2. Lorcan
LORCAN
She stares at me like I’ve asked her to cut her own throat.
It amuses me.
Fear tells the truth faster than loyalty ever does.
Her fingers tighten around the strap of her cheap bag.
Her coat is wet from the rain, her blonde hair is damp and clinging to her face, and her bright blue eyes are furious, but also scared.
She looks out of place in my club. Too soft for the walls.
Too broke for the carpet, and too fucking alive for the kind of room she just stumbled into.
A mistake, maybe.
I don’t trust mistakes.
Tiernan stands near the wall, blood on his knuckles and impatience on his face. He wants to throw her back into the alley and be done with it. That’s his answer to everything. Remove the problem. Break the problem. Bury the problem.
I prefer to know what the problem is first.
“What’s your full name?” I ask.
She swallows. “Elle Langley.”
“Who sent you?”
“Mack.”
“There’s no Mack here.”
“I know that now,” she snaps, then immediately pales, as if her own mouth betrayed her.
Tiernan takes one step toward her. I hold a hand up.
Her eyes dart straight to it. I’ve removed the tape from the ring, but I haven’t iced up yet. I’ll pay for that later. Right now, I’m more interested in this woman who has stumbled into a restricted and highly illegal bare-knuckle fighting club.
“How did you get in?”
She blinks, and her gaze shoots to the double doors. “The doors were open.”
“No, they weren’t,” I counter.
“Yes, they were,” she argues. “How else would I get in?”
“Someone let you in. Who was it?”
“No one. I pulled the handle, and it opened.”
I study her face while she speaks. People tell lies with their eyes, their throat, their hands. She looks ready to bolt, ready to cry, ready to hit one of us with that cheap bag if she gets desperate enough.
She doesn’t look trained.
That doesn’t mean she isn’t useful to someone who is.
“I’m still waiting for that dance,” I say, crossing my arms and giving her an expectant stare.
“I’m not stripping for you,” she says, her cheeks going bright red.
“Yes, you are.”
“Absolutely fucking not. Not here.”
“Where then?”
She looks startled for a second and then chews the inside of her lip. “Nowhere. I don’t owe you shit.”
“You walked into a place you have no business being. You are trespassing,” I state. “You can either dance your way out of this situation, or Tiernan here will enjoy showing you what happens to petite, blonde trespassers.”
She gulps and stares at Tiernan again. He grins.
He wouldn’t touch her without at least a signal of consent, but she doesn’t know that.
“So what is it, Elle?”
She looks from me to my brother, then back again. Her chin lifts by a fraction.
“No.”
The word lands clean. Small, but not weak.
Tiernan laughs under his breath.
I don’t move. I let the silence stretch until most people fill it with panic, excuses, names, money, anything they think might save them. Elle Langley gives me none of it. Her hands tremble, but she keeps them on that bag strap and stares at me as if I’m the worst thing she’s ever seen.
Maybe I am.
“No?”
“No,” she repeats. Her voice shakes this time. “You can threaten me all you want. I’m not doing that.”
She stands there soaked through, terrified, cornered by two men who could ruin her entire life before midnight, and she still refuses.
I step closer. She holds her ground until there’s nowhere left to go. The wall keeps her upright more than her spine does, but she doesn’t shrink.
“You think that is bravery?” I ask.
Her chin lifts, but the tremor in it ruins the defiance.
“I’m leaving,” she says. “That’s what it is.”
Tiernan grunts. “Wrong answer.”
I keep my attention on her. She flinches at his voice, not mine. Interesting. She fears both of us, but she understands I hold the leash.
“You think leaving fixes this?” I ask.
“It fixes it for me.”
“You saw my face.”
She gives me a look that says she thinks I’m a dimwit. It only hardens my cock. “Everyone knows your face.”
“You saw the fight.”
“I saw a man get punched in the head. In London. Not exactly breaking news.”
Tiernan shifts again, his temper pressing against the room. I don’t look at him. If I do, he’ll take it as permission.
Elle notices and her breath catches. She grips the bag tighter, knuckles pale, body braced for pain that doesn’t come.
That pisses me off for reasons I don’t care to examine.
I reach out and grip her chin lightly, forcing her head back so I can look her in the eyes. “You saw more than that, and you know it,” I say, my tone dropping.
She swallows visibly. “I didn’t see anything.”
I smirk. “Good answer, but I don’t know you. I sure as shit don’t trust you. Who are you really, Elle Langley?”
“Nobody. A fucking stripper who got lost.”
“Prove it.”
