Chapter 8 – CASH
Eight
CASH
I watch her sleep for three peaceful hours. I get up a couple times to check on Avery, but for the most part, I just watch Quin – my beautiful captive. Once Hunter and Juliette find out, they’ll be pretty mad, but by the time they find out, it won’t matter. I have what I need and more importantly, some type of understandable pretext for keeping this woman here.
She is beautiful as she sleeps, even in her hoodie and those leggings. Maybe the hoodie and leggings make her even hotter. Her breasts are so fucking big. I mean… everything about her is big. It’s exactly what I like in a woman.
Her skin color isn’t a problem for me. Our club charter voted to maintain our old rules for the safety and preservation of our culture, but that applies to new members. I don’t let the club tell me who I allow into my bed. I’m not like my father. I don’t like tramps who let any dude with a monkey wrench and a Harley pump cum in their pussy.
When I have a woman, she becomes entirely and completely mine.
The last woman I tatted my name on got it covered up and since then… I’ve been on my own, no interest in pressing a needle to skin until Quin. Not like I’ll tell her that right away. No. For her to submit to this captivity, I have to appeal to this woman’s sensitivity and make it seem like I have a good reason for bringing her that surpasses my depraved desire to conquer her voluptuous body.
Just the thought of inking her skin gets me rock hard. Quin emits a soft groan in her sleep as she comes down off the drugs I had to use to get her here. If she wasn’t such a big woman, I wouldn’t have needed drugs. It’s not like I mind having to use what’s in my toolkit, I’m just saying that Quin played a role in those circumstances.
Humans are stronger than you think, especially with adrenaline rushing through them. Physical violence won’t get Quin to submit to me. I need… something else.
She groans again and I call her name to speed up the process.
“Quin, wake up. Everything will be fine. I just need you to wake up…”
Quin rolls over slightly, lying on her side and hiking her legs up. Her ass faces me with all its voluptuous glory making the hard-on in my jeans fucking impossible to control. She has the sweetest face when she’s sleeping too. Soft. Full. Innocent. I’ve always had a thing for round, chubby faces. I don’t know why.
“Quin. I need you to wake up now.”
If I sound more firm and commanding, it’ll scare her less.
She moves again. This time, her movement is a little more convincing. Good. Her fingers twitch and then her lashes flutter open. Her round cheeks move along with her lips as she yawns a little bit. Her lashes flutter more.
“What’s happening?” she mutters. Her head tilts from side to side as she tries to get her eyes open and get a good look around the room. She might be able to get her eyes open, but I have her bedroom purposefully dark. I sit in a brown leather armchair across from her, an inherited vintage piece from my dad’s office in Chicago. A small chrome lamp casts warm LED lighting over my face.
But not much.
“You’re in Arizona, Quin,” I say to her calmly. “You’re at Tanner Hollingsworth’s house.”
I lean back in the chair, fighting the urge to pour an ounce of whiskey down my throat or light up a cigar, anything to quiet my mind from the rush of excitement I have from obtaining my prize so easily. Hunter and Juliette have their hands full with their family, anyway. Whatever big mystery brought Quin Nash to Santa Fe… I’m sure I can handle it.
“No…” she mutters. The groan and the immediate rejection send a pulse of anger straight through me. I don’t even want her subconscious mind to feel the slightest disappointment.
“Wake up,” I command firmly, hating myself for betraying such immediate irritation. We need to get this over with before Avery wakes up, which she usually does in the middle of the night.
“No… Juliette…”
“You are no longer in Juliette Sinclair’s custody,” I repeat. “Now wake up, Quin. I would rather not have to do it roughly.”
My threatening tone forces her eyes to snap open and the fear cast all over her face nearly causes me to regret my tone.
“Tanner?” she says. The way she says my name gets me so hard. But she doesn’t sound happy, which doesn’t thrill me.
“Yes,” I respond gruffly. “I rescued you from Santa Fe and brought you here.”
“Rescued?” she groans. She tries to raise her head but the drugs must still be in her system because she makes a loud, uncomfortable moan and then rests her head back against the pillow. It’s for the best that she can’t fight back yet. It will make convincing her to stay much easier if she doesn’t have adrenaline coursing through her system.
“Hunter tells me you’re in trouble and Arizona is much safer for you than Santa Fe. If you want… I can offer you a job until the dust settles.”
“Job?”
“It’s a lot,” I say, but I don’t stop talking because I don’t want her to think too deeply. “But I’m in a situation myself. A secret baby situation.”
“Secret baby?”
“Listen, I’m sorry for how I took you but… I don’t want to get Hunter and Juliette involved in my problems. I don’t want anyone in their family getting hurt.”
