by Alexa Davis
"Brooke, you are a piece of work," he chortled as he met my gaze and sipped from his glass. I couldn't help but watch his lips curl around the rim of the glass and wonder what they'd feel like pressed against my own. My heart fluttered in my chest as I pictured his hands slipping into my hair and holding my head as he kissed me hard and deep. "Brooke?"
"I'm sorry, what?" I said flustered at being caught in an unplanned daydream. I was going to have to control my baser impulses if I was going to get anywhere with Dax.
"I was asking where you went to law school," he said.
"Oh, I went to UCLA for both undergrad and my J.D.," I replied.
"And?" he asked.
"And what?"
"And how did you get interested in law? Are your parents lawyers?" he asked patiently. I felt so exposed. Like he knew what effect he was having on me and was playing it to his advantage. I needed to channel my lawyer persona and get back in the game.
"No, my dad is a reporter for the Times and my mom is a high school math teacher at Lincoln," I said. "I'm not sure how I got interested in the law, honestly. It just seemed like the right thing to do. I'd always been a kid who fought for justice."
"Oh, so a real Cesar Chavez, eh?"
"Hardly," I laughed. "I'm not good at the field work, I have no patience for injustice at that level and I always end up fighting until I get myself in trouble."
"You got in trouble? I can't even imagine," he said.
"Oh God, I think one of the reasons I went into law was because my dad asked me to stop calling him to bail me out of jail," I said. "I'd go to a protest and even when the tactic was to protest in silence, I'd end up speaking out and sassing a police officer or a government official, and someone would eventually identify me as the instigator and I'd get hauled away."
"So, you're saying you have a bit of a temper?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
"I wouldn't say I have a temper, per se," I explained. "I'd say that I have a very sensitive trigger button, and that I don't have a good poker face. My mom always said that if I could have kept my expressions blank and my thoughts to myself, I'd have done great things in the protest movement."
"Sensitive trigger button, eh?" he raised and eyebrow. "Are we still talking about injustice?"
"Very funny, Mr. Malone," I said as I watched the server place an enormous plate of meat and perfectly sculpted mashed potatoes down in front of me. The smell of the perfectly charred meat made my mouth water.
"What about you, how did you become a hugely popular club owner?" I asked as I dug into the meal in front of me.
"I grew up with a grandmother who owned a grocery store, so I knew what it was like to be on call seven days a week," he said as he cut off a piece of juicy meat and brought it to his mouth. I watched as he put the fork between his lips and pulled the steak off of it. Again, my pulse raced and I looked back down at my plate and nodded. "I always said that I'd own my own business, but when I did, it would be something more glamorous and less tedious overhead."
"So, you decided that a night club would be easier. Is it?"
"In many ways it's way easier than stocking a neighborhood bodega," he admitted as he scooped up a forkful of creamy potatoes and made quick work of them. "It's a little more glamorous, but it's also time consuming and not quite as sexy as you might believe."
"Oh really, why not?" I asked as I cut into my steak and watched the juices spill onto my plate.
"Um, well, it's a lot of late nights and a lot of security issues to manage," he said. "When I started Apex, I was young and inexperienced, and I really thought it was going to be like in the movies."
"Oh wow, no one ever talks about that side of it," I laughed out loud as he admitted this.
"Yeah, I was young and stupid," he grinned sheepishly. "I thought me and my friends would be partying all night with gorgeous women and lots of high-end booze."
"And what happened?"
"Well, I'm here having dinner with a gorgeous woman," he smiled. "So, there's that."
"Thank you," I smiled as I tried to remind myself not to get caught up in his seduction. The lights in the restaurant had been dimmed to the point that the single candle in the middle of the table was really the only source of light, and made it more tempting to lean closer than if we'd been in a more well-lit environment.
"But it ended up being more like constant work," he shrugged. "My friends were disappointed that it wasn't more exciting and mad that they weren't actually getting laid."
"And you? How did you feel about it?"
