by Sophie Oak
His face changed, going from stony to sad in an instant as though he recognized that what they had was now irrevocably changed.
“Hey, babe,” Wolf said, getting her attention. “Great scene. Let’s go get cleaned up and grab a beer.” He held his hand up.
And her boyfriend proved he was a very silly man. She gave him what he wanted. A damn high five. He’d high-fived her in appreciation of her sexual services.
She caught sight of Leo, smacking his forehead with his hand and shaking his head.
She couldn’t help but smile. At least Wolf Meyer wasn’t perfect. He grabbed her hand and with a wink led her out of the dungeon.
* * * *
“I want the bitch dead,” a feminine voice said, pulling him away from his thoughts.
Mitchell Cross sighed as his wife walked in the room. He leaned back over and finished the line he’d started, the cocaine just beginning to work in his system. “I’m handling it, Brenda.”
Brenda had started losing her looks years before, but she’d fought it with every dime Cross had. God, her fucking plastic surgeon was one of the reasons he’d been forced to make deals with men like Steve Holder.
Brenda huffed a little. “You’re not doing anything, Mitchell. You’re pathetic. It’s just like everything else. I end up having to do it all myself. Did you use it all? Or do you have a stash for that whore you call an intern?”
He sighed. He actually was keeping a little for Stephanie. She was so much more willing to go down on him when she’d had a little snort. But between his dick getting some happy action and being forced to listen to his wife harp on him, his dick always lost. “It’s in my desk.”
Brenda’s expression never changed. That wasn’t surprising. She had enough Botox running through her system that Cross was pretty sure he could stab her and she would still have that blank, wide-eyed look on her face as she went down, her trout lips still in a slight smile because they didn’t move anymore, either. She pulled out the small plastic bag quick enough.
“What are you waiting for? If you kill that bitch decorator, everything will be over. We won’t have to worry about that damn tape coming out.”
He wasn’t even sure there was a fucking tape. But the timing was right. If there was even the possibility that the tape could get leaked, he had to take the chance and eliminate the threat. “I told you I’ll handle it. It’s been fourteen months. If she was going to come after us, she probably would have already.”
Brenda snorted the cocaine, the nasal sound turning Cross’s stomach. When she came back up, she sniffled and massaged her nose. The nose had work done on it, too. One of these damn days it was going to fall off, and he’d be charged with buying her another one. “I wouldn’t have come after you.”
“Why do you say that, dear?” God, he wanted to be alone. Her voice had started to haunt his dreams, and he couldn’t get rid of her. She still played well to his constituency.
“I would have waited. Look, Mitchell, if you think about it for two seconds, it makes sense. She had a lot of heat on her after that drug lord took her husband out. She was lucky someone was willing to pay for a lawyer because the way I understand it, the feds came in and froze all of her assets. She still hasn’t gotten most of it back.”
“Yes, so the bitch needs money.” And it would make sense to come after his since he’d paid her husband so quickly to stop the release of his little sex tape. “She would have come after us.”
Brenda shook her perfectly coiffed head. “With all those agents still looking at her? I don’t think so. I would have waited until some of the heat died down. That woman had the press all over her. When was she supposed to set up a new blackmailing circle? Not if she has a brain in her head. She got off. She was probably nervous, but I doubt she’ll stay that way for long. When everything calms down, we’ll get one of those nasty e-mails.”
God, he hoped she was wrong, but she made sense. “We don’t even know the tape exists.”
“And we don’t know it doesn’t. Obviously the feds don’t have it or you would be in jail, dear. They might not give a damn about your two-inch cock, but they would care about the fact that you accepted a half a million dollars to push a contract for security through the committee. They would damn straight care that those men are using their role in security to run drugs and blood diamonds out of Africa.”
Nausea rolled in his stomach. He could see the tabloid headlines. He could see the arrest warrants. How was he going to pay the blackmail on this? He was rapidly running out of money and there wasn’t an upcoming election where he could milk his constituents for funds. That was a year away. He was fucked.
