Chapter 26
C assie
Moans pierced the walls of my nest, and I flexed for my headphones to continue the movie I’d just started. Around me, in the bedroom I’d taken ownership of, my possessions were somewhat neatly arranged.
My duvet. A suitcase of clothes. A borrowed rack to hang cute dresses on.
Arran had grumbled when I informed him I was staying over, but he hadn’t asked questions, and I’d moved into a room on the cam girls’ floor. Here, I was never lonely, because those bitches worked like a boss, all night long. I always had company, even if it got a little noisy if someone took the room next door. The women and men who fucked themselves or each other in front of cameras for paying viewers were super welcoming, and vocal.
My phone beeped. I read the screen then jumped up, sliding my feet into a pair of flip-flops which paired nicely with my pyjama trousers and tank top. No one apart from maybe a security guard or two would see me go to the warehouse’s back door and collect the dinner I’d ordered.
My stomach rumbled. I had a feast of Chinese food only a few minutes away. Far too much for one person, but that hadn’t stopped my ordering finger.
Slipping from my room, I waved at Dixie, one of my favourites, who stood completely naked in the corridor, the door to a bedroom open in front of her.
“Cassie, get a load of this.” She slanted her eyes at the room.
I skipped over. “What?”
Dixie was such a gossip. I lived for her scandals.
She jabbed a finger at the room, and I peered inside. On the screen at the end of the bed, the picture had frozen. It displayed her butthole, huge and unmoving, and perfectly clear.
I cackled then crammed my hand to my mouth. “Oh my God.”
“I know! It’s been like that for minutes, and the guy I was talking to hung up on me. He was a new client, too. This is just awkward.”
From the other end of the hall, a woman in a black skeleton t-shirt hustled down, a headset nestled in her hair and a tablet in her hands. Tech Support, I gathered.
“Let’s take a look.” She bustled into the room, not blinking an eye at the giant asshole staring back at her.
Dixie sighed and reached for a bag tucked inside the door. She stepped into underwear then clipped on a bra. “Take your time erasing my butt. I’m off-shift now anyway.”
“Heading home?” I asked.
We moseyed to the lift together. I had been planning to take the back stairs but now wanted a chat.
“Nope.” She popped the P sound. “I’m stripping for an hour then I’ll be on my back all night in the brothel.”
The lift light illuminated.
I pondered her evening. “Dixie, how did you get into this work?”
“You really don’t want to know that, hun.” At my head tilt, she wrinkled her pretty nose. “Nearly all of us here were forced into sex work at a young age. It’s my career now, and I love it, but I wouldn’t wish it on a girl who had other choices.”
She poked my shoulder.
“My ma was a sex worker,” I explained. “It’s not like I’m new to the concept.”
Nearly all the jobs in the warehouse revolved around sex or customer service. I didn’t like being nice to people, so sex work had been on my mind. I’d never met my mother, but she’d done the same job as Dixie. I was literally made of that career.
“I mean choices over how to lose her virginity and who owns her body,” she added.
“Oh.”
“You’re the most adorable thing from your button nose all the way down to your cute petite feet. The clientele here would eat you up and spit you out. They’d degrade you, use every part of you, then pay the bill and walk away without even a thanks. It’s not something you want to get used to, more you just don’t care because worse has happened. This is the only place I ever worked where I get to set the terms.”
The lift arrived, and we got in.
“Sorry for what you’ve been through,” I said.
Dixie pressed the button for the ground floor. “I like the person I am now, but it took a lot of work. Alisha helped me.”
We descended one level, and the doors opened again, revealing the operations manager herself.
“Speak of the devil and then she appears,” Dixie said with a grin.
Alisha stepped inside, her head down, her expression distant as if she hadn’t heard Dixie speak. She wiped wet eyes with the sleeve of her baby-pink dressing gown, and my heart swelled. I didn’t know her anywhere near as well as other members of her staff, but I’d liked her when we’d talked.
“Going down? Ah, it’s already lit,” she mumbled.
