Seduced By the Billionaire (Filthy Rich Bachelors #6)

1. Ronan

Chapter 1

Ronan

T he throbbing bass pulsed in his blood, making his fingers tingle, his head aching with the neon intensity of the lights. But Ronan Duffy didn’t mind. There were few things that got his blood pumping these days.

And nothing got him going like she did.

The woman in front of him bent at the waist and laid her hands on his knees, the heavy pendulums of her breasts swinging near his face. She tossed her hair back, split ends brushing his chin. She reeked of strawberries and desperation, the musk of cigarettes and sweat and body spray.

She smiled, revealing wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Late twenties, maybe thirty—but a hard-lived thirty. “I’m Desire. Do you want a dance, baby?”

She was pretty enough, with a narrow waist and thick hips, but Ronan shook his head. “No thanks. I’ve had all the excitement I can handle tonight.”

He tucked a bill into her G-string anyway, carefully keeping his eyes away from the bar. He didn’t need to look at her —the one he was here for. He could picture every plane of her face, the sultry curve of her hips, the way her long, toned legs flexed just-so, when she walked across the club.

That was why he always chose this seat. The light caught her best from this angle. Sometimes, he imagined she was watching him, too, peeking from behind those thick lashes, hazel eyes glittering when she caught sight of him.

Keyword: imagined .

But even if it wasn’t imaginary, he’d never do anything about it. No woman wanted a stalker. And that might be precisely what he was.

The woman—Desire—glanced down at the fifty in her thong, smiled at him again, then trailed her fingers over the stubble on his jaw. “If you change your mind…” Then she was off to the next table, the next sticky chair, the next leering asshole.

Ronan leaned back, fingers laced behind his head. The Velvet Cage contained neither velvet nor cages, just pink vinyl seating surrounding an open stage, a long bar area to the right, a door at the far back that led to a dressing room and the owner’s office.

Sometimes, the owner leaned against the jamb just outside the swinging door, watching the main room with beady, snakelike eyes. One day, Ronan would give that man what was coming to him. But Waylon Pierce was a paranoid fuck who never did anything illegal while the public was watching. Even the women who worked here seemed unaware of his criminal activities.

But Ronan felt the man’s guilt in his blood. The man had a criminal history: statutory rape as a younger man, two arrests for sex with underage prostitutes in his thirties. In Ronan’s experience, men like Waylon abused more than they were ever arrested for. He couldn’t prove it— yet —but his gut was rarely wrong.

He reached for the particleboard table and pulled his glass to his lips—whiskey. Nothing like the Macallan M his brother drank, but cheap liquor made him feel more connected to those he’d vowed to protect.

No one here knew that, of course. People in clubs like this stayed away from cops.

His brother turned up his nose at the mere idea of Ronan having a blue-collar job. The Duffys were part-owners of a multi-billion-dollar media conglomerate, but that wasn’t work, no matter what his brother said. “Children of a now-dead billionaire mogul” or “The bastard heirs to O’Connor Media” were closer to the truth.

They didn’t even share the O’Connor name—Duffy, after their mother. When the press ran stories about the “Billionaire Brothers,” they weren’t talking about his father’s second family with his stripper mistress.

Ronan took another slow sip, gazing at the stage. Three women twirled around the poles, all of them topless, one with tassels like bullseyes in the center of each breast, one with glitter on her chest. All of legal age, two in their later twenties.

But one of them was right on the cusp—nineteen? Though it wasn’t illegal, he didn’t like that one bit. He also didn’t like that he could gauge their desperation by how hard they tweaked their nipples for the crowd.

Lots of desperation tonight. Good thing he’d hit the ATM. If his mother had had help, she might not have ended up with his father. Sure, he and his siblings wouldn’t exist without Charles O’Connor… but there were worse things than non-existence.

Ronan and his siblings were never even allowed to engage with his father’s rich-ass society until his father’s legitimate children turned on him. Suddenly, their side of the family had become useful—dear old Dad had thought it beneficial to stack the Duffy voting shares in his favor.

The other men around the stage shifted, shouted, reached out their hands, their sweaty dollar bills, skin flashing in the neon lights—pink, then green, then pink again. Hungry eyes—greedy. As if any of these women thought that the man of their dreams might be the one shoving singles between her ass cheeks.

