Page 64 of Black Sheep

“You’re not…I’m not doing…that with you while I’m wearing another woman’s shoes.”

One brow rises, and there’s brittle amusement in his eyes. “Jealousy looks…interesting on you.”

The pulse of dark satisfaction in his voice makes my teeth clench so hard my jaw aches. “I’m not jealous.”

His hands trail up my thighs, teasing through the dampness still very much present between my legs from our mutual release. “Am I misremembering an incident where you threatened to ‘beat the shit’ out of a waitress who smiled at me as she took our order? Or when one of Troy’s girlfriends accidentally got shoved into a pool for brushing her tits against me at a pool party?”

In hindsight, a shockingly foolish period in my life I want to take back and crush to oblivion simply because it makes everything that followed so much more devastatingly bleak in comparison.

“Yeah, well, that was a long time ago, before…” I press my lips together to stop from saying something that will come back to haunt me.

The fingers playing dangerously close to my labia freeze. “Before?” The satisfaction is gone, in its place a tightly knotted cluster bomb that can go off at any second.

Before I knew the true depth of the darkness in your soul. Before I found out you were capable of cold-blooded murder.

“Before real life got in the way.”

“Real life,” he breathes, and I swear I see dragon’s fire flaming from his aura. “And what we had before this ‘real life’ was…?” His voice is deceptively casual.

Behind us, the elevator doors open, but he doesn’t move. Over his shoulder, I see four people waiting to board.

“Axel, we’re here. There are people waiting…” I venture.

His eyes don’t move from my face. “I asked you a question,” he spits out. “What did we have?”

“Nothing more than unsustainable dreams spun by horny teenage idiots?” I hiss under my breath. We’re gathering an audience and although his large body obscures most of mine, it doesn’t take a genius to work out where his hand is situated.

I hear whispering before one man dressed in a shiny PVC boiler suit clears his throat.

Axel removes his hand, unhurriedly buttons my coat before he steps back. His face is the taut mask of a stranger and the hand that grasps mine is painfully tight, his control barely leashed.

The man in the suit receives a withering look that makes him take a hurried step back once he realizes whom he dared to disturb.

We enter the main reception area of the club and the first true taste of what goes on here hits me in the face. Even this early in the morning, the scene is so shockingly decadent, my jaw drops open.

In the city that never sleeps, apparently neither does the craving for punishment.

In a private alcove, two scantily clad women are openly flogging each other, the sting of the whips drawing sobs with each blow delivered; a middle-aged man in a three-piece suit is crawling across the floor, shaking his head and muttering shame over and over; a young man, barely over twenty-one, is seated in front of a video game, his severely bloodshot eyes glued to the screen as his fingers fly over the handheld console. Occasionally, he sips from a mug labeled Rat Poison.

Unlike the last time I was here, there are no nude clients or lurid sex acts being performed, for which I thank my lucky stars.

I follow Axel as he walks to another private elevator. The stunning black woman behind the desk openly eye-fucks him as we pass. He doesn’t acknowledge her. Her gaze shifts to me, and whatever she sees in my face makes her eyes widen a touch.

His mocking reminder of my possessiveness over him once upon a time rises to slap me in the face. I want to tell her I have no claims on him. I don’t straighten the frown I sense on my face, and when the words lock in my throat, I tell myself it’s because I don’t care enough to utter them.

We enter another elevator. This time he doesn’t look at me or move in on me. He faces forward, jaw locked, although his hand doesn’t release mine.

I’m not sure why I’m surprised when he hits the button for the second floor and walks me back to the suite I rented.

Did I, on some subliminal level, imagine he would whisk me to his personal domain now that I am supposedly his?

No, this is a far better fit. The reason I had the club make a replica of his pool house bedroom was so I had an inescapable reminder of my dangerously naïve past. The grief and horror that burn in my heart are adequate reminders, but the visual evidence is a useful stimulus.

He punches in the code and pushes the door open. I enter and my chest tightens as I’m slammed by the very thing I craved a moment ago.

Behind me, Axel hulks in ominous silence. When it becomes too much to bear, I turn and face him.

His face is hewn from stone, his eyes so dark and stormy that the gray looks almost black.

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