Dixie took her elbow. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, hi, Dixie. I’m fine.”
“You’re not, I can tell.”
I slid to the side. Took out my phone so I didn’t appear nosy. They were obviously friends as well as coworkers, though I’d heard Dixie warn other girls about Alisha’s harsh judgement if they were caught slacking.
Alisha blew out a breath, her blonde fringe floating. “I don’t have time for a breakdown. Not at work.”
Dixie shook her lightly. “Work can wait five minutes if you need a shoulder to cry on. We’ll hole up in the changing rooms.”
Alisha dropped her voice to a pained whisper. “I can’t stop. It’s nothing. I’m just missing R a lot.” She put emphasis on the initial.
Who the heck was ‘R’? The only man I knew around here with that initial was Riordan.
“Heard he was thrown out,” Dixie whispered back.
Yeah, not Riordan, then.
Alisha raised a dainty shoulder. “It wasn’t fair to him, but I respect Arran’s decision. I miss him so much it’s killing me, and it’s made me realise something. I like him. He wants someone to love, not that he asked me, but I made it clear I wasn’t going to settle down. I think I was wrong.” She hugged her arms. “He’s out there cosying up to another gang, and I can’t even speak to him. He’s going to die, and I’ll never see him again.”
The lift doors opened. The two women exited, and I trailed after, still pondering the identity of Alisha’s mystery man. I knew Convict had been sent to join the Four Milers, so ‘R’ had to be his real initial.
Almost immediately, someone darted over to her. “Alisha, sorry to leap on you. We’ve had a couple of people call in sick. The bar upstairs is down a bartender, starting in an hour.”
Alisha pinched the spot between her eyes. “It never ends.”
I scooted on over, the opportunity presenting itself nicely. “Alisha? If ye need a stand-in, I’m available.”
She twisted to look me over, approval over my revealing tank top then a pretty scowl at my pyjamas.
“I’ll change, obviously,” I added.
Slowly, she inclined her head. “If you’re willing, I won’t say no.”
I took a brief instruction then danced away to fetch my food. Selling my body was the extreme option for working here, but serving drinks would give me a fly-on-the-wall view of how the place operated.
Trotting down the steps, I hit the basement level. Waved to the guard at the back desk who was leaving, a vape concealed in his hand. Come Friday, this floor would be out of bounds. Arran’s sex-chase game would be underway, and I intended to watch but from a distance.
The door popped open, and I smiled at the dude on the other side with a food bag in his hand.
“Cassie?” he asked.
“That’s me. I tipped on the app.”
“Much appreciated!”
Beyond him, a meaty engine revved.
I stilled.
Directly across the car park, a big man sat astride his motorbike, black helmet on and his visor down. Riordan. The beam from the bike’s bright headlight spilled through the metal fence to the riverbank, but there was also a downlight that pooled around his feet. A pretty blue colour. So fancy. He peered around and backed out of his space, but then his gaze swung my way. He stopped moving, then with a fluid motion, killed the engine and hopped off, his heavy boots thudding on the concrete.
He’d seen me. Oh, shite.
“The food,” I gasped to the delivery man.
“Not many give a tip because they think it goes to the bosses and not the workers,” the delivery guy chattered on. Glacier-slow, he reached for his insulated bag. “It doesn’t, though. Not like in restaurants or pubs. All of it goes to us, minus a cut to the app but that isn’t much.”
“That’s great. If ye could just…” I made ‘hurry’ hands.
After my manic moment with the tracker, my impulses had calmed some. I’d tried to limit how often I checked his location, knowing that way lay dragons. My oversight cost me now.
With a casual stroll, Riordan appeared behind the man, right as he was pulling out the bag. “I’ll help Cassie with that.”
“Such a gentleman!” Delivery Douche handed it straight over. To him.
I dropped my expression to a glower. The courier walked away, whistling, and Riordan stared down at me, my bag on his outstretched finger like the amount of food I’d bought didn’t weigh a ton.
“Can I please have my dinner?” I asked.