He knew better. The men who frequented these establishments were losers. That wasn’t self-deprecation—some things were just true, and Ronan knew he was as fucked up as any of them.

The dark-haired woman on the stage gyrated around the silver pole, her blue panties glittering. She caught his eye and touched the tip of her tongue to her top lip, then dropped to her knees. Crawling toward his chair.

She knew he belonged here in the sweaty trenches. No posh ballrooms. No tuxedos. No ten-thousand-dollar bottles of whiskey. Just glistening flesh, choking on too-sweet perfume and acrid smoke, the burn of alcohol heating his blood.

The woman stretched herself across the stage before him like a buffet of skin and glitter. Ronan leaned forward and tucked two tightly folded bills into her G-string. The woman blew him a kiss, then made a move to slide off the front of the stage—presumably into his lap—but Ronan waved her away. She was new, like the woman who’d just propositioned him. The others were well aware that he never bought lap dances.

But none of these women knew he was the one who snuck thousands of dollars into their lockers. They also didn’t know that three women in the last six months had left with him after their shifts, never to return.

Some things were better off kept secret.

The dancer’s eyes tightened. She slunk back and crawled off toward the bearded man at the end.

Ronan watched her go, then dropped his eyes to the whiskey. Almost empty—it was time.

He raised the glass, downed it, then finally turned to the bar, his heart hammering against his breastbone. The woman working behind it had long blonde hair that ended in blue tips, an aqua hue that curled seductively over her tank top straps. Deliciously curvy in a way that always made his mouth go dry, made his cock stiffen despite his best efforts to control himself.

She didn’t take her clothes off for money—never walked around in less than that tank top and the short silver skirt that completed her uniform. But, oh, how he wanted to know what she looked like beneath her shimmery outfit.

Jenny lifted a glass from the bar, her slender fingers grabbing a towel to dry it. Graceful. Like a ballerina—everything a dance. She probably fucked like a ballerina, too, smooth and limber and agile.

Ronan swallowed hard. Though he was definitely an asshole for thinking it, those physical attributes were not the things that had drawn him to her. It was the darkly suspicious glint in her eyes, similar to the one he saw in the mirror. It was the way her full lips stayed tight when she was trying to figure out whether to trust you—and she never trusted anyone. It was the scar, deep and angry, that started at her shoulder and sliced down over her heart as if someone had tried to cut it out of her.

The latter was probably why she was a bartender instead of a dancer: Men didn’t like strippers with scars. It made them feel too real, like actual humans with pain and pasts and dreams.

In contrast, billionaires appeared more real when they were knocked down a peg or two. The public would love to see his scars—would love to see him in a place like this, two drinks deep, pretending not to be too interested in a bartender he’d never have.

She had shown no interest in him—he wasn’t an idiot, even if coming here week after week might make him a masochist. But whether he’d ever have her, Ronan’s gut was certain that she needed him. He just didn’t know exactly why.

Jenny froze, her fingertips unmoving on the rim of the glass. She turned her face his way, slowly, tensely. The light hit her high cheekbones, her large, hooded eyes.

Ronan’s breath caught. For a moment, he imagined what it would be like to close the distance between them, to press his lips to hers, to trace the curve of her waist with his palm. He leaned back instead, masking the heat in his gaze with a lazy, practiced smirk as he raised his glass and tipped it her way— I’ll take one more. Just another smarmy customer, though more attractive than the rest of this brood.

Muscular and broad-shouldered, and though not as tall as his brothers, he had inherited his father’s strong jawline and his mother’s piercing blue eyes and straight aquiline nose. He spent an hour every morning in the gym sweating out last night’s booze so he could function on the measly four hours he usually slept.

Jenny turned to the back wall, where they kept the whiskey. He took full advantage of her divided attention, watching her pour his drink. But in his mind, she was looking right at him, lips slightly parted as he traced his fingers over her hip to the softness between her legs.

She stiffened, glancing over her shoulder toward his chair, but he turned away.

Ronan licked his dry lips, keeping his gaze on the stage, avoiding the bar. Avoiding her eyes. Pretending he was a good man.

His brother Charles was certain that the world was created for men like them—that power came with wealth, that they were above consequences. Ronan had never subscribed to that, which was probably why he’d ended up in this line of work.

His brother was half-right, though: the world was created for the rich. But it was also created for monsters. And a lot of people were both.

Ronan knew that better than anyone.