The application email on the screen was one of many I received every week for entry to Delirium. The sender was asking for a private meeting with me to discuss membership in the club. Like the others, this lawyer had gotten a word-of-mouth recommendation from a member and they wanted in.
As if it were that simple.
Delirium was at capacity. There would be no draw if the club wasn’t as exclusive as it was. Sometimes they tried to sweeten the deal, buy their way in, adding a little gratuity on top of the membership fee.
It didn’t work.
The best I could offer to the impatient ones was the one-time event package that went for a cool $250,000. That booked the space, the women, catering, and use of any and all equipment including any special requests.
Someone knocked at the door, then pushed it open. Not even the housekeepers had that kind of freedom. I didn’t need to look away from the screen to know it was Nixon.
“What is it?”
“You’re not going to like this.”
“Then spit it out.”
“It’s the undertaker,” he started. “Don’t know what’s gotten into him, but he’s asking for more money.”
My hand reached absently for the heavy, brass paperweight shaped like a lion’s head on my large, oak desk.
“Is he offering new services?” I snapped, an annoyed edge making its way into my voice.
“Nah, he’s just greedy.”
Having Snow’s services at my beck and call was too convenient to want to give up, but that didn’t mean the man couldn’t be replaced.
“How much does he want?”
“A twenty percent increase,” Nixon reported. I squeezed the brass paperweight in my fist, its jagged edges pressing into my skin.
Money was no object, respect, however…
Snow was even more the fool than I thought he was.
“No,” I decided.
“I’ll tell him.”
“No. I’ll do it.”
I dropped the paperweight, feeling dull points of pain where its edges dug into my skin. Nixon frowned, confusion furrowing his brow. “You sure? I’m happy to do it, boss.”
Some messages were better communicated in person. Punctuated by pain.
“He needs a reminder of who’s in charge.”
“I’ll come with.”
I shook my head, coming around at the desk.
The undertaker was no threat, even when he was making demands. He was discreet and efficient, but he wasn’t intimidating. Not a fighter. He felt big enough to ask for more money because he wasn’t asking in person. He wasn’t asking me to my face.
“No need.”
“At least take your piece,” Nix urged, indicating my glock still in its holster atop my desk. I was not going to need it and bringing it would only increase my chances of injuring him badly enough to prevent him from doing the job I needed him to do.
The fucker wasn’t asking for more money because he thought he could get it or even because of some misguided belief that he deserved it. He was testing his boundaries like a child. Seeing how far he could push, what he could get away with.
I sighed, taking the gun if only because I knew flashing a piece would help get my point across even if I didn’t intend to use it.
There was still a sliver of sun in the sky as I pulled into the gravel drive, parking up directly in front of the building, below the long darkened windows set high above the ground.
“Bright and early tomorrow,” the undertaker’s voice echoed from the back of the building as I stepped out of the car.
My teeth clenched and I let the door close silently behind me, listening to light footsteps retreat down a footpath behind the mortuary.
I cut into the woods along the edge of the property, dried leaves and twigs crunched under my boots. They sunk into the damp soil on the banks of the creek that snaked around the back of their property and I stopped dead in my tracks, sinking in the soft ground as I watched her walking alone down a path deeper into the trees.
Her long jet-black hair was back in a ponytail. Wearing loose jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt, she walked alone, and I followed her like a shadow in her wake.
A small cabin crouched in a copse of trees at the edge of the property, just before the trees thickened into a forest too dense to traverse.
You’d never know it was there unless you’d come back here yourself.
The old man was hiding more than a few secrets from me and for good reason.
I cut deeper into the woods as she went inside, peering over her shoulder first as if she’d heard me.
The windows lit like beacons against the encroaching night as she filled the sleepy cabin with life. I watched, sinking low in the brush.
My vision tunneled for any sight of her and when her face appeared in the window my breaths shallowed. Desire surged through my muscles, feral in its intensity. I wet my lips, watching every tiny shift in her expression, finding worry in the crease between her brows. A tightness around her smooth jaw.
