What He Shields (What He Wants Book Seventeen) (19 page)

 
The guys in here were definitely a lot
older, and dressed a lot more casually, but maybe it was a second marriage or
something.

“Hey there,” a man sitting in the corner
said.
 
He was bald, with graying
hair around his temples and a
pot belly
.
 

“Hi,” I said.
 
Something about the way he was looking
at me made me nervous.
 
It was
different than how it had been out there, talking to Caleb.
 
That had made me think that maybe there
was more to Caleb than what I’d seen.
 
But in here, I felt like maybe I was in danger.

I set the bottle of champagne down on the
table.

“You bring us the good shit?” one of the
other men asked.
 
He walked over to
the table and picked up the bottle, studying it.

“Yup,” I said, even though I had no idea
if it was true.
 
I knew nothing
about alcohol, even less about champagne and what would be considered “good
shit.”

“So, um, if you guys don’t need anything
else…”
 

I turned to head out of the room, but
before I could, one of the guys stepped in front of the door.
 
“What about our dance?” he asked.

“Your dance?”
 
I shook my head.
 
“Oh, no, I’m not a dancer.
 
I’m just a cocktail waitress.
 
I’ll go out and find the girl who’s
going to be, um, performing for you.”

I went to move by him, but he grabbed me
by the shoulders, hard.
 
“We like
you,” the guy said.
 
His meaty hand
dug into my flesh.
 
“We want you to
dance for us.”

“I’m not a dancer,” I said.
 
“But I’ll go get you one.”

“No,” the man said, his nails digging into
me even harder.
 
“Dance for us,
girl.”

“Yeah, dance for us, slut,” the man in
the corner said.
 
He reached into
his pants and pulled out his penis, then grinned as he began stroking it.

I tried to move out of the room, but the
man who was holding me just gripped me harder.
 
I screamed as loud as I could and bit
him in the arm.
 
But he just
laughed.
 
“I think she likes it rough,”
he said, pushing me up against the door, his hands moving over my ass.
 
“You like it rough, baby?”

Suddenly, the door behind us went flying
open, and Colt was standing there.
 
He took in the scene, and when he realized what was going on, his eyes
blazed.
 
“What the fuck is going on
in here?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” the guy in the corner said,
adjusting himself back into his pants.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Colt said to
them.

“
Aww
, come on,
man, we were just having some fun,” the guy who grabbed me said.

“Get the fuck out of my club,” Colt
growled, grabbing the man by the neck.
 
He squeezed until the man gasped,
then
finally
released him.
 
“And don’t come
back.”

The men looked at each other, obviously
deciding if they wanted to fight him on it.
 
But they must have decided I wasn’t
worth it, because they shook their heads and walked out the door.

“Are you okay?” Colt asked, rushing over
to me.
 
He took my hands and looked
me over, his gaze roaming over my body, making sure I hadn’t been harmed.

“I’m fine,” I said.
 
“It was no big deal.”

“It is a big deal,” he said.
 
“You have bruises on your arms.”
 
His fingertips slid up my body, checking
me over.
 
“Did they hurt you?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head.
 
“You came in before anything could
happen. I’m fine.”

“Wait here,” he said, turning around and
heading for the door.
 
I knew where
he was going – he was going to run after those guys and do God
knows
what to them.
 
I remembered what he’d done to those men on the street earlier, and I
reached out and grabbed Colt’s arm, pulling him back toward me.

“No,” I said.
 
“Please, don’t.
 
It’s not worth it.”

He shook out of my grasp and took another
step toward the door but then turned around.
 
“What the hell were you doing back here
anyway?”

“Jessa sent me back here,” I said.
 
“She told me I needed to bring those
guys some champagne.”

“Jessa sent you back here?” he
repeated.
 
He shook his head.
 
“No.
 
She wouldn’t have done that.”

“She did.”

He opened his mouth to protest again, but
then he shut it.
 
“It doesn’t
matter.
 
This is over.”

“What’s over?”

“This.
 
Our arrangement.”
 
He took my hand and led me back out through
the curtain, through the club and into the hallway of back offices.

He pulled me into the room I’d been in
earlier, the room where I’d done my audition.
 
As soon as I saw it – the pole in
the middle, the big chairs set up – it came back to me.
 
How close Colt and I had come to
kissing, his lips inches from mine, his hands on my body, guiding my hips,
instructing me to undress.
 

“Sit down,” Colt demanded.
 

I sat down in one of the big leather
chairs, sinking back into the supple fabric.
 

He crossed the room to a small
refrigerator in a corner, pulled out a bottle of water and handed it to
me.
 
“Drink,” he instructed.

“I’m not thirsty.”

“Drink.”

I took a sip.

A second later, he took off the black
sweater he was wearing and draped it over my shoulders.
 
“We’re done,” he said.
 
“We’re not doing this anymore.”

“What?”

“We’re not doing this anymore.
 
The deal is off.”

“The deal is off because some guys
grabbed at my ass?”
 
I shook my
head.
 
“Wow, Colt, I didn’t peg you
for a quitter.”

