13. Chapter 13 – Tamen
Chapter 13 – Tamen
I was either going to fuck her or kill her.
Hell, knowing me, I’d probably kill her while I fucked her. Losing control around Sloane was inevitable, especially when I imagined what it was going to feel like to sink deep into her body for the first time.
It was after ten P.M., and she was two hours late for our training session with the girls at Prism. Last night when I had dropped her off, she told me she quit. And I had called her bluff, but apparently she felt the urge to test my limits on it. As I paced around the open floor of the new stage room, all the different ways I could make her life hell raced through my brain.
I could fire her. But she kind of already quit.
I could demand that she return to work. Though knowing her, she’d refuse.
I could blacklist her, creating lies about her, so she’d be unemployable at any other establishment. But that would only work for other bosses unless they laid eyes on her, because as soon as they saw her in person, they’d hire her on the spot.
And the mere thought of her working somewhere else, for someone else, made me twitchy. Believe me when I say there’s nothing worse than a twitchy maniac. We made terrible decisions.
Mashing my thumb against her contact card in my phone, I pressed send. It wasn’t as if I had a grand plan of what I’d say to her, to entice her to show up, but I was running on pure need.
Carnal need.
The need to prove to Sloane she couldn’t just walk away from me. That I wasn’t disposable.
But the line never even rang before I got an automated message about her number not being in service at that time, and to try my call again.
“Bloody hell.” I hissed, punching out a scathing text message and hitting send, only to have it bounce back as undeliverable. “Oh, Rainbow.” I cracked my neck as I pulled up the social media apps I downloaded simply to stalk her on, but her profile was gone. “Oh, my pretty little Rainbow is playing with fire.”
As I closed out of app after app, only one remained unchecked. Before I even clicked on it, I knew her name would pop up, but seeing her face again finally made the game of cat and mouse that she was playing even hotter.
Last night, I had paid her electronically for the wine she bought at the restaurant and tonight, that seemed to be my only form of communication with her. Any other man might have balked at the idea of paying a woman to pay attention to him. But I was in the business of employing women to do just that, and I wasn’t above it.
Typing out a message to her, I watched as it went through with the transaction.
Blocking me in the name of spite only turns me on. + $200.00
A small red heart icon appeared on the transaction, telling me she fucking saw it, and was toying with me in response. I waited, daring her mentally to respond to me. Yet nothing.
I gritted my teeth and marched into the room where the OG girls were practicing some pole dancing skills that most of them perfected years before they ever slept with their first clients while the new girls we recruited from the strip club watched.
Forgoing greetings, I got right to the point of my visit. “Who here has talked to Ember today?”
The girls paused before Mya, the tattooed girl from the strip club that gave Sloane a lap dance, raised her hand. “I talked to her earlier. We have plans to meet up tonight. Is everything okay?”
“Call her.” I nodded to her phone as she absently picked it up from a chair. “I need to speak with her.”
Her dark eyebrows creased slightly before she shrugged and swiped her screen to dial Sloane’s number.
“Wait a second.” Valentina stepped in, putting her hand on Mya’s arm. “Why can’t you just call her yourself?”
I stared down at the blonde I had come to actually tolerate better than most of the people I interacted with. Expecting her to wither under my menacing glare, she simply raised her eyebrows at me and silently challenged me to make her.
“Because she’s avoiding me.” I replied honestly, feeling every pair of female eyes in the room judging me. “I was a prick.”
“Shocker.” Valentina winked and then let go of Mya’s arm. “But she’s busy getting ready for a gig tonight. The three of us are working it together.”
The hair on the back of my neck rose as the bubbly blonde watched me closely, as if she expected me to have a reaction to that tidbit of juicy information. “She’s working somewhere else instead of working here, at her actual job?” I snapped.
Still, Valentina watched me closely. “I’m not sure of the logistics.” She shrugged and turned away, “But glory holes are kind of her kink.”
Twitchy.
