4. Talon
TALON
F uck.
The way none of us looked away from the girl? Shit.
She was Rone’s. But fuck me if I wasn’t a man of my word. I’d strip her and fuck her on this table faster than Ronan could pull his gun on me.
Shit.
“Hey there, princess. Start out slow. You win, we strip. We win? You strip. That gives the boss here time to decide just how much that little virgin pussy is worth.”
She didn’t say anything, to busy eye-fucking us I’d guess.
“Knox? Grab drinks. Something tells me we’re going to need them,” I said.
She looked at Knox, and I realized I was apparently doing informal introductions.
Now that everyone was gone, the fun could be had. I relaxed in the chair, letting my legs take up as much space as I damn well wanted, and watched our little caged princess. In all the iterations of our plans, no one saw a little repressed virgin waiting to just bargain that shit away.
Scratch that. We all saw a repressed virgin, but after watching her uncle for so long we’d all assumed she was stupid and shallow.
I studied her, but she seemed to only have eyes for Ronan. Lucky damn bastard. Although that wasn’t really his story at all. Outside the clink of bottles from Knox grabbing some beers, the room was silent. The bartender was gone. The last guard gone. Just us and our prey.
“Little bird, is that really yours to bargain with?” Ronan asked just above a whisper, but the edge in his voice said she was hitting a damn nerve.
Which nerve? Who knows. Ronan had been pretty quiet about how he knew Margaux, other than just from watching the corrupt uncle who was causing us, the Barone family, a lot of trouble.
“Last I checked, it’s my vagina, so it’s my cherry. Weren’t you the sweet man who pointed out my fiancée’s blatant promiscuity? Something tells me he doesn’t deserve to be my first. But, maybe one of you do?”
Jett snorted but was smart enough to choke down the laugh I knew should have followed.
“Angel, you really don’t know when you’re dancing with the devil, do you?”
Knox dropped an open bottle of beer in front of Ronan, although I doubted that bastard was paying much attention. That little vein slowly coming to the surface on his neck? The show was going to start.
I grabbed a bottle from Knox and kicked back.
I loved when life gave us surprises. I was tired of being the guard dog for Barone senior, Ronan’s dad.
What might have been more unexpected was the way Ronan hit the table.
“Alright, little bird. Boys? Deal. We play for clothes and then?” Ronan paused, never turning away from her as he took her chin between his fingers. “Then we get to see who destroys your fiancée’s claim on you.”
I took the cards and dealt the hands, all while waiting for her to panic. Hell, I’d feel a little better if she at least seemed to gather just how dangerous this situation could be. Four men with questionable morals at best and an innocent little princess like her.
She finally turned away from Ronan and smiled at me. I wasn’t going to give the little stutter of my shriveled heart a second thought.
“These are mine?” she asked.
“Yeah, princess. Yours. Those two cards you keep to yourself. These?”
I pointed to the five in the center.
“These you need to help create a winning hand.”
She pulled the two cards toward her and looked at them, and us? Fuck, we were a sorry lot of bastards. We sat there and just watched her like she was some kind of glorious goddess, and hell, maybe she was.
“What’s a winning hand?” she asked.
Jett pulled his chair closer to her and started to whisper what I had to assume were the rules.
Couldn’t really be sure, but I shrugged.
She wasn’t supposed to be ours. Hell, we were expecting some little broken doll and maybe she was, but this wasn’t broken porcelain.
She wasn’t broken and waiting for a prince to glue her back together.
No, it was almost like she was begging for someone to add to the cracks until what? She became sharp shards?
I fucking wanted to know.
From my side of the table I watched Ronan glare at Jett and Jett did not even notice. He liked fire, so I supposed he’d play with this little flame until Ronan burned him. Wouldn’t be the first time Jett learned shit the hard way.
The seconds ticked by, and when I was pretty certain our guest of honor had some idea of her hand, I called it.
“Alright. Show your hands, boys and princess.”
“Ace high,” Jett said, tossing his cards down.
Knox tossed down his three of a kind sevens. Not the strongest show at the moment.
“Princess, what do you have?”
She smiled.
“Does it even matter? Four against one? Seems like I’ll lose no matter what.”
I stopped with the beer bottle halfway to my mouth.
“It sounds like you don’t really want to win,” I said, tossing down my own pairs of queens and tens.