“A quitter?” he raged.
 
“Are you insane? This isn’t about
quitting, Olivia, this is about making sure you stay safe.”

“I am safe!”

“You’re not.”

“Yeah, well, I was until Jessa decided to
send me back to the wolves,” I muttered, taking another sip of my water.
 
A rage was building up inside of me, the
kind of rage that made me want to run out there and slap her in the face.
 
It wasn’t fair.
 
She hated me because she had a thing
with Colt, and she was ruining my chance to find Declan.

Colt shook his head.
 
“Jessa wouldn’t have done that,” he
said.

“Whatever.”

“We’re going home.”

“What?”

“We’re leaving.
 
Me and you.
 
I’m taking you home.”

He left the room and returned a few
moments later with my clothes and my bag.
 
I was angry.
 
Angry at Jessa,
angry at Colt, angry at myself for thinking that maybe something was going to
go my way for once, that maybe someone was going to help me.
 

“No,” I said, acting like a baby and not
caring.
 
I sunk down in the chair
and crossed my arms over my chest.
 
“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yes, you are.
 
Come on.”

“You can’t make me.”
 
It was maybe the most ridiculous thing
I’d said in my life, but I didn’t care.

“Actually, I can,” he said.
 
“I own this club and if you don’t get the
hell out of it, I’ll call the cops and have you arrested for trespassing.”

“Perfect,” I said.
 
“That’s actually great, because I want
to talk to the cops.
 
I want to tell
them about the girl that was here earlier, the one with a jacked up face and a
chunk of her
hair cut
off. The one everyone is just
pretending doesn’t exist, even though I saw her.
 
And then I’ll mention the track marks on
Jessa’s
arms.
 
I’m sure they’ll be interested in figuring out how she got them.”

“Wow,” he said, shaking his head.
 
“You are something else, you know
that?
 
Here I am, trying to be a
nice guy by offering to find some asshole for you, a guy who doesn’t even give
enough of a shit about you to bother giving you a phone number or an email or a
fucking address before he just takes off, and now you’re giving me shit because
I’m trying to keep you safe.”

“Oh, please!” I said.
 
“You aren’t trying to keep me safe!
 
You’re trying to keep your club
protected.
 
And you weren’t being
nice by giving me a
job,
you wanted something out of
it.
 
Which you still won’t tell
me!
 
So if anyone was being nice to
anyone, it was
me
being nice to
you.”

“Please,” Colt said.
 
“I was doing you a favor and you know
it.
 
That audition you gave me
earlier?
 
It was pathetic.”

“And yet you still wanted to fuck me,” I
said.

He looked taken aback for a
moment,
as if he couldn’t believe those words were coming
out of my mouth.
 
I could barely
believe it.
 

“Listen, Princess,” he said.
 
“If I wanted to fuck you, I could have
fucked you.”

“Yeah?” I said.
 
“Try it.”

I was blazing mad now, so mad that I felt
like there was a fireball inside of me, just waiting to explode.

Colt crossed the room in two long
strides, pushed the chair I was on back into a reclining position and pinned me
down with his body.
 
The weight of
him on me sent shivers flying up my spine, and there was one second, one
endless second where he paused, his lips inches from mine.

My breath hitched in my chest, and it was
like I was standing on the edge of a cliff, and Colt was holding my hand, begging
me to jump with him.
 
His eyes asked
permission for just one second, not giving me a chance to change my mind.

And then his lips were on mine.

It was an instant explosion of heat, my
body almost bursting into flames.
 
His hands were in my hair as we kissed, his tongue slipping into my
mouth.
  
He tasted like
cinnamon and alcohol, his stubble brushing against my chin as the kiss
intensified.

I grabbed for his back, pulling him into
me, but he pulled away and grinned, his hand moving up my thigh, under my skirt
until he slid his finger over my hip and hooked it around the fabric of my
thong.

“You taste real good, Princess,” he said
kissing me again on the lips, softly this time.
 
“I’ll bet you taste even better down
here.”
  
The thought of his
mouth down there, his tongue on my pussy, his lips moving in between my legs as
he kissed my center was enough to make me moan out loud.

But he moved his hand out from under my
skirt and up to the ties of my uniform.
 
He pulled one strand of fabric, then the other, until my top was
open.
 
He slid his palm under the
loosened fabric and as soon as he touched my bare skin, my nipple
hardened.
 

He shifted on the chair and I could feel
his cock through his pants.
 
I
wanted to push into it, to feel it against me, to take him inside of me.
 
I’d heard about girls losing their
minds, having sex with guys not that long after they’d met them, and I’d never
believed you could want someone that bad.
 

But now I believed it.

I wanted to fuck him.

I wanted him to do whatever he wanted to
me, to lick me, touch me, finger me,
use
me.

He pushed the top of my uniform back, so
that my breasts were completely exposed, and then he lowered his head to my
nipple, pulling it into his mouth and sucking gently.
 
His tongue swirled around my peak, then
moved to my other breast, sucking and squeezing my tits until I was dizzy.