Bane: Trillionaire Shifter Club Book One (4 page)

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

As the hostess signaled to Harper and
Cordelia, they quickly began to ascend the stairs towards her. Since she had
entered the club, Harper’s fears had dissolved some. All around them were the
sounds of natural rainforest and all the little insects and birds adding their
sounds to the background. She could even smell the scent of the leaves, and
feel the watery mist hovering in the air around them. There was something
serene about this place. Something enchanted. In other rooms she could hear the
sounds of both men and women conversing with one another. Everyone sounded
happy and alright.

They entered
the dimly lit room on the second floor behind the hostess, where Bane and
another man were standing at the bar. The other man was wearing a grey jacket
without a shirt underneath, his bare chest tough to look away from. He spoke
before Bane did.

“Good evening
ladies,” he said pleasantly. “Welcome to Trillionaire Shifter Club. My name is
Chilton, but I prefer to be called ‘Chill’, and of course you’ve already met
our handsome friend here … Bane.”

Bane glanced
at Chill, looking a bit put off.

Chill ignored
him.

He reached
out for Harper’s hand to shake it. “And you are?”

“Harper,” she
said taking his hand.

Bane’s eyes
flickered.

Soon Chill
was onto Cordelia.

“Cordelia,”
she said sweetly.

Chill kissed
her hand before she stole it away.

“Why don’t
you come and sit with us – let’s get a table, Bane.”

Bane ran his
fingers through his hair and stepped away from the bar.

As they
walked to the table together, Harper noticed he failed to make eye contact with
her.

“A seat for
you, and a seat for you, and well, Bane knows where to sit,” Chill said helping
everyone to their seats. “I’ll go get us a few more drinks to get this
started.”

“I’ll have –”
Cordelia began.

“A-a-ah,”
Chill cut over her. “Leave it to me.”

He left the
three of them alone together.

“Are you
okay?” Harper asked Bane. “Sorry, for barging in on you like this.”

He looked up
at her. “It is quite a surprise.”

“A good
surprise?” Harper asked. “Or a bad one?”

“I’m not sure
yet,” Bane replied.

“Oh,” Harper
leaned back. “Well, that sounds ominous.”

“What’s up
with this address?” Cordelia asked, placing Bane’s business card on the table.
“We looked it up, looked you up, couldn’t find anything.”

Bane reached
out and plucked the card from the table. He put it in his pocket.

“Hello,”
Cordelia blurted out. “I asked you a question.”

“It seems you
found your way here okay,” Bane said quietly.

“Yep.”

Chill
returned to the table with drinks for everyone. He had given both Harper and
Cordelia a goblet shaped glass with a bubbling dark blue liquid inside.

“What is it?”
Harper asked as Cordelia just started drinking hers.

“Delicious!”
she cried.

Harper took a
sip. Her tastebuds immediately began to ignite.

“Mmm,” she
murmured. “Very nice.”

“What do we
call that one, Bane?” Chill asked. “Is it the Fallen Dove or something?”

“The Ocean’s
Swan,” Bane corrected. He frowned a moment. “You just ordered it, didn’t you?”

“I forget
these things,” Chill said smiling at Cordelia.

Harper turned
to Bane. “You okay? You seem kind of down.”

“He’s not
down,” Chill said. “He’s just wondering what the fuck you’re doing here.”

Bane glared
at him. He went to speak but Cordelia was already talking over.

“We’re here
because Harper thinks Bane is a bear shifter,” Cordelia said. “I was like, ‘No
way. You’re crazy, Harps.’ But she was full on serious.”

“They don’t
call it Trillionaire Shifter Club for nothing,” Chill said.

“Oh so you’re
a bear shifter too?” Cordelia declared loudly. “Well, let’s see it then.”

Harper looked
over nervously towards her friend.

Cordelia
looked away from her.

“Come on,
Chilly, let’s see you break it out.”

Chill opened
his hand, looking at Bane. “She wants to see the bear.”

Cordelia
burst out laughing. “Yeah, let’s see Bane’s bear too.”

Harper
knocked Cordelia’s knee. “Shut up…”

Cordelia
glared at her. “You shut up.”

“You know,
we’re not circus performers,” Chill said grinning. “You’re being very rude Miss
Cordelia.”

“Oh really,
I’m being rude?”

“Very, very
rude.”

Chill stood
up from the table, while Bane looked over his shoulder.

“What are you
doing?” Bane asked.

“I don’t
know,” Chill replied. “Maybe I’m obliging the lady’s request.”

Cordelia
burst out with hysterical laughter.

“Don’t
Chill,” Bane warned. “You’ll frighten them.”

Chill raised
his hands in the air and aimed them towards Cordelia. “Am I scaring you? Am I
frightening you?”

“No,” she
giggled.

“What about
now?”

Instantaneously
Chill’s whole form shifted into that of a towering polar bear. His arms were
still pointed towards Cordelia as though he was about to lunge at her.

She screamed
and fell out of her chair.

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

A moment later, the polar bear was
gone, and Chill was helping Cordelia to her feet. Harper looked over and
realized she was holding Bane’s hand.

She quickly
retracted it.

“What the
fuck?” Cordelia wheezed in Chill’s arms. “What the fuck was that?”

She looked
across at Harper. “They’re trying to drug us!”

“You’re just
drunk, darling,” Chill said.

“I am not,”
Cordelia protested. “I’m fine! I’m ready to party!”

At that point
she collapsed.

His arms
sagged a little, but Cordelia’s hair never touched the ground. Chill scooped
her feet up.

Both Harper
and Bane stood.

“I think she
needs to lie down for a moment,” Chill said. “I’ll take her to one of the beds
upstairs.”

Harper
glanced over at Bane, alarmed. “Wait a second. Will she be alright with him?”

