Wicked Fall (9 page)

I hold still as a statue as I watch her stare at the plans before her. Her eyes roam all over, once she even takes a finger and taps it against the center.

Finally, she looks up at me and I get ready for a full-body cringe over the condemnation I’ll see on her face.

Except… it’s not there.

In fact, her face looks passively bland. It makes me relax just marginally.

“The Silo,” she says softly. Slowly. Carefully choosing her words. “Behind the nightclub. It’s a… sex club?”

I swallow hard and give a tentative nod.

Afraid to trust my voice.

Her gaze lowers to the plans again, and she slides a finger to the top corner… stopping over the words “The Wicked Horse”.

“This is your brand?” she asks hesitantly as she taps her finger on the image just below the words. A circle, an inner ring, seven compartments. So obvious.

“Yes,” I say softly.

“It’s modeled after The Silo?”

“Yes.”

“Because that’s sort of the cornerstone of your… your…”

“Sex club,” I provide politely.

She nods with flushed cheeks, but forges ahead since I’m answering her questions. “And what? Do people pay to go in there and… have sex with other people?” Her voice is timidly curious, but I note a slight tone of censure.

Sighing, I take my hat off and toss it on the wall peg. Since she’s standing behind my desk where my chair is, I take one of the guest chairs and sit down, kicking my legs out. This is not how I imagined my run-in with Callie would unfurl.

“Bridger and I wanted to open a club where people could live out their deepest fantasies without fear of judgment or condemnation. We wanted a private club where people could… be themselves, so to speak. To explore their sexuality in a safe environment.” I stop right there, let her digest what I’ve said. It’s the simple truth of what’s she seen. It’s not the full truth, but the simple truth and really all she needs to know.

“And you practice… um… like BDSM there or something?” she asks fearfully, her eyes holding what I think may be a bit of disgust in them.

Of course there would be disgust. I mean… after the way she found her fiancé and that judge.

“I don’t practice it,” I tell her swiftly. “I mean… some elements, yes, but I’m not hardcore. I don’t hand out pain.”

If I expected her to look relieved over those words, I would have been a fool. She looks overwhelmed with what she’s learned so far.

“So… what do you do there?
You
specifically, I mean,” she asks, her voice so slight and whisper soft, I can barely hear her.

It irritates me. The delicacy by which she’s discussing this. I’m pissed I have to sugarcoat things for a sweet girl. I’m pissed she was in my office even though I’ve never forbidden her from being in here, and I’m pissed she knows this about me.

“What do you think I do, Callie?” I taunt her in a low growl. I sit forward in my chair, press my elbows to my knees, and stare at her with naked honesty. “Same as anyone else. I fuck.”

Callie’s lips are drawn downward, her eyes bleak. It hurts to see her look at me like that, and for the first time in my adult life, I’m ashamed of my proclivities. For a fleeting instant, I feel the urge to call Bridger and tell him I’m selling out.

I stand up from my chair, because this is the point I expect Callie to be running out of my office, straight out to her truck to hightail it away from the filthy, pervy Woolf Jennings.

Callie’s gaze drops back down to the plans, maybe for one last disgusted look. She takes a deep breath, looks back up, and pins me with clear eyes. “I want to join the club.”

My jaw slackens, and my mouth drops open wide. I ignore the tingle in my groin over the thought of Callie in my club, and…

Did she just fucking say she wants to join?

“Please tell me this is a goddamn joke,” I grit out.

Her eyebrows furrow inward, and she keeps her gaze on me with bold challenge. “I’m not joking. I want to be a member.”

“No fucking way,” I snarl as I stalk over to the wall and grab my hat off the peg. I need to get the fuck away from this brand of insanity.

“At least take me there,” she says firmly to my back. “So I can see.”

I ignore her… open my office door.

“Take me,” she says ominously. “Or I’ll find someone who will.”

I snort and step out of my office. Good fucking luck with that. Bridger and I are the only two she knows associated with the club, and he sure as shit wouldn’t take her.

“Colton Stokes,” Callie calls out.

I stop dead in my tracks.

My blood turns to ice in my veins, and I pivot slowly to meet her stubborn gaze. “What did you just say?”

“Colton. Stokes.” She punctuates both words with relish and even gives me a sly grin.

How the fuck did she—?