He was fucked. God. He was going to go to prison.
“You’re going to prison.” Brenda sounded almost excited at the prospect. There was still a little line of white powder on the desk. She scraped it up with her manicured finger and indelicately spread it on her gums.
“Well, maybe you should switch to the cheap stuff, darling,” he said, venom dripping from his tongue. “Because if I end up in jail, you won’t have a dime to your name.”
“Daddy’s company still pays me well,” she said with a sigh. “Still, I wouldn’t like to think about what this little scandal would do to the family name. We have children, you know.”
They had two piece-of-shit boys who could barely spell their own names, much less keep out of trouble. They were utterly worthless, but they were somewhat attractive and looked good on the yearly Christmas photo. He had his family-friendly photo op with them once a year and then he was able to happily send their asses back to boarding school.
Which he also wouldn’t be able to pay for if this decorator bitch decided to milk him for cash he didn’t have.
“I’m taking care of it.” Brenda’s words dropped like a ticking bomb.
“What have you done?” Cross asked, considering for the first time if he wouldn’t be better off without her. Sometimes accidents happened, after all. Sometimes a poor woman with a hidden addiction got some bad coke and overdosed. A grieving husband made for good news.
“I handled it,” she repeated.
Fuck a god damn duck. He stood and took her by both shoulders, shaking her. Even through the Botox, he was able to see some small amount of fear in her eyes. “You tell me what you did.”
She pulled away, trying to straighten her designer dress. “I hired someone to take care of it. That bitch is going to meet a few nice men tonight. I’ve had them tracking her for a couple of days. The minute she leaves that building she works in, she’s not going to be a problem anymore.”
She was going to fuck everything up. “I already put someone on this.”
“And he’s taking too long. You talked to that asshole days ago and she’s still out there. My guys are going to move fast. They are being paid to go through her apartment and find what we need, then they’re going to kill her and the problem will be solved and we don’t have to worry about it ever again.” She reached for a cigarette, lighting it with some designer lighter that had probably cost him more than a fucking car. “Now run along, Mitchell. I’ve handled it. I think if you hurry, you can catch Stephanie before she finishes for the day.”
He stared at her. God, he hated her. She’d taken his balls long ago, and he couldn’t fucking look at himself in the mirror because all he could see was the man she’d made of him.
And yet, if Shelley McNamara Hughes really was dead, maybe it would be the end of the problem and then he wouldn’t need Steve Holder anymore.
He turned away from his wife with a sigh. Maybe sweet twenty-one-year-old Stephanie could take his mind off his troubles.
Chapter Eight
Wolf felt magnificent despite the fact that his dick was languishing in hell. He walked into the men’s locker room with a huge grin on his face. He’d kissed Shelley, those gorgeous, sensual lips pressing against his, and dropped her off at the women’s dressing room with strict instructions on how to dress and where to wait for him.
She was fucking perfect.
Wolf glanced around the locker room. It wasn’t some cruddy, poorly lit gym locker room. Oh, no. Everything at The Club was first-rate. Gleaming hardwood floor at his feet, and the lockers were engraved with the name of the holder. It was really more like a small closet.
This place was unlike any club he’d been in before, and he got to work here. He’d spent months trying to get back on the Teams, and he’d worked on a ranch, but when he’d walked into this club, he’d had the oddest feeling that he was coming home.
“You high-fived her? What? Are you still in fifth grade?”
He grinned as Leo marched into the locker room followed by Logan. Yes, his brother was bitching at him. It really did feel like home. “Hey, I thought Shelley and I made a great team. And she totally deserved that high five. I would have patted her on the ass, but I’d already spanked it earlier.”
Leo kicked off his boots. Naturally, someone had given Wolf the locker right next to his brother’s.
“Yeah. Not sure you should be spanking her when she doesn’t have a collar on yet, but that’s beside the point. Nowhere in all of the clubs I have been in have I ever seen a Dom high-five his sub after a scene,” Leo complained.
