What the fuck had I been thinking? It had been three days since the fight against Odin, and I was still kicking myself. I should never have taken Kit to that damn fight club; it was way too dangerous, and now she was on Sergei’s radar. I had received a serious talking to from River that night about my blatant disregard for Kit’s safety, and he was right, even if it was his personal feelings for her talking.

“Cole, buddy. Are you listening to me?” Harry, the stinking little rat of a man, was all up in my face again, and fuck if I didn’t want to just deck him.

“I’m not your fucking buddy; now move,” I snarled at him, pushing his smaller frame out of my way and reaching for the door handle to the office he had been guarding.

“I’m telling you, he doesn’t want to be disturbed right now,” Harry tried again, this time grabbing my wrist to try and hold me back. I paused, looking down at his sticky hand on my skin as though it was a poisonous frog.

“Don’t ever touch me, again,” I said quietly, with a promise of pain in my voice, and he wisely snatched his offending appendage back. I pushed into the dirty office and immediately saw why Sergei wouldn’t have wanted to be disturbed.

A pair of huge tits bounced and slapped the desk while he pumped away furiously behind the naked girl bent over the desk. She was his usual type. Young, skinny, fake tits, and too much makeup, which was currently smeared down her face like some sort of nightmare makeup. I recognized her as one of the dancers here at The Pussy Palace, but she used to be a bleached blond. Sergei must have sprung for a trip to the salon, or at least a box of dye, because she was now a flaming redhead, and it pissed me off.

The hairy Ukrainian saw me standing there and kept going. He slammed into her a dozen more times while she rolled her eyes at me and made fake noises of pleasure until he grunted and convulsed like some sort of constipated animal. Goddamn that is disgusting; I’m fucking glad I skipped lunch today.

Finished, he withdrew from the girl and tossed a baggy of white powder onto the desk in front of her. “Get back to work, Candy.”

The girl eagerly grabbed the bag, then stood and collected her tiny scrap of a dress from the floor. “Cole, hey baby,” she purred in a voice thick with whatever substances she was already on. “I still have ten minutes before I’m due on stage…”

I eyed her with thinly veiled pity, standing there without a stitch of clothing on her body and another man’s sweat coating her skin. “No.”

She shrugged and stepped into her ridiculous plastic stripper shoes, not bothering to put her dress back on. “You know where to find me if you change your mind.” She winked at me and sauntered out of the office with an absurd sway to her skinny hips.

“You sure?” Sergei leered, snapping off his used condom and flicking it into his waste basket. “She looks smoking with that red hair now, huh? I would have thought you’d be all over that ass.”

I hardened my features into my carefully blank mask. Integrating ourselves into this disgusting business was part of our job, and I couldn’t risk fucking that up now. “What can I say? My needs are being met just fine already.” This undercover work had never bothered me before, but knowing he assumed it was Kit “meeting my needs” made my skin crawl. Not that I wouldn’t want her to—in fact, I doubted I had ever wanted anything so badly in my life—but I despised talking about her like this.

“I’m sure they are… How is Emily doing?” He licked his lips like the lecherous bastard he was, and I fought the urge to knock his teeth out. Emily. I couldn’t imagine why River had chosen that as Kit’s fake name. She looked nothing like an Emily.

“None of your fucking business, Sergei. I just came to pick up my money for the Odin fight. Boss told me it was here.” I folded my arms and tried to look at anything but him, given he was still just standing there proudly naked. Not much to be proud about, though.

He stared at me for a minute, and I could practically see the gears turning in his slimy head. Bending to collect my packet of money from his floor safe, I was treated to an uninterrupted view of his pasty rear end, and I knew my lip was curling with disgust.

Fuck, he was revolting. When he straightened again, my mask was firmly back in place, but even so, it was an internal battle not to throttle him when he held out the envelope then pulled it back as I reached for it. Fucker.

“You know, it strikes me as strange,” he commented, tapping my envelope on his hand. “You and River don’t seem like the sort of guys who would be happy with their girl sleeping around. You’re both too… alpha male. You know?”

“No. I don’t. Give me the envelope, Sergei. I have places to be.” Like anywhere but here. I scowled at him and allowed just a little of my anger leak through.

He looked like he was considering fucking around a bit longer, but something in my expression must have convinced him otherwise because he audibly swallowed and handed over the envelope of money. I jerked my head in lieu of a thank you and turned to leave the dirty office before his voice halted me.

“Hopefully I will run into your pretty girlfriend again soon. You won’t always be around to protect her, you know.” His taunting words snapped the tenuous hold I had over my anger, and I spun back to him, closing the gap between us in one wide step and grabbing a tight fistful of his junk.

“Do I have your undivided attention right now, Sergei?” I asked, and he responded with a high whimpering noise. I tightened my grip a little tighter, and he howled. “I asked you a question, Sergei. Do I have your undivided attention? I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding here.”

“Y-yes! Yes! Undivided!” His voice was a pained squeak, which gave me a grim satisfaction.

“Good. Now listen closely. If I find out you’ve so much as breathed in Emily’s direction again, I will rip this pathetic excuse of a cock straight off your body and shove it down your throat. And I will find out. Are we clear?” I hissed the promise to him, and he nodded frantically. “I’m glad we cleared that up.”

I released his crown jewels and stormed out of the club, wiping my hand off on my jeans. It was almost the end of the day already, and I still needed to buy Kit those shoes she had been drooling over. But first, maybe I should sterilize my hand.