Chapter fifteen
She touched me.
Not just me—she touched my cock.
Emotions I’d spent the last ten years burying in the darkness began clawing their way to the surface, destroying everything in their wake.
I wanted to break her, to tighten my hand around her slender little throat and make her beg me to breathe while tears streamed down her pretty face. Everything about her reminded me of everything I hated. My own demons were suffocating me. My own body was betraying me because at the same time, I wanted to rip those shorts off her tight little body and fuck her until she screamed.
And then she apologized. No one in my life had ever apologized to me. These assholes who begged for mercy while I held a gun to their head or a knife to their throat didn’t count.
“I’m sorry.”
It was two words, but she might as well have tossed a lasso around my dick.
One look at her. One hint of her sweet voice, and I was drawn to her, sucked in like a raft in a whirlpool. She kept staring up at me with those big innocent eyes, and all I could think about was how badly I wanted to ruin her the same way I’d been ruined. But then I replayed her apology. It was a vicious cycle on repeat.
My mind was chaos. I had to walk away before it drove me insane.
I could break her.
I would break her.
Stiletto was still packed when I went back. No surprise there. Between customers coming in during their lunch hours, to people coming in after work and those coming after dinner with the wife and kids, there was rarely a “slow” time at the club.
My best girls were on their stages, my best serving staff was handing out drinks, and my best bartender was making them. I didn’tneedto be here. This was typically when I’d be chilling at home with a beer in one hand and a game on TV—baseball, football, basketball, it didn’t matter. They all made me money. Organized competition was an investment, and I liked to keep an eye on my investments.
I stopped by the bar on my way to the stairs. “Send a Shiner Bock to my office.”
The bartender lifted a brow when she looked at me.
Yes, I’m working late. So the fuck what.
“What? We out of beer already?”
She smirked. “Nope.”
“Good.” I started to walk off, then glanced over my shoulder. “Then, make it two.”
There was a loft at the top of the stairs that overlooked the main floor. Sometimes I stood up here with my elbows resting on the steel railing and watched everything going on below. Like a king overseeing his kingdom.Or a god watching his domain.
Tonight, I had no desire to watch.
Tonight, I needed to be alone.
All my betting clients set up accounts online with our platform in Europe. They all used an alias, and their accounts could be accessed twenty-four hours a day from anywhere—phones, tablets, computers. Leo hacked into the Vegas system and got the lines, and I managed everything from a master dashboard. Lucky for me, that made gambling a twenty-four-hour business.
Typically, I left the shit alone at night and checked the breakdown every morning. Right now, I was pulling out my desk chair and firing up my Mac, getting ready for a long night of numbers. Not an ideal way to spend a Tuesday, but it sure as fuck beat the alternative.
The pulse of the club music pounded through the walls of my office.
Thump. Thump. Thump thump.
There wasn’t a song that played that I didn’t recognize by now. This one wasPrivate Showby T.I.
The door opened and Leo walked in with a beer bottle in each hand.
I leaned back in my leather chair.