Chapter Three
Ian
Light streamed in through the shades in Ian’s room and he was tempted to roll onto his stomach and drag the pillow over his head. It was seven o’clock in the fucking morning and there was no goddamn reason for him to be awake at this godforsaken hour when he’d been up until three.
But his body almost never let him sleep late. Seven o’clock, every morning like clockwork, it was allGet outta bed, you lazy fuck. Get your run in before you turn into a potato.
What was so terrible about potatoes anyway? People fucking loved potatoes. Fries, chips, hash browns. And yet.
He’d go down to the club after he showered, make sure everything was cleaned up from last night. Although spankos didn’t tend to be their messiest clientele—except for when it was finger-paint or craft night for the littles and some Nobel prize winner had picked a project with glitter. Fuckers. He’d be finding sparkles in his floggers for months. To be fair, though, it was mostly him who couldn’t resist the lure of a good glitter craft. Whatever, there had been no glitter last night, thank fuck.
So he’d give a once-over with their hardcore cleaning solution and make notes for Huds about anything that needed to be repaired or replaced though he hadn’t heard about anything getting busted last night. Ry would go down to his office later and deal with balancing the books from last night’s event, run the cash to the bank to deposit.
And now Ian’s mind was composing the list of things he needed to do before Jethro, Gunnar, Eric, and Gideon arrived for the poker game tonight. Including some plain old dicking around because man they’d been busy lately. Which was great, but sometimes you just wanted to binge some Netflix with a couple beers or thrash your enormous roommate at foosball.
First things first, going for a goddamn run because unlike Ryker, he didn’t like running in the dark. Ian loved the guy but sometimes he had to wonder if Ry wasn’t actually a vampire. Dude hardly ever went out during daylight hours.
Okay, alright. Let’s go, Galbraith.
Ian swung his legs out from his covers and stood, cracking his back with a couple stretches, and snagged a pair of shorts from his drawer. It wasn’t exactly balmy outside, but he’d get warm after a mile or so.
Truth of it was, now that he’d given himself a few minutes, he felt energized. He usually did after he got to play. And he’d had a lot of fun with a lot of women last night. Plus he’d gotten to read stories to the littles which was always such a fucking ego trip. They looked at him like he was an Oscar-winning actor instead of someone who’d been given the role of second lobster in the elementary school nativity play and just liked to do some funny voices.
Out in the kitchen, he slammed some water, filled up his camelbak and bolted a banana. With one last longing look at the couch, he headed out. Now or never.
Ian jogged down the steps from the loft to street level, plotting his route. If he wanted to do ten miles, he could head up Pine Street, circle around Bishop Park, and then—
What the fuck?
There was a heap of human at the entryway to Hive. A small one. That’s the only way Ian could describe it. Because it—she, judging by the floral print of the sorry excuse for clothes she had on—was huddled up against the wall.
Yeah, they sometimes had homeless people crash in the doorway to the club, but they were always far, far better equipped than this girl. They usually had a cart, blankets, sometimes even a dog. The unwritten rule was that the guys offered to call a shelter for them, handed them twenty bucks, maybe made them a sandwich and offered to let them shower in the club if they weren’t in a hurry to get somewhere.
This girl though… No blankets, no cart, not even a cardboard mat to sit on. She was wearing a dress for fuck’s sake, and no goddamn shoes. What the hell? Had she been robbed? Christ, was shedead? Well, he could at least figure that part out before he tried to rouse his partners.
He approached the heap slowly in case she rolled over and saw him. Didn’t want to scare the bejesus out of the poor thing by looming over her. He was no Hudson, but he was grazing six feet and she looked tiny. When he was a couple yards away, he said, “Excuse me?”
No response.
As he looked closer, he noticed bruises all over her. Not the fun kind people showed off at the club—those were beautiful blooms of dark purple and blue verging on black on buttocks and thighs and other fleshy places, lovingly and meticulously applied marks that would fade into greenish-yellow skin that said it was time for another playdate.
These contusions were all the fuck over, in places people weren’t meant to be bruised for entertainment. And her feet were a fucking mess—soles covered in a mixture of blood and dirt and—shit, was that a piece of glass sticking out of her arch?
Ian’s stomach roiled and his infamous temper ignited but he swallowed that. He took a few more steps, his mind racing with a thousand questions. Who was she? Where had she come from? What the hell had happened to her? How long had she been here? Not more than a few hours had passed since Ry would’ve locked up around three and no way would he have missed her.
“Excuse me, miss?”
She didn’t move, not a twitch of a muscle, and he felt invisible. He was almost touching her now and raising his voice to a little below a shout.
“Excuse me, miss? You okay? Can you hear me? I—”
Okay, he could see the expansion and contraction of her ribs so she wasn’t dead, but if she wasn’t responding to him when he was practically on top of her, she wasn’t in good shape, not at all.
Finally he put a hand on her shoulder and she still didn’t open her eyes or anything. Fucking hell. And what a stupid fuck he was for not bringing his phone.
Not that he ever did on runs. It had never been a problem and he really hated the way it bounced around in his pocket. Hudson had gotten him one of those arm-band thingers and he should fucking use it because—well, because apparently they might have the little goddamn matchstick girl show up unconscious on their doorstep.
Ian shook her gently, and finally,finally, that got her to turn over. Turn was a strong word, more like half-jerk, half-fall. She opened her eyes, startled, and tried to push herself further into the corner of the doorway.