"I did what I had to do," he shrugged again. "I worked. I had my brother to support, so I didn't have the option of just backing out and doing something else. I had to make the club successful or I would have lost my initial investment."
"Oh, you put a lot down on the club?" I asked.
"Well, enough to allow me to get a thirty-year mortgage," he said. "It wasn't a lot, but enough."
"I guess I thought that a high-end club would require a huge investment," I probed. I knew what I was doing but I wasn't quite sure where I was headed with this line of questioning.
"It was a huge loan for a twenty-year-old kid, that's for sure," he said. "But I'd learned a lot about business working with my Gran, so I knew what I could get away with and what had to be done." Dax sensed that I was after something and shifted into the role of someone being cross-examined. I knew I was going to have to take it back down to flirting or I'd lose him.
"So what you're saying is that you're the kind of guy who should be running the country?" I asked.
"Hardly," he laughed. "I'm not very presidential, more like a benevolent dictator."
"I'm sure you're a lot better than that," I laughed with him. "So, what does your brother do?"
"Um, he's figuring things out," Dax said in a vague way as he reached for the wine bottle and offered me more.
"Yes, please," I nodded. "But don't let me do any shots tonight."
"Heaven forbid," he smiled. I got the feeling that he didn't want to talk about his brother, so I changed the topic.
"And what do you do for fun?"
"Fun? What is this fun that you speak of?" he grinned.
"Oh c'mon, you have to do something for fun," I pushed. "Like painting pottery or tending a Zen garden or rappelling down the sides of mountains."
"Those all sound like wonderful hobbies, and ones I'm sure that you excel at, being the accomplished person that you are," he said as he finished the last bite of his steak. "But I don't do much except work. There doesn't seem to be enough time in the day to cultivate hobbies."
"Maybe you should think about it," I smiled.
"Are we still talking about hobbies?" he asked as he leaned across the table and came dangerously close to crossing my carefully constructed boundary.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Dax
I could smell Brooke's perfume as I leaned across the table and asked her if we were talking business or flirting. She smiled and looked down at her plate as she tried to decide just how far our little linguistic flirtation was going to go. I'd kept my guard up as she questioned me, both wanting to let her know who I was and also being very aware of the fact that I was out on a date with someone who knew the ins and outs of the law better than I ever would.
That was the problem with my line of work – I had to always view every new person as a potential breach in the wall of security. I couldn't let my guard down and allow any small detail to slip, or I'd find myself quickly sinking into the abyss of the legal system. So, I told her the clean version of who I was and left the dirty version buried underneath the truth.
I knew she didn't quite believe what I was telling her, but I also knew that she was fighting her attraction to me because I was fighting mine as well. Getting involved with a lawyer, even one as incredibly beautiful as Brooke Raines, was risky business and with Lydia dead, I couldn't afford to slip up. I wanted to take Brooke home and peel off her dress so that I could see her in all her naked
glory. Then, I wanted to own her body in a way that I'd never wanted before. It scared me to feel this way; it felt out of control.
"Would you care for some dessert?" the served asked as he cleared our dinner plates and swept the crumbs off the table into his hand. "Coffee? Espresso?"
I looked at Brooke and she nodded, so I said, "Yes, please, tell us what you have for dessert tonight."
The server went over the substantial dessert menu and Brooke ordered an exotic fruit tart with layers of whipped cream while I chose the rich, dark red velvet cake. I smiled at her as I ordered it, and although I couldn't see the exact color of her face, I knew she was blushing when she smiled and turned away.
"So, what about you? What about your firm? You have a law firm, don't you?" I asked.
"Oh yeah, we do. There are three of us, we all went to school together and decided to make a go of it after we realized that we hated working for the big firms," she said with a sigh. "It's hard to run your own firm, probably a lot like running your own club."
"So you aren't doing well?" I asked and immediately felt the air between us chill. I'd hit a sore spot and she was either going to let me in or freeze me out.