She blinks and realises I’ve cornered her. She now has no choice but to strip for me and Tiernan or face consequences that she has no idea exist yet.
“Fine,” she says, making a decision. “But not here. At least give me music and a fucking pole.”
The corner of my mouth lifts up. “Done. Go back downstairs.”
She runs her tongue over her teeth but straightens up as Tiernan opens the velvet door and makes a gesture for her to move her arse.
She moves stiffly, her tight little body brushing past me as she goes through the door and down into hell. She is afraid, but she won’t show it. I admire that. I follow at a measured pace and let Tiernan bring up the rear.
The club has recovered from the interruption to the illegal gambling and fight.
Men in tailored jackets cluster near the ring, drinks in hand, eyes too sharp.
Women sit in dark booths with jewels at their throats and boredom on their faces.
Money makes people think they’re untouchable. Violence reminds them they’re not.
When Elle appears at the bottom of the stairs, heads turn.
She notices, but they aren’t looking at her. They’re looking at me.
Her step falters.
I move behind her and lower my voice. “Keep walking.”
She does.
The man I put down has been removed.
I signal to Darragh at the bar. “Music.”
His eyebrows rise when he sees the girl, but he knows better than to ask questions. The bass shifts, lower, slower, built for skin and sin. Elle hears it and goes rigid.
“Get into the ring,” I say.
“There’s… there’s no pole.”
“You don’t need a pole.”
She licks her lips and moves forward. She is running on pure adrenaline and fear.
Elle ducks under the ropes and drops her bag on the floor, unzipping her coat and peeling it off.
She drops it over her bag. She is dressed in jeans and a tight black top.
The room goes quieter than it should, but not because men want to watch a pretty blonde take her clothes off.
Men always want that. This is different.
This is attention sharpening. This is interest turning pointed.
Elle feels it too. Her fingers pause at the hem of her top, and the colour drains from her face.
I look past her.
At a booth near the far wall, Alex Snowden sits with a glass in his hand and three men behind him. He is watching her too closely. When he sits forward, a shot of possession shoots through me.
Tiernan notices him as well. “Lorcan.”
“I see him.”
Elle turns her head, following the direction of my attention.
She sways her hips, getting the rhythm of the music and turns back to face me.
I move closer to the edge of the ring as she pulls her top over her head.
Her small tits are covered up by a black lace bra that I want to rip off her.
The club is dark, the beat of the music thudding through the floor, but all I hear is the shift in her breathing.
She doesn’t dance like she wants to be watched.
She dances like she needs to survive it.
A professional can fake desire. She can fake confidence.
She can fake a smile that makes men empty their wallets and call it worship.
Elle does none of that. She moves with skill, but her fear bleeds through every controlled roll of her hips, every slow turn, every lift of her arms above her head.
She doesn’t look at the room. She looks at me.
I let her. I want her attention on me, not on any other man, especially not on Snowden.
Her jeans sit low on her hips, soaked darker at the hems from the rain. Her skin is pale under the club lights as she undoes the button on her jeans before realising she still has her boots on. She pauses and bends down to take them off in the sexiest way she can, which isn’t very.
It’s awkward. Human. Too real for this room.
Elle gets one boot off, then the other, pushing them aside with her foot. She straightens, breathing harder now, and reaches for her jeans again. Her hands shake when she pulls the zip down.
Snowden’s attention doesn’t move from her.
Mine doesn’t move from him for two seconds too long.
My breathing slows down as Elle slides her jeans down her thighs, inch by inch. She keeps her eyes on me, cheeks flushed, fear written all over her. Black lace covers her hips. Nothing flashy. Nothing staged for men with money and no souls. She looks underprepared, exposed, angry.
She steps out of the jeans and kicks them toward her coat.
The music keeps moving. So does she.
Her body knows what to do even when her head is screaming at her to run. She turns away from me, then back, hands moving over her own waist with confidence, with playfulness. She reaches up to unsnap her bra, and her tits fall free. I move closer, my eyes on her peaked nipples that I want to bite.
“Come closer,” I murmur, not expecting her to hear me over the music.
She does, or she lip-reads, and moves towards me. Her tits jiggle as she moves.
Tiernan is beside me in a flash, his eyes roaming over her exposed body. He wants her as much as I do.
Possession cuts through me again, dark, deceptive and dangerous.
Elle sees Tiernan beside me and falters. It’s small, a catch in the movement, but I see it. Her throat works. Her hands drop from where they’d been moving over her skin, and for one raw second, the performance breaks completely.