“After we’ve had a chat,” he said.
Heaving a sigh, I turned around, keeping the door open for him with my foot. “Fine.”
He followed me inside, a huge tree of a man in leathers and dark energy. “Glad to hear you can be reasonable.”
“You’re holding my food hostage. What choice do I have?”
The security guard hustled back down the corridor to his desk, not even glancing at Riordan.
“At least raise the visor,” I grouched when we rounded the corner.
“You know I’ll get kicked out if I’m seen.”
“Oh no, ye guessed my plan.”
We entered the back stairwell and climbed. The scent of my food swirled under my nose, and I briefly considered snatching it and running. Except if I dropped it in the scuffle, I’d cry. If I touched Riordan in the fuss, I’d probably lose my mind, too.
The stairs took us up to the fifth floor. Through the doors, we entered the now-quiet corridor, and Riordan finally slid up the reflective visor covering his eyes. I ignored my spike of lust at how stupidly pretty he was, even in the narrow view I’d been gifted.
My crush’s green eyes had featured in my dreams.
Along with other parts of him.
Resisting a melt into a puddle of lust, I prowled down to my room. Inside, I gazed around as if my obsession with him had somehow become evidenced by a detective’s wall of furtively taken photos and local maps. Luckily for me, it was all concealed in my head and my phone.
Riordan kicked the door closed behind him then set down my food and removed his helmet entirely, his leather jacket following to reveal a close-fitting black t-shirt that stretched over his thick biceps. He ruffled his messy brown hair, finger-combing it into a shape that had no right to look so artful.
Annoyed, I kicked off my flip-flops and toed the floor. “Can I have my dinner now?”
The biker folded his arms, taking a wide-legged stance that tall men sometimes did to lower their height when talking to someone shorter. My brother, Sin, did it with Lottie, his wife. For some reason, that endearing gesture chipped a hole in my frosty exterior.
“Not until we clear a few things up. Did Moniqua put you up to damaging my bike?”
I blinked at him. “Your girlfriend who lurched from the shadows earlier like a rancid ghoul?”
“Not my girlfriend, but yes, the same ghoul.”
Not his girlfriend? My belly butterflies did a happy dance. “I’ve never even spoken to her, and I wasn’t trying to hurt your motorbike.”
His brow furrowed. A week or so ago, I’d watched Divergent and lusted over Theo James. Riordan had the same quiet, brooding confidence. He was way more handsome, too, which I blamed for why I did stupid things around him.
“Then you’re not trying to do me harm?” he pressed.
“Never.” My stomach rumbled. I clamped my hands to it. “Please, can I eat? We can share.”
He worked his lips, then said, “For the sake of getting answers, sure.”
“Shoes off, and ye can sit on my bed.”
I grabbed the board from the floor that I’d been using as a table and set it on the mattress, reaching to claim the white takeaway bag from a still-scowling Riordan. Even so, he undid the snap-lock buckles of his biker boots and positioned himself cross-legged opposite me. One by one, he helped me line up the different cartons of food.
A little bolt of some unnamed emotion hit me.
I wanted a person. My person. Someone I could eat with. Or hug. Someone who wanted me. In a mansion surrounded by my family, happy couples with a thousand kids, or here, with sex everywhere, I felt lonely. I didn’t like it.
“Enough food to sink a battleship,” Riordan observed. “Were you planning to invite someone else?”
“Nope. I just got over-clicky when ordering. It all looked so good.”
“Smells good, too.” He opened a container with ‘beef and green peppers’ scrawled on the lid. Steam rose, mixing with the scent of the sweet and sour chicken I’d opened.
My mouth watered. I grabbed the wooden spoon and the fork the restaurant had provided and handed one over. “I have work in under an hour, so eat now, talk later. Dig in.”
Riordan speared a piece of beef. Chewed it then groaned. “That’s fucking amazing.”
I watched him swallow and held in a sigh of deep need. He raised his head; I snapped mine down to start my meal.
