’ he said, coming after her. ‘You can move into my place.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, picking out underwear and an outfit for the night. ‘That was my plan all along, get into your pants so I could move into your place and never work another day in my life.’

  ‘We’re
together, right? Why shouldn’t we—‘

  ‘I am not going to rush this,’ she said. He sauntered across the room to sit on the bed next to the clothes she had laid out. ‘Yes, we’re together, but I want to keep seeing Lyssa and keep working through this. Just because we’ve been physically intimate doesn’t mean that all of my issues are gone.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said, fingering the lace of her bra. ‘But I’d like to spend the night with you.’

  ‘Case and point why we shouldn’t rush into living together,’ she said, fastening in earrings then heading over to don her underwear. ‘We haven’t actually spent a whole night together yet.’

  ‘We will.’

  ‘Yeah, we will,’ she said. ‘But we’re going to pace ourselves and even when we do decide that the time is right to move in together, I’m not going to stop working. I want to pull my weight. I want to help out here and at the garage and I want to be more involved in the club. I want us to be a team.’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Because I don’t want you thinking that I need to be looked after anymore and I don’t want you doing anything illegal, not even for me.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘I’d like it if we took the time to learn each other again and develop our relationship properly, at a normal pace.’

  ‘We’ve lived together before.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A long time ago, but we should enjoy this, maybe you could take me out somewhere.’

  ‘Like a date?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t tonight. That was Crystal on the phone, there’s a problem at the club, something about the air conditioning that they think I fixed last night.’

  ‘But you didn’t?’ she asked. She finished getting dressed then went to the wall mirror with her makeup bag to put on her face for the evening.

  ‘I got a guy in to do it this morning,’ he said.

  ‘Everyone thinks you fixed it once so you can do it again,’ she said. ‘You didn’t tell Crystal about last night?’

  ‘I didn’t tell anyone, except Dax.’

  ‘Can it wait five minutes?’ she asked. ‘I could use a ride to the club.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said and pushed up on his hands to bounce back and lie down on her bed.

  Flicking her eyes to the reflection of him staring up at the ceiling, she swiped on her mascara. ‘You’re distracted, Love.’

  ‘Thinking about what I’m going to say to Ruger.’

  ‘When will he be here?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ Blaser said. ‘Could be in an hour, could be in a day. Everything you told us is just proof that we don’t really know where he is or what he’s up to.’

  Finishing up with her makeup she looked at her own reflection for a while thinking about what had transpired. ‘Do you think that Dax has killed people?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ he replied. ‘From the way he was today… I’d guess he’s more lethal than a lot of guys around here.’

  The ex-cons that Blaser hired tended to be thieves or dealers who’d got clean. Somehow Dax had slipped through the net, Bri wasn’t so sure that he was clean, which was one of Blaser’s requirements for hiring guys and leasing apartments to them. And there was no way that Dax was a simple criminal caught because of his own stupidity like most of the other guys around here. From what she knew, Dax had never done time inside.

  Ivy was cagey about answering questions. The story that she had told about how she and Dax had met was shocking, but now Bri was getting the impression she’d only understood broad strokes. But Dax didn’t raise his hands to Ivy and he’d bailed them out of a jam, so she couldn’t judge his skills negatively, they might have saved Blaser’s life. Giving him a pass seemed like the least they could do.

  ‘We’ll ponder that later,’ he said, springing off the bed and coming over to grab her hand. ‘Let’s get to the club, there’s nothing else we can do until Ruger gets here. Dax’s business is Dax’s business, let’s just be grateful that he’s on our side.’

  That was true, she couldn’t imagine that being on Dax’s bad side was a place anyone would want to end up. Blaser was right and for now they would have to tolerate the wait. Until Ruger got back, Blaser was going to be tense, but no matter how long it took Ruger to get here, Bri planned to do all she could to ease every burden that Blaser shouldered.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Messing around with the AC unit wasn’t actually supposed to yield results, but giving it a final thwack it shuddered into life and he looked up, triumphant. The girls applauded, all except Bri, who was hiding a smile behind her hand. With a wink at his girl, he sent his audience back to work.

  The rest of the night was just like the old days, routine, boring, normal… except his view had improved. Bri’s drinks orders got priority because when she came in his direction he automatically gravitated to her position. She didn’t seem to notice, but the other girls had and delighted in giving him a hard time. Crystal was the only one who showed no good humour about it.