“Don’t
worry,” Bane said quietly as Chill took Cordelia away. “He’s all bark, no bite.
He won’t hurt her.”

“What if he
touches
her?”

“He won’t,”
Bane said somberly. “That’s not Chill’s way.”

“Are you
sure?”

“He’s my best
friend. Of course I’m sure.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Chill pushed
open the doors leading out to the staircase landing, and walked through them
carrying Cordelia. Harper wondered if she should follow him.

“So,” Bane
said, his voice right by her ear. “So why have you come here?”

Harper turned
around, forcing a smile. “It’s messed up. I’m really sorry. We were just
talking and she phoned the number, joking around.”

“I knew it
was too soon for you to have second thoughts about your relationship,” Bane
said.

“Well,”
Harper gushed. “I mean, we’re just – we just met. We don’t know where this
would go, whether I was engaged or not, doesn’t make a difference.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Well, I
mean,” Harper began, “I don’t want to leave the impression –”

“Don’t
worry,” Bane assured her. “You haven’t.”

“Oh.”

He walked
past her and stood by the window. “It’s just another night,” he said. “Another
wave of meaningless coincidences. You are but a shadow to me. An outline of
what I desire, but not the real thing. You’re a reminder. A reminder of what I
truly want. But you aren’t real. Not in this moment. Not to me.”

Harper took a
step towards him. “You’re making me feel really bad now. Have I let you down or
something?”

“You don’t
exist,” Bane whispered.

“What?”
Harper cried. “What does that mean? ‘I don’t exist’? I exist. I’m right here.”

“But you
aren’t,” Bane said. “You’re in the arms of another man. Someone you love.
Someone you want to spend the rest of your life with.”

“But…” Harper
began. “But … all I can think about is you.”

She turned
away from him, stunned by her own words. She quivered, afraid of what they
could mean.

She heard
Bane’s footsteps behind her.

“I’m not here
to ruin your life,” he said. “And I’m not going to pressure you just because
you have come here.”

He pulled out
a chair for Harper to sit down. He sat down also.

“Do you know
where you are?” he asked her.

“Trillionaire
Shifter Club,” Harper said after a moment.

“If you left
this house right now, and climbed over the gate, you’d find yourself in a world
you’d never been to before,” Bane said. “You wouldn’t be able to go back and
find your man. You wouldn’t be able to find any of your friends or
acquaintances, or any of the places you’d ever been to. Because you have left
that old world behind. This is a new one.”

He picked up
his glass and drank from it.

“I don’t
understand what you’re saying,” Harper said slowly. “Are you saying I can’t go
home?”

“You can and
you will,” Bane answered. “But understand how far you are away from it now.
This place, this sanctuary, is so special. So infinitely one of a kind. There
is magic here, magic that even I don’t understand the full meaning of. Because
it’s different every time.”

“Why are you
telling me this?” Harper asked.

“Because
you’ll ask yourself these questions later. You’ll try to find this place but
you won’t be able to. And of course, you’ll never see me again either.”

“Wow,” Harper
whispered. “I feel like we’re breaking up or something.”

“I guess,”
Bane said. “In a way, we are.”

 
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

It was all gone now. All of it.

It was over.

Harper was in
the back of the limousine again, on her way home. Not back to Cordelia’s but
the house she lived with Joshua. Where she belonged.

She had been
very wary of leaving Cordelia alone in with Bane and Chill but they both
assured her they’d take her back straight away home the following morning.
Harper had tried to wake Cordelia up to see if she was well enough to go back
with her anyway, and she had woken in a momentary daze.

“I want to be
here,” she had told Harper out of earshot of the guys. “I really like Chill. He
seems like a great guy…”

“I’ll stay
here with you,” Harper insisted. “Make sure they don’t do anything –”

“No,”
Cordelia replied. “Go home and be with Josh. I can see how much it hurts you to
be here. Sorry for dragging you into this…”

So Harper had
agreed to leave.

Bane wouldn’t
look at her properly. He mumbled his goodbye. Harper knew he wasn’t happy. He
didn’t say it, but she knew she had somehow hurt him by coming here.

It was a
stupid night.

A stupid,
stupid night.

As the
vehicle approached her house, she wondered if Josh’s friends would still be
there. Whether they’d all be awake still. It was possible. It was only a
quarter to one. She hoped Josh would be up, because she wanted to talk to him.
She wanted to tell him everything.

Even as she
had been in the shifter club with Bane, she had begun to feel her love for Josh
slipping. Like it was something she could forget while being there. She wasn’t
sure she believed Bane when he talked about the club being inside a world
separate to her own. But there was distance. There were borders and walls she
had crossed to get there. Now she was coming back, Bane and his club felt like
a faraway dream. Something that only happened inside her mind.

This here.

This start to
her driveway.

This was the
true reality.

“Thank you,”
Harper said to the Chauffeur before he took off down the empty road. She turned
and walked up through the front garden and towards the front door. She unlocked
it with her set of keys and entered.

Inside, the
hallway was trashed. Half a bag of corn chips was spread out in the centre of
it, without any sign of the bag, and a couple of beers had been completely
spilt in the barrier between here and the kitchen.

Inside there,
someone had managed to vomit all over the counter.

“Oh my God,”
Harper exclaimed. “Gross!”

She set her
handbag down on one of the stools and exited looking for the bedroom.

“Josh!” she
called out.

No answer.
She could hear music coming from the end of the hall.

She stopped
in front of the bedroom and nudged the door halfway open. It collided with the
head of a guy Harper didn’t recognized, passed out on the carpet.

When her eyes
centred on the bed, Harpers heart nearly choked in her throat.

Josh was
naked and asleep, in the arms of two equally naked and asleep women.