Chapter 6
LILA
I don’t feel like talking after that.
The last traces of alcohol must’ve vanished from my blood, so everything that was fun, intriguing, bold, and cheeky on my part, and intrusive on his part, has vanished too.
He’s sunk in thought, as if he’s alone in the car. I don’t want to make an ass of myself, so I’m waiting for an opportunity to prove to him that I’m not the shallow person I have seemed to be.
That opportunity never comes, so it’s no surprise that we reach the club without exchanging a word.
“Follow me,” he says once we roll to a stop.
We climb out, he picks up the suitcase, and then gestures at me to enter the club in front of him.
We walk through the back door and face a stairwell.
I stop at the bottom of the stairs, and he flicks his chin up.
“Upstairs,” he says.
The music booms through the walls as I walk in front of him, feeling his stare on my back and rear.
I’m tempted to glance over my shoulder, but what good would it do me if I knew he’d checked me out?
As soon as we step onto the upper floor, he walks in front of me. He opens the door to a large room, and we have a panoramic view of the club in front of us.
The club has multiple bars and an enthusiastic crowd.
The room we’re in appears to be his office.
It has a large desk, a couch, three armchairs, a coffee table, a bar, and a thick rug across the floor.
He unbuttons his jacket and slides into a chair behind his desk, while setting the suitcase next to his seat.
With a few clicks, he brings several computer screens to life, and we watch several livestreams from around the venue.
“What are we looking at?” I ask to break the silence.
He ignores me for a few good moments before he shifts his focus to a darker room with gambling tables, female servers, and men playing cards.
“This is where I need you to work,” he says, as if his proposal still stands and I’m giving it serious consideration.
My eyebrows move up as I shift my eyes between the screen and him.
“Isn’t gambling illegal in Georgia?”
He flicks his stare up, a stern expression on his face.
“You must know the answer to that question. We’re not here to debate the legality of it.”
I press a hand to his desk, the other clasping my crooked hip.
“Wait? Are you trying to involve me in something illegal? I don’t want to get in trouble with the law. My father’s business was legal.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know about your father. And no, I’m not trying to get you in trouble.
I suspect that a couple of men use one or more female servers to cheat.
I lose money. My clients lose money. It’s not good for the business.
If I’m in there, or my men go in there, no one wants to gamble. That’s also bad for the business.”
I shift my focus to the screen.
“Who are these people? Aren’t they afraid they might get caught?”
“Nah. Some of them run little towns in Georgia or neighboring states.”
I shift my eyes to him. He leans back in his chair with a smile on his face.
“Who are these people?”
His smile broadens.
“Can you do this for me or not?” he says instead of answering my question.
“I don’t know how to do this.” I gesture at the screen, annoyed. “Besides, I don’t want to break the law.”
“You’re not doing anything illegal. You’re serving drinks and keeping an eye on a couple of men and the women who interact with them.”
“How am I supposed to know if they’re cheating?”
“I thought you knew something about your father’s business.”
“That wasn’t this.”
I point at the screen with my finger.
He crosses his arms on top of his chest, studying me with interest and smugness before his expression changes and he is serious again.
“All you need to do is create a distraction.’
“How?”
“Dress provocatively. Make everyone in the room look at you. Men and women. The women who won’t look at you will look at the men they’re in cahoots with.”
“What will happen to their women if we catch them doing that?”
“That’s not something you need to think about.”
“Damon?”
“Yes?”
He has a smirk on his face.
I sigh.
“I thought you had a real job in mind. I can’t do this.”
“Because it’s hard?” he asks with sarcasm.
“Because it’s illegal.”
“Not what you’re doing, isn’t it?”
“I’d be an accomplice.”
“Maybe. But things won’t get that far. I need you for a night or two. Once I find who these men work with, I’ll fix the problem, and you’re out. You can serve drinks in the main room, if you want to.”
“No. I don’t need a job. I got one.”
“You don’t need to work for money, yet you’re still doing it.”
“What kind of argument is that? You’re asking me to do some shady stuff for you. How in the world could you think that I was the right person for this?”
