F*ck Club: Riley

by Shiloh Walker

  “Paying people money in exchange for sex is against the law.”

  “Well…” He drew out the bottles of vodka—a local craft product that he couldn’t seem to keep on his shelves. Tilting one of them, he held it up to the light, pretending to study it. Then he added two of the bottles to the stock up top before tucking the others away under the bar. “I don’t think I’ve ever contracted with a client that I would have sex with them for money.”

  “Are you telling me you’ve never had sex with any of the women you’ve…escorted?”

  “Now, detective…” He tsked under his breath. “I’m a gentleman. My mother taught me to never kiss and tell.”

  She stared him down.

  After a few seconds, she reached into the inner pocket of her lightweight jacket and pulled out a picture, placing it on the surface of the bar. “Do you know her? Was she ever one of your…clients?”

  Something icy trailed down his spine as he moved closer.

  There was a challenge in Chance’s eyes, something he didn’t like at all.

  If he hadn’t already steeled himself not to react, he would have given himself—and a lot more—away.

  Candi.

  Son of a bitch.

  It was Candi.

  “Candi. Yeah, I know her. We haven’t…talked in a while. Is she okay?”

  Memory flashed through his mind. Boys like you only look at girls like me for one reason …

  Chance was still quiet. Shifting his gaze up, he asked, “Did she hurt herself?”

  That didn’t seem to be anything she’d been prepared for. Her mouth went tight, only to smooth out immediately. “Odd question. Why would you ask that?”

  “Because she’s done it before.”

  “Oh, that’s smooth, covering it up that way.” She clicked her tongue and reached for the picture.

  Riley jerked it back out of her reach. “Is she okay?”

  The emotion he’d worked hard to keep lashed down broke free, underscoring his words.

  Her brows arched slightly.

  She pursed her lips, her hand lowering back to the bar. “You know, I think you really want an answer to that.”

  “Yeah. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t ask. Where is she? Can I go see her?”

  “Sure.” She gave him a pretty smile and then reached into her jacket for something else.

  The cold, hard light in her eyes should have warned him.

  But nothing could manage to prepare him for what he read when he picked up the newspaper clipping.

  Candace Lowe, 36, to be laid to rest…

  He closed his eyes, thinking of the last time he’d seen her.

  I saw him…

  “What do you want, detective?” he asked woodenly.

  “What was your relationship with the deceased, Mr. Steele?”

  He almost told her. For some reason, the words wanted to come spilling out. But self-preservation—or familial preservation—kicked in and he just shook his head.

  “We went out. She called me when she was lonely. It used to be that she called a lot. But not in the past few months.” Not since she’d seen the man who’d raped her, broken her. He’d wanted to think she’d been off somewhere, putting the pieces of herself back together.

  He should have called her.

  Reached out.

  And now she was gone.

  “How did she die?” He lifted the picture, once more staring at Candi’s pretty face, hating himself a little more than he had that morning. He wanted to hear the answer, almost needed to hear the cop say something like they were looking for clues into who’d done it. Maybe if he could point them toward the man—

  “She killed herself.”

  The picture fell from suddenly numb fingers, drifting down to lie over the obituary, covering the image used for that particular announcement. “What?”

  Chance reached over and took the picture, studying it closely before looking back at him. “You don’t think she was capable of such a thing, Mr. Steele?”

  “Look, lady—”

  The back door opened, light shining in.

  Bree stood there, her hand gripping Toby’s shoulder as she looked around, a dazed expression on her face.

  The bruise on her cheek had darkened to a mottled blue-black, an almost macabre mask that covered nearly half her face.

  “Bree,” he said, the cop forgotten.

  She flinched at the sound of his voice.

  What in the hell?

  An awful thought occurred. She’d told him yesterday she was going back to work today, back in Turner Grove. Had they let Don out? They’d been lucky and he’d gone at her on a Friday night, so the son of a bitch had been forced to sit in the county lock-up all weekend but if he was out…

  He didn’t even remember coming out from behind the bar, but he had. He’d closed the distance between them and cautiously, afraid she might shatter if he wasn’t careful, he reached out. “Bree?”

  She pulled away, shaking her head.

  “Mr. Steele, why don’t you leave the lady alone?”

  He looked at Chance, something ugly already forming on his tongue.

  She had her hand on her weapon.

  “Ma’am. Did he do that to your face?”

  “What the—” He stopped as she took another step toward him.

  “Mr. Steele, I want you to back away and let me speak to your…”

  Bree seemed to wake up from the daze she was in and blinked, looking around. She saw Chance and froze. “What…? Ry, why is there a cop here?”

  “She’s harassing me.” He kept his voice soothing, but he didn’t look away from Chance. “She’s under some misguided notion that I did that to you, Bree.”

  “She…what?” Bree’s mouth dropped open and she jerked her head around, gaping at Detective Chance. “No. You’re crazy. Just…no.”

  Chance didn’t relax. “Are you saying he didn’t hit you?”

  “Daddy did it.” That came from Toby. He was the only one watching the cop with absolutely no guile or fear. He stared at her gun with wide eyes. “Are you going to shoot somebody? Why?”