Wolf wasn’t stupid. Shelley might never have slept with Leo, but they’d had something serious going on. He’d spent the whole afternoon thinking about the problem. The minute he’d figured out that Shelley had something to do with Leo’s yearlong crappy mood, he’d wondered if he hadn’t made an enormous mistake.
And then he’d realized he had a choice. He could walk away and hope that Shelley and Leo found what they needed. Or he could be what they needed and bring them together. And all the while he could make a place for himself.
A family. That was what he really wanted, and he couldn’t think of anyone he’d trust more to share a family with than his brother.
It worked for his friends. Hell, he’d seen men who hated each other bond over a shared woman. Why couldn’t it work for him?
“Hey, she was hot, man. I would have high-fived her, too,” Logan said, giving Wolf a thumbs-up.
Leo turned back to his charge. “I told you to watch Julian’s form. You were supposed to be studying the scene.”
Logan shrugged. “When some hot chick has her cootch on display, I’m not going to be capable of studying two dudes. It ain’t happening.”
“I am surrounded by twelve-year-olds,” Leo said.
Leo had never been huggy with Wolf, but god, he hadn’t been this dried-up prune. Leo’s sarcastic, snarky self seemed to have been replaced with someone Wolf didn’t understand.
“Well, it worked. It took her mind off what happened this afternoon.” But Wolf’s mind was working overtime. He couldn’t help but follow his instincts. And he didn’t like the fact that Steve Holder had been there. “I don’t want her in that apartment alone.”
Leo untied the straps of his leathers. “You know about the trouble she had?”
Wolf shoved his leathers into his gym bag and pulled out a pair of jeans. He was going to need to buy another couple of pairs of leathers if he was going to be in The Club every night. And he needed to find a dry cleaner who wouldn’t mind some unsavory stain removal. “I read the file Julian sent me. Her husband seems like he was an asshole.”
“He put her through hell.”
Yes, he understood that. If he could, Wolf would love to have a little talk with Bryce Hughes. It seemed to Wolf that a single bullet to the head hadn’t been painful enough. “You’re worried that someone’s going to try to take revenge on her?”
“I don’t know.” Leo shoved his legs into a pair of boxers and sat down on the bench in front of his locker. “The feds cleared her, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of people out there who would love to get some revenge on someone, and Bryce is no longer available. It won’t work. She doesn’t know anything.”
“I believe you. You were around this guy. Why the hell did she marry him?” It surprised Wolf that she would be in a bad marriage. Shelley seemed so smart, so capable. Yes, she was submissive, but she knew what she wanted. He just couldn’t see her wanting this Bryce guy.
Leo sighed and leaned back against his locker. “Go away, Logan.”
Logan’s eyes lit up like a prisoner who had just realized he might get parole.
Leo frowned. “I find you in the bar and we’re going to have trouble. Go and find Ben and Chase. Follow them around for a while.”
“Cool. That Kitten chick seems like a trip.” Logan was out of the locker room in a flash.
Leo looked up at him, his eyes narrowing. “He doesn’t seem as broken as you said he was. I actually thought he would be a little unsettled by the scene, but he simply watched you get your sub off, paying no attention at all to the very intense scene going on onstage. I thought I would use it as a talking point, but I guess I’ll have to find another way.”
Wolf shook his head. Leo was barking up the wrong tree. “Logan isn’t going to be disturbed by a lot of this stuff. He grew up in Bliss. I’ve heard that most of the men of the town have spent some time in Stef Talbot’s playroom. I spent the last summer with him and his best friend, James. Logan is into some kinky shit, but don’t think for a minute that he’s not troubled. You just haven’t found his pressure point yet. Now, tell me about my sub.”
Wolf was satisfied with the way Leo’s eyes tightened at the word “my.” Leo wasn’t as remote as he liked to pretend. “I met her when I started treating Trev.”
