“Is she here?”
“What do you think?” She dangled the note in front of him, urging him to take it.
He snagged it out of her hand and slipped it into his pocket. “This woman’s afraid of me!” he called out.
“Booooo! Get her out and away from there, then,” someone said.
“You heard them—get the fuck away from my cage, bitch.” He pursed his lips and gave her a cool look.
She glared at him, then went back to the bar.
He paced, glowering at her friend, Maddening—his new name for her since he wasn’t about to ask her what it really was.
In the next moment he ripped his shirt off. He clanked his fingers against the bars but kept his eyes glued on her.
Maddening simply sat there, staring back. She drank and chatted with Max, but she was calm and undisturbed by the aggressive acts Kel displayed in his cage.
He huffed, gripped the bars, stood there for several moments peering into her impassive face.
His chest built up in pressure and became so tight he couldn’t bear it anymore. “Ahhhhhh!” he screamed.
He picked up his chair and threw it at the cage. He picked up his water, chucked it at her, but it hit the bars, busted and splashed the women at the first table.
Instead of cowering away from him, the women catcalled and begged him to rip the rest of his clothes off.
So he did. He yanked his jeans off and stood there in nothing but his black boxer briefs, his chest bursting in flames and his heart pounding so loud he could hear what sounded like ocean waves in his ears.
Max turned up the pumping music, making the atmosphere more charged.
Kel clawed at his chest, stroked his cock through the material and howled at Maddening over and over.
He climbed up the cage bars and hung from the top like some crazed gorilla.
How could she do this to him? How could she be here and act like none of it mattered?
Where was Casey, the know-it-all-bitch that acted like she cared and then dismissed him like he was trash?
He landed with a thud when he grew tired of hanging from the bars.
His eyes never came off Maddening though. If Casey was here, she’d show some hint of it.
He grunted, scraped his chair back to upright.
Then he grabbed one of the sleeves, motioned for a redhead at the front table, slightly damp from his water bottle exploding, and she jumped to her feet, scampering over to him.
He yanked his cock out, pumped it a few times, then licked his hand for some moisture, laving his tongue all over, making it really juicy.
“You wanna lick it, don’t you?” Kel pointed at his groin.
The woman swallowed and turned red.
“Say it, bitch. You want this huge piece of meat down your throat, because you wanna pretend you’re some kind of carnivore. Well, I’ll give you what you want.” His hand whipped through the slats, and he gripped her behind the head, then shoved her face up to the bars as close as they would go.
“Stick out your tongue, you filthy slut, and see if you can reach it. I’ll help you.” His hand was already burning from touching the back of her neck.
He stood, pushed her down so she was lowered, then he dangled the tip of his cock right in front of her outstretched tongue, not allowing her to touch it.
She groaned and strained, gripping the bars, trying to give herself some kind of leverage she’d never find.
He smirked and looked over at Maddening. She wasn’t even watching. Her attention was on Max, and she was talking animatedly, her arms flailing around as she told him some stupid story.
“Watch me, bitch!” he hollered at her.
Maddening ignored him.
“Uuuuunnnnngh!” He stretched his neck, let go of the redhead and sat his ass down, picking back up the sleeve he’d dropped at some point in his antics.
Again, he covered his hand in saliva, stroked his angry, stiff cock, then grabbed the redhead’s hand and made her put the sleeve on him.
The floor broke out in screams of pleasure as the women watched her enjoy every moment of it.
Once it was in place, he grabbed her hands greedily, closed his eyes and pictured Casey, putting ice on his body, purring softly in his ear and understanding that there was pain but so much need, it overpowered all of that shit.
“You’re hurting me,” the redhead said.
“Shut up.” He licked his lips, tipping his head back and digging his claws even tighter into her hands, making her pump him faster, harder.
“Ow! Stop that!”
“Shut it, stupid bitch!” He opened his eyes, and when he saw tears in hers, he crumpled inside. He flung her hands off him and grunted in disgust at her.