  “I’m not going to shoot anybody.” She slowly pulled her hand back from her weapon, but her frown remained firmly in place. “Who did that to you, Miss…?”

  “Sharpe.” Bree looked at Riley with apprehension. “My name is Brianna Sharpe. And I don’t think that concerns you. I will tell you it wasn’t Riley. He couldn’t hurt a woman if he had to.”

  “Is that a fact?” A faint smirk twisted her lips and Chance looked as though she wanted to pat Bree on the head.

  Bree heard it, too.

  Riley watched as something transformed Bree. It was almost as if the past decade undid itself and the woman in front of him pulled her shoulders back and stood up a little straighter. “Yeah, that’s a fact. When you spend a few years getting treated like a punching bag, you learn damn fast what kind of man thinks it’s okay to do it, and what kind of man would cut off his hand first. Riley wouldn’t just cut off his hand, he’d cut off every damn body part.”

  “Mama, you cussed.” Toby piped up, but Bree was too busy glaring at Chance.

  A few taut moments passed before the detective shifted her attention back to Riley. “Perhaps. Mr. Steele…I’ll be back.” She took the picture and put it facedown on the bar.

  Riley grabbed it and shoved it in his pocket, his head pounding.

  Some of the servers who were there to help set up for the night gave them all curious glances, but Riley ignored them. Bree appeared to do the same as Chance walked past them and slid out the back door.

  Once she was gone, Bree sucked in a deep breath. “What was that about?”

  “A hassle I’m dealing with.” He kept it at that and hoped she’d leave it alone. “How about you tell me what’s wrong? I thought you were working.”

  “I…” She stopped, looking away. After a moment, she looked back at him. “I was fired, Ry. I lost my job.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN


  Bree sat curled up on the couch looking lost.

  Riley had called on Con to help with the kid. Con had brought up a video game console, several games and a pizza, and they were currently ensconced in Riley’s bedroom, whooping and hollering as they smashed each other into oblivion.

  Riley sat on the coffee table, waiting for Bree to talk to him.

  She wouldn’t.

  Hesitantly, he reached out and touched her knee and she jumped, looking up at him with startled eyes.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, the polite lie echoing in her blank eyes.

  I’m fine. I slipped. I fell down. Nothing’s wrong.

  Every time she told one of those polite lies, he wanted to scream. Now, though, he wanted to gather her into his arms and hold her.

  “You’re not fine. You’ve been working at the grocery store since you were seventeen and they fired you. So don’t lie to me and tell me that you are fine.”

  The words made her flinch and when she looked back at him, there were tears in her eyes.

  “Aw, hell. Baby, I’m sorry…”

  “They fired me, Ry,” she said, the words coming out in a torrent, one broken piece over another. “Eddie Ridley said he could keep my job open for me if I’d reconsider pressing charges, but he couldn’t have somebody on staff who’d so—”

  Her voice shattered.

  She started to cry.

  Riley couldn’t do it anymore. He slid from the coffee table onto the couch and picked her up, settling her onto his lap. He braced himself for the rejection, for her to pull back. But she clung to him, her arms going tightly around his neck as she buried her face against him.

  He slid a hand up her back, burying his fingers in the soft curls at her nape.

  “You go ahead and cry, Bree.”

  He had a feeling she’d been holding those tears back for years, probably longer.

  Some storms were like wildfire, quick to come, quick to pass. Others lingered, hovering in the air for what felt like days.

  That’s what this was.

  Even when her tears faded and the sobs died away into nothing, Bree clung to him and her chest rose and fell in an erratic rhythm, as though there were still a hundred, thousand things left to cry about, but she just didn’t have the energy.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her breath warm against his skin.

  “Don’t apologize to me.” He continued to stroke her back, staring at the far wall and willing himself to think about stupid, inconsequential things. Like the water bill. Or the sewer bill. The water and the sewer bill, and the fact that somebody kept flushing things down the third stall in the women’s restroom that shouldn’t be flushed.

  He needed to think about things that weren’t related to Bree, because for the past ten minutes, his body had been acutely aware of her—how soft she was. How female she was.

  How good she felt and how long it had been since he’d been able to touch her the way he wanted.

  It didn’t matter that he’d spent two hours in bed with a woman last Monday. That was just a woman, and this was Bree.

  “You’re always around to pick me up when I’m falling down,” she said, sighing.

  She lifted her head and he could feel her staring at him.

  Sewer bill. Clogged pipes. Slow flushing toilets…

  But she was staring at him.

  Slowly, Riley turned his head and met her eyes, so wide and soft in her face, the green glowing almost jewel-like against the dusky-gold of her skin. He would have given his right arm to be able to kiss her.

  She licked her lips.

  Sewer pipes. Water clogged. Slowly flushing bills…

  Swearing, he jerked his gaze away from her as his cock began to pulse and throb, twisted into an almost-crippling position at this point. Bree rested her head on his shoulder, a shaky sigh escaping her.

  “I’ve missed this.”

  He squeezed his eyes closed.

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened, Bree?”

  Wow. He even managed to sound normal. He should be a fucking actor.

