by K. M. Scott
“Nothing but to see you dance at my club where you won’t be touched and treated like a piece of meat.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Maybe that’s because you’re not used to people being nice to you.”
“You mean men, not people. I see what this is. You think I’m some broken bird who needs a big, strong man to save her. You think because you saw a few bruises that I can’t handle myself. Well, you’re wrong.”
I reached out and gently pressed my fingertips to the inside of her leg where the bruise had been the night I met her. “A man who cares for you wouldn’t hit you, Abbi.”
Pushing my hand away, she squeezed her legs together tightly and turned her face from me. Quietly, she said, “I’m not stupid. I know that.”
“Do you also know that not everyone wants something from you?”
She looked at me with an expression of complete disbelief. “That’s a lie. Everyone wants something. Even you, Kane. I don’t know why you’re doing this. Maybe it is to make up for your mistake. Maybe it’s something else. But whatever it is, I know this. You want something. Everyone does.”
“Right now, I want you to sit there until we get back to the club. Can you do that?”
She studied my face, likely for the answer to the question of what I really wanted from her, and then sighed. “Fine. My purse and clothes are back at The Carousel. Can we go back and get them at least?”
Sliding the car into gear, I began driving again toward my club. “I’ll make sure you get them.”
“What is that on the radio?” she asked with a tone of disgust.
“Led Zeppelin.”
“Jesus, how old are you?”
“Twenty-nine, not that my age has anything to do with knowing what good music is. How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her slip her feet out of her shoes. She began to raise them to place them on the dash, and my hand shot out to stop her. “Keep your feet down. This is a ‘69 Mustang, not some POS car.”
Lowering her feet to the floor, she snorted in anger. “Fine. I won’t hurt your precious car, which is so quintessentially you, by the way.”
“Really? Why?”
“A ‘69 Mustang Boss, one of the most badass cars there is? It fits you perfectly. Big, tough, and definitely you.”
I pulled into a spot behind Club X and turned off the car. Easing my arm from behind her, I smiled. “That’s nice of you to say. I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Take it any way you want. I’m out of here.”
And in a flash, she opened the door and ran from the car. Thankfully, my much longer legs made catching up to her easy, and by the time she hit the road that ran alongside the club, I had my arms around her in a hold much tighter than I’d normally use on a woman so much smaller than me.
“Damnit, Abbi! I can’t trust you, can I?”
She flailed in my hold but got nowhere. “Let me go!”
I leaned down and whispered in her ear, “No. I didn’t want to do it this way, but you’ve made it necessary. Stop fighting or I’ll carry you in.”
Pushing against me to get away, she growled, “Don’t you dare pick me up again!”
Her fingernails caught my cheek, and I reared back in pain as she scratched the full length of my jaw.
“Fucking woman!”
Scooping her up, I threw her over my shoulder and walked toward the back entrance of the club, all the while feeling her hit my back with her fists.
I marched up the four floors to my apartment and sat her down hard on the bed, making sure to block the door so she couldn’t run away again. Abbi sat there with a hurt look on her face, but when she opened her mouth, I couldn’t help but be hurt myself.
“Just in case you think you’re different from any of the men who hit me, they all said I made it necessary for them to act the way they did too.”
Jesus, she had a way of being able to cut me to the quick. I couldn’t have this conversation right now, though. I walked to my closet, never taking my eyes off her, and grabbed a new shirt. As I dressed, I explained the best I could, even as I fought the defensiveness she so skillfully brought out in me.
“There’s no point in running, Abbi. I’ll find you and just bring you back here. I’ll be back in a few hours, and hopefully by then you’ll be calmed down.”
Her hurt expression morphed into one of shock at my words. “You can’t just keep me here. I promise I won’t go back to The Carousel Club. Gemma’s working tonight, so she’ll make sure I get home.”