She stumbled back to her seat.
“Who here can take me? Who’s not gonna pussy out when I grab your hands and show you how to jack me off like a real man craves? No more of this light touching shit. Men hate that, and you stupid bitches need to learn that.” He stroked himself over the sleeve, the veins popping out in his arm, his fingers almost blanching white from the pressure. “Yeah, watch me. This is when it feels so good my balls can’t even breathe. See how I love it when this fucker’s almost being ripped off my body—being punished for even existing and tormenting me. Now! Which cunt here’s gonna do it right?”
Maddening stood and waved at Max like she was done and leaving.
“You! Maddening woman—get your ass back over here. You’re not done!” He’d show Casey he didn’t need her. This would definitely get back to her.
Maddening’s right brow popped up, and her lips quirked, then pursed like she couldn’t resist a challenge.
“Yeah, you, bitch. Get your ass over here, and act like you know how to pleasure a man. It’s only a fucking hand-job, I’m not asking you to marry me.” He snapped his jaws at her, and he tugged even harder on his cock. He wasn’t even close to coming. He was too pissed to be pushed over the edge, and he hated jacking himself off.
She rolled her eyes.
No way was she going to get him there, but he wanted Casey to know her friend had touched him.
She sauntered her way up to the cage, exaggerating the sway of her hips.
The song “Animals” by Muse blared over the speakers. Evidently Max was trying to tell him something . . .
This filthy woman actually stripped out of her shirt on the way up so she was in her too-tight jeans and bra, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t like this was about attraction.
At least not for him.
She moved right up to the bars, her hot breath puffing through her nostrils, and a fine mist, only he could feel, was sprinkled over his arms.
He stood directly in front of her. Her eyes were focused on his, and he did the same, but the moment her hands extended through the bars, he ripped the sleeve off and forced her to touch it skin-to-skin.
It burned. Oh Jesus—so bad!
“Ffffsssssssssuuuuuuuuuhhhhh!” He hissed at her and imagined he was coating her face with venom. But the minute her eyes went devoid of all emotion, he saw his reflection there.
He was the devil, barely leashed behind bars.
Dread flooded his entire body, and he pushed her off him like she’d actually burned him and left a mark with her touch.
She stepped back, found her shirt and put it back on, giving him a look like she knew this was the corrective thrashing his ass needed. He had to see what he truly was.
So, he turned around, yanked himself to climax, envisioning only Casey and her soft, punishing caresses, fevered kisses and eyes filled with adoration.
The last thing he saw before he blacked out was familiar blonde hair at the back of the room. Hannah?
* * *
Kel woke alone in his bed, drenched in sticky sweat.
A fan blew across him, and he scowled.
Fucking Max. He didn’t need his help. Besides, when did Kel ever use a fan?
He wanted to stay in that sweltering cage forever, spla
yed out in his pool of come so all these women would see exactly how repugnant he was.
They needed to keep away.
He swallowed what felt like fine grained sand in his mouth.
What kind of medicine had Max given him this time when he was out of it? That jackass do-gooder.
He reached out for his nightstand, and of course, there was a water bottle there, lid off and ready to go.
His greedy mouth wrapped around the opening, and he took several hard pulls, wishing it was a bottle of Jack instead.
“Guuuuuh,” he gasped for air then went back for more.
He had that fucker drained in less than thirty seconds.
When he was done letting some of it dribble down his chin, he got up and looked around his room.
He was still clad in only his black boxer briefs, but who the fuck cared? His left eye twitched, and his fingers flexed.
He shoved his body out of his apartment and back into the club.
It was daylight, so of course no one was around.
Every cell in his body screamed for him to smash this place to bits, piss on it all and then set it on fire.
He climbed up onto the bar and lay down on it, staring up at the ceiling.
Like an asshole, he pulled his underwear off and smeared his nasty body all over the place where women would drink tonight. Where they drank every night.
