Knight (65 page)

I flushed. “I am
not
a stripper.”

Lyn tightened her jaw. “Drop that holier-than-thou attitude before I smack it out of you. I didn’t mean dancing. I meant as a musician. We have a live music night.”

“You want me to play?”

“Or bar-tend.”

“Really?”

“You make more if you do it topless.”

“I can’t do that.”

Lyn smirked. “Virgin?”

“Why does that matter?”

“You’re a virgin.” Her smile faded, and she looked me over. “Oh. Were you molested?”

My insides instantly curdled. “
What
?”

“Happens more than you might think. I have a club filled with more daddy issues, broken pasts, and heartache than you can imagine. Maybe.”

“I’m not—”

“It’ll eat you alive if you don’t deal with it,” she said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Thorne isn’t going to be the one to support you. He has two modes:  Fucking and Fighting. One day, you’ll need more than that, so you better sort your shit out before it happens.”

I swallowed. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know your brothers need you.”

I wondered if she’d eventually just smack me. Five pristinely manicured nails across the face would make more sense than her whiplash of invasive questions.

“What do my brothers have to do with any of this?” I asked.

Lyn shrugged. “It’s a dangerous world. But your brothers are still your brothers.”

I didn’t like her tone. “Who else would they be?”

“Let’s hope we never find out.”

I never had stage-fright before, but I imagined what it felt like. Being trapped. Alone. Watching over a crowd of judgmental and hostile strangers who knew something I didn’t. Maybe my pitch was off. My guitar strummed out of tune. The microphones set too soft or my songs screeched horrible and unappealing.

Lyn met my gaze with a sympathy absent from Anathema. Her pity stung worse than any injury Exorcist inflicted on my body.

“You’re no stranger to heartbreak,” Lyn said. “If I were you, I’d be doing everything I could to avoid more of it.”

We both flinched at the knock on the door. I tensed as she removed a gun and rested it on her knees, hidden under the table. She ordered me still and answered the knock.

The door swung open. The brunette dancer pouted and slipped inside. Lyn sighed. My pulse raged against my bruised ribs.

“Shannon.” Lyn gestured to me. “Rose.”

The brunette rocked the strips of lingerie barely concealing her curves, but she didn’t try to hide the few injuries marring her otherwise perfect skin. I recognized the bruises. A belt. The marks lashed over her thighs, tucking under the lacey panties covering her backside. She didn’t seem to care. Her hand absently tangled in the collar around her neck. Lyn frowned.

“If my customers wanted to see broken women, they’d go home and smack their wives around.” Lyn scolded her, but the chastisement felt half-hearted. As if it weren’t her first warning. “You’re better than this, Shannon. What the hell did Lash do to you?”

“Nothing I didn’t like.”

Her bruising rivaled mine, but I certainly didn’t like what Ex or his crew did.

“What’s he have you doing now?” Lyn frowned.

“Nothing I didn’t agree to do.” Shannon matched her cool tone. She handed me an envelope. “They said you’d know what this means.”

I didn’t take the paper. Lyn’s eyes darkened.

“Who is
they
?” I asked.

Lyn answered for Shannon. Hatred soured her voice. “The Coup. Shannon’s...owner is one of Priest’s crew.”

“Sorry.” Shannon shrugged. I didn’t believe her. “I’m guessing it isn’t good news.”

She forced the paper into my hand and demanded her paycheck before she sashayed from the room. Lyn stared at my trembling hands as the envelope fell away.

“Rose, what the hell is going on?” Lyn asked.

23 and 3
^rd

Theater off of Washington Street

Thursday, 11 AM

The prez will be handled tonight

I crumbled the paper. The blood iced in my body and pooled at my feet.

“Rose, talk to me!” Lyn ripped the note from my fingers. “Who the fuck wrote this? What does it mean?”

Nothing.

Because I wasn’t letting it happen.