“Colton Stokes is a member, is he not?” she asks sweetly as she walks out from behind my desk toward me.

I don’t affirm her suspicion. Because that’s all it is, right? Just a suspicion she has?

I stare at her hard, hoping to cow her with my death glare. I can feel an annoyed muscle ticking in my jaw from gritting my teeth so hard.

Callie walks up to me, no more than a foot away, and gives me a knowing smile. She primly clasps her hands in front of her and even sways back and forth like a mischievous schoolgirl. “I’m sure Colton would be more than happy to take me.”

Deep breath in… calm the fuck down, Jennings.

“What makes you think Colton is a member?” I ask neutrally as I lean my shoulder against the doorjamb and tap my hat against my leg. I hope my casual nonchalance doesn’t look too fake.

Callie arches an eyebrow at me and then snorts. She walks right past me out of my office, her shoulder brushing up against me. I turn to watch her strut up to her desk where she sits in her chair and picks up her cell phone from the desk.

She looks up at me and says, “It wasn’t that hard to figure out. You and Colton wear matching belt buckles. Well, not matching exactly. Different style but the engraving’s the same. A circle with an inner circle, eight lines creating seven spaces around the ring. It’s the same brand that’s on your drawing in there of The Silo. So, what is that… a secret code to get in or something?”

I squeeze my eyes shut hard, curse internally for a good ten seconds, and then open them back up. She smiles at me in victory.

I attempt to knock it right off her face. “Exactly. And you don’t have one so you can’t get in.”

“Bet Colton can take me in,” she says in a singsong voice.

“For fuck’s sake, Callie,” I yell at her in frustration. “Why would you ever want to go in a place like that?”

She studies me a moment. Almost as if she expects me to come to the answer on my own, but I’m fucking clueless. I have no idea what could possess her to want this.

“Come on, Woolf,” she says with a tinkling laugh. “I’m pretty transparent. I want to be different. I want to do something exciting and adventurous. I don’t want to be dull Callie who does what everyone expects anymore. I want to do what I want to do. And besides… it’s good enough for you but not for me?”

Christ… she had to lay that at my doorstep. The same exact little poor-me speech that worked very well on me Saturday night, inducing me to kiss her hard and then stick my hand in her panties.

I walk up to the edge of her desk and look down at her. In a voice as close to begging as I will ever come for any person, I say, “Callie… please. You don’t belong in a place like that. Trust me on this.”

She eyes me almost sympathetically. “You see, Woolf… I think I belong exactly in a place like that.”

Then it’s on.

We engage in a staring war. Her fern green eyes sparkling with excitement and sass. Mine leveled in a bitter scowl. My will against hers. My ego against hers.

“I can call Colton,” she prods me to action, poising her finger over the screen of her phone.

“Fuck,” I mutter and slam my hat back on my head. “I’ll take you, but that’s it. It’s just so you can see. Quick in and out.”

“We should stay for at least one drink,” she says with a happy grin.

“One drink,” I concede, my brain already spinning fast, trying to figure out all the ways it could go wrong by me bringing the governor’s daughter to a sex club.

“Tonight?” she asks with excitement.

I shake my head and pin her with serious eyes. “I can’t tonight or tomorrow night. But I’ll take you Wednesday.”

She looks like she wants to argue for a moment, but I’m not budging on this. Nope. I need some little victory over her in this battle that she just completely decimated me in. Wednesday happens to be the slowest night at The Silo, and more importantly, I know Colton Stokes will be out of town starting Wednesday. When we made plans to meet so I could look at his stock, we had to choose the weekend since he was going to be gone to a breeder’s conference in Vegas.

It’s going to be hard enough to pull this off, and I sure as shit don’t need Colton to see Callie at The Silo. I don’t want that fucker thinking he can have her in any way, and the dude is into her. I know that’s exactly what he’ll think and while I’m pretty confident this is just curiosity on Callie’s part, I don’t want to take any chances that she would ever want to avail herself of The Silo’s decadence. I know I sure as hell won’t indulge her in that way, but I’m not so sure Colton wouldn’t oblige her… and then I’d probably have to kill the man.

Callie

I push my way through the crowd at The Wicked Horse, my nerves jangling and my heart about to slam its way out of my chest. The two shots of vodka I took while I sat in the parking lot haven’t helped yet, and for the millionth time, I question the sanity of what I’m about to do.

