I wore black the next day, a lacy black bralette and a matching lacy skirt, my panties underneath barely enough lace to cover my carefully-manicured triangle. I finished it off with a pair of black stilettos. I checked myself in the mirror, patting the French twist I’d tied my hair into and the heavy makeup that highlighted my eyes and covered a thumbprint bruise on my throat that Curtis had left on his last visit a few nights before.

“Looking good, Scarlett,” Sara, one of the other girls, said as she patted my ass on the way to the door.

“Thanks, Violet.”

We all had names we used here at the club and the names we took home with us. I chose Scarlett because I’d always been a fan of Gone with the Wind. Rachel was Jasmine, another girl was Persephone, another Mercedes. It gave us a sense of protection, even if it was a false sense.

I walked out to the bar and took up my perch on a stool along the far edge. The bartender, a nice enough guy who called himself Jensen, set a ginger ale in front of me with a friendly wink. There were only a few clients in the room and fewer of the girls, most lost in the buzz of their drinks. One client, though, a younger man than what I was used to seeing here, was well aware of his surroundings, looking around like he’d never stepped foot in such a place. He was dressed in street clothes—which was a hallmark of a first-time visitor—his jeans and t-shirt loose enough to be comfortable, but tight enough to give a good idea of what lay underneath. I watched him, curious why a man as good looking as him would feel the need for a club where the girls were paid to be nice to him. I could imagine it wasn’t hard for him to find a woman willing to be really, really nice.

He was insanely tall—something that was obvious by the way his legs folded in front of him as he sat on the couch—and he had amazing eyes, dark blue eyes that seemed to be curious about everything around him His hair was dark and tended toward curls—if it was allowed to get long enough, that is. He kept it buzzed along the neckline and not much longer on top. He was muscular, clearly the kind of guy who liked to work out. But it was those eyes I kept coming back to.

Beautiful, intense, curious eyes that seemed filled with light and darkness all at the same time.

He caught me watching him and offered me a friendly nod, holding up his drink as though offering some sort of toast. I nodded back, trying to ignore the insanely optimistic flutter of my heart. I hadn’t been attracted to a man since I first set eyes on Curtis, afraid to allow myself that simple, basic instinct since leaving Curtis. But this man…sometimes beauty was difficult to ignore.

He stood and came toward me, forcing me to duck my head and pretend to be more interested in my drink than what was happening around me. But, of course, he took a seat beside me and I was forced to pay attention.

“First time at Highland?” I asked when he didn’t say anything to me.

“It’s not, actually.”

“I’ve never seen you before.”

“It’s been a few years since I was last here.”

I turned toward him just slightly, allowing myself to study his profile for a long second. He was studying me when I turned toward him, but then he quickly looked away almost as if he was embarrassed by the depth of his interest.

“Do you know how all this works?”

He made a sound that seemed to be part laugh and part embarrassed snort. He stared down into his drink as though he couldn’t stand the idea of looking at me again. That just made me want to get his attention all the more.

I touched his knee and you’d think my hand was a hot poker for the way he reacted. He jumped, jerking his knee away, still refusing to look at me.

“I should tell you,” he said quickly, “that I’m Brent Stone with Stone Security.”

“Should that mean something to me?”

He glanced at me only to quickly drop his eyes to his drink. “I was hired to investigate the beatings of the three women who were attacked in the parking lot.”

I immediately dropped my Scarlett façade and turned toward him, crossing my arms over my chest. “Rhonda hired you?”

“She did.”

“What have you found out? Do you have any idea who’s been doing this?”

He shook his head, lifting his drink to his lips to take a steady swallow. “I’ve just taken the case this morning.”

“She waited this long?” I almost couldn’t believe it, but then again, I knew Rhonda. She was incredibly cheap when it came to spending money on things that weren’t going to lead to making more money. “Do you think you could do better than the cops have done so far?”

“Potentially. I have access to things the cops don’t.”

I nodded as I ran my finger over the rim of my glass. The cops had come to ask questions after the second girl was hurt and came back after the third. But we could tell by their attitude that they had no sympathy for us. They saw us as nothing better than street prostitutes.

