Wow. I blinked again and finally my vision cleared. I stared at the steep edge of Zeus’s bearded jaw and decided it was time for me to step in.
“Zeus, he didn’t mean any harm.”
He stiffened even more and cut his burning gaze down to me for one horrible moment. “I’ll deal with you later.”
Um, what?
“What?” I asked, confounded by his fury.
This was the first time I’d seen him since I was seven years old and this was how he was going to talk to me?
Then again, it was the first time I’d seen him in a decade and this was how I was going to see him, drunk, dumb and seriously disgusting.
The inebriated side of my mind chose to point out that at least I was in his arms which was nice.
More than nice.
So my drunk mind won out and I curled closer into his marble slab of a chest, my fingers pushing past the edge of his leather vest so I could rest my palm over his heart.
I could feel the breath stutter for a moment in his chest before he recovered and it made me smile.
“I’m not either of those guys. I did her a favour, man. You obviously don’t get this but Louise is fucking repressed and she needed to let go. I helped her do that. Though why the fuck you of all people care is beyond me,” Reece said.
He had bigger balls than I’d originally credited him with or he had a death wish.
“In fact,” Reece went on, proving that he must indeed have a death wish, “I should be defending her from you.”
A low, menacing growl thundered through Zeus’s chest. I peeled open my sticky eyelids to see Reece step back in fear at the look on my biker man’s face.
“Listen here, you motherfucker. You obviously know who I am, you obviously got no respect for anythin’, but if Lou thinks you’re worth her time then you better prove fuckin’ worthy of it or the entire weight of The Fallen will fall heavy on you, you hear me? I personally will cut off your dick and shove it up your ass if you treat her like anything less than fuckin’ gold. Under-fuckin’-stood?”
Reece blinked at Zeus then looked at me and back to him. I watched his Adam’s apple work as he swallowed painfully and said, “Yeah, Mr. Garro. Understood.”
Zeus nodded curtly then turned on his heel and stormed out of the house. I noticed vaguely that there were no more teenage partygoers. Instead, leather-clad bikers appeared through the open doorway to the kitchen laughing and drinking leftover booze.
“You kicked everyone out?” I asked weakly, safe but curious in his arms.
“Shut the fuck up,” he ordered without looking down at me as we stepped through the front door and made it to his huge motorcycle.
Maneuvering me in his arms so that I was wrapped around his front like a koala bear, he reached for the helmet strapped to the back seat of the bike and plunked it on my head, clipping it closed with one hand. He stared at me with dark, angry eyes for a second before he swung us both over the bike and let go of me to put his hands on the bars.
“Hold on tight and don’t fuckin’ throw up on my bike,” he demanded.
I swallowed and closed my eyes against the misery of my pounding head, twisting stomach and wounded pride. I closed my eyes, held on tight and hoped with every molecule that I would wake up and this would have all been a terrible nightmare. Miserably, I noticed that he smelled like leather, tobacco and some kind of tree, cedar or pine. It was better than any high drink or drugs could give me. His big, hard body was warm against mine as the cold night wind rippled over us as he pulled into the street and I snuggled close to the scent and the warmth.
“I missed you so much,” I murmured, half-asleep and fully drunk.
“Fuckin’ pissed at you for pullin’ this shit, Lou,” he told me over the loud rumble of his bike and the rushing wind.
“I know,” I agreed sleepily. “I’m pissed too. I don’t know if I’ll remember this in the morning and thinking about forgetting the way you smell makes me want to cry.”
“No tears,” he ordered.
“But I’m not alone this time,” I reminded him. “I’ve finally got my guardian monster back.”
Zeus was silent but the level of fury vibrating through his body stilled and I fell asleep listening to the steady thrum of his heart thinking that nothing and no where had ever felt so close to heaven as this.
When I woke up it was in my deeply shadowed room and Zeus was somehow there, dropping me gently into my bed.
“How did we get in here?”