Woolf had told me to meet him in his club office tonight at eleven PM and he’d take me over. He reiterated that we’d stay for one drink and then we were leaving. I didn’t argue with him about that, mainly because he’s been in a terrible mood the last two days. He’s stayed away from the office for the most part, but the few times I’ve seen him, he’s snapped and barked at me with no provocation.

He’s furious that I’ve forced him to do this, but I don’t care.

The New Callie is on a mission to figure herself out. So no matter how many times I question my sanity right now, I’m going to keep trying things and testing my boundaries, so I can see just what I have inside of me. I’m not willing to let anyone mold me again, but I have to know exactly what I’m made of so I can mold myself.

It doesn’t take Woolf but a moment to open his office door, and bless the great DNA of his parents, he is magnificent. He wears that black hair messily styled, curling over the edges of his ears and just a few inches too long all over. He has on his traditional jeans and boots, but he’s looking beyond amazing in the black, long-sleeved t-shirt that fits his powerful chest and arms like a glove. I’m surprised when he beckons me in. I got a brief glimpse of this place the night Woolf hauled me off the bar onto his shoulder. He brought me here first and no sooner had he opened the door and taken one step in, he was backing right back out again. No clue what made him do that and all I got was a brief, upside down glimpse of an office that was shockingly bare. Now as I take in more detail, I see the same wooden floor as out in the main nightclub, a large desk built for two people to work opposite each other, a leather couch, and a small, electric refrigerator in one corner. Very Spartan, speaking of a place that is meant to do some hard work with no distractions. If I had to guess, I’d say this was more Bridger’s office than Woolf’s.

“I need you to read and sign this,” Woolf says in a tight voice as he hands me a document.

Glancing down at it, I see the words “Non-Disclosure Agreement” on the top. I look back up at him in question.

His lips are in a flat line, which means he’s clearly still displeased to have me here. He nods down at the document. “Everyone that enters The Silo has to sign it.”

“I assume it prohibits discussing the club with non-members?”

“In a nutshell,” he says tightly.

I shrug my shoulders and walk over to his desk, grabbing a pen out of a mug that says, “Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy”. Placing the document down, I lean over to sign it when Woolf grabs my wrist. The contact of his palm to my skin is almost electric, and it makes me realize I’m sexually wound up. My blood immediately quickens, and I feel unsettled and needy. I realize it’s not nerves I’m dealing with at all. It’s a sexual itch I think needs scratched and the prospect of all the naughty things I’m about to see is turning me on. One little touch from Woolf and I want to lie down on the floor and spread my legs for him.

Shaking my head to clear it, I look at Woolf.

“You’re just going to sign it without reading it?” he asks in disbelief.

“Well, yeah. I mean… who in the hell would I ever talk to this about? My dad? My non-existent best friend because Will didn’t want me to have any friends? Or maybe Will?”

“There’s a damages clause in there. If you talk, you agree that the damages are minimally set at one-million dollars.”

“Fine by me,” I say coolly as I pull my hand away from his grasp. I hastily sign my name at the bottom and date it even though I don’t have a million dollars. But I’m not worried because I don’t have one single person I could talk to this about. Placing the pen back in the cup, I hand the agreement to Woolf.

He stares at me a moment, still wearing his put-upon scowl before taking the document. He folds it in half, seems to consider what to do with it, and then tosses it back down on the desk again with a sigh of resignation.

For a brief moment, I consider alleviating this stress on him by telling him I won’t make him take me. But that trickles away as just the thought of what I might see starts building up excitement within me.

“Are you ready?” I ask, almost bouncing on the balls of my feet. I actually may have overdressed a little, but I didn’t know what to expect. Woolf had told me that memberships cost fifty-thousand dollars per year, so I know The Silo will probably be filled with elegantly dressed people. Or maybe naked people, I have no clue. Woolf is dressed super casual, but it doesn’t make me self-conscious of the blue dress I bought yesterday that has one shoulder and arm bare, while the other is covered in a long, tight sleeve. It’s form fitting through my bust, waist, and hips but comes down to my knee with a sexy slit up the back. The material is slightly stretchy with a silvery shimmer, so I paired it with a pair of silver high-heeled sandals I also bought.