Borden (Borden #1)

by R. J. Lewis

  Turning back to Joel, I gingerly went down to my knees and used parts of my dress to wipe his face clean. A basket of napkins from the restaurant was placed beside us. I looked up at another waitress who appeared deeply disturbed by the bloody mess.

  “Thank you,” I said, faintly.

  “I can call an ambulance if you want,” she offered.

  “Do you want to go to the hospital?” I asked Joel. “Can you hear me? Should I take you to the emergency room?”

  “No,” Joel managed out, barely opening his eyes. “Home. Take me home.”

  Before I could respond, shadows fell over us. I looked up at two men – one of them Hawke – and watched as they bent down and grabbed Joel off the ground.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “Put him down!”

  “We’ll be taking care of him from here on out,” Hawke snapped. “You get inside.”

  “Will he be okay?”

  They didn’t answer. I watched as they lifted him up on his feet and steered him away. Joel’s head was down in defeat, his body limp and barely moving.

  “You really need to go,” the waitress told me solemnly. “Mr. Borden doesn’t like to wait.”

  She returned to the restaurant and I just shook my head at myself. What happened to my quiet uninterrupted life? I felt like it was a different reality ago.

  I turned my attention back to the entrance of the restaurant where a lunatic was waiting for me inside.

  Joel’s creepy prison conversation suddenly didn’t seem so bad.

  Thirteen

  Emma

  I felt absolute dread as the waitress from outside led me to his table in a discreet area on the second level. I was made to wait a short distance away from where Borden was already seated. He was looking casually down at his cell phone as he chatted with a man across the table from him. He seemed so unaffected. Did he not care that he just punched a man and made a huge scene?

  I understood that Joel probably deserved to be treated like shit for what he did, but to be stripped of his shirt and punched for it? That was too much. A simple, “get the fuck out of my restaurant” would have sufficed.

  The man Borden was dining with seemed to be doing most of the talking, and Borden responded in short sentences that I could barely hear.

  “This would benefit you very much, Mr Borden,” he adamantly said.

  “I disagree.”

  “You would make a lot of money.”

  “I already have money.”

  “You can never have enough.”

  “I disagree.”

  “Well then what can I do to convince you to invest?”

  “If I haven’t been convinced by now, it’s unlikely you can do anything.”

  After several minutes, the man then stood up, throwing his napkin on the table out of frustration and left. Not even seconds passed before a waitress came around and quickly cleared up the table, and it was then she motioned me over.

  The eyes of almost every person in the room were latched onto me on my way to his table. Borden, who hadn’t looked once at the man he dined with just minutes prior, suddenly looked up at me, and every head in our vicinity turned away in a blink of an eye. Just like the diner, his power was thick in the air. I felt this ominous feeling of helplessness as I grew nearer to him.

  I tried my best not to tremble when I took a seat.

  “Your food’s being re-cooked,” he stated, all casual-like.

  “I’m not hungry,” I replied calmly, now avoiding his eyes. I kept mine pinned on the napkin on the table in front of me.

  I heard him shift around in his chair. “You barely ate your food. You’re poor. You’re thin. You’re obviously hungry.”

  “After your outdoor display, that’s sort of the last thing I am.”

  “My outdoor display wasn’t as atrocious as it could have been had you not stopped me.”

  I glimpsed at him, sharply replying, “Joel didn’t deserve to be punched like that, Mr Borden.”

  “He disrespected my employee and called me a lunatic in my restaurant within earshot of my diners. Nobody gets away with that. I have a reputation to maintain, Emma. If I let little things like that pass, it’ll create a snowball effect. Shit gets ugly fast. That’s just the way it works, doll.”

  “Besides,” he added, with a flicker of disgust on his face, “that doctor has quite a few alarming secrets. Fetishes that are… difficult to swallow, to put it mildly. You should be thanking me for ridding you of a weirdo. Wouldn’t want to find your shoes on the side of a highway anytime soon, right?”

  While that was disturbing, after my talk with Joel I wasn’t all that surprised.

  “How do you know that?” I wondered aloud, studying him closely.

  He paused. “Because I wanted to know that.”

  My brows came together in thought. “But did you already know? Or…” Or did you find out I was going to go to fucking dinner with the guy and had him checked out?

  He seemed to understand my question, and he chose to respond with a small smirk that could have meant a million different things.

  “Okay,” I whispered to myself, looking away and back to the napkin that didn’t glare or intimidate or, more importantly, entice me.

  Silence filled the space between us for a few minutes. I kept thinking about how much I wanted to get out of here and be home. I would never be on this side of town again. Hell, I doubted I’d leave my unit for the next six months besides going to work.

  A fresh plate of my order was placed in front of me, freshly cooked and smelling divine. I snuck another glance at Borden and then quickly down at my plate. He was staring hard at me, studying me with a kind of depth I’d never been subject to. It wasn’t anything like Joel’s creepy stare either.

  No, it was more.