He straightens in his seat.
“You’re the right person. You’re part of the family now,” he murmurs, staring at one of the screens that has a direct view of the main bar in the biggest room of the club.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I ask, grappling with a bad feeling.
He leans back again, relaxed, a smile on his lips, and after searching my eyes for a moment, he tilts his chin toward the suitcase sitting on the floor.
“You’ve already done something illegal.”
“What?”
“That suitcase can incriminate both of us. You’ve crossed that line about an hour or so ago.”
I look at him, not believing my eyes.
“What is this, Damon? I didn’t do anything. You picked me up. I rode with you. I had no idea what you’d do.”
“Tell that to the men gambling in that room. They might run the investigation.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
“Nothing can incriminate me. I didn’t do anything wrong. Besides, I trusted you.”
“And I’m trusting you now that you’ll help me to catch those women.”
“You hired them,” I remind him. “You should’ve done a better job at it.”
“They came highly recommended by other people. I didn’t put an ad out on the Internet for them. You’re the only one I’ve asked to work for me.”
“I trusted you…” I say again, disappointed.
“And I’m trusting that you’ll do the right thing. You do that for me, and you’ll never get dragged into something nasty. I’ll make sure of that.”
I fold my arms over my chest, studying the man in front of me.
“This is extortion.”
“Call it as you wish. It gets things done.”
“I could walk out of here and go straight to the police.”
He laughs quietly.
“For that, you’d only need to walk into that room first. A couple of the higher-ups are right there, playing cards.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’m going home.”
I push off his desk and move toward the exit when he swivels with his chair, loops his arm around me, and pulls me back to him.
I fall to his lap, his arms looped around me as I put my best effort into fighting him off.
I’d lie if I said I didn’t enjoy fighting him.
I’d lie if I said our fight was a real fight.
He could finish me in two seconds, but he must enjoy this as much as I do.
I’d also lie if I said this story didn’t have the spellbinding sexual tension written all over it.
He may have changed his behavior, shifting from teasing me to talking serious stuff with me, from showing interest in me to pretending to be annoyed with me. Still, now that I sit on his lap, things seem to get more in tune with what is actually going on.
The more I push him and try to break away from him, the more heated I get, and the more aroused I get.
I try to put that on the fact that I haven’t been with a man for a while.
He eventually grabs the back of my hair and pulls, making me wince in pain and lessen my efforts while tilting my head back and exposing my neck and top of my chest to him.
My hands grab at his shoulders as he does the most unexpected thing.
He presses his mouth straight on the root of my neck and bites me gently.
Electrical storms form beneath his lips before traveling down, touching the tips of my breasts, and moving rapidly to the point between my legs.
My skirt has already rolled up a few inches from sitting on his lap, so when he brings his other hand to my legs and slides it up a little, I get a quick spike of arousal that leaves me breathless.
His grip on my hair slackens.
It moves down my back, locks around my waist, but then does something outrageously delicious.
It inches up, slips under my arm, and cups a breast.
Starved from a man’s touch, my body betrays me within seconds, creating a swirl of desire.
I can’t move, as he keeps his other hand between my legs, not moving it up, not needing to move it up, as even without his touch traveling between my thighs, the pulling in my abdomen and pulsing in my core are just as powerful, demanding, and addictive.
“You can’t be doing this to me,” I say quietly, torn, drowning in mixed emotions, overpowered by how he makes me feel.
My eyes are closed as if by not looking at him, I can make this less irresistible than it is.
My panties are wet, my center pulsing softly as his hand gently kneads a breast, the nipple underneath hard as wood.
He tenderly strokes the sensitive skin of my thighs, still not moving his touch up––with me still not wanting him to do it.
And still not wanting him not to do it.
It’s all bittersweet. And maybe this is why I can’t scale down. It won’t happen in his arms.
I should’ve stayed away from him.
He’s awfully quiet as he breathes hotly over my neck and leaves a couple of kisses.
My arms are covered in goosebumps from his touch, my heart filled with fear.
I open my eyes and look at him, yet his eyes don’t meet mine as he grabs my inner thigh, making me feel a little pain.