He hesitated pulling the covers over me then shook his head like he couldn’t believe me. “Tell your dad you need better locks.”
Oh.
“How did you know you’d be able to get inside?”
“Lou, shut up. I’m still fuckin’ pissed at you and the less you talk the better. I got some things to say and then I’m leavin’.”
“Okay,” I agreed easily because now that he’d found me, gotten over whatever made him think we couldn’t be together, I knew I wouldn’t lose him again. “Sit down beside me.”
Zeus looked down at me, a muscle clenching in his jaw. “No. I’m tellin’ you what I got to say then I’m leavin’ and Louise, I am not coming back. I’m pissed because I found you tonight drunk outta your fuckin’ mind with a dumbass kid who woulda fucked you without thinkin’ a fuckin’ thing about anythin’ but gettin’ off. You can barely speak, walk or keep your eyes open. You think I wrote to you through the cancer and all that fucked up shit you had to go through as a kid just to see you piss your life away like this? I stayed away so you would stay good. I’m warnin’ you now, you don’t smarten the fuck up, not only will that buy you never seein’ me again but I’ll get in touch with your cunt father and tell him exactly what you’re doin’ and he’ll send you to a fuckin’ nunnery. You get me?”
Somewhere deep in the shroud of my drunkenness, my heart was breaking.
“I don’t want to be Louise Lafayette anymore,” I admitted.
For the first time that night, Zeus softened. I couldn’t see him in the darkness of my curtained room but I could feel his gentling in the air and it made the pain in my chest loosen.
“You can be whoever you want to, Lou. I’m not tellin’ you to be the girl Benjamin fuckin’ Lafayette wants you to be. I’m tellin’ you to be who you want to be, not anyone else and I’m tellin’ you to do it smart, yeah? Right now, you don’t know who you are, what you want or where you’re goin’, your head is stuck so far up your ass.”
“You don’t have a right to talk to me like this,” I whispered brokenly.
“I have every fuckin’ right. As the man who saved your life once, don’t make me save it again,” Zeus ordered then turned on his heel and left.
He left and even though I woke up the next morning with a headache that clanged worse than broken church bells between my temples and a memory filled with holes, I knew Zeus had reentered my life only to tell me he was leaving it for good.
Four months later.
The brick was hot against my mostly bare back. In fact, it burned, and the texture was rubbing my sweaty skin raw but I didn’t move. I’d spent a long time perfecting The Lean and I finally had it down. One foot, encased in kickass super tall espadrilles that I kept hidden beneath my floorboards, was wedged up against the wall while the other was straight and long, showcasing the long length of my yoga toned leg beneath the beyond short shorts I wore. My arms were crossed loose enough to be look casual but tight enough to press my boobs together, to ride the hem of my white crop top up even higher on my tummy. My chin was tipped down, pale hair perfectly mussed, unlit joint hanging between my lips.
In short, I was rockin’ The Lean and I was absolutely not going to fuck it up by wiggling like a moron.
The sun was practically set but it could get hot in Entrance and it had been a record breaking October. I had the deep brown tan to prove it, tiny tan lines and only around my hips, over my crotch and cut through the cheeks of my ass because I sunned in a thong every chance
I could get to slip off to the little knoll in the forest behind my house. I only owned a few and I had to keep them hidden under my floorboards but the effort was worth it to be brown all over.
If Mum or Dad ever caught me, they would’ve killed me but I’d stopped worrying about that a long time ago. They were always telling me not to waste my brain, that I was too smart not to use it. So, I did, just in ways they didn’t like.
To be fair to me though, I always did my homework, got straight As, sat in the front pew of church every freaking Sunday at what felt like the butt crack of dawn, volunteered at the Autism Centre every weekend and never, ever, did anything to disrespect the Lafayette name.
At least, not when I was Louise Lafayette.
As Loulou Fox, I did everything my family stood against.