  There was also something in his hands, and another little glimpse showed it was the same plain zippo lighter he’d been toying with before. He circled it in his hands, and I wondered if he smoked. I certainly didn’t smell it on him when he kissed me… and ugh, why did I have to think about that all over again? Imagining that moment when I was near him made me uncomfortable and red. It also made me paranoid enough to think he knew I was thinking it.

  “I wonder the odds of us being in the same restaurant after what happened,” he finally remarked. “Seems a little strange to me.”

  It was strange, but now I looked at him suspiciously.

  “Where else am I going to find you next?” he asked. “The place I have breakfast? At my work? I’d rather you tell me now to avoid future surprises.”

  I raised a brow in my confusion. “What are you talking about?”

  “I wonder if you’re something other than a waitress. What do you say to that?”

  Oh, hell. He thought I was a cop? “I’d say you’re very paranoid. Again.”

  He shifted again in his seat, and a small chuckle sounded out of his throat. I couldn’t help another glimpse in his direction. His ocean blue eyes were still fixed on me, and he looked amused, and that amusement made him look deceptively friendly.

  He had remarkable genes in the looks department. It was such a shame he was a psycho. I had to remind myself of that over and over again. I wondered what happened to that man in those old photos of him. What changed him into this scary guy in front of me now?

  I shook my head, trying to stifle my irritation. “If I was some cop, by the way, why the hell would I be a waitress working on the other side of town in a shop you don’t even own? Doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.”

  “I’ve seen it before. Sexy women approach me all the time, carrying a wire, trying to get me to talk–”

  “Do you want to search me? I’m wearing nothing but this pathetically small dress of which I can assure you has no empty space to accommodate a wire.”

  “Are you giving me permission?”

  I willed myself to look at him sternly now. It was important he knew I took offense to this pathetic paranoia of his. But when I saw the wicked
gleam in his eyes and the smirk at the corners of his mouth, I was nothing short of infuriated.

  He was toying with me.

  Of course I wasn’t a cop.

  Of course I wasn’t carrying a wire and following him around.

  He wasn’t just scary now, he was also a complete asshole.

  “Is there a particular reason you wanted me at your table, Mr Borden, or am I just your entertainment for this evening?” I asked curtly.

  He leaned forward, his large frame taking up my entire vision as his large hands clasped together. His face was halfway over the table and he drank me in with that stare as if he’d been deprived of the sight of me.

  In a low voice, he huskily said, “If you were my entertainment for tonight, you’d be limping out of here – and it wouldn’t be from the kind of beating you’re thinking of.”

  My breath thinned at his statement said in such a blasé way, and my cheeks heated, and not out of flattery, but out of shock! While a tiny, itty bitty, unnoticed and uncaring part of me wondered what these activities consisted of exactly, I focused on my outrage.

  I leaned forward too, enjoying the adrenaline from the anger he’d incited in me. Quietly, I retorted, “I would never be a willing participant in what you find entertaining, Mr Borden.”

  His smirk intensified as he eyed my lips. “We’ll see, Miss Warne.”

  Was that a challenge?

  “No we won’t,” I bit back. “We agreed to part ways, remember?”

  “I remember everything we agreed to, doll.”

  “Nothing changes, right?”

  He tilted his head to the side, scanning my face as if he was trying to figure something out. I was too busy trying to control the nerves from turning me into a walking earthquake. I’d already dug my nails way too deep into my skin fisting them beneath the table to stop from shaking.

  “You’ve always been hard, haven’t you?” he asked, out of nowhere. “From a kid ‘til now, you’ve got thick skin. I like that about you. Makes you worth having around.”

  I blinked in surprise. “If it’s brought me back to your table, I don’t see how that’s a good thing.”

  He chuckled again. “I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Just going to threaten me?”

  “Why would I threaten you when you’re so good at slapping me for it? That was certainly a first for me, Miss Warne.”

  I fought the smile on my face and looked away, gripping the napkin now. I wanted to take that opportunity and ask him why he kissed me for doing it, but then that would mean acknowledging I kissed the cocky asshole in the first place.

  He had a ghost of a smile on his lips. “Why won’t you look at me?”

  “You’re intimidating.”

  “Certainly doesn’t stop you from talking back at me.”

  “That’s just years of being defiant.”

  “I like your defiance,” he said even lower, that sex voice returning.

  Enough to turn you on? I wanted to ask.

  “You also like power, don’t you, Mr Borden? And being in control.”

  He shrugged, absentmindedly. “I don’t like it at all, actually.”

  I pinched my brows together. What did he mean by that?

  “What you just did to Joel,” I started, searching his face for any kind of emotion, “you didn’t like doing it? Is that what you’re saying?”

  His eyes settled back to mine, and completely disregarding my question he said, “Why didn’t you talk to the police officer?”

  Where was he going with this?

  “Because,” I muttered.

  “Because what?”

  “Because…” I paused, already getting the gist of what he was saying. “I was scared.”

  “And now that you know I don’t harm women, will you be running off to one?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m… still frightened of you.”

  He nodded. “Right. Once that fear gets under your skin and settles inside your bones, it’s not something you can switch off overnight. You learned the fear from rumours spread throughout the city, but you experienced it the night you found my men thrashing a man that owed me money around. I own you now.”

