Chapter 9 Fawn #3
“Just a precaution.”
“Liar,” I mutter.
As we glide through the city, steadily rolling between the cars like a graceful swan through reeds, I can’t help but scan each vehicle.
Who are these people in their shiny boxes on wheels?
What important job or mundane errand are they embarking on at this hour?
Are they rushing to a meeting that pays the bills?
Suddenly I feel like the most boring human alive. Just… shopping.
Just pretty.
I look at my twins. "Actually," I say, an idea planting itself into my mind along with the word ‘pretty.’
I’ll show him pretty.
"Will you take me to Sir’s hotel?”
Jasmine raises an eyebrow. "Now?”
"I just want twenty minutes." I glance at my phone, Clay's simple ‘pretty’ still burning into my retinas.
I need more than that text, or I will be stewing and temperamental by the time he gets home.
I need him. Just to… soothe me or something just as pathetic, but completely real and raw.
"You can watch the twins for, like, twenty minutes, right? I just want a moment.”
Jasmine's eyes widen. "I have been asking to babysit these little vampires since they were born. Of course I will watch them.”
"And HJ?" I turn to him with pleading eyes. "You’ll stay here in the car, idle and watch them all. I won’t be long.”
“I’m to follow you, Miss Harlow—”
“You’re to follow orders, Bolton,” I counter, using his real name for dramatic effect. “My orders, remember?”
His mouth drops open with shock. “Well, well, well, you sound like a spoilt Mafia princess there, Miss Harlow.”
“Do not.”
“If you say so, Boss,” he teases. He takes two turns, and within five minutes we are pulling into the drop-off circle outside Clay’s hotel—The Main.
“Woah,” Jasmine coos, looking up at the hotel.
"Twenty minutes,” HJ states adamantly.
As if he’s the boss.
Pfft.
The moment the car stops, I open the passenger door and stride towards the entrance, suddenly reminded of the two whiskeys when my feet falter a step. I keep going as if it didn’t happen, but aware of the two henchmen from the other Cosa Nostra SUV following close behind me.
Dobber rat.
Clay will already know I’m here.
I’ll never be able to surprise him.
The bellman holds the front door open as I reach it, and a buzz of quiet energy erupts from the staff as if they know who I am. Who I am—Clay Butcher’s fiancé.
Still, sometimes it feels like I’m wearing someone else’s skin, walking someone else’s carefully shaped path.
Will I ever get used to this? Is that what will happen when I become his wife?
The pieces will fall into place? I’m scared of the picture, scared it means less of him, more independence.
When I settle into this life, when I am house-trained, will he give me less attention? The word ‘pretty’ taunts me.
It's already happening.
Oh, stop it, Fawn.
I continue through the hotel. Around me, the hum of awareness might be in response to the two men in black flanking my body through the shiny lobby.
Woah. It. Is. Beautiful. An older hotel with modern renovations, deep red carpet and black leather sofas, thick, round pillars holding up high ceilings adorned with carvings, and gold travertine tiled walls. Masculine and strong to match the man who owns the space—
And everyone in it.
The receptionist grips the phone at her ear, her lips moving fast, eyes anchored on me as I approach. With a slim figure, long curly black hair that looks soft to touch, and dark skin, she’s pretty. Pretty, just like my lingerie.
She hangs up the moment I stop at her counter, her eyes wide, startled. About what, I don’t know. I’m not mean—I’m not a spoilt Mafia Princess! Not yet.
“Mr Butcher is on level fifty-five.” She passes me an elevator card. “It’s lovely that you’ll be staying with us, Mrs Butcher. Please call down if you need anything.”
Am I staying?
“Thank you,” I say, stifling the confusion in my voice.
I go to the elevators, turn to face the henchmen, and watch them stop just outside the steel doors. A lady in a dress-suit tries to catch my elevator, but they block her and press the button for a second lane. The doors ping and close before my eyes, shutting me inside. I sigh. Alone.
As the lift ascends, I mull over all the things I am going to say. Play it cool? ‘I was just in the neighbourhood.’ Or be real and authentic—he sees straight through me, anyway? ‘I miss you! Why are you in a hotel? Are you here all night?’ Or maybe I should act—
The doors part, and there he stands.
I peer up at him, tall and formidable, a perfectly elegant man in a tailored black suit, dark tie loose around his collar as if he’s finished for the day, hair a little messy from his fingers feeding through it out of frustration.
God, this man.
Breathtaking.
“Fuck you, Sir,” I blurt out.
Where did that come from?
His brow lifts. “Well, hello, little deer.”
I huff, losing my internal battle. He is smooth and beautiful and powerful. His entire existence bewitches my resolve. “Pretty?” I sound as petulant as I feel. “That’s it?”