I walked to the door and shook my head. “No. You’re staying here. You’ve shown me you can’t be trusted to stay put. You’re free to eat all my food, drink all my liquor, and watch TV until I get back. Don’t bother screaming or yelling because you’re in my part of the club and no one will hear you. The door will be locked from the outside, and you’re on the fourth floor with no way to get to the street even if you squeeze out the bathroom window, so don’t try because you’ll hurt yourself.”
“Kane, you can’t do this! You can’t keep me prisoner here,” she said with a sob in her voice as she walked over to stand in front of me. Looking up at me with her big blue eyes, she asked, “Why are you doing this to me?”
Christ, I wanted to take her in my arms and never let her go when she looked at me like that. And I didn’t know why I was doing any of this since I knew being with her would bring nothing but bad, but I’d gone too far to turn back now.
“I’ll be back later.”
Before she began to cry, I got the hell out of there and locked the door from the outside. Turning to head back up to my post on the top floor, I heard her call my name, but it didn’t matter. I hadn’t lied. Nobody would hear her there.
I found Samson waiting for me at the top of the front stairs where I’d left him. Barely ten o’clock, it was still early and I hadn’t missed anything important other than some problem between two of the dancers. Nothing new.
“You have a few rooms to handle tonight, but I’m going to need you back here to stand in for me by one. I have something I need to take care of.”
“Whatever you need, Kane. I’ll be here anyway.”
“Thanks, Samson. Oh, by the way, we’ll have a new dancer soon. She’s good.”
The news of an addition to the dancer ranks made him smile. “Good. For a moment there, I thought you might mean a new guy. I thought you were nicely telling me I was going to need a second job soon.”
Samson was too important to the success of the fantasy part of the club, and I wasn’t a fool. Slapping him on the back, I assured him of his status at Club X. “No worries, man. I know this business, and you bring in a lot of customers with a lot of money. I’d call that job security. Plus, I can trust you to take care of my business when I need you to.”
“Thanks, Kane. I appreciate that. I’ll be back by one.”
He left me standing there alone, and even though I had a full night of members’ fantasies to handle, my mind was one floor down with Abbi. I had no idea what I planned to do about her. All I knew was every fiber of my being wanted to protect her from all the men who’d hurt her.
* * *
I DIDN’T know how long I pounded on the steel door and yelled for Kane to let me out, but I finally gave up when my voice went hoarse. Who the hell did he think he was kidnapping me and keeping me hostage in his shitty apartment? Exhausted, I threw myself on his bed and let the tears finally fall. I cried for what Aaron had done to me. I cried for how fucked up my life was. I cried for being stuck in these tiny rooms of a man who was basically a stranger to me.
I cried until there was nothing left in me.
When there finally were no more tears, I wiped my face and looked around at my prison cell for the night. Kane owned part of Club X, and he lived in this cheap three room apartment? Why? Was he a lesser owner than Cassian and Stefan? Or maybe the club didn’t make much money.
The white painted
cinder block walls stood bare of any pictures of family or friends or even cheap wall art people hung up to give their homes some feeling of warmth and hominess. Looking down, I saw the wood floor looked old and beat up, like something heavy had been dragged across it, leaving deep scratches and dents, and hundreds of feet had trampled over it when the building was a factory.
Kane’s metal twin bed with its single pillow sat in the corner against two walls, making me feel like this place was a prison even before he’d locked me in here. No knick-knacks sat on shelves. Only a single dresser stood on the wall opposite the bed, but even that had nothing sitting on top of it.
My curiosity about Kane and all of this made me want to snoop, so I opened the top drawer of the dresser and looked inside. All I saw were the usual socks and men’s underwear, although the guy seemed to like black a lot, if this drawer was any indication. I opened the second drawer and found shirts neatly folded. The drawers below that one were very similar, with both of them filled with Kane’s long sleeved T-shirts I’d seen him in at work. Lifting one to my nose, I inhaled the fresh smell of laundry detergent.