  My jaw dropped and I looked perplexedly at him. “You own me?”

  “Yes. It’s how I control everyone. It’s the reason I’m at the top. You’ll do whatever I say because of your fear.”

  “And is that what’s happening? Are you going to make me do something I don’t want to do?” Fuck, did he want my body? This could be why he was doing all of this, I realized.

  He frowned, irritated. “I don’t fuck women forcefully, if that’s what you’re referring to. I don’t need to, either. I have enough throwing themselves at me, and a body is just a body at the end of the day. Sorry to disappoint.”

  My shoulders slumped in relief, but I still glared at his egotistical remark. “I’m not disappointed, Mr Borden.”

  “Of course you are. After your display in your boss’s office, I’m inclined to think you’d do anything for more.”

  “I’m not the one that kissed you first, Mr Borden.”

  “But you certainly didn’t stop it either, did you?” Another smirk.

  I seethed. “I had no choice, and I certainly didn’t want it.”

  “Don’t lie. A part of you is curious about me, alley cat. A part of you wants to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “What it’s like to be fucked by me. Because if one kiss feels that good, imagine the rest. I’m still surprised by how fast you melted into me, like butter. Sweet, melted butter. Fucking tasty, if I’m being honest.”

  Jesus, he was good.

  He was killing me.

  My whole body heated in embarrassment. It took everything in me to mutter out unconvincingly, “I’m not curious to know what you’re like at all, and I think you’ve read a little too much into it.”

  That was a lie.

  A blatant fucking lie, and he knew it too. I felt like an open book. It was impossible for him to know how many hours I’d wasted the past few nights looking him up, reading through those rumours, staring at pictures of him and those lips, trying to figure out the mystery that was Marcus Borden. Yet here, right now, it was like he knew it all.

  And did he? I suddenly worried how he might have gotten this information, or if he was simply capable of reading me meticulously.

  One second I’d been too scared to make eye contact with him, and now I couldn’t turn away from those blue irises if I tried. He drank me in with a captivating look, one that was trying to scratch beneath the surface of my being. Why was my mind and body suddenly roaring with both indifference and interest for the man? It was so easy to rationalize how insane he was when I was alone, but here, with him so close to me, he was so magnetizing. I felt lured in, probably like all the helpless women before me, vulnerable and ready to explore him.

  “You’re enamoured by me,” he stated slowly. “I can see it in your eyes. You lust for something new, different. Maybe I’m the same.”

  I swallowed, unwilling to acknowledge his statement. “Why am I here, Mr Borden? Just cut to the chase.”

  “You’re different,” he quietly remarked.

  “Different how?”

  “Just… different. I see colours when I’m around you.”

  Colours. What did that mean?

  My chest tightened at the fleeting shadow of sadness lurking beneath the surface of him. Something wasn’t right. The cocky, arrogant man from two seconds ago had disappeared, and I wanted to speak to this man in front of me now before he bottled it up again. I opened my mouth to respond when his phone rang. Snapping out of whatever bubble we allowed ourselves in, he sighed and pressed a button on the screen of his phone and put it to his ear.

  “What?” he demanded.

  He listened intently, and I could already feel the shift in the air. He was pulling away, back to the man fr
om before.

  “I’ll be on my way in a few minutes,” he said before hanging up and looking back at me. “I’m just going to cut to the chase in our job interview, Miss Warne.”

  I froze, my breath knocked out of me. Job interview? “What? What are you talking about?”

  “I like you, and I think you would be a wonderful asset to my business. Thank you for expressing interest –”

  “I didn’t express shit. I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about right now.”

  He stared at me evenly. “You’re a bookkeeper by trade, are you not?”

  I didn’t respond. I was too lost to understand.

  “My club is in need of one as soon as possible, and the job is yours. You’ll be working alongside me –”

  “No,” I cut in, catching up to his words in my shock. “I won’t be taking any position with you. I don’t even know what you’re talking about!”

  He tucked his phone into his pocket and leaned back in his chair. “It’s a good paying job, more than what you’re making at the place you’re at currently. You should be thanking me right now. It’s not often I like someone enough to hire them on the spot.”

  “I don’t want to be hired. I’m happy where I am.”

  “You’re happy to live in poverty? Somehow I find that unlikely, and anyways it’s done. You’ll be taking the position, or you’ll end up unemployed, which I know you don’t want to be. That would mean crawling back to your grandmother’s little house, putting stress on that poor fragile thing after she thought you were handling yourself so well on your own. It’d be a shame, wouldn’t it?”

  My heart nearly stopped. “You’ve been combing through my life.”

  “Every inch of it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can.”

  I paused, trying to understand this man. “Why me?”

  “You already know why.”

  You’re different. He’d said.

  We stared at each other for several moments, neither of us unwilling to look away first. What started out as anger had now weaned to me curiously exploring his unnaturally attractive face, wondering exactly what thoughts inhabited his crazy mind to justify doing this to me.