What About Love (Club Decadence Book 6) (27 page)

Not twenty minutes had passed when she counted six empties and eight demolished lime wedges in front of her, the waitress having cleared at least two shot glasses away. She was considering another round when Megan sat bolt upright in her chair and announced in a noisy whisper, “He’s here.”

Sobering fractionally, she followed her gaze and saw the top of his dark head as he moved toward the bar. “He was supposed to be going out of town. That’s the only reason I came.” Blinded by tears that threatened to overflow, she choked out. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Don’t you dare cry,” Joanna ordered. “You can’t give the little prick the satisfaction.”

A drunken laugh bubbled up inside her. “I think that’s probably the first time little and prick were used in the same sentence when referring to T.”

“Good to know, Ang, and we will talk about that more in-depth later,” Megan cut in as she moved around the table and took the seat beside her, “but she’s right. I know it’s hard, but keep your head high, honey.”

“Like you didn’t cry over Cap?”

“I did, but I also told him to go fuck himself when he cut me off at the knees. He did that once to me. T has done it repeatedly, hasn’t he?”

She nodded, choking back a sob. “I need another drink.”

“No!” This came in a chorus of cries from around her.

Lexie pulled out the chair on her other side and slid into it as she slipped a sympathetic arm around her shoulders. “You need to find another Dom right away. Show him what he’s giving up and he’ll be back.”

“No. She needs to find a Dom who’ll appreciate all that she is and make her forget Lil T ever existed,” Mara countered.

“Either way,” Joanna said with a glint in her eye, “she needs another Dom. Now. And, I have the perfect one in mind.” She rose to her feet, systematically searching the crowded lounge until she found who she was looking for. Her smile was filled with an unholy light as she leaned forward and squeezed both of Angie’s hands. “He’s perfect and he’s got a sexy French accent. He’ll either have T ready to rip his head off in a jealous rage and claiming you as he should or you’ll leave here tonight with a well satisfied smile on your face shouting, ‘Viva La France’.” She straightened, smoothing down her dress and hair, still flawless despite her set of table dancing and panty melting kisses. “It’s a win-win,” she added, giving Angie a wink. “Don’t let her drink anymore,” she cautioned the other girls. “I’ll be right back.”

The table of submissives watched as their de facto leader, stunningly turned out in a clingy backless black dress and crimson stiletto heels, glided across the lounge, turning heads as she passed despite her rapidly approaching fifty-fourth birthday.

“Damn,” Angie slurred. “I want to be her when I grow up.”

The rest of them nodded in full agreement.

*****

It was almost ten o’clock when he walked through the front doors in a foul mood. An hour on the road to Ft. Worth, he’d turned around when the bondsman called to advise that the fugitive had been apprehended. He should have gone straight home, but knowing Angie would be here, along with fifty of the club’s available Doms hungry for submissive ass to beat and pussy to fuck, or vice versa, he’d been unable to resist coming to keep an eye on her, although he didn’t have that right.

Without a word to anyone, he strode to the bar with one intent, to take the edge off his self-directed anger with large quantities of alcohol. Ben slid a draft in front of him without asking. He downed half of it before swiveling on his stool, his back to the bar. Scanning the lounge, he easily located the girl’s table. N
o Angie, thank God. Maybe she’d changed her mind. That idea made him feel like an even bigger shit, knowing he was to blame for wrecking her plans for the night.

“Looking for someone?” Cap asked as he took the open stool next to him.

T shrugged.

“Bullshit.”

His head jerked around. “You got something to say, Cap, then say it.”

“You and Angie have been going head to head from day one. What gives?”

“Nothing gives. Not that it’s any of your business.” He almost laughed. A similar line had been used on him little more than two hours ago. “Angie wants more than I’m able to give.”

“More bullshit,” Cap repeated, making T scowl. “You’ve got your head so far up your ass you can’t see the goodness right in front of you.”

“Fuck off.”

