7. Killian
Chapter 7
Killian
F uck, fuck, fuck.
I slammed open the office door and threw myself down on the couch, burying my face in my hands in frustration at my behavior.
My weakness.
When I’d returned to her, I’d been determined. Determined to make her suffer, determined to get her to talk, determined to end this shit. But watching her under the lash of the flogger, watching her squirm and pant, watching her strain and groan. It was un-fucking-bearable. It was my greatest turn on—watching a woman, bound and immobilized, respond against her will to pain and domination, to torment and control.
Particularly this woman, with her incredulously innocent responses and her embarrassed, uncontrolled reactions. God, I’d wanted to get her off while I spanked her, flogged her.
My dick was still rock hard as I thought about her red ass, about how she buried her shy, humiliated face in the bed when she realized how turned on the beating was making her. Why the fuck had I flogged her in the first place? It wasn’t exactly Torture 101. I knew many women found the flogger arousing—the sting, the heat, the vibration causing a storm of endorphins and adrenaline that blurred pleasure and pain, funneling that riot of chemicals straight into desperate lust.
Unable to stop myself, I unzipped my pants and grabbed my stiff cock, distracted by its constant throbbing. I squeezed it to try to get it under control, but soon images of her writhing on the bed, my fingers in her wet pussy, rubbing her eager little clit had me lightly stroking. Before long, I was beating off to the image of me spreading those legs and fucking her while I stared at and spanked her red-hot ass. My cock swelled and wept at fantasies that were reeling through my mind, fantasies of taking her into deeper, darker places. Of causing her pain and delight as my cock pounded into that tight as fuck pussy and owned it.
Goddamn . I came embarrassingly quickly. Shaking my head, I stared down at the mess I’d made on my stomach and reached over to grab some conveniently placed tissues to clean myself before zipping up.
I just fucking jerked off in a sex club to the woman who got Mac murdered when there were fifty available women upstairs to fuck.
I was in deep shit.
I pulled out my phone and hit Ian’s number, my other hand reaching up to squeeze the bridge of my nose.
“What’s up?” Ian replied absently, clicking in the background confirming he was where he normally was—behind a computer screen.
“You did a background check on Lily Jensen, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Does she have a sister?” I asked, almost dreading his response. A part of me wanted him to say yes so, I wouldn’t feel so fucking crazy about my reaction to this girl, but another part of me hated the idea that I might have just tormented an innocent woman.
“Um, let me see. Yes, one sister, eight years younger than her. Named Willa.”
My head dropped back on the couch. Fuck.
“Can you send me a picture of the sister?”
“Yeah. Give me a minute. We didn’t do much digging into Lily’s family because her parents are dead, and she didn’t seem to have much contact with the sister. I doubt hanging with a college kid is Lily’s style. Okay, just sent you a text of the sister’s pic.”
My phone chimed and I clicked on it, almost dreading what I would find.
My breath released in a whoosh. Staring back up at me was a picture of a beautiful, smiling blonde-haired woman.
The same woman I had tied to the fucking bed in the other room.
Her long golden hair was up in a ponytail and she had her arm around a brown-haired girl who looked her age, probably some college friend. Those sky-blue eyes stared at me from the picture, but instead of being drenched in tears and clouded with pain, they looked open and happy.
Shit, shit, shit.
I pulled out the driver’s license I had found on her and compared the pictures.
We had the wrong fucking girl.
In my defense, she and Lily looked eerily alike, but there were subtle differences I could see now that I had a comparison. Willa had slightly wider eyes and a softer, sweeter smile.
Christ, I had to let her free and pray she didn’t have my ass thrown in jail. I was still sitting on the couch and contemplating the best course of action when Logan walked into the office, his office, and stared down at me. His dark, perceptive gaze quickly assessed my body language. “How’s it going with the girl?” he asked, dropping his large frame into the leather chair behind the large oak desk.
Logan Galloway had spent the beginning part of his career as an MMA fighter and still had the physique to show for it. He was huge and covered in tattoos. His dark hair was kept nearly buzzed, due to his time as a fighter. He always said longer hair could be a liability in fighting. He was now staring at me with dark eyes that I’d seen seduce women with their magnetic draw or terrify men with their opaque coldness. Logan started this club after he’d retired from competing. He owned other businesses, but most of them were related to the fighting industry.
We’d handled his security from the beginning, since Mac had helped him out when an ex-girlfriend tried to sic some hacker on him. Mac created an airtight security system and Logan was sold. When he expanded his interests and bought The Red Room, he immediately brought us on board. He had been as shaken as the rest of us when Mac got murdered and wholeheartedly supported our quest to get vengeance.
I sat back on the couch. “Badly. I just found out she’s not Lily Jensen. She’s Lily Jensen’s sister, Willa. She told me she was Lily’s sister, but, fuck…targets do that shit all the time. She had Lily’s ID on her, and they look like fucking twins.”
Logan grimaced. “How rough did you get? I presume she’s still alive?”
