Eight

Damien

 

She shivered, her shaky exhale hot against my neck. My own breathing wasn’t exactly normal—it wasn’t shaky like hers, but it was fast, borderline uncontrolled. Just like my desire for her.

My hand inched closer to her wet pussy. I didn’t need to touch her to know she was wet, but I wanted to. I wanted to push her, see how far she’d go before she realized I was right.

She would give in to her body. She already was. It was betraying her with how it responded to me, but she wasn’t exactly fighting it. Her half-hearted attempt to get off me was just that—half-hearted.

She wanted this as much as I did in this moment. I wanted more. I wanted to free my cock and slip it inside her. She was right here on top of me after all. It would be easy. So fucking easy to fuck her wet little cunt until she screamed and told everyone inside and outside of this car what was going on.

Too easy.

Too. Easy.

I didn’t want her easily. I wanted her on the brink and ready to take things into her own hand. I wanted her hovering on the brink of an orgasm before I finally gave in and let her have it.

I wanted her to need me the way I wanted her to.

I was selfish and greedy, and I didn’t care one bit.

Dahlia swallowed. I brushed the backs of my fingers over the lace that covered the mound of skin just above her pussy. She took a sharp breath in, and her hips rocked¸ making my knuckles just ghost across the rough area where her clit was.

Wet.

I could feel it on the fabric.

“So much for not giving in,” I murmured in her ear, slipping two fingers beneath her thong. “You can feel that, Dahlia. You can feel how much you want me.”

She didn’t respond. Her bravado was gone now that I had full control.

I liked having her at my mercy.

I eased my fingers across her pussy. Its wetness made it easy, and I adjusted myself so I could touch her properly.

She dropped her forehead to the back of the seats when my fingers found their way inside her. Her muscles clenched around my fingers. I moved them in and out of her a few times, slowly, teasingly, until the tiniest whimper of a sound escaped her flattened lips.

“But you don’t want me,” I whispered into her hair. “Right, Dahlia? You don’t want to be sitting on top of me while I fuck your tight little cunt with my fingers, and you sure as hell don’t want to sit on my cock so I can fuck you properly, do you? You said that. You won’t give in easy.”

Brushing my lips down her jaw, I eased my fingers out of her and set her underwear straight again.

“We’re here,” I added. “Shall I meet you inside?”

“Jesus Christ.” She gasped, rolling off to the side. Frantically, she tugged at her dress, stretching it right down over her thighs until it was like it was supposed to be. “That wine must have been stronger than I thought.”

“No,” I said simply, eyeing her flushed cheeks and bright eyes. “You just stopped lying to yourself for a few minutes.”

She took a deep breath and looked back at me. “Rain check.”

With that, she snatched up her purse and got out of the car.

I adjusted my pants and leaned forward to open the partition. “Go home, could you, Will?”

The ever-silent man nodded, hit the blinker, and I sat back in the seat.

Dahlia Lloyd was a walking, talking, sin of a woman.

One who had me going out of my fucking mind.

 

***

 

I finished the resume and threw it straight into the metal trashcan to the left of me.

My father’s flagship strip club needed two new dancers, and so far, nobody had been a good enough fit. None of the girls in the other clubs wanted to move to Foxies, and I understood that. It was the first club, but not the best. Goldies was the number one bar we owned.

Dad rubbed his hand over his salt-and-pepper beard. “What kind of floozies are you interviewing?”

I gave him a dark look over the top of the newest resume. “None. Their resumes aren’t good enough.”

“They’re swinging around a pole with their tits out. What kind of fucking resume do they need?”

“To not have a background in prostitution.” I dropped the papers I was holding across the desk in front of him. Whoever Poppy was, she was the third woman in a row to have been a prostitute trying to “better herself.”

I understood that, but the moment she got caught sucking some guy’s dick in a private room for extra tips was the moment we got shut down.

Foxies wasn’t that hard up to take the risk. Not yet.

“That complicates it.” Dad folded the resume in two and handed it back to me to throw into the trash. “Did you put that on the advert?”

“Helena did it. She said she had a few places to advertise it as well as the usual ones.” I filed the ‘maybe’ ones into a paper folder. “Face facts, Dad. We’re not the only big competitor on the Strip now. Maybe we should put two clubs together. Less rent but more revenue.”

His eyes, as dark as mine, glared at me. “You want to cut our portfolio?”

I sighed. I’d been dreading this conversation. “Listen to me, all right? I’ve been crunching the numbers and then some. If we consolidated Spark and Thunder, we’d pay thirty percent of the total rent we currently do. We can move Shawna and Darla to Swing since they’re bi and that caters to the bi crowd with the mixed dancers. Alana and Marie have already expressed a desire to move to Passion since that’s their crowd. We’re mixing sexuality more than we need to. Take Alana and Marie from the straight club into the lesbian club, put the bi’s into the bi club, and instantly, we have space to accommodate into Spark. Regina is quitting next month. Kaitlyn is pregnant, and Sally is going back to school. That’s Thunder’s staff who can’t assimilate into Spark.”

“The bar staff?”

“We split them between the others. They’re always short. Play is understaffed four out of seven nights despite our best efforts, and Sugar’s staff is overstretched. We’re playing with the law with them because they need ‘round the clock staffing.” I tapped my fingers against the desk and passed him a financial breakdown for two months ago. “Dad, I know you don’t want to sell, but Thunder just isn’t as profitable as the others anymore. We’re doing the staff a disservice by not putting them in front of the biggest audience.”