  She stiffened and got up, but when she started to pull away, he caught her hand. “Quit shutting me out like this,” he said. He stood and stared down at her, feeling as if he was going to fly into a million pieces. “You want to act like we’re friends and then when I’m trying to be your friend, you won’t talk to me.”

  “I’m not talking to you because I don’t want you to freak out,” she said.

  “I’m already past that point. That dipshit Ridley is claiming that he won’t have you in the store unless you back down on pressing charges. Let me guess. Donnie’s mommy has been throwing her weight around.”

  Bree stiffened. Then she jerked a shoulder up. “Probably. The guy who owns the house where I live said she’d called him. He told her to fuck off, but not everybody will stand up to her. They own a lot of property in town.”

  “So that means her son gets to batter women and not suffer the consequences.” Riley was disgusted. Turning away from her, he moved over to the window and stared out over the busy street. People were already starting to come into the pub and he could hear the muted roar from the patrons below. It had always been a welcome background noise for him but he knew it was keeping her from sleeping well.

  When she was quiet, he looked back at her. She was staring at the floor, her cheeks pink with a blush, one hand gripping the elbow of her opposite arm so tightly her knuckles had gone white.

  “This isn’t your fault,” he said softly. “You didn’t make him hurt you or your son.”

  “I didn’t stop him, though, did I?” She lifted her head and stared him down.

  “You did. You left.”

  With her mouth in a tight, flat line, she shook her head. “Only because he hurt Toby this time. It never should have come to that.”

  Through the door to Riley’s room, there came a hard thud, followed by Con’s shout. “Hey, squirt, no cheating allowed. Tickling is cheating!”

  “Sore loser!”

  She smiled, the echo of sadness showing on her face as she looked from the door back to Riley. “He sees you all every couple of months. He’s been here just a couple of days. And he’s happier with you all than he is with the man who has lived with us for three years. He doesn’t even know his own father, and the man who claimed he loved me and Toby…” She lifted a hand and touched her cheek.

  Riley went to her. “Just promise you won’t go back to him. He’s hurt you before and you went back. If you do it this time…”

  He stopped in front of her and she tilted her head back, meeting his eyes.

  He was too close.

  He knew it.

  But he didn’t back away.

  He needed her to understand.

  Reaching up, he cupped her chin. “Don’t go back to him. The next time he hurts you, I’m going to kill him, Bree.”

  Her breath caught. “Don’t… Don’t say that, Ry.”

  “I’m going to. So save us all the trouble and just don’t go back to him.”

  She blinked, then, nervously, she nodded.

  Her tongue slid out, wetting her lips.

  Don’t do that…

  “I won’t.”

  Her breath was a soft, shaky sigh and she reached up, closing her hand around his wrist.

  Back away, Ry. Do it now.

  Her gaze flicked to his mouth.

  A groan rumbled out of him and he thought he might explode if he didn’t touch her, kiss her…something.

  “I need to…ah…” Do something. He couldn’t even think of a stupid lie, much less a convincing one.

  Bree looked up at him. “I miss you.”

  Fuck.

  He pushed his fingers into her hair and she blinked, caught off guard. Her eyes widened when he dipped his head, then fluttered closed as he caught her mouth.

  He didn’t close his.

  He wanted to see her, almost had to.

  Her mouth was
damp, only open a little, but it was enough. He licked at the seam of her lips, teased that slight yielding until she gave more. She reached out and braced her free hand on his shoulder, clinging to him.

  He paused, lifting his head to study her.

  She licked her hips, made a sweet sound deep in her throat.

  And her eyes were still closed.

  So he did it again.

  This time, he backed her up until she was trapped between him and the nearby recliner. Bracing his hands on the high back of the chair, he caged her in, although it was an easy enough cage to break away from and he didn’t lean his weight in on her. She was so nervous, so hesitant, it set off every radar he had.

  Her tongue flicked against his. Hesitant.

  He groaned in approval and cupped the back of her head, angling her in closer while fighting the urge to make the kiss deeper. More.

  He might have done something stupid, too, such as slide his hands under her T-shirt and strip away the fabric. Might have done a lot of stupid things.

  But his brother shouted his name and even though he heard it, he didn’t really hear it, and what was he supposed to do anyway?

  A split second after he head the noise, something hit him in the back of the leg.

  Then it hit him again, and he finally realized somebody was yelling at him.

  Somebody small and furious.

  “Leave my mommy alone! You’re not going to make her cry, too! I won’t let you!”

  Toby wound up, ready to swing at him again, his weapon—a wine bottle that had once held flowers, courtesy of Charli—clutched tightly in his left hand.

  “Toby!” Bree said sharply.

  He didn’t even hear.

  Riley caught his hand before the next blow landed—good thing because now that he’d turned, the target wouldn’t have been his hip or thigh. “Easy. Easy there, Toby. You don’t have to go beating me,” he said.

  “Break my other arm!” Toby shouted at him, his face red and angry. “I don’t care. But nobody is going to make my mama cry again.”

  “I agree.” His heart pumped something ugly and hot and he resisted the urge to demand that Bree tell him everything. Clearly, a few details had been left out. He got the wine bottle away easily enough, but the moment the boy was disarmed, he went into a frenzy.