by Poppy Flynn
This must be what it's like, he mused, to share your life with someone. To share your burdens and have someone help shoulder the load just with the knowledge of their support. This is what he imagined being married must be like. Coming home at the end of a long and tedious day and knowing that someone else cared enough to give their own time over your wellbeing. They may not be able to erase the actual problems, but just the idea that there was another person who was simply there for you, somehow managed to make everything seem far less bleak. Charlotte was like his own personal ray of light. His angel.
They had started off just trying to make time for each other outside the club but, in truth, for the past ten days, he hadn't even bothered going back to his hotel suite. And it had been wonderful. Like he had a proper home and a proper relationship.
He'd known a long time ago that, with the addition of a couple of kids, he wanted this exact scenario as his forever. He'd realised recently that he wanted this with Charlotte, specifically.
They hadn't had time to talk about the future. Hell, they'd barely had time for each other the past couple of weeks. It was one of the reasons he'd all but moved in. Between trouble shooting at Blackwood's and then for the club, even trying to fit in lunch on the go had become a feat, never mind a lunch date with someone else. This way, at least, even if it was eight or nine a clock in the evening before he finished, he could come back here to a home cooked meal, and even when he was too exhausted for anything else, he could pull her close, tuck her into his body and find peaceful sleep in her arms and in this place that had already become more of a home to him than the clinical, somewhat austere, condo that he'd lived in for the last nine years. Although he suspected that even his apartment would seem more like home if only Charlotte were sharing it with him.
In truth, it was probably too soon for that kind of pledge. It had been mere weeks, hardly enough time on which to base a lifetime, but already, Jake couldn't imagine his future any other way. He wondered if he would frighten her off if he told her how he felt, but Charlotte seemed just as content as he did. There were some logistics to work out, most definitely, but Jake was certain there was nothing that couldn't be overcome. Despite the disruption that was going on right now, the future looked bright. Brighter than it ever had before.
And sadly, as much as Jake wanted to pull Charlotte onto his knee right now and lose himself in her body, he had spent so much time wading through legal minutiae with Logan regarding the stance they should take with the reporters who had tried to infiltrate the club, that he was way behind on a couple of obligations to Blackwood, and although the company may well bear his name, he was still, technically, an employee.
They had decided to take a tough stance with their 'gate-crashers' at Club Risqué. Throw the book at them and make an example of what would happen to those who tried to sneak in, in the hope that it would act as a deterrent against future intrusions. It had taken up a lot of his time—Logan's, as well. While he may have a good amount of leeway, he couldn't afford to let things slip, and some things just couldn't be put off, even if it meant working from home and into the night.
Sighing, he stilled Charlotte's hands, pulling them over his shoulder and kissing her fingers, feeling her bend over behind him and kiss his hair. He smiled, despite everything.
Despite the fact that Joel and Desi would be home in a few days and Jake would be required to hand everything over, which could maybe buy him a couple of extra days in the current circumstances, he would be expected to go back to head office; he had less than a week.
They needed to have that conversation soon. But not right now. Right now, he needed to get some work done so that he could devote what remained of the evening to his girl.
"Sorry, angel," he murmured, reaching up and stroking her cheek. "Much as I'd prefer to dedicate the entire evening to making you squirm and listening to you come, I've really got to get off a couple of emails before I can close things down for the night."
Charlotte laughed huskily. "Well, you hurry and get those emails off, and afterwards, maybe I'll get you off." She winked suggestively.
"With that kind of incentive, you can bet I'll get things tied up pretty damned fast." Jake grinned. "And then I'm going to tie you up and get you off. Now stop distracting me with all these double-entendres, woman."
Jake bounded off the sofa, suddenly feeling energised and keen to finish with his responsibilities so he could play, instead. Grabbing his leather briefcase, then searching around for his laptop bag, Jake let out a terse oath.
Surprised, Charlotte turned to face him. "What's the matter?"
"I've left my laptop at the office," Jake groused. "I'll have to go all the way back and pick it up." In his head, the curses were a damn sight worse. It would take him the best part of an hour to make the trip there and back again. So much for his plans for Charlotte, later. He'd be working well into the night, at this rate.
Charlotte walked over to him, smoothed the furrows from between his brows and shook her head. He looked like a little boy who hadn't gotten his own way with his petulant frown and his pouty lips. She popped a kiss onto them and patted his cheek.
"No problem," she soothed. "You can use mine and save yourself the trip."
Jake gave her his killer smile and kissed her hard. Maybe the evening wasn't lost, after all.
Charlotte preceded Jake into the small third bedroom that she used as an office and typed her password into her laptop.
"I'll leave you to it, so you get finished quicker." She grinned with a suggestive wiggle of her eyebrows.
"I won't be long, I promise." Jake winked, giving Charlotte a playful pat on her rear as she left the room.
Surfing her system, Jake realised Charlotte used the same email provider as he did. He'd have to sign her out in order to get into his own account. Luckily, she had her password saved so he didn't need to disturb her again.
Just as he was about to log her out, four little initials caught his eye and had him doing a double take. 'BDSM'. What the hell?