I headed toward the closet, hoping to find something to tell me more about the man who I now considered my jailer. Opening the door, I found just a few dress shirts like the one I wore and maybe a half dozen pairs of jeans and pants. It was the least cluttered closet I’d ever seen in my life. But on the floor sat a box, and crouching down, I saw it contained old records like the kind my parents used to love listening to. I thumbed through the albums and saw all those bands from the 60s and 70s the classic rock stations liked to play.
Nothing about his clothes told me much of anything about Kane, other than he definitely wasn’t like his brother Cassian. There was a man who knew how to dress to impress. Always in expensive suits and silk ties, he looked powerful.
Not that Kane didn’t look powerful. I doubted I’d ever forget the moment as I stood up on that stage and opened my eyes to see him staring up at me and then the next minute him throwing me over his shoulder and carrying me out of The Carousel Club.
Thinking about Kane as some rescuer would only get me into something I didn’t need. Angry at how easily I could forgive him for basically ruining my only chance at that club, I slammed his closet door shut and stalked away toward the bathroom. He wasn’t a rescuer. He was just like every other man.
Not to be trusted.
I stared at the tiny bathroom window he’d mentioned as he listed all the rules of this prison and saw he hadn’t lied. Squeezing through the space would be difficult. I could probably do it, but it would take some work. I stood on the toilet lid and looked out to the street below. Four floors would be a drop to my death without anything to hold on to, and I saw nothing to help me down the side of the building.
I was trapped.
For a moment, I stood there staring at that tiny window and wanted to cry. It was like a symbol for my life. I could see a way to escape, but I couldn’t get out. I felt like the punchline of some cruel joke. Would I never find the way out of my life? Was I destined to spend every day trapped in one way or another?
I walked back out to the kitchen hoping I wouldn’t find the typical bachelor refrigerator filled with milk past its expiration date, some kind of rotted meat, and too many bottles of alcohol. If I was going to be stuck in his crappy apartment, I planned on eating what he had. Feeding me was the least he could do for keeping me here.
To my surprise, I found food—real food like normal people ate. In fact, I found the kitchen stocked with everything needed to make practically any meal I’d want. There in that tiny apartment that looked more like a jail cell than a home he had a place that felt warm and welcoming. Not the décor, which consisted of the same boring white painted cinder block walls and old wood floor, but what he hid in the refrigerator and behind the cabinet doors.
The image of Kane as someone who’d care enough for anyone to feed them lingered in my mind as I made myself a meal of spaghetti. What was this guy’s deal? He didn’t even try to hide his dislike for me in the interview, making up his mind about me not dancing at Club X before I even hit the top floor. Then weeks later, when he stopped down at the bar, he seemed to want to talk to me like we were friends, but why?
“I’m good enough to bartend but not good enough to dance,” I muttered to myself as I washed my dirty dishes and placed them in the dish rack next to the sink to dry.
That must have been it. He didn’t think I had the right stuff to dance at his precious club. But why then had he come to The Carousel and taken me from that place like he felt bad about not hiring me to dance for him?
I couldn’t figure him out. He hated me from our first meeting and then one night he decided he needed to save me from the ugliness of some strip club across town where he didn’t think I deserved to be.
Why did he care at all?
The question rolled around in my head as I returned to snooping around my captor’s apartment. Did he have a girlfriend? I imagined he must. The man may have been strange, but he was stunning. Well over six foot with jet black hair and piercing blue eyes that seemed to stare right through you, he was the type of man women noticed. Add to that the tattoos on his arms, which gave him a badass look, and the fact that he said practically nothing, even when he was being nice, and I couldn’t imagine how women didn’t fall at his feet.
If he did have a woman in his life, she didn’t spend a lot of time at his apartment. The place showed no sign of any feminine touch at all, and I found no clothes a woman would wear stored anywhere in his dresser or closet.