"We're doing okay, not great, but okay," she replied as she fiddled with the napkin in her lap. There was something she wasn't telling me, but since she'd given me a pass on my brother, I'd let this one go.
"It must be difficult running a law firm," I tried to sympathize.
"It's a lot harder than most people think," she agreed. "What's most difficult is drumming up consistent business. We're not a tax firm or a corporate mergers firm that can count on repeated business year after year. We're criminal lawyers who rely on word of mouth and reputation, you know?"
I nodded as an idea began to take shape in my brain. It was too soon to be thinking this, but it was still there. I needed to run it by Riza before I decided anything. She'd tell me what was insane about the idea of hiring Brooke Raines to replace Lydia.
"I mean, it's not like we can count on our clients to keep getting in trouble," she said with a rueful smile. "It's awful to think of it that way, but that's what we do. We get people out of all kinds of terrible trouble, and we deal with things that most people would rather not have to deal with."
"It's got to be rough," I said. "I mean, dealing with people in trouble."
"That's not so bad," she said. "The hard part is knowing how many people there are in trouble on any given day and not being able to reach them. We're good lawyers and we know how to manage problems, but we're not like the big firms who can take out tons of radio ads and put big billboards all over town so that their firms' names are in people's brains."
"I see," I said as my phone went off again. I looked down and saw that it was Kesha. I shot Brooke an apologetic look and got up to take the call away from the table. "What is going on over there that you can't handle the club for one night?" I hissed.
"Boss, something is weird about the shipment in the basement, there are four new boxes down here that weren't here when I checked in the inventory for this week," she said, then added, "And they're not part of the backup stock either."
"Alright, well, take some pictures and send them to me. Maybe I'll recognize the boxes," I said. "And for God's sake, do not call me again unless the club is burning down or you yourself are on fire!" Kesha laughed in my ear as she hung up.
I returned to the table and apologized for the interruption.
"No, I'm sorry," Brooke said shaking her head and laughing weakly. "This is a date, not a session with my shrink or my business coach."
"No, it's okay," I said as the server placed our desserts in front of us and then went to get our coffee. "Sometimes it's good to just talk about what's bothering you. Just get it out and then find a way to formulate a solution that solves the problem."
"Is that what you do?" she asked as she looked across the table at me. The intensity of her gaze almost caused me to look away, but I knew better than to show any weakness right now, so I stared back and simply nodded. Then she murmured, "I thought so."
"What did you think, Brooke?" I asked as I reached across the table and laid my hand on hers. She stared at it for a moment and then looked up at me.
"Latte for the lady and an espresso for the gentleman," the server announced as he placed the steaming hot drinks in front of us. I pulled my hand back to give him room, and Brooke looked up and chirped, "Thank you!" before digging into her dessert.
The moment had passed and I was left wondering what she thought I did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Brooke
"So, tell me about the last really fun thing you did," I said in a voice that was a little too bright. There had been a moment where we'd almost connected, but the waiter had interrupted before I could tell Dax that I'd thought he was a thinking man whose thoughts ran deeper than just an urban club in a large city. Now that the moment had passed, it seemed awkward to go back and try to reconstruct it, so I kept moving forward.
"The last really fun thing I did, eh?" Dax said as he sipped his espresso and picked at his cake. "Let's see, I think it was taking my boat out and doing some deep sea fishing."
"How long ago was that?" I asked.
"Last summer," he said as he slid his fork into the dark red layers and cut off a healthy bite of the cake. It looked so rich and decadent, and when he slipped the fork between his lips I felt a little lightheaded. There was something so deeply sensual and raw about Dax Malone, and it had been a very long time since I'd felt a man's hands on my body.
I looked down at my tart as I avoided his eyes. Without thinking, I swiped my forefinger through the fresh whipped cream that topped my tart and lifted it to my lips. I looked up and caught Dax staring, open-mouthed, at me as I sucked the cream off my finger. The moment I realized what I'd done, I felt the heat creeping up into my cheeks, and I looked down unwilling to meet his gaze again. Was I after business or sex? I needed to get my act straight or I'd screw everything up.