  Bri stayed after all the other girls, even after the place was squared up she remained to put away the last of the cleaning supplies. Counting the cash out of the register, he noted the figures in the columns of his accounts book as he went along. Keeping a nightly tally in ink was a habit he’d started on night one.

  The only lights left on were behind the bar, so when the front spotlight blasted a white beam onto the stage, it caught his attention. He hadn’t expected such a bright flash. Bri strode onto the stage, he heard the footsteps before he saw her because the glare of the light shielded her form.

  When she entered the cloak of the shining white glow, he stopped counting and watched her stretch out her arm to curl her fingers around the streak of metal that dozens of his women had thrown themselves around.

  Observing Bri spin her body around the pole in a down and up pendulum move, she then twisted to lean back on it, lifting her arm above her head. Coiling a leg around it, she went around again this time the thrust of her breasts captivated him.

  Putting down the money, he kept his eyes on the performing woman who caused the wood to grow in his jeans. She undulated to inaudible music, rocking her hips left and right. Bending at the waist her ass rose high as she straightened her legs and tossed back her hair.

  Picking up the pace, he leapt up onto the stage and gripped her waist, making her gasp. He’d never craved a woman on this stage and now he was up here with one thing on his mind.

  ‘You’re hired,’ he whispered and kissed her neck.

  She laughed and rested her weight on him. ‘Who says I want a job,’ she asked, rubbing her ass back into his groin. ‘I wanted to know if I could still do it.’

  ‘You can do it, Doll, all night long.’

  Keeping close contact, she circled around and began to open his jeans. ‘We’re all alone,’ she whispered.

  ‘We are,’ he agreed.’

  ‘Have you ever had sex on this stage?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then tonight’s your lucky night.’

  She took off his tee-shirt and began to kiss his torso. Bri could get away with anything. There were tasks to take care of like cashing out and locking up, but when she stepped back and pulled her top over her head, her breasts bounced out of the spandex and he caught the glorious soft flesh, thinking only of her. Gripping and kneading the mounds, he tried to get closer, but she dropped to her knees and pulled off his jeans.

  She took his hands and pulled him down on top of her. ‘You’re not going to fire me for getting kinky with a colleague on your premises, are you?’ she grinned.

  ‘This is the only time you take your clothes off on this stage, or anywhere, when I’m the only one in the room to see you.’

  ‘Deal,’ she said, sliding a hand around to the back of his neck to pull him down for a kiss.

  Tracing his fingertips through her cleavage and down her abdomen, she parted her thighs to welcome his digits. Her skirt bunched
around her hips, but he kept working his fingers over her panties, rubbing and teasing her clit. Her breathing quickened and the moisture his attention garnered soaked right through her underwear.

  ‘Yes,’ she exhaled and brought up a knee to plant her foot on his shoulder and pressure him away. When he sat up, she shimmied out of her thong and used her feet to clasp his hips and bring him back toward her.

  Kissing her mouth, he tasted her deep and pushed his finger into her. She was wet and ready to accept him. But he wouldn’t move too fast, he kept up his internal massage, urging his finger deeper he curled it and pulled out then slid it in again. His kiss was warmed by the pulse of her breath, each inhale told him how her arousal was growing and when she reached fever pitch, right on the cusp of her orgasm, he removed his hand and his lips and gazed down into the devotion she poured into him.

  He didn’t need to check if she was comfortable or happy, he could tell that she was by the way that her body squirmed under him. She got hold of his dick and he directed his hips to her centre. When she raised herself, he let her keep hold of him and force the bulb of his head between her folds. Pushing down he slid in deeper, she kept her hips up but let her hands fall away.

  Gliding through her juices was easier today, there was no hesitation from her body or her mind. Her loose muscles welcomed the bulge of his aroused member, there was no blockage, just the woman he loved basking in the thud of fervour pounding to the silent bass produced by the beat of their deafening hearts.

  ‘Blase,’ she called, gritting her teeth and impelling her hips higher, begging him to move faster and bring her to the chemical conclusion of pleasure. Working harder, he kissed her and brought his hands to the sides of her skull to support it and trace his thumbs up and down in the grooves behind her ears.

  Spasm locked their bodies together and her crescendo squeezed his cock so tight that the ferocity of her reaction pitched him to his own summit. Forcing his groin into her pubis, his spunk pumped out in an erratic stream. Even after he’d gone soft, he didn’t want to leave the heat of his favourite cocoon.