I was very bloody twitchy as I stood in a room full of women who were supposed to fear me simply because I was their asshole boss. Instead, they toyed with my nonexistent morals as I imagined the color of Valentina’s blood across the new white marble flooring.
“Where?”
“I’m not sure of the logistics.” She repeated, taking her place back at one of the poles with a smirk on her lips. “But from what I hear, Ember is the star attraction for the evening. She’s going to make a lot of money tonight.”
I clenched my teeth so hard, my molars cracked as I walked away, barking out over my shoulder. “Go the fuck home. We’re done for today.”
I sent another payment through my phone to the infuriating woman, desperate to reach her before I lost my grip on reality.
If you need money so badly, you should have shown up to your actual job. + $500.00
Immediately, I groaned, knowing that would simply piss her off and make her ignore me harder. So, I sent another one as desperation morphed into something akin to anxiety in my gut.
Call me and I’ll give you another grand. + $500.00
I didn’t wait for her call, knowing it wouldn’t magically come through . Instead, I called the only person who could help me at the moment, even knowing what it would cost me.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” My brother’s annoying gruff voice floated through my ear as I grabbed my keys and jacket from my office.
“I need you to track someone. Immediately.”
“Who?” He asked and then sighed, “Dammit, if you say the Rainbow from last night, my answer is no.”
“Sloane.” I barked, irritated that he called her by the name I used for her in my darkest fantasies. “Her name is Sloane and you know it. I need her location.”
“And why can’t you just ask her nicely for it?” He asked, “What did you do?”
“What I always do.” Snapping in frustration as I got into my car. “Pushed. Avoided. Irritated. Annoyed. And then slammed her up against the wall by her throat.” He sighed through the phone, “Until she dropped me on my ass and held my own knife against my heart.”
“Hmm.” He hummed, intrigued. “That’s not at all what I was expecting you to say, though I can’t say it’s impossible to imagine that scene based on the fire she had in her eyes when she found you last night.”
“Dane!” Cracking my neck, I took a deep breath. “Please.”
“Fine.” He sighed, and I heard him groan as he adjusted himself in his chair, no doubt working late like usual. “But answer one question for me first.”
“What?”
“Is she more than just a girl that works for you?”
“Not currently.” I replied instantly, pleased with his wording and the avoidance I could use to respond.
“Noted. Send me her phone number.”
I hung up and instantly sent her info to him and then forced deep breaths in and out of my lungs as I imagined the situation Sloane was putting herself into out of spite.
Well, to be honest, it probably had nothing to do with me at all. She loved sex. She loved the power it gave her; I recognized that call for control the moment I saw her on stage all those weeks ago.
She wasn’t mine; it wasn’t as if I had a claim on her or told her she couldn’t sell her body the way she had been doing for years. But fuck, if it didn’t irritate my nerves, knowing she was about to let someone else touch her skin when I hadn’t even had the privilege.
Other men were going to use her body, while she used them for money.
Sloane wasn’t a victim, she wasn’t stuck somewhere in life, forced to make these terrible decisions to survive.
Sex was her drug.
Money was her high.
Power was her kryptonite.
And she was my fucking antidote to madness. Her ignoring me and cutting me out was driving me insane, and she knew it. She just didn’t know what it would cost me to lose control when it finally happened. Sloane didn’t understand that someone would get hurt.
My phone pinged with a text from Dane, clicking on the link gave me a live tracker to her phone’s location in real time.
“Gotcha.” I whispered to myself as I dug deep into the venue she was at and the event going on tonight.
Lucky for me, I knew the man running the event. Unfortunately for me, he had been trying to get access to my particular skills for years to benefit his own business ventures. The man wanted me to kill off his biggest competition in the cocaine trade on the east coast.
Up until that exact moment, I had no interest in trading my skills for his fat wallet.
But now; now I had the incentive needed to play ball.
No one else was going to touch my pretty little Rainbow tonight.
But I sure as fuck was going to.