I picked up my glass and took a long swallow, then sat back to study him. “What are you going to do? How are you going to make this stop?”

“I’ve looked at all the security camera footage and plan to install new, better cameras. I’ve stationed some of my own men around the place. I’ll be here personally most nights to walk you ladies to your cars. And I plan on doing a little good old-fashioned investigative work.”

“Like what?”

“I’d like to talk to all of the girls who were here those nights or who were close to the girls who were injured.”

It all sounded very professional, but I wondered how it was different from what Rhonda had been doing before.

“Do you have a list of names of the girls you want to talk to? Maybe I could point them out to you.”

“I’m looking for Scarlett right now.”

“Well, then, you found her.”

He finally looked at me then, his eyes moving slowly and deliberately over my face and the length of my body, what he could see of it in the position I was sitting. I watched him look me over, watched the storm clouds that drifted through his eyes. I wondered who’d hurt him so badly that he was both interested and cautious at the same time.

“You’re Scarlett?”

“My name is Dane Walters. I go by Scarlett here in the club.”

He nodded, his eyes drifting to my bare ribs for a second before he turned back to study the contents of his glass. “I understand you and Rachel Abbott were close.”

“We’re friends.”

“Can you tell me about the night she was attacked?”

I shrugged, playing with my glass again. “Rhonda called closing. We went into the locker room to change, but Rachel said that the water heater was busted at her place and she was going to take a shower here. I told her to make sure and have Tommy walk her out to her car and then I left. I didn’t find out what happened until Rhonda told me the following day.”

“Did you see any unusual cars in the parking lot? Anyone out of the norm?”

I shook my head. “I was parked close to the door. I just got in my car and left.”

“What about the other girls? Are you close to any of them?”

I shook my head. “I try to keep to myself. I mean, we’re friendly, all of us, but I don’t know about their personal lives and most of them don’t know mine. Just Rachel.”

“Why Rachel?”

I bit the inside of my cheek, a bad habit I thought I’d broken. “She was a customer of mine at a diner downtown. She told me about this place, got me this job. We were roommates for a little while. She’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a best friend.”

He nodded, clearly listening, clearly contemplating what I’d said. It was rare that anyone actually listened to me, anyone actually cared what I had to say. With the exception of Rachel.

“Why this job?”

“It’s good money.”

“There are other ways to make money.”

“Yeah. I could have continued trying to make ends meet with my waitress job that was mostly tips, or I could have gotten a job as a stripper.”

“Instead you give blow jobs to rich men.”

I got up, determined to storm away. It felt like an unfair assessment of me and my job, even if he wasn’t far from the truth. He grabbed my wrist before I could get far, tugging me back toward my stool. Jensen came over, his hand slipping under the bar to where one of those trusty security buttons was located.

“Everything okay, Scarlett?”

“Fine.”

I sat back down and tried to pull my wrist free, but Brent held on to it like it was a lifeline or something. When his fingertip outlined a portion of my inner wrist, I knew what he was seeing and that only added to my determination to pull free of his clutches. He did let go, but it was in such a way that there was no mistaking that he was the one to let go.

“You get that from a client?”

I brushed my hand over the bruises he’d outlined, my heart beating a little harder, though I wasn’t sure if it was his touch or the humiliation of knowing that he now knew my secret shame.

“Not a client.”

“A boyfriend, then.”

There was a certain level of disgust in his voice that made me cringe. “It’s none of your business is what it is.”

“Fair enough.” He stood and tossed a handful of bills on the bar. “I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”

“I guess so.”

He walked off and I couldn’t help but watch him go. But it wasn’t a minute before his seat at the bar was taken and I had to turn my attention to my job. For the first time, I did it with a little blush of embarrassment.

I put in my time, keeping my mind in the game by remembering there was a reason for all this. But, I had to admit, at the end of the day I was relieved that it was over. I changed with the other girls, listening to them talk smack about their clients—some clients I’d worked with and had a decidedly different opinion of—snatching up my bag and leaving before any of the others were even close to ready. I could hear Rhonda’s voice floating to me from down the hall. Her office was tucked behind the locker room in this employee section of the club, a section of the club she didn’t spend a lot of money on. The floors were concrete and the walls were cinderblock, the showers in the locker room like those in a high school gym down to the timer on the water facets. But the fact that she was willing to have her office here, the fact that she’d hired a private security agency to protect us, made up for her cheap streak in my book.