God, he was right. Spoonfuls of fluffy rice, crispy spring rolls, crunchy prawn crackers, it all got shovelled in with the flavoursome dishes. At first, Riordan picked at the food, but the more I encouraged him, the hungrier I realised he was.
When my belly complained, I slowed. “If Moniqua isn’t your girlfriend, what’s the deal?”
“Thought I was the one asking questions.”
I gestured to the mostly empty cartons. “I fed ye, didn’t I?”
“And that gets paid for with my stories?” He reclined.
I chanced my arm. “Everyone needs someone to talk to.”
Riordan watched me for a long moment. “The last thing I need is someone else throwing me under a bus.”
“Has that happened a lot?”
“One story at a time, wild girl.”
Wild… He’d nicknamed me? Fuck.
Unable to respond, I waited, my heart skipping a beat when, at length, he spoke.
“All right. Moniqua was a one-night stand. We met at a party thrown by one of the guys from work. I got drunk oddly quicker than reasonable and woke with her the next morning. Something I have never done in the past and never will again.”
“The drinking part or the casual sex?”
He eyed me. “Anyway, she somehow got my number and texted me a couple of times for a hook-up, I declined, then she changed to daily chats. Wishing me a good morning, that kind of thing. One day she messaged to say she was sick and could I bring over some shopping. I did it for the sake of being a friend. When I was in her flat, a guy let himself in. Her cousin who she told me in a whisper scared her. I hung around until he left.”
Packing away the food, I drew lines in my head and made connections. Genevieve had told me about Moniqua’s gangster cousin because we’d originally thought him the murderer. “Don, right?”
Riordan tilted his head. “I’m not even going to ask how you know his name. So, Don is dead now, and Moniqua was cut up about it. I even drove her around to try to find him when she thought him only missing, and I’m a fucking idiot because despite me laying a clear boundary, she took that to mean we were a couple. Even my sister believed the same.”
“But you’re not.”
“No.”
Through the wall to the next room, a lady gave a low moan.
Riordan stared. “Is that…?”
“This is the cam girls’ floor. She’s going solo by the sounds of it. Ye get used to the noises.”
He dropped his head back, pink on his cheeks under his dark stubble. “You sleep surrounded by people having sex, Cassandra?”
I made an off noise. “Guess again.”
“Cass… I’ve got nothing.”
“Cassiopeia.”
“Surname?” he asked.
“Archer.”
“Well, Cassiopeia Archer, isn’t that weird?”
I liked too much how my name sounded on his lips. “The sex everywhere? I thought most of the men in the city came here for that.”
He curled his lip. “Not me. I’m here because of chasing after you, but also I needed to talk to my sister. It’s been a shitty day.”
“Hence the comment about people throwing ye under a bus. What happened?”
He chuffed. “A trauma dump wasn’t my plan for the evening.”
“I’m a good listener. Or we can trade tales, if that’ll make ye feel better?”
His forehead lined as if he couldn’t see how I had anything comparable to share. Boy didn’t know what was coming.
I counted a few fun points off on my fingers. “I was in foster care until the age of six then kidnapped. I don’t know my actual birthday and never will as my mother concealed the birth and then died without me being able to find her to ask.” I cocked my head. “Food for stories, as ye called it, or a straight-up swap.”
“Jesus. Is that true?”
“I don’t lie.” Well, I did, but I wasn’t right now.
“Fine, then apparently I owe you. I got fired this afternoon, right before I walked out and saw you on the street. The boss is hard-line anti-gang, and rumours reached him about me. I’ve had that job since I was eighteen and used it to pay our bills and save up for Gen to go to university. Then our father stole the money—” He stopped. “Her father, I mean. Which brings me onto the second part of why today can just do one.”
“Did ye have a run-in with him?”
“Putting it lightly. But I don’t want this to get back to Gen.”
I put my hand to my heart. “I’ll take it to the grave.”
Riordan’s gaze lingered on me, then he dragged it away. “Why should I trust you?”
“You’re here and already talking. Might as well get it out.”
He stalled.
