“How long are you keeping her?”
A plume of white smoke rose from the cigarette in Nixon’s hand.
The entrance to the club waited in silence for the night to begin as my staff readied everything inside for another night of debauchery.
Hiding in plain sight.
Whoever had taken those photographs and posted them online was hiding in plain sight.
It had been all I could think about since the security breach.
When it wasn’t that, it was her.
Truthfully, my little lamb had been more of a distraction than anything, but one I couldn’t seem to keep away from, even while my kingdom lay under siege from an unknown enemy.
Nothing seemed amiss.
Everyone who attended was vetted and approved by the same rigorous standards as they’d always been.
The club had been swept for recording devices and came up clean.
I’d checked the escorts I had working the floor. From the outside looking in, it was as though nothing happened.
I was hesitant to open up to guests but that was the only way to figure out where the leak was. Draw it out. Set a trap. Kill the rat.
“Until I’m done with her,” I said, giving Nixon the reply he seemed intent on getting, staring at me intently.
“The undertaker will want more of an answer than that,” he replied.
I narrowed my gaze on him. “The undertaker will want…” I trailed off, repeating his own stupidity back to him. “What’s gotten into you, Nix?”
“I just don’t see how this ends. You took her to control the undertaker. If you let her go, then what?”
“Then hopefully the jackass will have learned his lesson and won’t want me to take her a second time.”
Nixon pushed the toe of his fine leather boot into the hard packed dirt, rolling a reply around in his mouth, too much the coward to spit it out.
“Get on with it.”
He shrugged his shoulders with the comfort of someone who knew they were allowed to speak freely in my presence.
“If you want to teach the undertaker a lesson, returning her defeats the purpose. He gets what he wants. No doubt he’ll squirrel her away somewhere, someplace far beyond our reach, and then what?”
My chest tightened and a rueful laugh escaped my lips.
This was why I kept him around.
He was wrong in so many ways, but he made a point.
Since getting her to the house, I forgot about her father and the reason, well, the main reason why she was here in the first place.
He was forgettable and insignificant but his daughter was something else. She had a way of climbing into my thoughts, appearing when I least expected. After I touched her, her essence clung to me like perfume that I couldn’t wash off.
And even though Nix did have a point, a swell of defensive anger rose in me.
“I’m not killing her, Nix,” I deadpanned, putting the full weight of my authority into the words, feeling the truth of them like a sling to hold up the weight of a decrepit heart. Sturdy and true.
“Why not?”
He was looking at me, his gravel-colored eyes dead serious. He didn’t see it. See her. Not the way I did. “You never fuck them more than once anyway, boss. Use her, do what you will, and then dispose of her. Or better, send her in pieces back to her father.”
Why did I get the sense he was testing me. Prodding at my resolve. Feeling for cracks.
“She’s more use to me alive.”
My fists clenched. If Nixon wasn’t careful, he’d be the one meeting the hard edge of my knuckles tonight.
But on closer inspection, I could admit my anger wasn’t only at his apparent desire to murder someone who belonged fully to me. It was also because in bringing Emily here, losing myself in her, her father became an afterthought. That made her dangerous. The kind of distraction that could allow a leak at the club to go unnoticed. A spy to slip in between the cracks.
Don’t get involved, Thane’s words echoed in the darkest recesses of my memory. I couldn’t count how many times he repeated those words to me. When he fired the third housekeeper I’d stuck my cock in more than once, reminding me that all women were a means to an end and nothing more.
When he killed the man I spared because he told me he’d just had a baby daughter the night before and he needed to bring formula home to feed her. Thane made me watch as he turned out the dead man’s pockets, finding them filled with nothing more than lint and the heroin he bought instead.
Or the dog I saved from a cougar, the one I called Opie, who later got rabies and almost tore my left ear off before Thane put him down.
Don’t get involved.
“I can’t fuck her if she’s dead,” I muttered, taking a flask from my inside jacket pocket for a swig of smooth bourbon.
Nixon laughed, crushing his cigarette butt underfoot, and lighting up another.
“Nah. Necrophilia ain’t your jam, but I wouldn’t recommend keeping her around either.”
I was going to do whatever I wanted in the end but Nixon’s statement interested me.
“You don’t like her.”
He nodded, shrugging as he puffed smoke from his nostrils.
“You’ve got a whole fountain of pussy, Ruarc. Why fill only one cup?”
I scoffed, appreciating the analogy.
“You haven’t had any other women since you brought her here. Actually, for weeks before that, too.”
I didn’t have to hunt. Women found their way to me all on their own, but I wasn’t looking. Didn’t see them.
Emily was the first woman I’d ever gone out of my way to possess. In my defense, I hadn’t even fucked her yet, how could I get rid of her already?
Maybe when I finally had her, my obsession would relent.
No more obsession meant no more need to keep her. No more distractions.
“You seem a little too preoccupied with what I’m doing, Nix. Do you need another project, something to keep you busy?”
He exhaled another plume of smoke, smirking. “Nah, you run me ragged as it is, boss. I just don’t see the appeal.”
“What? She not your type?”