I didn’t see Mr. Stone or any of the other security guards around. I didn’t feel the need to wait. As frightened as I was of the person who was attacking the girls, I knew that I was parked close enough to the door to get out of here before whoever it was could cross the parking lot.

I was wrong, of course.

I stepped out the door and was immediately grabbed from behind. A heavy male arm came around my shoulders, another around my waist. My first thought was that Curtis had figured out where I worked. But then he was shoving me up against the brick wall, knocking the air out of my lungs for a moment.

“You never answered my question the other day, Scarlett,” he hissed near my ear.

“Mr. Wallace.”

“Bill. You can call me Bill.”

I wanted to laugh. This hysterical laughter bubbled up in my chest even as my lungs worked to draw in a satisfying breath. Tears filled my eyes, but not from fear. I was pissed.

How dare he grab me like this?

“I want you in a way I’ve never wanted another woman, Scarlett. Every time you touch me…” He groaned, the sound one of the most disgusting I’d ever heard. “You make me incredibly hard!”

“You need to let me go, Mr. Wallace.”

My tone was low and steady, masking the anger that was vibrating through my body. Every muscle was tense, every inch of me ready to strike out.

“I want you,” he said again, running his hand along my hip like it was his right to do so. But the man made a mistake. He let go of my hands.

I grabbed his crotch, taking a big handful of his hard cock and his pitifully small testicles and twisted. It wasn’t difficult, seeing as how his slacks were loose enough that I probably could have twisted the whole thing a complete 360 around his shaft. He stiffened, his face reddening as his mouth opened on a silent scream. The back door burst open at that moment, Brent Stone and a couple of big, burly guys I’d never seen before rushing out into the cool early morning air.

“You ever touch me like that again, I will castrate you!”

I let the man go and he fell onto his side, bending double to cradle his injured parts. I glanced at Stone, catching sight of fleeting amusement in his blue eyes.

“If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen.”

I moved around Stone and his companions, snatching up my bag from where it fell on the ground and crossing to my car. Stone moved up behind me as I tossed my bag into the passenger seat.

“You were supposed to wait for an escort before leaving the building.”

“I can handle myself.”

“You got lucky.”

I twisted and looked up at him, a little intimidated by how far he towered over me. I leaned back a little so that I could look up at him.

“I know how to take care of myself. I’ve been doing it a long time.”

He snatched up my wrist and turned it so that the bruises were visible despite the body makeup I’d put on them. “I think this proves otherwise.”

I jerked away. “You’re an ass!”

“And you’re stubborn.” He reached into a pocket and pressed a business card into my palm. “Keep this. Call me whenever…” He studied my face for a long second. “And if you really want to learn how to defend yourself, give me a call. We run self-defense courses at Stone Security all the time.”

He really seemed to care. I had to remind myself that he was only doing this because it was what he was being paid to do. Just like Mr. Wallace should remind himself that I only gave him a sensual massage because I was paid to do it.

But I kept his card.

“I’ll think about it.”

I looked up at him once more, something about the closeness of his body, the scent of his cologne, doing things to my equilibrium. But it wasn’t just that. There was something about the way he was looking at me, this tortured sort of attraction, that made my knees grow a little weak.

Get a grip, Dane! You’ve been down this road!

I couldn’t help myself. Looking into those eyes just made my entire bone structure turn to liquid. But then he touched the small of my back and turned me around.

“Be safe, Dane,” he said close to my ear before shoving me into my car.

He walked away the moment the door was closed, strolling over to where his men were holding a clearly defeated Mr. Wallace between them. Just as casually as someone might offer a hand for a shake, he thrust his fist into Mr. Wallace’s ample belly. I stayed long enough to see a few more blows fall, then drove away, my attraction tempered by the violence.

I had enough violence in my life. I really didn’t need more.