Why had he ever thought having the club open nightly was a good thing? Why hadn’t he just gone with weekends?
He rubbed his eyes and groaned.
And why, for fuck’s sake, had he thought he’d seen Hannah last night? No way was she here. She was dead. He’d never hear her call him again by his last name, Liam, instead of his first name, Kel. She did that every time she was turned on.
“That’s some impressive shit, but pretty disgusting. Get your ass up, and put your clothes on, you stupid fucker,” Max called out.
He was in the cage, mopping and sanitizing the damned cell down.
“You need to hose that thing with bleach,” Kel responded, still lying there with his cheeks leaving their oils behind on the bar-top.
“No doubt. But what I’m trying to figure out is what the hell’s going on with you, man. Last night wasn’t an act; even I could see that. You’re out of control. Do I need to pay some bitches in here to get them to touch you more? Are a few hours a night not cuttin’ it anymore?” Max kept his eyes on his busy work.
“Nah. I don’t want those nasty hoes touching me. I’m done with that kinda shit.” Kel draped his arm over his eyes and breathed deep into his gut.
“What do you want then, ‘cause I have no idea what to do to help you anymore?” Max huffed. “You’re even freaking me out. I got a safety deposit box in case you need to bail. It’s got some stuff for you to change your identity, your appearance, and some money just in case. I even stocked it with a few small weapons and that listening device we made. You’d just need to code it with the proper fingerprints.” He paused, then dug in his pocket. “Here.” He tossed a key, and it landed on the bar-top.
Kel’s heart dropped, but he took the key anyway. “Thanks, but I don’t need to leave. I’m fine.”
“The hell you are—I thought you were going to hurt Maddie last night. My hand was on the gun I keep hidden behind the bar, that’s how far you went. I won’t let you hurt any of these women. That’s not what this place is about.” Max sprayed down the bars in the cage and wiped them with a towel.
“I wouldn’t hurt any of them—I just—Jesus! Why don’t you just tell me already what Maddie said while she was talking to you for a fucking year at the bar?” He said her name like it was a curse word and damaged his internal organs.
“She didn’t say anything about you if that’s what you’re asking.” Max kept spraying, wiping and irritating the hell out of Kel.
“What the fuck did she say then? I wanna know.” Kel pushed himself up to sitting, slipped off the bar and put his underwear back on.
Max sighed, and his shoulders dropped. “She was telling me about her friend Jana and the other one.”
“Casey!” Kel snarled. “It’s not a hard name to remember.”
“Yeah, well, since you act like a raging monster around her, I figured hearing her name wouldn’t make matters any better for you.” Max rolled the bucket and mop out of the cage with the towel over his shoulder and the spray bottle hanging from his front jeans pocket. He locked up the cage door. “This shit needs to stop. We’re running a business here.”
“We’re keeping me hidden and helping me survive—that’s what this is all about. I let you be a partner in this business because I trust you, but I’ll be damned if this is about making any kind of serious money. It’s never gonna do that.”
“Says you.” Max stopped moving, set his hands on his hips and his eyes narrowed. “Look, I know what you’re dealing with.”
“Oh yeah? Tell me about it, then.” Kel snorted.
“You know I hear the shit you spout off when you’re talking in your sleep.” Max paused. “Or when you’re screaming out in pain, rather.”
Kel’s left brow quirked up. “You think any of that matters? That’s in the past.”
“Not really—not when it means you come unglued when some woman actually cares about you. Why couldn’t you let her in? She really, honest-to-God liked you.”
Kel’s eyes stung, flooding with tears. He blinked them away and blew out, forcing his spasming diaphragm to smooth. “I tried, but she decided I was too fucked up to be near. She pushed me away, not the other way around.”
“Whatever, man. All I know is she’s afraid of making things worse for you. Maddie says she’s staying away because you told her to.”
“I did not!” Kel’s arms flung up in the air. “Why would she even think that?” He couldn’t even remember what he’d said to her the last time he was with her, he was that crazy thinking about her.