“Yeah, I knew who her brother was. I probably should have put two and two together, but math was never my strong suit.”
Leo’s eyes rolled. “God, I wish you would stop the ‘I’m dumb’ shit. Anyway, I really liked her. It was obvious that she loved her brother and that her marriage sucked. You know me. I like to flirt.”
Wolf liked to flirt, too. He just preferred to flirt with women who he could actually have a relationship with. But then his brother wasn’t big on relationships. He’d had a few girlfriends in high school, and he’d married Janine, but other than that, as far as Wolf knew, he hadn’t even had a permanent sub. Having spent the day talking to other Doms and some of the subs who worked at The Club, he knew that Leo was a bit of an enigma. The Doms respected him, and the subs fought for his attention, each one desperate to be the one sub who finally caught him. But Leo was a hard case who never fell easy. “So you fell a little hard for her?”
Leo closed his eyes, his head against the door. “I guess so. I just know that I felt more for her than I’ve felt for anyone in a long time. I might flirt with my friends’ wives, but I wouldn’t touch them. They’re safe. So are the subs I work with.”
Yes, Leo had been running from the whole idea of commitment for a really long time. “So after years of anonymous sex and flirting with no real intent, you meet Shelley and suddenly you can’t help yourself. I can see it. She’s amazing. She’s gorgeous. She’s funny. So why didn’t you try to get her away from that asshole?”
Leo’s eyes flew open, and his face hardened. “You think I didn’t? Goddamn it, Wolf, I offered to take her away. I told her I loved her. She told me to stay out of her marriage.”
Wolf could guess what had happened next. Leo would have stepped back and walked away. “Why did she do that?”
“Because she didn’t want me.”
“Bullshit. Why did she do it? I’ve known her a month and I would bet my life she did it because she thought she was protecting you. But your pride got hurt and you walked away when you should have tied her ass up and shoved her in your truck.”
Leo leaned forward. “It’s nice to know you would have done it differently. It’s over now.”
“Is it? Does it have to be? Do you want it to be?”
Leo laughed, but there wasn’t a damn thing humorous about it. “You’re going to give her up?”
“Why should I have to?” There, he’d put it out a
s flatly as he could.
Leo stood and slammed open his locker. “You’ve spent too much time in Bliss. It wouldn’t work. I’m too possessive. I can’t share.”
“Bullshit. You aren’t possessive enough.” Maybe it had been too soon to bring that up. Wolf grabbed his jeans and started to get dressed. “You can use a word like possessive all day long, brother, but you let Janine walk out on you. Now you’re letting Shelley walk away.” He shoved his feet into his boots. “But I’m not going to make the same mistake. She’s the one. I’m crazy about her, and I think I can get her to love me.”
Leo sighed, the sound making Wolf feel like he was five years old again. “You’ve known her for a fucking month. You just met her in person. God, Wolf, you have always just jumped in with both feet never bothering to look and see what you’re jumping into.”
Wolf wasn’t about to argue with that assessment. “I go with my gut. My gut tells me Shelley is special. My gut tells me to go for what I want. And my gut tells me to share her with you because we could give her what she needs. But I’ll handle it by myself if I have to. She has ménage fantasies. I thought you could help with that. But I have friends who won’t mind.”
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
That was what he wanted to hear. His brother was actually quite possessive, though he had spent the last several years hiding it well. Or he simply hadn’t cared enough about anyone to be possessive. Wolf knew the feeling well. “It’s my job to give her what she needs. If I decide that she needs a ménage, then I’ll make it happen.”
He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t share her with anyone except Leo, but Leo didn’t have to know it. Wolf had known the minute he’d laid eyes on Shelley that he wouldn’t share her. He’d enjoyed the ménages he’d shared with his friends, but she was serious and only a seriously committed ménage would work. If Leo wouldn’t go along with it, then Shelley would have to be satisfied with toys and fantasy.