“Ex is going to kill Thorne,” I said. “And we have to stop it.”

Lyn’s stare might have set the note on fire. “What the fuck do you know?  What happened when they grabbed you?”

“If you want to stay alive, don’t ask me that.”

“Does Thorne—”

“And if you want everyone else to stay alive, forget you read this.” I ripped the paper from her hands.

Lyn swallowed. She flipped on a secondary monitor on her desk. Security footage from the club blinked. She enlarged the image of the parking lot and the four bikers poised outside.

“The Coup is here,” she said.

“Call Thorne. He thinks we’re just giving Luke his bike back.”

“So does Luke.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Luke arranged this meeting.”

“Then Luke lied.”

Lyn’s eyes flashed lethal, and I braced for the strike of a pissed off rattlesnake. “Knight would never lie to me.”

“
How do you know
?”

“You have your secrets…” Lyn glanced to the paper. “If I call Thorne and tell him what’s happening, they’ll kill Luke.”

“But...”

“Let’s just say I don’t want the liability on Sorceress.”

I knew better than to ask any more. “Then I have to go warn him.”

“You walk out there, that note in your hand, and run over to Thorne, Ex will shoot you on sight.”

“Then you do it.”

“They’d kill me too, for their own reasons.”

“I am not going to let him walk into a trap.”

Lyn’s frown tempered into a quiet smirk. “Well, he did say not to leave unless you were in a thong.” She checked her watch and dialed out on the club line. “Shannon, you’re not leaving. Grab Sophia and Angel. You three go entertain the guys from the Coup. Tell them it’s on the house while I get the VIP room set up for the meeting. Tell Marie to distract Anathema.”

Lyn slammed the phone on the cradle and grabbed my hand. She led me from the room but didn’t head into the club. We hid in a dressing room backstage. The door locked.

Like I needed any more trouble.

“Strip,” Lyn said. “You go warn Thorne.”

“
Strip
?”

“You have a better idea?  The lights are dim, my other girls will be dancing, and...” She grabbed a brush and yanked the scrunchie from my hair. My curls tumbled down, and she pulled most of the dark mass over my face. “Trust me, they’re not looking at your pretty eyes. Take off your clothes.”

Like it was that easy to do.

She ripped through a closet full of costumes. I flushed as I twisted the shirt over my neck and fumbled over the button on my jeans. Lyn glanced up as I stood, goose bumped, in my white bra, panties, and socks.

“Christ, you are a virgin.” She tossed me a plaid school-girl skirt. “Leave the panties, drop the bra.”

“Are you sure?”

“My other girls are in g-strings. Play the fucking part.”

I hated the pink curse on my cheeks. A sheer blouse fit over my shoulders, but Lyn batted my hands away before I buttoned it. She shoved me into a pair of black heels.

“Don’t say anything to anyone. Head right to Thorne, dance, and warn him. Then get the hell out of there before this place turns into the OK Corral.”

I glanced at the walking bundle of sex in the mirror. The skirt was too short, the heels too high, and the shirt way too revealing. Lyn pulled it down off my shoulders, and the swell of my breasts peeked into the air.

“Christ, I hope Brew and Keep don’t kill me for this,” Lyn said.

“Me too.” I ignored the tips of my hardening nipples in the air-conditioned chill. “Let’s go.”

Lyn guided me backstage, but she frowned as she peered around the curtain. Shannon distracted two of Ex’s men closest to the stage, but Thorne and the rest of Anathema waited on the opposite end of the club. My brothers loitered in the middle. Patrolling. Watching the dancing. Just waiting to catch me and lose their minds.

“Be quick,” Lyn said.

My stomach eroded before I even stepped foot onto the floor. I didn’t have the curves to strip, and I didn’t have the courage to slip across the club without trembling before making it to Thorne. Lyn pushed me. I grabbed her before she ducked away.

“Where are you going?” I hissed.

She pointed to the bar. “I have to warn Luke.”