I gambled, partied, smoked, lied, cheated and generally disrespected all authority, every government given rule.
I was a seventeen-year-old teenage dirt bag and I fucking loved it.
Which was why I was doing The Lean against The Wet Lotus, Entrance’s one and only strip club.
It was a sleazy place with poor lighting, sticky everything and a female owner who was beyond bitter and disillusioned and hated the club even though it was the only one in town and made her a crap ton of money.
She didn’t know who I was or, more specifically, who my father was, or she wouldn’t have let me anywhere near her place.
Loulou Fox, though, she loved.
I was underage but even if she knew it, and Debra Bandera was a wily one, I had the generous curves and the fake ID to pull off nineteen.
Besides, Debra liked me. She liked me because when I’d taken to hanging out after dropping Ruby off and picking her up again at the end of the night, I’d started to help out around the bar and who doesn’t like free labor? Four months later and I was Debra’s unofficial assistant.
I did a bunch of the ordering, everything from nipple tassels to cocktail napkins. I sewed the girl’s minuscule costumes, learned to mix drinks, flirt with men without promising them anything more, mop and sweep the floors, wax and shine the poles and take care of the twelve very high-maintenance dancers. I wasn’t there every night but I was there three times a week on the nights I pretended to go to the support group and it had become, in a way, more of a home than my actual home was.
No one knew Loulou Fox had cancer because none of the bikers, scoundrels, dancers, bartenders or regulars that hung out at the Lotus read the local newspaper or the parish newsletter. I’d be surprised if most of them even knew either publication existed. They probably knew of Louise Lafayette, the Goody Two-Shoes daughter of Benjamin and Phillipa Lafayette. It would just never cross their minds to associate the Loulou they knew—fun loving, brazen and ballsy—with the staid, boring girl they had heard about in passing.
I laughed as I leaned, as I always did when I thought about Louise vs. Loulou, good vs. bad, my very own naughty and nice combination split down the middle into two very separate people.
I much preferred Loulou.
And three nights a week, I could be her without impunity.
“I’ll never get used to seein’ you like that,” the woman who was largely responsible for my new two-sided nature said as she pushed open the emergency door and stepped into the alley beside me.
Ruby Jewel was her honest-to-God given name. Her mother had been a prostitute that found a decent John who married her and provided for her and their two kids. They weren’t a poor family. Ruby wasn’t abused as a kid, she didn’t need the money and she was pretty well adjusted as far as twenty-one-year-old girls went. She just loved to dance, she loved expensive shoes and she loved The Lotus.
We’d actually met at the one and only Youth Cancer Support Group I’d gone to in Vancouver. Ruby had been diagnosed as a kid with brain cancer. She’d battled it for four years before finally going into remission. She’d succumbed to the disease again when she was seventeen, this time in her bile ducts. After a year of intense treatment and three surgeries, she’d beaten that too. Ruby Jewel was a fighter. I’d known it the second I had seen her sitting in the depressingly empty classroom on a plastic chair waiting for group to begin. She was wearing a tiny dress held together with silver safety pins and her hair was out to there. Somehow, even rocking all that, she didn’t look like a whore. She just looked super cool, someone who had grown to love themselves and was comfortable not only in their own skin but in their own personality, flaws and all.
I’d sat beside her and left two hours later with a new best friend.
“Is it the joint?” I asked mildly, as she pushed her dark red bangs back from her sweaty forehead and waved a hand to cool herself.
She was wearing blue, red and white spandex short shorts and nipple coverings shaped like miniature American flags. It was one of my favourite outfits she wore.
“Nah, it’s the complete ease you got goin’ on out here. I’ve seen you, from afar obviously, livin’ the classy life. You go to a church every Sunday and to a school where you wear uniforms for Christ’s sake. And yet here you are, Louise Lafayette leaning against the wall of a fucking strip club as if you were born an’ raised here.”