“Getting hurt?”
Quin’s repetitiveness gets under my skin. I have to remind myself that I’m the one who drugged her and fight the impatient urge to spank her ass awake.
“Listen, Quin. All you need to know is that if you help me, we keep Juliette and Hunter out of trouble while I solve my problems and you get paid… plus safety. Unconditional safety. I will protect you from… anything and everything.”
“Everything?”
I grit my teeth.
“Yes.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I don’t. But I need her to believe that I know exactly what I’m talking about.
“You’re in big trouble. You wouldn’t have come so far from home on such short notice if it weren’t big. And it’s big.”
I stare at her until the fear hits her. Shit, maybe I’m not too far off.
“I don’t want to get Hunter and Juliette in trouble,” she says. “But you drugged me. Why should I trust you?”
“I drugged you for your own safety. That way no one can say you ran away from the trouble you got yourself into…”
Her fear is so intense that she doesn’t notice how goddamn vague I am about “what she did”. I feel bad for scaring her. A little.
“Listen,” I say, softening my voice. “I have a problem and you have a problem. Work for me and we can help each other out. You’re a grown woman. You don’t need Hunter Sinclair to tell you what to do.”
She considers it.
“I don’t understand what you need,” Quin says. I can tell she still doesn’t trust me, but she really must be in ungodly amounts of trouble to give me a chance so quickly.
I stare at her until she breaks eye contact. These little moments of exerting control over her will make it easier to handle her later on. Quin appears unaware of my strategy as she looks at the floor.
“Before I drove to Santa Fe to visit Hunter, someone dropped a baby on my doorstep. I don’t know who it is, or why, but they claim this baby is mine. While I investigate the situation, I have her here…”
“They claim the baby is yours?”
I wouldn’t mind her skepticism if I didn’t find the mystery behind the baby on my doorstep equally confusing and frustrating. I would much prefer having answers to this.
“Yes. I am conducting a thorough investigation. Until then, she needs a nanny.”
Quin raises her eyebrows and then drops them slightly.
“I can barely take after myself.”
“Nonsense. You have clearly been through some serious shit, Quin. But I can tell you’re a good woman.”
Truthfully, she could be a terrible person. But when I look at her face, I can’t help but notice my immediate attraction to the soft roundness of her cheeks or the way her full figure affects the rest of her features.
I want to trust her without any reason stronger than my initial powerful attraction to her. I have always preferred the body type of a plus-sized woman on the larger end of that spectrum… but it’s more than Quin’s body.
Maybe it’s the darkness behind her eyes.
Maybe it’s that goddamn trouble she’s running from, somehow pulling me in.
“I don’t think I’m qualified.”
“Neither am I,” I tell her. “I’m not a father.”
“Technically, you are.”
“Right. Well, I didn’t plan on it. I have no idea what’s going on and frankly… you’re a woman. It’s instinctive.”
“That’s sexist,” she says with an educator’s tone of voice.
I grunt in response. Sexist or not, I need her to agree to be Avery’s nanny. I can’t bear to be around the kid alone for too long and my lifestyle isn’t friendly to having some kid hanging off your arm. I need her as much as she needs me.
“Don’t deny yourself protection and safety over bullshit politics, Quin. There’s nothing sexist about the truth.”
If I’m lucky, my so-called sexism will only inspire her to accept my offer and take Avery off my hands. I don’t want to worry about the baby while I solve this mystery, make money, and handle club business.
And anyway, if she says yes, this will ensure I can get closer to her.
I haven’t met a woman I want in a long time and I sense that once I get to know this one… I’ll want her even more than before.
“I’ll accept your offer,” she says. “But only because I can’t stand the thought of Avery developing your backwards notions on gender.”
“You plan on staying here for a while then?”
“Did I say that?” She responds with a hint of panic.
“Avery won’t be able to comprehend the concept of gender until she’s at least seven years old.”
“Whatever,” Quin says, throwing up the single dismissive word to create distance between us that I desperately want to deconstruct.
“It’s agreed. I’ll draw up a contract and you can read it in the morning.”
“Right,” she says, gazing at me tentatively. “What about Juliette and my phone or whatever. I need to contact people.”
“You can get your phone back when you sign the contract tomorrow.”
“So you’re blackmailing me?”
“I’m recommending you think about my offer and my capacity to provide what I promise.”
I walk over to her and kiss her on the forehead, certain the small action will imbue her with a jumbled sense of desire, outrage and confusion. The last thing I want when Quin looks at that contract is for her to be in her right state of mind. Legally she should be there – naturally.
But I want this woman’s emotions vibrating at a fever pitch so she comes running into my arms and never leaves.