9. Burning Up
~ CAIN ~
When I saw the post I got butterflies. She’d surprised me.
No one ever surprised me.
It shook me so bad, I shut the computer down and didn’t let myself log back in. An hour later, I was expecting a visitor, and I wasn’t properly prepared because I’d been distracted all day. Even after she arrived, I was never quite centered.
I was obsessing about Bridget.
I’d never accepted a mark that consumed me so completely before and it was dangerous.
Driving, working, fucking sleeping, I couldn’t stop thinking about her and it wasn’t fair to anyone, least of all the woman I was currently in session with.
And she noticed. We’d met before, so she could tell I was distracted.
It was rarely a discipline for me, but this evening I had had to work to turn my emotions off, to concentrate on the needs of my companion. But then, just when I was settling in, forcing myself to focus, just when my companion went deep, my phone buzzed which meant Bridget had started moving again and I had to swallow a curse. The woman I was with was halfway through a catharsis and was going to need significant aftercare.
Shit. Shit.
I did my best, but for the rest of the hour we remained together, more than half of my brain was screaming at me that Bridget was out there and she’d prepared and it was time, even though in over a dozen preys, I’d never started a hunt the same day a mark got equipped.
Not once.
When I was finally alone again, I took one look at the map to see where she’d ended up and growled a curse. Then I tore through the house to get changed and… fuck!
First she visits a fucking priest, now she’s hanging out—alone—in one of the seediest bars in the city. One that was frequented by men who would kill her—or worse—as soon as look at her?
Or… what if she wasn’t alone?
I couldn’t decide which would be worse.
Time to find out.
Time to hunt.
I grabbed my keys and my bag and got out there like the building was on fire.
But it wasn’t the building at all. It was me burning up.
Shit.
~ brIDGET ~
Kash was standing in the half-dark behind the sticky bar, rinsing out glasses. He looked up to see me approaching and started shaking his head before I even got close enough to hear him over the music.
“Nope. Not tonight, Bridget. Get out.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I’m not even drinking. Give me a ginger beer. See?”
He wasn’t amused. He shook his head and turned around to lean down to one of the glass-fronted fridges lining the floor behind him.
For a second I saw him like a stranger would—a tall, wiry-strong, pretty handsome guy, with a beard that needed trimming because it was hiding his neck tattoos, a dark presence, and a wicked grin.
Kash and I dated three years ago and stayed friends after.
Well, I stayed friends with him. He tolerated my presence because, in his words, I was a good fuck.
We hadn’t done that for over a year, though. I’d sworn off sex after the guy who said he liked to role-play as a serial killer but who attempted to examine my large intestine, up-close and personal.
Heart conditions and massive blood loss are not easy bedmates.
And neither are me and twelve-inch bowie knives.
I pushed away the slew of impaled by twelve-inches jokes that sprang to mind that only I would laugh at, and flashed a smile at Kash when he plonked a Bundaberg ginger beer on the bar, glaring at me over it.
“You drink it. You do whatever business it is that you’re here to do, then you leave. I’m not playing, Bridge.”
Kash had met the not-so-psuedo serial killer and warned me he was bad news. But since Kash also existed boldly in the Mother Will Not Approve space, I’d told him he was the kink calling the fetish “pervert.”
Of course, Kash drew the line at loss of life—unless it involved his own, and a massive amount of drugs—so maybe I should have listened.
“I’m not doing business tonight,” I said as I pulled the tab-top on the fat, brown, short-necked bottle. “I’m just hanging out.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“Kash, stop.”
“No, Bridge. You stop. Art told me what you were looking for last time. That’s fucked up.”
“Art needs to keep his mouth shut,” I grumbled, then took a swig from the bottle, appreciating the very-real, slightly spicy, ginger hit.
“Wouldn’t help since you told the entire bar,” Kash grumbled. “So drink your drink and bat your eyelashes at someone, then leave. I’m having nothing to do with it. I don’t want those kinds of guys in my bar.”
I let my mouth drop open, then very slowly turned to look pointedly at the old mob guy who sat in the corner booth here five nights a week, doing business because he liked that Kash played old rock music instead of “that electric crap.” Then I looked back at Kash with my brows up.
Kash’s jaw tightened. “ He’s never had the Police knocking on my door,” he said with a pointed look at me.
“That’s because they work for him.”
“Shut up, Bridge. I told you, drink your drink, then get your ass out of here.”
“And a very shapely ass it is, too,” a low voice rumbled from behind me.
For a split second my heart leaped—had Cain come for me?—but I should have known, it was just Art, the barn-sized man who worked as Kash’s bouncer.
“Hey, Art,” I said, giving him my most winning smile, mainly because it would piss Kash off.
“Hey beautiful—I’m glad you made it. I found something you might like.”
I clapped my hands as Kash put both hands up and shook his head, backing away from the bar. “Fuck this. Just fuck it. I don’t want to hear it. I’m too old for this.”
“You’re thirty-five,” I snapped at his back as he tossed the dirty rag into the sink and stormed out to the walk-in fridge at the other end of the bar.
