Captive Heart (Club Risqué Book 6)

Chapter 2

Micah Flynn shook his head as he pondered the neat pile of cardboard boxes next to a green tarpaulin. He could have sworn he’d picked them up just yesterday and placed them into the relevant recycling bins.

Then again, they got through a lot of boxes, given the constant stream of deliveries to the club.

But the tarp? Damn it, he definitely remembered dealing with that, because he had taken a while to decide exactly which refuse collection it belonged in.

Picking it all up once again, he sighed at the sight of a badly chipped whisky tumbler which had also not been placed in the designated recycle container and frowned at its precise placement under a section of drainpipe where it was collecting water, almost as if it had been put there on purpose. But that really was ridiculous.

When he heard a scuffling noise to his left, Micah looked in the direction of the sound, expecting to see a stray cat or another small animal, but nothing was there. As he turned away, he thought he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked back again, there was nothing but the rustling of a bush.

Had anyone been there?

He stood quietly, hands on narrow hips, his curling blond hair lifting in the chilly winter breeze, sending a shiver down his neck. But nothing was out of place, and everything seemed quiet once again.

It must be his mind playing tricks on him. He was overly tired these days and hadn”t been sleeping well lately.

It was the time of year, he knew. It was the same every year.

No matter that he’d moved to a different city—hell, a different coast, even—the weeks running up to the anniversary of Sara”s death still haunted him.

He rubbed his hands over his face and decided to head off to the gym. Maybe he could exhaust himself into sleeping.

Turning away, he didn”t see the slight figure peering out from the shadowy recesses of the small wood on the edge of the industrial area where the club was located, nor the eyes that followed him as he headed for his car and sped away.

The following day,Micah looked down at that same glass once again.

He knew he”d forgotten to move it, but how could it possibly be empty? It had been raining all night and the glass had most definitely been full yesterday. It stood in exactly the same place, so how could it now be different?

And why did he have that prickly sensation at the back of his neck, as if someone was watching him?

Something deeper in the recesses of the double-wide stock doorway caught his eye. He peered from where he was, and squinting his eyes against the gloom, he realised that it was the very same tarpaulin that he had binned the past two days running.

Micah pursed his full lips but made no move to do anything other than to offload the recycling he”d come out to this small, private courtyard to deal with.

There was definitely something going on and he intended to find out what it was… but without drawing any attention to the fact that he was on to it.

Back inside, Micah headed upstairs to a small storeroom on the upper floor.

Hell, storeroom was a stretch of the imagination! Right now, it was more of a kinky junk room, full of stuff that had been dumped there during the conversion of the kink club Perversions into its current upscale incarnation of Club Risqué, the premier and very exclusive East Coast BDSM club Micah managed.

After pushing things to the sides, he finally managed to clear a wide enough walk space to access the small window. The only window on this side, which looked out over the enclosed back courtyard that housed the now defunct stock goods entrance and the industrial sized recycling skips of what had previously been an industrial warehouse.

The twelve-foot square area had been fenced off from the adjoining parking lot to house and hide their unsightly waste management facilities from the wealthy clientele who frequented the club. It did make it kind of isolated, though, since they were the last building on a small industrial estate, enjoying a large, private plot, blocked off behind six-foot-high fences which backed up against an area of woodland right on the outskirts of the city.

The area wasn”t locked up or anything, since it only held refuse and it could be easily accessed from the woods. The doorway into the club had been bricked up on the inside, so there was no opportunity for anyone to break in. All that remained was the four-foot wide by eight-foot-deep recessed space, which had originally been intended to keep any unloaded incoming goods protected from the elements.

When the club had been renovated, a more convenient goods entrance directly into the bar area had been designed. Right next to it was the new private elevator for the upstairs BDSM club, which was used to manoeuvre the bulky kink apparatus, but it was also used by patrons who valued anonymity and didn”t want to parade themselves through the downstairs nightclub and bar.

When he looked out, Micah didn”t see anything amiss, but he was damn sure going to keep his eyes open. That, at least, should be fairly straight forward, since he had temporarily moved into the club after a fire in a neighbouring flat had caused structural damage to his apartment building and he was having to look around for somewhere else to live.

Any other time, he would have bunked in with one of his friends. But with Joel”s wife, Desi, on long term bed rest after an early miscarriage scare, Jake and Charlotte being new parents, Logan and Luanna trying for a family of their own, and Connor and Laurel in the midst of buying their first home together and getting ready to move, he was pretty much out of options.

Of course, there was still Trinity, but considering she was newly settled in a relationship with her ex, he wouldn”t even dream of asking her to put him up… especially in light of their own history as fuck buddies. That would be sure to put unwanted pressure on her budding relationship.

He could have moved into a hotel, of course. The insurance would have covered it, but not for the length of time he wanted to take to make sure he found the right place.

And who the hell wanted to live in a hotel for months? Not him, that was for sure.

Nope, his stuff was all in storage but for a few clothes and necessities, and the club had enough basic facilities for him to slum it for a little while.

Hell, there were over a half a dozen themed playrooms here, all with a huge, luxury bed. He could sleep in a different one every night of the week if he wanted to, though, in reality, he was sleeping on the sofa bed in the employee lounge since it had a kitchenette and bathroom attached. That was all he needed for now.

Micah wanted his next move to be his last, and that meant taking the time to check out the real estate and not rushing into making a decision. With what might well be a prowler lurking around the club, even if it just turned out to be kids messing about, his presence here might actually be a benefit right now.