Page 155 of Beyond the Badge: Nox

Nox wasn’tsure where T-Bone and Saint were getting the women for their side hustle. Were they strippers from The Peach Pit they purposely got hooked on drugs? Or were they random women taken from the streets? Willingly or unwillingly.

Either way, he feared they would all end up like Sadie. Drugged up, physically and sexually abused and in the end, dead.

He wondered if anyone else in the Demons knew about this little enterprise.

Nox’s guess? No fucking way.

From where he had sat in his truck night after night, he could see it was a lucrative business. Plus, if they skimmed meth from the Demons’ supply to “pay” these women, the overhead wouldn’t cost much more than renting the motel room.

After a while, if anyone got suspicious at their current location, they could easily move to another shit-bag motel. One with staff willing to look the other way when it came to questionable goings-on.

Nox paused the recording and leaned in to take a closer look when the next dancer stepped on stage.

He cursed under his breath. While the stage lighting at The Peach Pit was on point and made it easy to see each woman, it was tough to tell if the women at the motel were one and the same. T-Bag and Saint were just smart enough to have the women keep their head down or covered for the few feet it took to get from the vehicle to the room.

Nox fast-forwarded until he got to the next dancer and routine, at the same time scanning the footage for signs of T-Bone and Saint. One thing Nox noticed while searching the footage was, the quality of dancers had spiraled toward the bottom of the barrel after Mel left. But after Sapphire was fired, the “entertainment” somehow got even worse.

Most of them danced with the enthusiasm of a wet washcloth. Zombies only going through the motions. Their eyes were dead, and their athletic ability was at a zero.

The Peach Pit was truly a “pit” now and Nox doubted the business would ever recover.

It wouldn’t surprise him if some of the current dancers were meth addicts. Or willing to have Saint and T-Bone pimp them out for some extra cash since the audience at The Pit was as spotty as mange and only an occasional crumpled dollar bill was tossed on stage. If they were being pimped out, Nox wondered if they even saw a dime of that money, or they were fine with only getting drugs in exchange for having some stranger pumping and dumping inside them.

He closed his eyes and once again saw Sadie on that damn motel bed in Ohio. She had been nothing but a skeleton covered in a leather hide that used to be supple skin and coated in…

His nostrils flared and he pulled in a long breath to cool down his simmering rage.

Women were nothing to those motherfuckers.

Absolutely. Fucking. Nothing.

He blocked out the noise from his fellow task force members as they talked, cracked jokes and ribbed each other. He stayed out of the conversations swirling around him and, instead, concentrated on the screen in front of him.

Even though it was hard to concentrate.

Thoughts of Liyah kept filling his noggin.

Naked beneath him. Naked on top of him. Naked on her knees with his cock in her mouth as she kept her eyes turned up to him.

Naked and slick after stepping out of the shower.

Naked and curled around him as she slept.

He sensed a theme in his fantasies. In them, Liyah was always wearing his favorite outfit… None.

He shook himself mentally before he got a raging hard-on in the middle of the task force headquarters. He’d never live that down because they’d think he got it from watching the limp washrags wrapping themselves around the poles.

His mind wandered to the weekly group meetings. He only half-listened to whoever was speaking in the circle since he was too busy watching Liyah. Watching how she responded to their stories, even the ones she’d heard over and over again. Every damn time, she reacted with warmth and empathy. She always made the members of the group feel welcomed and supported.

And because of how she handled the group, it had grown to almost twice as large since Nox started attending.

He no longer came in at the last minute. Instead, he arrived early every week to help her set up. He was also always the last to leave because he stayed to help clean up. Of course, he escorted her out to her car, too.

After introducing her to his BAMC brothers on the club run, they no longer had to find a motel to “boink” after the Wednesday meetings. Now, they used his place. And used it often. Even when her house was empty because her sons were away.

Since Magnum had a key to Liyah’s house, Nox wasn’t risking the big man making a surprise visit. He’d rather not have to deal with her father when he was buck naked. Especially when he was about to fuck or had just finished fucking the man’s daughter. The fact that Liyah was an adult would not matter to Malcolm Moore, Sr.

Crew came bursting through the door, shouting, “Time to round ‘em up, boys! I got the official word. It’s indictmas time! Operation Demon Destroyer is now a go!”

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