"I'm sorry," I said quietly. "I didn't think..."
"Brooke, it's okay," he said as he reached over and slipped his hand under my chin and tipped my face up so that I was looking at him. "It's all okay. I promise."
I nodded, still feeling self-conscious as he handed the waiter his credit card and then signed the bill. "It sounds like they've got a club in the next room!" he laughed. "Let's check it out, shall we? Just for comparison, you know?"
"Alright, as long as it's business," I smiled uncomfortably.
"All business, all the time," he grinned as he reached down, took my hand and led me into the next room. The music was loud, but it was a throbbing electronic beat that seemed to invite couples to grind on the dance floor. Dax looked at me and raised an eyebrow, then looked at the dance floor. I followed his glance, then looked back at him and nodded.
We moved onto the dance floor and Dax took my hand as he rested his other hand on my lower back. I reached up and draped my arm over his shoulder as he pulled me close. I could feel his hard body pressed against mine and I felt the waves of desire begin their slow torturous roll through my body. He pulled me closer and I rested my cheek against his chest as he rested his against the side of my head. We swayed to the seductive beat of the house EDM, and I felt perilously close to the edge as I felt Dax's breath in my ear.
I knew that if I tipped my head even slightly, he'd read the sign correctly and kiss me. And I knew that once that happened, there would be no stopping the rest of what I desperately wanted to happen. But I also knew that I had a job to do and that if I screwed this up, I'd not only screw up my life, but Jordie's and Roger's as well. And what would happen to poor Alma? No, I had to stay on track and not get swept up in how badly I wanted to take Dax Malone home and explore his obviously incredibly fit body.
I sighed deeply and Dax read it as his sign. He lifted my hair off my neck and bent his head just as I stepped back and put both palms on his chest.
"I...I...I can't, I'm sorry, I'm so so
sorry," I said as I backed away. "I want to, believe me. Oh God, please believe me, but I just can't. I'm so sorry, Dax."
The confusion flooded across his face as I looked back at him over my shoulder and took off for the front door. On the street, I hailed a cab and hopped in as I heard him yelling from the doorway of Beso, "Brooke! I don't understand! Wait, let me take you home!"
"Drive!" I yelled at the cabbie who demanded to know where he was taking me. I gave him my address and when he reminded me that it was a good half hour down the 101, I told him I didn't care, and threw a handful of cash at him. He drove and I sat in the back seat, breathing deeply and hoping that I hadn't just screwed both of my chances with Dax Malone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Dax
Standing at the front door of Beso, with a raging hard on, yelling at Brooke to wait so I could take her home was one of the more humiliating moments of my life. I had no idea what had happened on the dance floor or why she had pushed me away before rushing out and hailing a cab.
I drove back to the club, both worried about Brooke and pissed as hell that she'd rejected me. The long drive home did nothing to solve the problem in my pants, so when I walked into the club, I motioned for Diamond to follow me upstairs and once she entered the room, I asked, "You up for a little rough play tonight?"
"With you, baby? Always," she grinned as I grabbed her wrists and pinned them to the wall above her head. I kissed her hard and deep, the way I'd wanted to kiss Brooke when we had been pressed against each other on the Beso dance floor. Diamond didn't argue or struggle; she kissed me back just as hard and took a deep breath as she thrust her large breasts against my chest.
I quickly pulled off the flimsy top she'd worn for dancing and roughly pinched her nipples before bending my head and sucking hard. She moaned as I bit down on one and then moved to the other, and gasped, "Oh God, yes, more, more!" I rolled her nipple under my tongue and then bit down again causing her to cry out as she pushed her hips forward. With one hand, I yanked her panties down around her knees and she let them drop to the floor. Still sucking on her nipples, I lifted her off the floor and pinned her back to the wall as I unzipped my pants with one hand and yanked my swollen cock out.