Art leaned over the bar to steal a handful of peanuts, then grinned and threw a few in his mouth as he watched Kash leave.
I patted his ham-sized fist to draw his attention back to me.
Art was old-school. The kind of criminal who used knowledge as power, and was more interested in ripping off The Man, than becoming an online culture icon. He was a vault when it came to keeping secrets, and knew a great many of the fleas crawling around on the dirty underbelly of this city. He was very useful. And he liked me. I didn’t know why, but from the first time Kash had brought me here, he acted like I was his niece or something. He watched out for me, stuffed me into an uber when I got too drunk, and needled Kash to make me laugh.
I loved him.
“Now that Killjoy has left the chat, what’s going on? Whatcha got for me?”
Art grinned and crunched the rest of his mouthful before he answered. “I got a dude who likes the same dark shit you like and he’s trying to build what he calls an audience. I want you to be careful though, he’s a live wire.”
“Those are the best kinds. How do I reach him?”
“You walk over to the pool table, ‘cause he’s hustling, but he’s eager to meet you.”
I leaned past Art’s mammoth chest to look at the slightly-better-lit alcove where the two pool tables were, and sure enough there was a guy with spiky black hair, metal punched through every ridge and orifice, a dog collar, and a nasty grin, looking right at me as he chalked the business end of a pool cue.
I straightened so Art was between us again. “He looks… interesting.”
Art snorted. “That’s one word for it.”
“Exactly what kind of shit is he into?”
“He’s working over at Vigorí ,” Art said, waggling his eyebrows at me.
I sat back, surprised. “Really? Him?”
“Really,” Art said, beaming because he got a kick out of surprising me.
I leaned past him again to take a second look at the guy, but nope. “Someone needs to tell him the eighties called and they want their punk back.”
“You tell him. He doesn’t strike me as the type of dude who has a feedback box.”
Me either. But my mind was still turning over this new puzzle.
Vigorí was a club just a few blocks away, but one that was definitely not for public consumption. Entry was by invitation only—and you could only be invited by one of the Doms who worked there, or by long-term members. There was no signage. No website on google. No indication that a business even existed there. It was literally a door in a blank wall that anyone would walk past a hundred times without a second look.
I’d been inside many times, but not for over a year.
The thing was, Vigorí was the kind of place where menus didn’t have prices, and the offerings were generally human in nature. The Doms called their pastimes art, and everyone else either watched, or participated.
And if you didn’t participate on your very first visit, you weren’t invited back.
“He just doesn’t seem their type.”
Vigorí was run by a woman named Valerie, which was the most interesting thing about her. The club catered to people with money. Rich housewives, bored executives, and their trust-fund kids. Valerie told me she’d chosen to locate on the shady side of town because rent was cheap and it made it seem edgy.
“When people have money, the whole world is available to them,” she said in her smoking-for-thirty-years rasp. “It’s not just hard ons that elude them. Any kind of thrill is hard to find—no pun intended—when all you have to do is point and whatever you want is given to you. Coming downtown makes them feel like they’re in danger they can’t control, which is a new experience for most of them.”
Unaware of my meandering thoughts, Art shrugged. “I guess he’s been in DC, decided he wanted to come west, and he’s very… skilled.”
“At what? Stonewashing jeans?”
“Look, I don’t know. Not my circus, not my monkeys. But I thought of you as soon as I heard, because you’re into that shit. And after last time—”
“Last time I was drunk. We shall not speak of it again.”
Art gave me a look. “I gather our friend over there likes gagging people too, so you two will get right along,” he giggled .
It had always taken me aback when he did that. He was such a massive man—ruthless and dangerous when he needed to be. Intimidating in the extreme when you didn’t know him. But the longer I knew him, the less surprised I would be to find out he played Bingo on Wednesdays and was learning to crochet. The man was a study in juxtaposition.
“He mentioned gags?” It wasn’t really my thing, but the world only existed on two planes in Art’s world: Things/People Art Liked, and Everything Else. I had learned early that asking a lot of questions was important if I didn’t want to stumble into some extremely unpleasant situations that Art knew only enough about to be dangerous.
Art shrugged again. “Nah, he just said he works at Vigorí , but I mean, that’s part of the whole Dom thing, right?”
“Sure, sure,” I murmured, frowning. “So, why does he want to talk to me?”
“Oh! So, last time, you were talking about looking for someone who wanted to hurt you, so I did some asking around and his name came up.”
Not what I meant, but bless his heart. “That was… very thoughtful,” I told him.
Art rolled his eyes. “Look, I know he’s not what you were looking for. But he obviously knows people, and he’s looking to make connections, you know? Those kinds of people are always helpful. Besides, I thought you might enjoy checking the place out.”
Art didn’t know I used to be a regular at Vigorí . But it had been a while since I visited, and if they were using dudes like this now, maybe it wasn’t the place I remembered. Maybe Valerie died.
“Okay, I’ll talk to him,” I said, hopping off my stool and starting across the bar. “Thanks, Art!”
“Do your business and get out!” Kash called after me. I didn’t reply, but raised my middle finger over my shoulder and let it talk for me.