Jake turned his attention to the email information with a growing sense of dread.
His breath caught in his throat as he realised the sender was a publishing house. With his hand unsteady on the mouse, Jake hovered over the subject bar entitled 'BDSM article'. It was a saved email, so he could open it without her ever knowing that he'd been snooping…in the unlikely event that it was something purely harmless.
But already, Jake could feel his stomach clenching in panic. He was imagining countless scenarios and they were all bad. He felt positive in the knowledge that Charlotte had betrayed him.
Just looking at those few incriminating words had his heart racing double time, heat rising in his face and an unholy anger building up like a pressure cooker that was about to explode.
He paused for a fraction of a second, his finger visibly trembling against the button that would reveal all with a single click. Maybe he should just call her up here and ask her. Maybe there was a perfectly valid explanation. But then, if she was planning to sell some kind of story to the press, why would she bother telling him the truth? No, better to check for himself and face her with all the damning evidence of her treachery and pretend he'd never so much as looked if there turned out to be an innocent explanation. But how could there ever be an innocent explanation?
Jake screwed his eyes shut and pulled in a laboured breath. In the end, the decision was taken out of his hands when his shaking digits applied a fraction too much pressure and the offending post opened up before him.
Jake reared back as if it had bitten him, a low yelp escaping his throat as all the blood drained from his face. He didn't want to look. He didn't want to see the confirmation of her duplicity, but he couldn't look away. He desperately wanted to be wrong but there, in front of him, staring out from the screen in black and white, was the proof of her transgression. A brief correspondence confirming that the publication would most certainly be delighted to run her BDSM article, complete with photos,
and would be in touch about the amount of payment they would offer.
The knowledge booted Jake in the stomach with an almost physical force and left him struggling for breath. He's been played. Again.
Jake's blood ran cold and an arctic chill ran through him, dousing the heat of his rage as his mind latched onto a single phrase, 'complete with photos'. She had betrayed the entire club! Somehow, she had managed to get a camera in there, or her phone maybe, and taken pictures inside the club. Of the equipment and its members? Of him?
Cold fury rippled through him, followed by a terrifying numbness and, finally, a chilling, dangerous certainty. He was going to destroy her.
Once he'd finished with her, she would never write another article again, not even as much as a review of a bake sale for the local community paper. He would turn her into a pariah that no one would ever trust for as long as she lived.
An eerie calm washed over him as he methodically and deliberately shoved all his deeper, warmer emotions away and ruthlessly locked them down, so his concentration sharpened and his wits returned. Making a mental catalogue of the necessities, Jake quickly ran the email to print. While that task was performed, he quietly slipped out of the room and made his way to Charlotte's bedroom, where he collected any pertinent belongings. He didn't want to have to set foot in this house again. Mentally, he catalogued what other personal possessions he needed to collect and where they were located.
Back in the office, he made a quick search through her desk to see if there was any other incriminating evidence to support his case against her but came up empty.
Finally, he gathered up all his own paperwork and files and stuffed them, along with a second copy of the printed email, into his briefcase.
Taking a deep breath, he took a last glance around the room before he went to confront the bitch who had deceived him.
It took Charlotte about thirty seconds to realise there was something majorly wrong with Jake. She barely heard him as he came down the stairs with an unnatural quiet and a carefully measured tread that was quite unlike his usual bounding steps and carefree manner. But a whisper of movement caught her eye and she frowned as she noticed him approach the antique sideboard in the entrance hall and unplug his phone charger. There was a stiffness in the way he moved that was a far cry from his typically natural grace.
When he turned and walked towards her, his features were coldly immobile, frozen in a remote mask of stony indifference. A frisson of alarm skittered down Charlotte's spine. What on earth could have happened in the twenty minutes he'd been upstairs? His suddenly icy eyes didn't meet hers, but instead, focused on a point slightly to the left of her ear. She almost felt like checking over her shoulder to see if there was something that might have upset him, except she knew there was nothing there.
He stopped, keeping the coffee table between them, picked up his car keys and put them in his pocket. Charlotte wondered if he'd decided to go back to the office and get his laptop, after all. Perhaps he'd realised there was other work that he couldn't do without it, but his body language wasn't shouting irritation at the interruption of their evening. It seemed more like he had shut down and closed himself off completely.
When he finally spoke, his normally velvet-smooth voice was stark and glacial. "Well, you sure as hell had me fooled, Charlotte. In fact, you had us all fooled, didn't you? You even got past Micah, but I'm not going to blame him since you got past me, too," he bit out harshly.
Charlotte's face scrunched in confusion and she uncurled her legs from beneath her on the couch, so she could sit up straight. "What are you talking about, Jake?"
"The club rules are quite clear—no journalists, no exceptions—but you pulled out all the stops to get around the safeguards, didn't you? Used your connection with Desi to get a referral that even Micah wouldn't reject."
"This is about my club membership just because I'm a journalist?" Charlotte struggled to understand. "I didn't even know you had those rules, Jake. No one said anything to me about them! I write a travel blog, for goddess's sake. I'm not any kind of threat to the club! And why would a referral from Desi make any difference? She's not even been going there that long."