Sharply, she whipped her head to the left, looking right at me, but not seeing me. The skin around her eyes crinkled as she squinted to see into the shadows, her shoulders heaving with a sigh.
The gulf between us might as well have been ten miles wide. My fingers itched to touch her. To trace the strong line from the base of her delicate ear to her chin, lower to the ridge of her collarbone, lower still.
Everything inside me seized, stiffening in anticipation of something I wouldn’t allow myself. Not yet.
I moved to the front of the cabin, crouching next to an oak tree to get a better vantage point. With every curtain and blind open to the night, I watched unimpeded as Emily Snow pulled the gray shirt she was wearing over her head and turned, offering me only a glimpse of her perky breasts from the side before she vanished.
I slammed my palm into the rough bark of the tree, sucking air through my teeth.
Little lamb wasn’t so innocent.
She knew.
She knew I was out here.
If not me, then she knew something was. The trepidation in her expression at the window was unmistakable. I pawed myself through my pants, clenching against the start of an aching hard on.
She knew she was being watched but still she took her top off in the window? She wanted me to see.
I rose to my full height and stalked around the porch to the steps, climbing up, keeping close to the wall as I found a better view, one that allowed me to see deeper into the little cabin.
A savage want coursed through my veins, tightening my muscles. I reached over and tested the door handle, finding it locked. It wouldn’t stop me if I decided to go inside, take from her what my body craved.
I waited, hating every second I was reduced to this… this… stalker in the dark. Lusting after a girl. A girl who couldn’t have been older than twenty when I was nearing thirty.
I was no cradle robber. No pathetic creep. And yet I couldn’t seem to make my booted feet leave her front porch, starving for another glimpse of her snow white skin.
It was a few minutes before came back into view, wrapped in a towel, a trail of steam chasing her from a bathroom just out of sight.
She paused for a second then swept her gaze to the left again. A slow smile spread over my lips, thinking I’d been caught, but she looked right through me, the shadows on her porch too deep to see me through their darkness.
I could see her in the corner of the other window frame, hair wet, stuck to her skin like ink on white paper.
She held the towel to her chest. I wanted to strip her down and mark up every inch of that skin so that anybody who saw her knew she was mine. I opened my pants, pulling my cock out, jerking it until it was full and throbbing. I spit into my hand, fucking it as she tiptoed closer, her lips parting in fear as she tried to make out my shape on the other side of the window.
Such a curious little lamb.
It intrigued her, that feeling she couldn’t put her finger on. That sense that danger was just around the corner, close enough to bite her.
She might not have been able to see me, but she could feel me, unable to shake the sensations making her thighs press beneath her damp towel.
I pumped harder, my cock a stiff rod now. Drop the towel, I thought. My breath was ragged, zeroed in on her as I fucked my hand. Drop it.
She shifted back slightly, giving her head a shake before releasing her arm from her chest. The thick white fabric fell, revealing every bare inch of her slender curves.
My breath caught in my throat. I fucked my hand harder, the friction a sad substitute for her hot, wet cunt. Her skin was buttery vanilla. Dusky pink nipples sat on her round, generous breasts. A groomed patch of black hair sat on her mound, right above the place I would have killed a man to bury my face right now.
She was there, and then she was gone, turning to disappear around the corner into the bathroom. I closed my eyes, the image of her seared behind my eyelids. My hand slipped over my cock until I exploded, spilling my seed on her threshold, marking my territory.
I shoved my cock back into my pants and stepped down from the porch, throwing myself to the edge of the woods. Away from her. Away from every dirty, rotten, cruel thing I wanted to do to her.
I wanted to ruin her. Ruin her so fucking fully–so completely–that I was the only man who would ever know how to put her back together again.
The crisp night air nipped at my lungs on a shaky inhale.
I wanted her and I was going to have her, it was only a matter of when.
A devious idea lit like the strike of a match in my mind, flaring into a burning fire. Her father seemed to need a lesson in submission. Maybe his daughter could help me teach it to him.