He lifted a brow. “Not yours,” he corrected. “I thought you liked them a lot more… submissive.”
My hand went instinctively to my eyebrow. Everything was all healed now, but Emily had not come quietly. I didn’t just like submission from a woman. I needed it.
I used their bodies however I wanted, and then afterward I never saw them again. I was already breaking one of those rules for Emily. The other one, she was breaking, and I was letting her.
She must’ve felt that she had to fight me, tell me no. If she gave in to her darkest desires, it would mean I won. It would mean every vile thing she thought about herself was true.
I’d been right about the things she craved, whether or not she was being honest with herself.
No. Emily wasn’t going anywhere. Her utility against her father was secondary to my desire to keep her. Now that I had her, she couldn’t leave. I wouldn’t allow it.
A muscle in my jaw ticked, the need to go back inside, check that she was still there, rushed through me like a live current of electricity.
I wasn’t naive enough to think my little lamb wouldn’t leave if she was given the chance. If I didn’t have eyes on her at every moment, if there was an unmanned window or an unlocked door, she would run for freedom.
I couldn’t give her that option.
An icy heat filled my core as I drew out my phone, tapping shakily over the screen to log in to the app with the live feed of her bedroom.
My mother’s face flashed across my eyes and I furiously blinked her away, hating how even now the memory of her face made something in my gut sour and twist.
She was still young the last I’d seen her. Close to my age, but haggard by a life of drugs and street prostitution. With guarded eyes from so much betrayal.
Always adorned with bruises, split lips, and new marks on her body given to her by her johns or pimps.
I sat in a puddle of my own refuse for days before wandering out from the hovel we called a home, knowing even in my adolescent naivety that she would not be returning.
I should thank her now.
She taught me a valuable lesson the day she decided to let herself be bought and packed like cargo on a ship bound for Europe.
Nothing was too precious, too beloved, to stay.
If I wanted something bad enough, I had to hang on. I had to fight, destroy all other alternatives.
The feed of Emily’s room came into focus on my phone screen, showing sitting on the bed, her gaze on one of the paintings in the room.
“Emily will come around,” I told him.
I passed through the club on my way back through the mansion. Closed and quiet, it seemed almost benign. You could pass it off as an avant-garde performance or exhibition space. That might have been what it was in essence. My mind went to Emily, upstairs.
Three days since I was with her in the courtyard…
Since she let her lust win, using a deadly weapon for her pleasure.
A throb of desire started in my core. I’d never forget the way she felt, her cries, her racing pulse under my fingers.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d fucked my hand so much. I barely made it from laying her in her room to my own quarters before I had my cock out, thrusting into my own palm to find release in a pent up roar that had me spurting ropes of cum over my Persian rug. Clutching the mantle to keep myself standing as dark spots crowded at the edges of my vision.
In the control room, I dismissed security before setting into the man’s seat, bringing up the feed of my little lamb on the largest screen.
Her room and bathroom were fully covered with cameras. I saw everything. She was laying on the bed now, wrapped in a towel, her cheeks flushed from a hot shower. She showered or bathed daily, sometimes more than once.
I had to assume it was a way to pass the time besides sleeping and reading. The books in the room had been placed there mostly for decoration by the staff. Tomes of dry philosophy, history, and a few rare editions of fiction.
If I had my way, I’d lock myself in that room with her and not come out for a week straight. She was already a distraction but going to her whenever the urge struck would be catastrophic. My empire would burn to the ground while I lay buried between her thighs.
Emily licked her lips as she flipped the page on the weathered book in her lap, moving to lie back against the pillows.
Propping the book up with one hand, she reached between the flaps of the towel, pushing her hand between her thighs.
My cock jerked to attention against my thigh.
What did you find, little lamb?
I leaned into the screen as she bent her legs, getting a better angle, her fingers playing between her folds. The towel fell to one side and I toggled the camera view, finding a better angle of my own as I watched her swirl her dainty fingers over her opening.
Her wild eyes flicked to the camera across the room, meeting mine through the screen.
Naughty, naughty little lamb.
I admired my restraint so far but I’d only be able to keep it up so long. She was holding back too. She had needs, dark desires, almost as dark as mine. This proved it.
Just look at her, asking, begging for me to come to her. Taunting me. Teasing me.
I clenched my jaw, watching her head tip back as she pushed her fingers into herself, rubbing her juices over her greedy cunt.
With a growl, I undid my pants, plunging a hand inside to ease the want. My hunger for her lingered just below the surface, restrained enough for me to keep back but I was only so strong.
I’d never tire of watching her.
Emily was mine and mine alone.
How far would I have to bend her to make her into someone capable of loving a monster? I knew, watching her watch me as I spit into my palm and fucked my own hand, gripping the edge of the console, that her body wouldn’t be enough.
Not even owning a piece of her soul would settle my own.
When I told her I wanted everything, I didn’t realize how deeply the meaning ran. I wanted her whole heart. I wanted her to love me like she would never love another person on this vile planet.
When I was finished with her, I’d hand her the key to her freedom and I wanted her to drop it at my feet.
I wanted her to stay.