Jake ignored her and carried on as if she'd never spoken.
"Then you diverted him with some half-baked sob story about your childhood to throw him off your true intentions. I've got to hand it to you, Cha-cha," he spat the name with disdain. "It was an Oscar worthy performance. The angelic persona you managed to pull off, right down to the 'no sex' limit, so you had a legitimate excuse not to get too down and dirty."
'Some half-baked sob story about her childhood'? Charlotte felt her anger rising at his callous dismissal of her traumatic youth. What the hell had gotten into him? He thought she'd made up the details of her time with the cult to distract Micah from the fact that she had a degree in journalism? Even though she'd never actually worked as the kind of reporter he was insinuating, all so she could obtain membership to a sex club? Jeez, he made it sound like she was trying to gain access to classified state secrets or something!
"Do you have any idea how paranoid you sound?" she demanded indignantly, jumping up and facing him so she felt at less of a disadvantage as he loomed intimidatingly over her seat.
"Oh, but I'm not paranoid at all, am I?" he asked in a silky voice that sounded more than a little bit menacing. "Because I have proof!"
A tremor of foreboding rippled down Charlotte's spine as Jake pulled a sheet of paper out of his breast pocket and started to unfold it.
"All this time, right from that first opportunity when you caught me during a moment of weakness in the hotel bar, you've been plotting this, haven't you? Insinuating yourself into our lives so you can get your scoop."
"Don't be so bloody ridiculous, Jake! I went to college with you lot. I didn't need to 'insinuate' myself anywhere, I've known you all for years!" she spat angrily, her eyes blazing, and her hands fisted tightly at her sides. The nerve of the man!
"Yeah, and as soon as you saw the chance to use us for your own gain, you took hold of the opportunity with both hands, didn't you?"
"Desi is my friend!" Charlotte yelled. "My oldest and closest friend. How dare you imply that I'd exploit our relationship just for a damn story!"
"I’m not implying it, Charlotte, it’s a fact. You’ve been caught, found out! Exposed for exactly what you are, so stop trying to wriggle your way out of your guilt. It's right here in black and white." Jake waved the offending email print out right in her face so that Charlotte instinctively reared her head back and to the side, batting his hand away as she did so, but not before she realised exactly what it was that he was holding in his hand.
Damn it, she had to make this right. He'd taken it all the wrong way, jumped to conclusions based on his recent experience with reporters trying to gain access to the club. How could he think that of her?
"Jake, it's not what you think," she implored.
"It's exactly what I think, Charlotte," Jake bellowed, cutting her off. "An agreement from a fucking news rag to publish some scandalous 'BDSM' tale."
"No! It's not like that; you have to listen to me. You need to understand," she all but begged, reaching for his arm to try to achieve some kind of connection.
Jake shook her off as violently as if her touch had burned, then rounded on her and jammed himself into her personal space, his face contorted into an ugly mask of rage.
"I don't want or need to listen to any more of your lies, Charlotte," he hissed. "You can't manipulate me any further, so you can stop whoring yourself out for the sake of a story!"
Charlotte wasn't even aware that her hand had moved until she felt the stinging in her palm and watched the red bloom of her finger-marks appearing on Jake's cheek.
He grabbed her wrist defensively, but his grip was painful, and Charlotte let out a distressed yelp, though, in truth, it was more from the pain in her heart than any physical harm.
The blood drained from her face as he pushed her up
against the wall, his lips curled in a sneer and eyes filled with derision.
"I am going to bury you, you conniving little tramp!" he snarled. "By the time I've finished with you, you'll regret the day you ever laid eyes on me or the club. I will destroy your career, and that's not a threat, sweetheart, it's a promise!"
Charlotte began to shake as the adrenaline that had fuelled her anger began to wear off under the weight of the hostile emotions she saw chasing across Jake's face—bitterness, revulsion, animosity. There wasn't the slightest trace of the fun-loving, carefree guy she had come to love; and right now, he terrified her. She didn't think for one minute that he would hurt her, but she had no doubt that he meant every word he said, and she knew he had the money and the influence to back it up.
Slamming his palm into the wall beside her head so hard that Charlotte flinched, Jake pushed himself away from her in disgust and stalked across the room to the front door.
She watched him, eyes wide and scared as he reached for a bag that she hadn't noticed before which obviously contained his belongings. He grabbed his briefcase and gave her one last derisive look.
Charlotte pressed her palms against the wall to keep herself upright as she braced herself for the last round from his barbed tongue. But even so, his final words pierced her heart like tiny knives, flaying her soul.
"You'd better pray that you're not pregnant, Charlotte," Jake warned harshly. "Because there's no way I will ever allow a devious, untrustworthy bitch like you to bring up my child!"
Charlotte heard the door slam behind him, as if from a huge distance, as her knees finally buckled and she slid gracelessly down the wall and slumped in a heap on the cold Victorian tile. A cold sweat broke out on her skin and her gut started to roil. Acknowledging an unfamiliar, metallic sensation in her mouth, Charlotte heaved herself up off the floor and stumbled clumsily to the washroom, where she promptly threw up the entire contents of her stomach.