“You mean how you fucked off when I asked you to when I pushed Megan away? You, Rick, Dex, all of you, were all over my ass. Not that I’m not grateful now, still, paybacks are hell, my friend. Something in your past is messing with your head. I recognize the signs, but you’re a fool if you let Angie slip through your fingers because of it. When you come up for air one day, and you will, you’ll want to kick yourself for being such an idiot.”

“You don’t know—” T began.

“That’s right. I don’t,” Cap cut in. “None of us do because you won’t let us in. You wrap it up with a joke or a smile and try to console yourself with a quick lay for the night. That’s a lonely existence, bud, especially when you walk out of here or Rossi alone, night upon night. Even more so when the woman you want is within reach. It took me thirty-eight years to get my head on straight and claim what was mine all along. Learn from one who has been there, T, don’t waste a precious second.”

He shook his head. “Your situation is different than mine. I can’t—”

“Then you won’t mind that she’s drunk off her ass and dancing with Arturo Durand.”

T’s head came up immediately searching the teeming dance floor.

“Like Megan, Angie was blessed with the Sinclair curves, which Arturo appears smart enough to appreciate. And, he seems to be greatly appreciative right now if that hand squeezing her ass can be read correctly. Although she’s too drunk to play tonight, he seems to be having a good time exploring what’s on the outside of that black lace dress. I’m sure he’ll see her home safely and do a more up close and personal exploration later.”

Cap paused in his play by play letting that sink in for a moment. T felt his friend’s eyes on him, while his remained riveted on the brunette in black on the dance floor.

“He’s half-French, half-Spanish and lives in London, so I hear. He’s got business with the general and will be in town for a while, so he’s been given temporary membership. The subbies are all gaga over his accent and although he’s a sadist who prefers a French whip called a martinet, they don’t seem to mind and come at the crook of his finger—quite literally. It might be me, but I think a mysterious European Dom who can handle a whip and a drunken submissive, make for a dangerous combination. Don’t you think, T?”

The calculating bastard was talking to air, however, because halfway through his former captain’s scheming soliloquy, T was on his feet, stalking to the edge of the dance floor. He froze, seething with jealousy as the tall, bearded Frenchman, who look more like he hailed from Spain with his dark hair and eyes, arched Angie’s aforementioned curves over his arm in a low dip. His jaw clenched and his hands fisted as he watched the bastard’s lips hover over her bare skin as it pressed upward out of the low neckline of her dress. At the same time, he slid his hand down her back, over the curve of her ass and along her thigh, reversing direction the next moment as his fingers disappeared under the hem of her short skirt.

On the move, he charged impulsively into the crowd, unable to bear watching his hands on her another minute. He was fully aware he was about to give Angie more mixed signals, but he couldn’t help that he was screwed up, caught between the nightmare of his past and the ravenous desire to have this woman as his own. Dodging the dancers as they dipped and swayed, it took T a few moments to reach the couple in the center of the hardwood floor.

As he moved in, he saw Durand snap her upright out of the deep dip and slam her into his body, not a speck of daylight separating them from knee to chest. He heard Angie giggle and saw red, wanting her sweet though drunken laugh directed at him not some Dom she’d picked up for the night. As the other man spun her around, her head fell back, glossy hair sweeping down skin left bare by her open back dress. In her inebriated state, she couldn’t realize the temptation her exposed throat offered. Durand didn’t miss the invitation and lowered his mouth, openly seeking.

He wanted to snatch her out of the swarthy Dom’s arms and slam a fist into his face, upgrading his violence from a punch to separating his head from his shoulders when T saw his tongue slip out and taste her skin.

“That’s enough, Durand,” he snarled. “She’s shitfaced.”

The man’s dark head lifted and his eyes angled up at him sharply. Astutely reading the volatility of the situation, he brought the dance to a halt, easing Angie slightly away from him. “Have I poached unintentionally?”

“Yes,” T barked, at the same time, Angie snapped, “No.”

“It’s like that, is it?” Arturo surmised correctly. He bowed to Angie gallantly, “Obviously, you two have things to work out. If it doesn’t, find me the next time,
Angeline,
and we’ll finish our dance.”

“There won’t be a next time.” T declared, to which Arturo smiled faintly. He inclined his head to Angie and disappeared among the crowd of dancers who were now standing still, watching the show.

