Chapter 15 Back in the Club
Back in the Club
Lore
I’ve gone and lost my fucking mind.
The floor of Masked Merrow was packed with people dancing and drinking tonight.
Slippery, sweaty bodies covered in glitter and melting body paint rubbing up on each other in time to the electronic beat pulsing through the sound system.
And yet, instead of hanging out in my office above the writhing crowd or joining in to catch myself a piece of ass to take home, I was sulking in a dark corner with a watery scotch I swirled around absently.
For some reason I couldn't quite put my finger on, I'd been all bent out of shape since my meeting with Grant two days ago.
Even Taylor seemed to notice and had been blatantly avoiding me and my pissy attitude.
My focus was somewhere else, so lost in my dark thoughts I didn't realize someone had sidled up beside me with a fresh drink until he set it down at my elbow.
My stupid heart lurched in my stupid chest, and I jerked my head up with a hope I shouldn’t have.
That hope was squashed pretty quickly when I realized the man swaying side to side next to my table was not who I wanted him to be.
He looked like a fucking ass, wearing his white shirt only buttoned halfway up and a cocky smile showing off perfectly white teeth.
“A drink, for the pretty lady,” he yelled over the music.
“You look like you’re lonely. Mind if I–”
I shoved the offered glass away with my fingertips hard enough to fly off the table's edge. My unwanted guest cursed loudly and sprung back to avoid the splash on his white pants. “Fuck off, sap. I’m not in the mood.”
Half of me wished the tool would cause a scene, even if it would be bad for business to start a brawl.
Kicking his ass might help get some of this frustration out of my system, though.
Unfortunately, the guy ran off with his tail between his legs before a solid decision was made with one low growl from the closest guard.
Taylor had put extra security detail on me and everything within a two-block radius since the shooting.
No one could drive down the street in front of the club without being stopped if I happened to be on the premises.
It felt… isolating. Even though I was in a packed room full of people dancing and drinking, and having the time of their lives.
I’d never felt like this before meeting Grant.
I’d been totally content to hang out in the soundproofed office upstairs, not down here moping among the masses.
My eyes glued themselves back to the black tabletop like it was the one who offended me.
I knew it was ridiculous to sit and pout like this over a man like Grant Black.
Yeah, I had threatened him to not talk to me anymore.
But maybe a small piece of me wished he would try to climb the walls I’d built around myself.
He’s just another underling for another mob boss—Andrea Caruso, no less—and my brain was telling me that I needed to forget him and move on to a less complicated situationship.
It’s not like he even gave me much to go on.
He wouldn't tell me much about his past beyond living with a wolf shifter pack as a foster. I shifted with a heavy sigh, starting to move toward the end of the booth’s seat, when a pair of legs clad in black pants blocked me in.
“Are you going to tell me to fuck off, too?”
This ballsy son of a bitch.
My shoulders stiffened, my spine snapping straight like I’d been pinned to the back of the booth.
A long-fingered hand holding a glass of scotch by the rim came into my field of vision as he set it down opposite my drink.
White sleeves rolled up to his elbows showcased those defined forearms, and the same black watch he wore in our first meeting caught my eye.
“I thought I already told you to fuck off,” I answered just loud enough to hear over the music. Despite my best efforts, my eyes still lifted from glaring at the table to meet Grant’s gaze through his black rimmed glasses. “Are you this bad at taking directions from your own boss?”
Grant scoffed. “Obviously not, or I wouldn’t have survived long enough to make it here.
” He kept his answer intentionally vague.
Not that anyone could eavesdrop on us over the thumping bass, but it was not a good practice to be yelling about being part of a mafia.
Maybe he does have some sense of self-preservation.
“You can say I’m a dog with a bone about some things. ”
“What, you’re calling me a bone? How charming.”
He slid into the booth’s seat opposite mine and leaned closer over the table, snatching my hand up before I could pull it away.
The two Riot members on guard bristled, shifting closer until I jerked my chin to the side in a silent command to stand down.