“Very,” he agrees, unshaken.
I stomp directly into the room.
House-trained, never!
Ahead of me, the entire wall is a vast sweeping window. Through it, The District is like a tiny model city that this man gazes down on like God. Fuck. Spinning to face him, I cross my arms over my chest. “You just left this morning? No goodbye?”
“I said goodbye, and I gave you a kiss. I swept your hair from your face. I didn’t want to disturb you further, sweet girl. You were up with Ash for two hours last night.”
Sweet girl? “Am I?”
He clasps his hands in front of him. “Are you what?”
“Am I your sweet girl? Or a fiancé who doesn’t need the same amount of attention? Put a baby in it, put a ring on it? Make it obsessed with you. Fuck you.”
Woah.
He rakes his attentive gaze over my body, from my ballet flats to the blouse I’m wearing. “Come here. Now.” He opens his arms for me to walk into, the gesture activating my feet as if I were wired to obey him.
I dart across the room and into his embrace. Melting into him, I nuzzle his suit, smelling cologne and something sweet, like cigars or chocolate. “I’m sorry.”
“How much whiskey have you had?”
Ugh. I push out from his chest. “HJ! That dirty rotten dobber rat—”
“The single malt on your breath, actually.”
“Oh.” Mortified, my eyes widen and my cheeks glow. “I had two,” I start to explain. “But I breastfed the boys first, and I wasn’t planning on feeding them again for a few hours, anyway. And I have yogurt and cheese and oth—”
“I’m not angry with you.”
“You flipped this,” I sulk. “I’m angry with you!”
“Is that right? May I inquire as to why?”
I scoff. “Pretty?”
“Yes, pretty,” he purrs, his deep timbre a literal toxin that attacks my senses, pulping rational thought to mumbles of nonsense and my muscles to jelly.
“Oh.” I blush from my chest to my scalp. “It sounds so much better when it comes from your lips...” And I feel so ridiculous for my behaviour and fluffy brain. “I blame the whiskey, Sir.”
“As do I, sweet girl,” he says through that perfect mouth that does devilish things between my thighs.
“Sorry, Clay, I forgot my jack—” A woman’s sultry voice comes from the elevator, her presence abrasive, somehow grating down my skin. “Jacket,” she finishes.
My blood runs cold.
I step back from Clay and stare at her.
Long red hair ribbons over her shoulders, relaxed and messy—just like Clay’s. Her body is swathed tightly in a black evening dress—yet it’s only lunchtime.
My face goes numb as Lorna—Clay's ex-whatever-she-was—saunters over to a coat rack I hadn't even registered when I walked in.
She plucks a long white jacket from it, then bends down with deliberate slowness.
My throat catches when she straightens, dangling a pair of scarlet stilettos from her manicured fingers.
"Almost left without these," she says with a knowing smile too tight to be kind.
Why did she take her shoes off, Sir?
A sudden weight hits my chest, lungs squeezing under the pressure. Four words on repeat coat my tongue in bile.
Why. Was. She. Here?
His hand touches the small of my back, and it feels like a blade. “You remember Lorna, little deer.”
I nod slowly.
“So lovely to see you again,” she offers, completely fake—everything. Her brows. Her smile. Her fucking lip filler. At least four fingers of frozen forehead. Fake. “We met at Clay’s party for the Indonesian associates, remember?”
I’m still nodding.
“Dustin’s daughter, correct?” she adds.
My stomach spasms as if she just punched me. I seethe. “I…” What the actual fuck? “I’m…”
I’m his fiancé.
Say it, Fawn.
Scream it!
“Lorna”—Clay’s naturally rough voice is somehow darker, thicker—“don’t think for one moment that is acceptable. You know exactly who Fawn is.”
Her smile slides wider. “Well, excuse me. I don’t mean to interrupt.” She shuffles her coat and shoes in her arms and sashays towards the elevator, her feet bare but for black stockings.
I take a big breath, calming myself.
I feel anything but calm.
Swiftly, he is striding towards her. Ice spreads through my veins as he seizes her elbow with fingers that make her painted lips part on a silent gasp.
“Say it,” he orders, and her shoulders recoil inward as Clay's massive frame blocks out the light above her. His shadow falls across her face, and his voice drops to a dangerous whisper. "Who is she, Lorna?"
Lorna whimpers, and I see why. Not from the pain of his grip. She is in love with him; that raw fact is etched into her eyes like literal cuts.
“Your fiancé,” she breathes.
“Good girl.” He releases her and nods at the elevator, ending the conversation and ordering her away. I don’t move a muscle until she is gone, then I flip out. I storm towards the elevator and punch the down button with my finger so hard it aches. “I have to get back to our sons—"