She shook her head but it was with awe and warmth that she turned to me to say, “You’re incredible. Weird as shit, but also incredible.”
“Back at you, babe,” I said.
We smiled at each other before hers broke off and her eyes darkened.
“How’re ya feeling?”
“Why?” I snapped.
I didn’t like to talk about the cancer, about Louise and her life when I was at the bar. Ruby knew that and, normally, she respected it.
She bit her scarlet painted lip and shifted on her heels. “Just that something weird is going on tonight and I don’t know if you should be here or not.”
I straightened instantly, my foot jarring against the pavement as I stood up. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “Dunno really. Debra told us girls that tonight had to be the best show we put on in our lives.”
A little shiver scuttled down my back. I knew Debra was frustrated with The Lotus. It was a lot of work and she was tired, not just of the club but of hard living. Her third husband had left her five months ago for a newer model and she hadn’t recovered.
I’d had a feeling for a while that she wanted to sell but the thought of her doing so slayed me. I’d found a little oasis of crazy calamity in my perfectly ordered life. It was what got me through the hours spent hooked up to poison that was supposed to cure, it was what pulled me through the teeth aching monotony of my day-to-day existence.
“Shit,” I swore.
It was a bit excessive but I’d found out that I liked cursing. There was some kind of release attached to the words that always made me feel better.
It didn’t then, not with the thought of losing The Lotus weighing on my mind.
“The new owner might not want to change things up,” Ruby offered. “I mean, they’ll definitely keep on the dancers but probably the serving staff too.”
“What use will they have for me though? I’m an underage, unpaid hang around.”
“Yeah, but you’re super cute so let’s hope that the buyer is a man with good taste,” Ruby said with a smirk.
I snorted but her attempt at easing me fell short. There was anxiety like arsenic in my blood.
“Cool it, Lou, everything will be golden,” Ruby said.
I chuckled darkly and dropped my joint to the ground to crush it beneath my high heel. “Nothing in my life is golden, Rue.”
“Your bush is,” she quipped which startled a laugh out of me. “If you had any that is.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Come on, let’s go see what’s going on.”
We linked arms as we headed inside, laughing about something Molly, a sweet but dumb dancer, had done the night before. I was mid-laugh when I noticed Debra heading into her office behind a few shadowy shapes. She caught my eye and looked uneasy. I raised an eyeb
row at her in question but she only bit her lip and shook her head slightly, like she was sorry.
A shiver of trepidation shot up my spine.
“Deb,” I called out to her.
“Behave tonight,” was her response in a voice that brooked no argument.
Ruby and I shared a look after she’d closed the door.
“Shit,” we both cursed at the same time, then broke down into giggles.
He’d been watching me all night.
I’d felt his eyes for hours but not in the way I was used to the men in a strip club looking at a woman. That was the feeble falling to sin and temptation, hoping to prey on the assumed weaker sex. Those eyes left hot greasy marks against my flesh, disgusting but easily washed off, easily ignored.
These eyes were not. They tracked me across the room, embedded under my skin like some clever device, not losing track of me even when I left and entered again, even amid the glittering mass of mostly naked women and excitable men, between the high backed semiprivate booths and the tall, mirrored bar.
I hadn’t looked his way, positioned with his back against the wall to one side of the main stage, his position open to the entirety of the club. It had taken more determination than I wanted to admit, I was curious about a man like him, a man who watched someone the way a computer might, or a camera, without bias or emotion. Only stone-cold calculation.
I wanted to meet him because I wanted to learn that.
I wanted to never meet him because it was dangerous that he watched me like that.
I had secrets, big ones, though none so scary as to threaten my life.
Something about the way those eyes watched me though, warned me that he could become that threat to my life and more that he wanted to.
The hair on the back of my neck had been on end all night and a little voice at the back of my head told me one peek wouldn’t hurt.
The rest of me knew better.
Welcome to the Dark Side (The Fallen Men Book 2) Page 7