So if he didn’t have a girlfriend, did he rescue me because he wanted me? No, that couldn’t be it. I’d worked at his club for weeks and only once had he even bothered to speak to me. Not that I gave him much reason to after pulling my nasty bitch routine on him.
Jesus Christ! I must be suffering from Stockholm syndrome. I’m sitting here locked away in the guy’s apartment wondering if he wants me to be his girlfriend and actually thinking I like him!
Like him would have been a stretch. I barely knew him, and what I knew I wasn’t too sure I appreciated. Sullen and brooding most of the time, he definitely had a domineering thing going on. Not that I didn’t like a man taking charge, but driving across town to yank me off the stage at another club and carry me out of the building was definitely a bit much.
Plopping myself down on his couch, I tried to figure out what all this was with Kane. The guy was a puzzle. Hated me from the minute he met me but rescued me. That didn’t make sense. He had seemed nice part of the time on the drive there. Well, when he wasn’t chasing me down and carrying me to this place to be kept prisoner for God knows how long.
I didn’t want to think about this anymore. Turning on the TV, I sat watching an MMA wrestling show for about three minutes before I began desperately searching for the remote. I didn’t need to see people beating the fuck out of each other. My life had enough of that, thank you.
Ten minutes later, I hadn’t found the remote to change the channel and some poor guy was lying on the floor bloody on the screen in front of me, so I just turned the TV off. Kane was part owner of the most exclusive clubs in town and in these shitty rooms he didn’t even have a remote for his fucking television. Did he just watch MMA shows whenever it was on?
As I sat there in the silence of Kane’s apartment, the memory of the last time I lay in a bloody mess after Aaron beat the fuck out of me came back with a vengeance. I hadn’t thought of it since that night he found me at the grocery store. Sliding the wig off my head, I ran my fingers over my chopped hair, unable to stop the tears.
I stood outside the store with my arms full of bags to wait for the cab to take me to Gemma’s house and felt someone brush up against my back. Immediately on edge, I had no way of getting away as he wrapped his hand around my neck and whispered, “I’ve been looking for you, Abbi.”
I wanted to cry out, but I knew it was no use. With all the bravado I possessed, I turned my head and s
aid quietly, “Let me go. I won’t let you do this to me.”
His dark eyes narrowed and he tightened his grip on my throat, his fingers pressing hard into my skin. Low in my ear, he said, “You don’t get a say in what I do, Abbi. Now come with me and keep your mouth shut or the beating you get when we leave will be even worse. You know that I’ll do it.”
I let him lead me to his car and jumped as I sat down and heard the automatic locks click shut. I was trapped there with Aaron, the man who’d promised to kill me if I ever left him. Covered in the bags after he’d thrown them on top of me, I thought about anything I could use to fend him off. Cans of soup and boxes of breakfast cereal wouldn’t stop him. As he talked about what he planned to do to me, I retraced my steps through the supermarket to remember if I’d grabbed anything that could help me.
“You thought you’d just leave me, Abbi? You’ve had your fun, but now it’s time to come home. No more hanging out with Gemma, that fucking whore. The next time I see her I’ll show her what I think of her taking you away.”
I knew better than to defend Gemma. If I did, both of us could get hurt. As it was, he might forget about hurting her if he could take his rage out on me enough.
He continued to rant about my leaving him, and I continued to mentally walk through the store. I’d passed up buying too much junk food because Gemma warned me if I was going to dance, even at The Carousel Club, I needed to make sure I kept at my best weight, so I’d spent most of my shopping trip in the fresh fruit and vegetables section. But hitting Aaron with the asparagus I’d gotten a great deal on wasn’t going to help me much.
Then I remembered the scissors Gemma had asked me to buy for her to cut food up. Fuck! What bag had the guy packed them in? Quietly, I slid my hand along the outside of the bags, feeling for the outline of the scissor package. If I could find it and get them out of the plastic before we got back to the apartment, I could use them. I wasn’t above stabbing someone to get away from having my skull crushed in.