A “hmph” escaped him, but he picked up the report anyway.

It’d been a long time since he’d been involved in the business. The last time was really seven years ago. Since then, he’d handed the control to me. He was still named as co-owner and president while I was co-owner, CEO, and COO, and I’d thought that’d been the shift in our power.

He’d always been my idol. The things we’d been through didn’t bear speaking about, so we didn’t. We kept them buried and ignored them as much as possible. Dad insisted that we moved on and focused on the present and the future, but that didn’t stop me thinking about the past.

About Mom.

About Penelope.

About him.

Thirty-years-old and my demons still silenced me. Still controlled me. Still dictated happiness to me. I was thankful that the biggest demon was the man sitting opposite me, no matter that he wasn’t evil.

No. Benedict Fox wasn’t evil. He was heartbroken. Although, maybe, they were one and the same, especially as time passed.

I certainly felt the melding of the two emotions as time passed.

“Your idea holds merit,” Dad grunted, dumping the report back on the desk. “What about The Scarlet Letter? Where are you with that?”

Fuck. I’d hoped we could avoid that vein of questioning for the day. It was only the third time he’d brought it up since Lennon Lloyd had died. The first time was mere days after his funeral. The second was the week before his daughter returned to town.

Today was the latest.

What did I tell him?

Did I ask him if he knew that Dahlia Lloyd was as intelligent as she was beautiful?

Did I ask him if he knew that Dahlia held the spirit of both her parents in the palm of her hand?

Did I ask him if he knew that Dahlia was compelling and fascinating? Educated yet fantastical? Wild and free? Careless yet disciplined?

I sure as hell couldn’t tell him this, mostly because I know it to be fact. Dahlia was a dirty dream come to life, an infuriating daydream personified, an enigma that could never be decoded.

“Struggling,” I answered honestly. “You were certain that she’d want to sell, but I fear you were wrong.”

He rubbed his hand across his beard again. He always did that when he was thinking. He reminded me of an old wizard—Dumbledore or Gandalf. I wondered if he even realized he did it half the time.

“I wasn’t certain.” Dad leaned back as he admitted it. He slotted his fingers through the others as he leaned back and set his hands on his stomach. “I told you I was, but I never was. Lennon created the bar for Melinda. It was something they’d always wanted, and they built it together. I’m not surprised you’re running into issues with Dahlia.”

He had no fucking idea.

“So, why send me after it? Why do you want it? I couldn’t care less.” Annoyance bubbled up. This wasn’t my fucking project, it was his. All this shit was doing was making me want a woman I had no place wanting.

“I want it for personal reasons.”

I stared at him. “Why now? Why when her dad died? Why not before?”

“He would never have sold it.”

“And you think she will?”

“I think she’s more easily influenced.”

I ran my hands through my hair. He was sending me on a wild fucking goose chase. He was assuming shit about a woman he knew nothing about. I’d been there just days ago. Dahlia Lloyd wasn’t that person. She wasn’t the rollover or the pushover or the fucking anything else anyone had her pegged as.

She was annoyingly strong and determined.

“She won’t sell.” That was no opinion.

Dad stared at the wall. He wasn’t close to looking in my direction. He was stone cold still. Not even the fingers curled on his beard moved. “Try harder.”

“You’re wasting my time.”

“She’s a woman.”

“A fierce woman.”

“A woman all the same.”

Anger twisted my stomach. “She’s not defined by her gender.”

Dad turned to look at me. His eyes were soulless, his lips thin, his expression emotionless. “She’s a woman. She can be fierce and mouthy, but that doesn’t make her comparable to you. She’s a Lloyd. You’re a Fox. Get that bar bought, Damien. No matter how.”

I kicked my chair back as I got up. Dad’s expression didn’t change as I snatched up my phone and stormed out of the office. He’d clearly taken my response for frustration.

He could take it whatever fucking way he wanted. I didn’t care.

Stealing The Scarlet Letter from beneath Dahlia’s feet without a solid reason seemed unfair. Why the fuck did my father want that bar so bad? Why did he covet it the way he did? What the fuck had he done to deserve the mini-empire Lennon Lloyd had built?

Why did Dahlia deserve to lose all that just because my father wanted it?

One week ago, I didn’t give a fuck about Dahlia Lloyd. She’d been a pretty woman with a pretty name and an education a pretty penny had bought. She’d been a pretty little easy target whose business had been easy pickings because her father had left. She’d been no more than a young woman with a broken heart, who’d bitten off more than she could chew.

Now, she was…I didn’t want to think about that. She was under my goddamn skin, for a start. Every time I stopped to think, it was her that crossed my mind.

I felt like she was quickly becoming an obsession. With her dark eyes and bright lips, her smart mouth, and her tempting touch. She was everything a man like me could get addicted to quite easily.

Everything a man like me could break.

I knew it, and yet, I couldn’t stay away. I couldn’t keep behind the line of business. I had to take it personally every time for my own selfish needs. I was greedy and heartless, pushing her so I could know things.

Did I need to pull her on top of me in the car yesterday? Did I need to touch her pussy to feel how wet she was?

No.

I didn’t need to do either, yet I did, for no other reason than I wanted to.

She was soft and gentle, a vulnerable young woman with the weight of her world on her shoulders.

I was hard and brash, a total asshole, carrying the weight of my own universe in my hands.

It didn’t matter that my heart was just as broken as hers. Didn’t matter for a damn second that we shared a pain she had no idea about.

All that mattered was that she was a wistful daydream to me, yet to her, I was no more than a persistent nightmare.