It was down to Ronan and her. If she wasn’t showing her cards, maybe it wouldn’t matter.
“That’s not how this works. You said you’d play. We accepted your terms. Tell you what. You play by the rules and we’ll give you all the chips on the table. That’s about ten grand,” Ronan said, pushing his stack toward her.
That got her eyes going from the cards to the chips then back to him and around the table.
“All I have to do is play by the rules? I don’t even have to win?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Play by our rules, and I’ll make sure tonight's tip is bigger than any you’ve seen.”
I rolled my eyes.
He knew damn well this wasn’t a normal thing for her. We’d been trying to get to her for the better part of two years and finally figured out the friend was the way to go.
“Okay. Here.”
She laid her cards down.
“I think I have a pair. Which means I already lost, I think.”
Ronan didn’t say anything as he laid his own cards down and hell.
“How in the hell do you end up with a straight? Well, princess. What’s first to go?” I asked.
Jett was damn near drooling, but when she reached for a clip in her hair? Well, shit. She was playing by the rules though, wasn’t she?
“There. No one ever said where to start. Now, deal the cards. Someone’s going to ruin my uncle’s plans as well as my fiancée’s pride. Or at the very least,” she paused and turned to Ronan, “someone’s going to show me what it’s like to make my own choices.”
No one spoke.
I started to deal another hand, but even I could see the smoke rising.
The crack of a bottle as it fell to the tile floor was the only warning the pretty little princess got before Ronan lost his shit.
I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth watching the way his face grew red as the devil he hid inside came out. It was the four of us and her, and I could tell at least three of us were interested in her. None of us would fight each other though.
She was over his shoulder before I could ask.
“Get in the fucking car,” he yelled to us as he headed for the door.
The boys and I grabbed our jackets. Jett grabbed his beer downing it as we hurried after Ronan.
“Was this on anyone's bingo card?” Knox asked.
I smirked as I quickened my pace. The car was in the garage below the casino and we were all taking the same fucking elevator, but whatever made Ronan happy, I guess.
The doors to the elevator dinged open, and thank fuck there was no one else in there. The elevator only served the penthouse floors, but in a casino there were enough high rollers that these floors were never empty.
Once the doors closed, I looked over. “So, my friend formally known as the corpse king, what’s with this little show of emotions?”
He didn’t look at me. In fact, he was scarily still while the little package over his shoulder was not.
“My bag. It’s still in the room. I need my clothes.”
Jett ducked around us and popped up in her face.
“Pretty girl, you’re wearing clothes. I know because I was really excited to see what they looked like on the table.”
The movement was so fast we heard the grunt from Jett’s lips before realizing Ronan had just elbowed him in the gut.
“You’ll get the bag back later.” That was all Ronan said as Knox pulled his phone out, no doubt texting one of our guys to take care of the retrieval.
“No. I can’t go home without it. You don’t understand. My uncle–”
She shut up when the elevator stopped and opened up to the parking garage.
Tonight we’d brought the SUV to fit all of us inside at one time.
I stepped around the disgruntled girl, pressing a button that disarmed and unlocked the beast as I liked to call it.
It wasn’t always our thing, but sometimes practically beat out the fear of all of us getting taken out in one fell swoop.
“No. My uncle’s in town. I can’t let him know where I’ve been.”
It was interesting to hear her seem more afraid of being sent back to the uncle.
“Angel. Shouldn’t you be more worried that four assholes might be kidnapping you?” Knox said as he reached for the back door for Ronan. That shut her up.
Once all four doors were closed and all five of us were safely in the vehicle, Ronan finally broke his silence.
“You have no fucking self-preservation instinct. So busy giving away your virginity to strangers that you didn’t even think about what could happen.”
I watched the jerk of her head as he grabbed her chin.
“Little bird, don’t trade one cage just for another that you think is lined in gold. Where’s that friend of yours? Fucking abandoning you.”
No one else dared break his little monologue. At least not yet. The show was too good. I started the engine, the tires squealing as I pulled out of our spot.
“I… She… Her boyfriend. I was going to get a car to her house later.”
Fuck me. The fear in that girl’s eyes? My cock was hard. I wondered if she’d look this way when one of us took her up on her little bet.
The question running through my mind right now was; what was she to Ronan? We all got obsessed, but never like this. We’d been watching her for years and just now we were doing something about it.