Desperation built in me. I spoke in a rush. “My father was a tyrant. He funded a trafficking ring. Whatever your non-father did, it can’t be worse than that.”
“A trafficking ring? Christ.” He breathed out incredulity. “No, it isn’t as bad as that, but he was drunk and throwing his weight around. He’s fucking delighted with Gen scoring a rich boyfriend, as he framed it, and said to me that I was a waste of space. After supporting him for years. I lost it and told him I knew he wasn’t my father. Want to guess what he did?”
I wanted to hug him. I’d cleared the bed of the food trays and packed it all back into the bag, and the wooden board was slid away. It would be nothing to reach out my arms.
Except I was already obsessed with this man and had no off switch for handling it. I couldn’t be sure what I’d do next.
“Did he hurt ye?”
“He tried. The asshole’s handy with a blade, but that isn’t the point. He laughed at me then said great, he didn’t need to offer me a roof over my head anymore. Then he collected an armful of my clothes and threw them out the window onto the street.”
My heart hurt. “He kicked ye out?”
He went quiet for a minute, his eyes darkening at whatever was going through his head. “Whenever Adam, that’s Gen’s dad, behaved like a prick, I used to wish my mother had been mistaken about my birth father knowing about me. That he wasn’t such a terrible person and one day we could even be friends. I know that sounds insane. She couldn’t have been wrong.”
My breathing came soft. Rejection hurt. Or worse—it could damage people permanently. My heart swelled for Riordan all the more. “Everyone wants to be wanted.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a fantasy. The father I did know delighted in chucking out everything I owned, which wasn’t much because I never had a bedroom in that place. I loaded it into my car piece by piece as it fell, moved my car so he couldn’t trash that, too, and then biked back here.”
“I’m sorry. Ye didn’t deserve that. Any of it.”
“Maybe I did for hurting Moniqua. Either way, it’s the chance of a new start I wasn’t expecting.”
He was resilient. Lesser men would crumble. Something uncomfortable registered in my thoughts. “Will ye leave Deadwater?”
“I’ll go wherever I can find work. I can come back if my sister needs to see me. Sisters,” he corrected.
No, no. I needed him to stay here. One glance at the brutally beautiful man who’d fought his way through the club to protect Genevieve and an arrow had pierced my heart. Dramatic but true. Ever since, I’d wanted him. I didn’t know how to ask. I’d never even touched my lips to a boy’s, but I was certain I wanted his to be the first and last.
He was mine.
His gaze landed on me and pinned me down in a way I wished his long body would.
“Now we switch again. Explain why, when I checked my bike over earlier, I found a mysterious little disc stuck to it. Either Moniqua’s tracking me or it’s someone else.”
Heat painted my cheeks. Moniqua had been tracking him, if I assigned ownership of the tracker I’d removed to her. But more…he’d known about the tracker, and suspected me, yet he’d still talked to me. Opened up. We both had.
I couldn’t stop the truth from spilling out. “I am.”
“On behalf of another?”
“I told ye I mean no harm. I operate all on my lonesome.”
Curiosity replaced some of his intensity. “Because…?”
A low vibration sounded.
Riordan shifted to pull his phone from his pocket. He squinted at the screen then held it up for me to see. “Arran. Gen gave me his number. I wondered how long it would take until someone spotted me on a camera then ordered me out.”
He answered the call, close enough that I could hear every word over the background of increasingly loud moans from next door.
“Riordan, I’ll keep this short but sweet. As soon as she’ll have me, I plan to marry your sister, so that makes us family. I want to offer you a job.”
The knowing smirk on Riordan’s lips faded. “You want to what?”
I could kiss Arran. Ew, no, gross.
A job would keep Riordan here. Working for the skeleton crew would mean he’d be around, even if I only got to see him from a distance. I’d learn to control my loose tongue.
Arran’s clear voice continued. “You have a choice, make a statement of joining my crew or take a less public role.”
“Which would involve what?”
“To be discussed. Think it over. Oh, and say hi to Cassie.”