T took her hand. “I’m taking you home.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she protested, yanking it away. “Besides, I’m having fun and want to stay.”

“You’re drunk and don’t know what you want.”

“Ha! That’s rich coming from you, Mr. On-and-off-like-a-light-switch. I’m fully aware of what I want and I know I don’t want you.”

He pulled her against his chest and bent his head to her ear. “That’s not what you said while I was fucking you against the wall a while ago.”

Her indrawn breath was the only reaction she allowed herself before demanding coolly, “Let me go. You seem to be very good at that when it suits your purpose.”

Knowing she was drunk and hurting, didn’t diminish the sting of her words. Without loosening his hold, he stared down into her flushed, angry face. Neither was ready to back down, until abruptly Angie looked away.

“Why are you doing this, T?” Her whisper was easily heard in the eerie silence of the bar, the music and conversation having come to a near standstill as their drama unfolded. “For whatever reason, you’re determined to be alone, to live a cold, solitary existence without love in your life. I don’t pretend to understand it and you sure as heck won’t let anyone in. But this has to stop, please.”

He closed his eyes as he focused on the words so similar to Cap’s. It was a cold, lonely existence and as he imagined his life stretched out before him, without someone to share it with, without love, without Angie in it, his heart wrenched painfully. He opened his mouth to say exactly that, to say he was ready to give love a chance again because he felt more strongly for her than any woman ever, when the band started up.

“I’ve been lonely...”

His head came up at the lyric and turned toward the stage. Elena in the spotlight was staring at them as she sang the old classic rock ballad. He listened for a moment to his truth in the words.

“T?”

Frowning, his gaze dropped from the stage, but collided with Dex, who stood in his line of sight at the edge of the dance floor. Arms crossed, he stared back at T, and shrugged as if to say he didn’t know how his wife did it. How she always seemed to have the exact song for every situation.

He turned to look back at Angie, just as Elena hit the chorus of Heart’s
What About Love
.

She too had turned toward the stage, staring at her friend in wonder. Appreciating the serendipity of the moment, he laughed. Then he bent at the waist, wrapped an arm around her thighs and with his shoulder in her belly, lifted her.

“T,” she squealed, sober enough to register the smiles and laughter all around them. “Put me down, you ginormous Neanderthal. You don’t own me.” She kicked her legs and beat her fists against his back in outrage.

“Not yet I don’t, but once I get you home, I’m going to see about changing that.”

“Oh no you don’t, you fickle feckless Lothario! I’m not going through this again.”

“Yes, you will, darlin’, because I’m going to make it worth your while.”

“Of all the conceited, arrogant—” Her cries of protest turned into a startled yelp as his big hand came down with a hard swat across her upended ass cheeks.

“Be still, before I give you more of what you’re asking for.”

To the delight of the onlookers, he carried her off the dance floor and down the aisle separating the lounge and the bar. As he neared the doors, he saw Cap standing with Megan, his friend wore a smug look on his face, while hers was filled with concern.

“Way to take matters in hand, bud.”

“Captain! This doesn’t look consensual and from what she told me earlier— Tony, he can’t just carry her off!” Megan protested as he opened the door for his teammate.

“Angel, I remember us in similar circumstances about three years ago. You were protesting louder than your cousin if I recall and you know how that night ended.”

Megan was quiet for a moment, remembering, surely, before she called to her cousin as T toted her by. “Call me in the morning, at least, so I know the barbarian didn’t break you.”

T heard every word and knew Angie had correctly processed it through her alcohol haze when she pushed off, her hand pressing into his lower back for leverage. “You mean you’re merely going to stand by and watch him take me away?”

“He’ll honor your safeword,” Cap called in answer. “Isn’t that right, T? Tell her.”

“Without fail, my friend,” T shouted back.

He stopped inside the door, the hand that had been riding the crest of her behind since administering the swat squeezed gently, before he let her slide slowly down his front to her feet. He looked down at her, meeting warm green flecked brown eyes that were full of trepidation and knowing full well he was the cause of her unease.