The fact that he wasn’t rattled by the possibility that I’d killed some woman in his basement told you all you needed to know about Logan.
“Yeah, she’s alive, but she’s sure as fuck not happy.”
“You go hard on her?”
I shrugged. The answer was actually no, I didn’t go that hard on her. As uncomfortable as Willa might feel right now, what I did to her wasn’t even close to torture, especially considering some of the shit Logan was into.
The single tail was rough, but I’d only given her four lashes with no broken skin or blood. The doubts had started creeping in, disrupting that session.
The flogger? Who the fuck was I kidding, the flogger was nothing but foreplay. But the rod…the rod could have been true punishment. If I had struck her more than one time. Which I hadn’t because seeing her in true pain had fucked with my head
“What the fuck, McKay? You going soft?”
Yes. But I wasn’t going to say that to him.
“It’s just as well I didn’t because we had the wrong fucking person.”
“Fair enough,” Logan conceded.
“I’m trying to figure out what the fuck to do with her right now. I had an idea to use her to bring Lily in. Maybe coerce Lily to come get her, if Lily even gives a shit that we have her sister, which I honestly doubt because from her story, it sounds like Lily set her up. If that doesn’t work, she might know how we can bring Lily in. Maybe she knows one of Lily’s bolt holes, or better yet, this fucking boyfriend of hers.”
“You think she’s going to be receptive to that idea right now?”
I sighed. “I have two ways I could go about convincing her—force or persuasion. I could simply keep her locked up and make her think her life is at stake if she doesn’t provide us with the information and assistance we want.
Logan nodded, seeing the logic in that approach.
“Or I could convince her to help using my powers of persuasion, maybe using guilt over what Lily did to Mac. I might be able to persuade her into helping us.”
Logan snorted. “Using what? Your sparkling personality? Your charm?”
“I can be charming when the situation calls for it.” I’d just never been confronted with a situation that had called for it.
“You get laid plenty, McKay, but it’s not because you’re fucking charming. In fact, it’s more likely despite a lack of that attribute. Women like your face, your body, and your money, not your personality. I’ve heard you talk to women. You’d be better off putting a gun to her head if the whole operation depends on your charm.”
I flipped him off, but he wasn’t wrong. Typically, my approach to sex involved asking a woman if she wanted to fuck. I hated small talk, but I loved sex, so I did the bare minimum to get it. Luckily for me, it usually worked, but if it didn’t there were always other women.
“What exactly did you do to her while you were interrogating her? How much charm would you have to exert for her to not kick you in the dick and run to the police?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Whipped her with a single tail, flogged her, hit her with the cane.” Even as I said it, I knew it was a paltry list in terms of torture.
Logan looked at me oddly. “The single tail and the cane—those make sense. You can make those fucking hurt, especially when you really go at someone. But the flogger ? You mean a cat?” he asked, referring to a cat o’ nine tails, a flail made of nine thick, painful braids of rope.”
I flattened my lips. I knew where this was going. “No, a flogger.”
His brow puckered. “No one is going to break under a flogger. Unless it was studded? Rubber?”
Jesus, this motherfucker. “No, none of those. She’s not a fucking sub or into kink, at least I don’t think she is by the way she looked at all that gear. She’s not used to pain; even pain we consider mild.”
Logan’s look changed slightly, he looked more speculative. “Well, like you said, at least you didn’t fuck her up too badly. You might be able to salvage the situation. Worst case scenario, you either throw money at her or force her to help. If it doesn’t work, you can always let Hathaway take a crack at her.”
Every muscle in my boy tightened at the idea of letting Cullen loose on Willa. “Fuck no. There’s a reason he’s on the sidelines on this. Christ, if it had been him in there, she’d probably already be dead just for saying she wasn’t Lily. I’m not letting him near her. I’ll convince her to help us. I won’t have to use force.”
Comprehension dawned on his harsh features, a small smile playing at his lips. “You don’t want to use force, do you? You’ve gone easy on her for a reason. I saw what Lily looks like. I know she’s hot. If the sister looks enough like her to pass as her twin…you want to fuck her, right?”
I scowled at him, annoyed at how quickly he figured it out. Except, he thought I just wanted to fuck her, which was bad enough, but it was more than that. I’d been attracted to women before, wanted to fuck them, but my attraction to Willa was almost visceral.
I couldn’t believe how much resistance I had to the idea of using force on her, creating more animosity between us. I wanted her and I needed her to want me. It was hard to convince a woman to have sex with you when you were coercing her into helping to kill her sister.
I hopped up, leaning my hands on the top of his desk. “Shut the fuck up and don’t say shit to Hathaway about your delusions. He’s the last person I need to deal with right now.”
“Well, I hope you have enough charm to keep your ass out of jail.”
I winced. Logan hadn’t been fucking around when he’d described me. Being nice, apologizing, making an effort with women—they were all way out of my comfort zone. They all screamed weakness and one thing I wasn’t was fucking weak.
I walked toward the door, flipping him off before walking out and slamming it shut.