The stiffness in Grant’s shoulders relaxed with the assurance I wasn’t tossing him out on his ass immediately.
Even so, I snarled and yanked my arm to free myself.
Grant raised my palm to kiss the center before rubbing it against his smooth cheek, then pressed his nose to the pulse point on my inner wrist and took in a great lungful of my scent there.
I had the pheromone blocker on—practically drenching myself in it before leaving the condo this morning—but it was weaker now, and Grant’s sense of smell was better than any shifter I’d met.
A sliver of suspicion slithered into awareness, something I had noticed but never gave much weight to until now.
Shifters were extremely driven by scent, especially those in prime breeding age.
While the effect was mostly lost on women, the men reacted to the pheromones of their mates on a baser level.
I wore the blocker in an attempt to avoid potential mates sniffing around—I didn’t have time for that shit—but Grant proved to be unshakeable.
If we had the unfortunate circumstance of being mates, it would certainly explain why my brain refused to hold on to the anger I managed to scrounge up.
That didn’t mean I was going to make it easy on him to trap me in a mate bond.
I had the distinct feeling, in this very moment, that there was nowhere I could go where Grant Black couldn’t find me. And something about that thrilled me. What changed to make him so assertive, though?
“I’m not here because of Andrea. Well, not in the way you think.”
The admission was low and sounded sincere enough.
I wished we were somewhere with fewer bodies, so I could scent him and assure myself he was telling the truth.
Or maybe to settle this unease weighing heavily in my stomach.
Grant must have felt the same way, because he reached across the table for my other hand and pulled like he was going to take me from the booth.
“Dance with me.”
My right brow tried to creep all the way to my hairline.
“You’re a cocky bastard, aren’t you? I thought I made myself clear, I wanted nothing to do with you.
” I tried to extricate my hands from his, but the effort was half-hearted.
“Just because I haven’t ripped your throat out yet doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. ”
Grant’s lips twitched in an almost smile, and he leaned across the table on his elbows.
His grip on my hands tightened as he set them between us.
It was like he refused to let go once he’d gotten hold of me.
I countered his move by leaning back into the lush purple cushion of the booth, finally jerking my hands free to cross my arms tightly.
Like that could hold on to whatever sliver of self-control I could muster like a life preserver.
“I’ve always been a bit of a slow learner.” Those rich brown eyes warmed like chocolate melting in the sun, and he slowly moved his right hand across the table. Still holding my stern gaze, he flipped it palm-up in a silent invitation. “Come on, Lore. What’s one dance?”
Because I already convinced myself not to chase after you, I thought bitterly.
Not that I would ever admit something like that to Grant.
It was bad enough to be panting after him like I was in heat.
Knowing that he had even the faintest connection to that slimy bastard Andrea should have been enough to make me retch in his presence.
It was definitely enough to taint any interaction we had after that little reality check.
So why was I even giving him this bit of attention?
“Since when do you dance, anyway? You never struck me as someone who’d be grinding on a crowded dance floor.” My eyes slid to said dance floor, where people were packed in so tightly it looked like a giant, writhing mass of arms.
He leaned in a little closer, still holding onto my hand like I was his lifeline. “When it comes to you, Lore, I’m willing to do just about anything to keep you close.”
Grant’s warm eyes pleaded with mine. Almost like…
he wanted me too. Not the Red Riot boss.
Not Cyber_Fox, or Vixen. Just me, Lore Brennan, and all my messy bits.
I willingly threw myself into the dark world of hacking and black markets, knowing I would sacrifice the human connections that could be used against me.
I resolved to guard my heart for the sake of more than just myself.
If whispers of my location ever made it back to my shitbag of a father or, even worse, the man he sold me to…
I already risked being found by fucking with Andrea’s money flow and blackmailing him to keep my identity a secret.
But I refused to stand by and let him snatch girls out from under my nose, when I promised them protection and freedom.
While I couldn’t go after every piece of filth in the world who took advantage of prone men and women, it was the least I could do to make predators within my reach wish they hadn’t been born, Andrea included.