“
Warn Luke
?”

“He might be our only shot at stopping this bloodbath.” Lyn’s voice cut like a knife. She dared me to argue. Crossing the club in a thong was safer than opening my mouth. “Go.”

My almost-nudity shouldn’t have destroyed my confidence, not when singing in front of strangers demanded more talent and skill and risk than just shuffling off my clothes and shaking my hips. But what remained of my pride discarded on the dressing room floor, and my stomach threatened to do a dance of its own.

But my modesty was worth protecting my family.

And I already stripped it for Thorne.

I slipped from behind the curtain and fluffed my hair in front of my face. No one shot me. Or pulled a gun. Or waited to bash my brains in and finish Ex’s job.

At least I’d have a head start before blundering into the light at the end of the strip club.

For the first time in my life, the music didn’t distract me. Not the thick command of the bass or the whining drone of a guitar. The song pulsing over the club played on every radio station every hour of every day and I couldn’t remember a single word.

I had nightmares about times like this—when my guitar strings would snap, the microphones would short out, and the audience’s jeers boo’ed in time to my set. Stage-fright crippled most performers, but I didn’t think it ever killed anyone.

Yet.

The first whistle rattled my bones. The second nearly cost me my composure.

No one ever complimented me like that while singing. Figured. The tiny skirt bounced as I walked, and the blinding white of my panties brightened the room more than the zapping pink light glowing over the bar. I hurried past the three men clustered around Shannon. One touched more than he observed, but Shannon didn’t mind, and it offered me a chance to dart past without too much notice.

I dared to look around the club.

My first mistake.

Luke sat at the bar, separated from the hooting of his men. He knocked back a shot before either recovering his bike or assassinating his former president. The drink in his hand stilled.

My eyes darted to Thorne.

His did too.

I swore and braced to scream, but he broke first, reaching into his vest. It didn’t matter how far he sat from Thorne, or that Keep stood in the direct path of his shot. The Coup didn’t care how many men they needed to kill to take out Thorne.

But he didn’t pull a weapon. Only a glowing iPhone. He lowered his gaze and read the screen.

Frowned.

Searched the faces of his men.

Lyn was a woman of her word, but I had no idea which words she gave Luke. She wanted to warn him as badly as I needed to warn Thorne.

And Anathema had no idea how badly her loyalty twisted.

I slipped into the shadows, edging far from my brothers. Keep and Brew faced away from me, distracted by the slow seduction of a girl in a black thong and nothing else. I wanted to shoulder the transparent blouse, but a fully clothed dancer attracted more attention than someone showing off a perky chest. Then again, not many strippers blushed top to bottom pink.

Gold was the first one to catcall as I approached. His smile transformed into a cowl of absolute horror as I shook my head and hissed for him to stay quiet.

His eyes asked a million questions, but his experience in the Marines taught him all he needed to know about a war zone.

He leapt from his seat, adjusted his jeans, and hurried to my brothers’ side, facing them away from Thorne.

Scotch crossed himself and turned away. I wondered if it was possible to bleed shame or if the fairy-pink glow of my blush revealed enough. I dashed to Thorne’s side, grabbed his cut, and dodged a backhand that would have shaken dollar bills loose from any dancer who dared to wrinkle the leather. He stopped his strike in time.

Stared at me.

Enraged.

“You get a dance.” I gritted my teeth. “On the couch. Now.”

Thorne’s eyes blazed a fierce gray—the gun-metal darkness cocked, fired, then melted under the pressure of his own stare. I didn’t flinch as his attention shifted down.

The primal heat of his gaze nipped over my neck, slipped over my shoulders, caressed the gentle swell of my exposed breasts, and tickled over my tummy. I knew what he imagined under my skirt.

My skin prickled with goose bumps. The raspberry pink of my nipples betrayed me. They tightened. Hard. Harder than they should have for the air in the room and revealing entirely too much for the warning I intended to give.