“Don’t be a stupid fucker. Women want to be chased, and have you called or tried to see her? You know where she lives.”
“I can’t.” Kel’s shoulders rolled forward, and his spine lost all stiffness.
“Pussy. That’s always how it is with you.” Max hooked his thumb toward the cage. “We got you out of your old cage so you could find a cure, but have you done that? No.” He pointed toward Kel’s apartment now. “There’s your real cage. Go back to being a half-dead, bitter douche. You’ve been a zombie for the last week. I was afraid you were completely shutting down again, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to bring you back this time.” He huffed and dropped his head along with his hand. “Hell, I was surprised you even had the energy to drag your ass back to the cage at all. You look worse now than you did when you went through that two week stint months ago, not allowing anyone to touch you, and you’d lost tons of weight then and were wheezing like your lungs were about to collapse.”
“I’m breathing fine,” Kel argued.
“God, you’re such an idiot.” Max started moving the mop back to the cleaning supplies closet. “I’m not talking about physically. The women wouldn’t scream at you like that if you looked like a diseased bastard. What I’m saying is you’ve got these dead eyes, and you act like a psycho, pissing on anyone that comes near you. Those bars are not to protect those women.” He opened the door, shoved the mopping supplies inside and closed it up tight. He rounded on Kel. “Those bars are for you, to keep them out. To keep them at a distance, and I don’t think it was an accident you let Casey in. It’s been months since you’ve done anything like that.”
Kel stared and went silent.
“If you really want to hide, I keep saying we need to turn this into a BDSM club, then you wouldn’t stand out and call attention to yourself when you’re trying to do the shit that keeps you going. It’s the perfect camouflage.”
“We tried that initially, and it didn’t work. We couldn’t get enough people in here to pay the bills. No—we need to keep it open to the broader, general public. Just the regular bitch
es, not the ones with fetishes.”
“You didn’t give it enough time.” Max’s voice was tight and his chest expanding with his frustrated breaths.
“So? You got a fucking point here with all this shit, or what?” Kel’s chest tightened as his heart hammered and flooded his stomach with green bile. He could vomit any minute. And it wasn’t because he was afraid of what Max said. It was because he wanted Casey in that cage with him—locked for eternity where she could touch him, know him and be his alone. Didn’t matter how he tried to hide himself as long as she was with him.
He wrapped his arms around his torso, hoping to keep the device down.
“Yeah, I do have a point. A good one, actually.” Max roamed over to the bar, sprayed it down and then handed the towel to Kel so he’d clean his butt cheek marks off.
Kel grunted and took it. Max was right. That fucker always was.
He scrubbed and tried to tune out the useless noise in his head, screeching at him to go after Casey.
“You gonna share it?” Kel glanced up at his friend.
“Nope.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because you’re acting moodier than any thirteen-year-old hormonal girl I’ve ever met. You’re not listening, and you’re all wrapped up in your head. So for now, I’m only going to warn you. You threaten any of these ladies, and I walk. I’ll leave and take my half of the club with me. I know you own this place, you created it, but who keeps it running? Me. I do all the books, I keep the liquor flowing, I find ways to get the word out so we never lack for customers. I clean this place up so it doesn’t resemble your shit-hole apartment. Do you want to take over all those responsibilities?”
Kel set the rag down, hung his head and shook it enough so Max could see it, but not enough his ego would burst into flame and disintegrate into ash.
“Look, I’m not trying to be an asshole here. I know what kind of hell they put you through, the shit you endured every day. I was the one guarding you, keeping you hostage. When they dragged your ass back after you escaped with Hannah’s help, I knew I had to get you out of there for good. They were killing a genius and torturing a kid, and I couldn’t take it.” He dropped his head. “My orders were to gather intel, not get you out. And what have you done to solve the problems you swore you’d unravel? What have you done to fix what they did to you? What if they’re doing the same shit to other people?”
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