The silence is killing me. It's filled with questions and possibly regrets.
This makes us accomplices.
It makes me more like him.
It may also signal an important crossroads, a line we are about to cross.
Convinced I got my answer from him, I attempt to rise from his lap and move away from him when I meet his force and realize I won’t be leaving his office until he chooses to let me go.
I fall back and quickly realize how hard he is.
“Don’t go, please…” he murmurs quietly, and I instantly lose my breath.
What is it with his husky voice?
Is he playing with me or is he serious?
He sounded serious when he said those words.
He said please to me? He asked me to stay? He asked me not to leave in the voice of someone who deeply needs me?
There is so much to process, and I can’t make sense of any of it.
Men do and say a lot of crazy things when they want someone, especially when they’re as hard as he is and are about to do stuff that they may regret later.
He doesn’t look like the regretful type, but what do I know about him, really?
The more I feel his erection under me, the more intimate I become with the storm between his legs.
His cock stirs as he grabs at my boob harder.
Oh, I know where this is headed.
I know it so well that I’d teleport myself to a different planet if I could.
“I won’t do anything to you…” says the man with a pulsing erection under my rear.
The man who slips his hand inside my dress and grabs and kneads my bare chest, making me arch, tense up, and bite my lip to push back a moan.
Then, squeeze my thighs and keep his hand hostage. Knead his shoulders.
This is so wrong.
My fingers splay over his muscular neck and slide into his hair. Perhaps it's my quiet signal of approval of what he’s doing to me, hinting at the fact that I don’t want him to stop.
Or maybe it’s what his body and mine want.
Whatever it is, he puts his mouth on my skin again and draws a trail of kisses to the top of my chest.
Smoothly, he removes the strap of my dress and recaptures my boob, this time his mouth moving in tandem with his hand.
I shift on his lap so he can have access to my chest and I can feel his teeth on my breast. He sucks on my nipple and my legs tense around his hand.
I’m so wet that I’d like nothing more than to have his hand travel up my thighs.
He lifts his head from my chest as he does just that.
Watching me go through the pains of pleasure mixed with guilt, he moves his fingers up.
A small explosion of delight happens when his fingers reach their destination and press onto my swollen sex.
The band of fabric is wet.
A few seconds is all it takes.
“You’re so fucking wet,” he says, moving his fingers through my wetness, not even attempting to finger me, and my body jolts, my arms locking around his neck.
I have his head pressed against my chest when firm footsteps ring outside.
A hard rap on the door makes my pleasure flounder, fall, find its way back up, and get cut out again.
I’m panting already.
“What the fuck is this?”
Frankly, it sounded like the police.
I’m so frightened and turned on that I can’t think straight.
“Don’t worry. I called them.”
I still hope it’s not the police.
“Give me a minute,” he thunders over his shoulder to the people outside the door before the corridor becomes quiet and his finger pushes into my center.
A last spike of remorse moves through me and quickly vanishes in the first shudders of stolen pleasure.
“Fuck, fuck…” I grunt quietly, so damn torn, so damn hot. “I need to leave.”
“Not yet,” he says, tense.
He bites into my boob, roughly pushing two fingers into me. And I come with so much force that I shake against him, coating his touch with my juices.
Throbbing, panting, biting my lip, quieting my moans.
“We never did this,” I say, panicked. “Never.”
He kisses my chest, slowing his penetration with his fingers.
“We’ll talk back home,” he eventually says quietly.
He lets me move up and adjusts his hard cock before tugging at my skirt and calmly reaching for his phone.
Later, two bouncers enter his office through a different door. Everything looks normal, I suppose.
My straps are back in place, my hair covers my heated cheeks.
“You take her home.”
He never looks at me again, and now I feel worse than I felt moments ago.
Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do to change what happened or what doesn’t feel right right now.
I collect my bag while he tosses his key fob to one of the men.
“She has a small box in my car. Pick it up before you take her home.”
I leave his office through the second door, while he runs a hand over his suit, buttons his jacket, runs his fingers through his hair, and opens the main door to his office.