She wanted to melt. She wanted to burn. She wanted to do something without giving a fuck about the consequences—before Antony found her.
Because she knew that he would. Of course he would. She knew exactly what resources he had at his disposal.
But still, Antony wasn’t magic. It would take him longer than a day to track her down. And in the meantime, for as long as she had left before he turned up here and showed her what was worse than a little wine over her head, she could live.
She wanted to live.
“Do you mean live a little or a lot?” she asked Lanie, peering up at her. Her friend stood framed by all the old oaks draped in moss and her smile was much, much warmer than the air around them.
“Don’t insult me, Merritt,” Lanie said, all that laughter in her voice and every long, tight year of their friendship glimmering between them as if there had never been a five year gap. How had Merritt let herself forget this? How had she breathed without this? “Do I ever go little when I could go large?”
And Merritt stopped thinking. About Antony or the Devil’s Keepers or her shameful behavior in her daddy’s front hall with Greeley last night. She stood up and smiled at her favorite partner in crime from way back when they were girls, and gave herself over to all that glorious wildness that had always bubbled in her friend. Merritt had spent most of her life warding it off, like that kind of wild might take her down if it touched her. And yet here she was anyway, in this crappy situation of hers with no outlet in sight and back in Lagrange besides, so why the hell had she tried so hard to steer clear all those years? It just seemed stupid, looking back.
Merritt decided she was done with stupid. Once and for all.
“That sounds like a dare,” she murmured, watching Lanie’s grin widen. “And you know I can’t refuse a dare. So you better make it good.”
Chapter 6
Greeley’s phone buzzed a little after ten p.m. while he was kicking back with a beer or two in Roscoe’s room at the clubhouse, not talking about the problems in the club because there was too much shit to talk about, most of it concerning Digger’s weird behavior, to get into any of it.
“You see Whale today?” was all that Greeley had said on the subject of last night’s bullshit.
“He saw me first,” Roscoe had muttered. His mouth had curved at that, a dangerous glint in his blue eyes that said the things neither one of them would. Not yet. “So, no. The little bitch ran like he always does.”
They hadn’t touched the rest of it. Digger had made a few phone calls earlier in the day, acting like shit was cool and also sidestepping the Whale issue entirely, and unless Greeley wanted to go hunt down his president and get in his face—never a wise move at the best of times—what could he do?
A couple of beers with his VP after a long day of dealing with the usual stupid shit seemed like the best compromise, all things considered.
Roscoe was a Cajun boy, born and bred from generations of the fierce Acadians who’d settled south Louisiana and who liked their own fucking space, mais yeah. He had a house way out in the bayou, accessible only by boat and requiring a little bit of old Cajun swamp magic to even locate the place. Most nights he stayed accessible in the clubhouse in a room he’d taken over years ago when he’d first patched into the club.
That was where Greeley was sitting when his phone buzzed, listening to Roscoe tell a few creative lies about the last time he went gator hunting last fall. He lifted his chin to indicate he was taking the call, then put the phone to his ear.
It took exactly two sentences from Okie to get him up and out of his chair. It took him about four seconds to mutter something at Roscoe and get the hell out of there. Maybe two minutes later he was on his bike, and then it took him all of six minutes to haul ass to Petit Joe’s, instead of the usual fifteen.
And if Sheriff Archer himself had popped up behind him during that ride as part of his campaign to clean up the parish, he doubted he would have stopped, which would only have made things weirder for the club. That was something he usually took seriously.
But Greeley didn’t give a single fuck about club shit when he pushed through the doors of the strip club, nodding at the bouncers who waved him in with a smile the way they did every man with a Devil’s Keepers cut.
Doc Broussard’s girl is about to get up on my stage and dance, Okie had said gruffly. Figured you’d have some thoughts on that.
Greeley had more than a few thoughts on that, in fact. All of them different varieties of fucked up. And he didn’t even have it in him to care that clearly, his brothers were treating the situation like Greeley still had a claim on her. Like she was still his.
That roaring thing inside him suggested he agreed.
The place was already crowded, even this early into a Friday night. The local dirtbags mixed with lame assholes from Baton Rouge who didn’t like to shit anywhere close to where they ate with their wives and kids, but hey, they sure did like to spend their money on Cajun strippers. Greeley cut through the place like it was empty, enjoying the way the overgrown frat boys, rednecks in chinos, moved the fuck out of his way even before they saw the cut he wore.
Greeley didn’t see Merritt anywhere, which was not good, but he found Lanie almost immediately. She was lounging on the customer side of the bar dressed like she was looking to start a riot. Meaning, the way she was always dressed. He’d known Lanie for years, ever since she’d started dancing here when she still had that whiff of jailbait about her, something she’d been happy to use to her advantage back then. And he’d had no problem voting to let her manage the bar part of Petit Joe’s a year or so ago, because he knew exactly how smart and trustworthy she was after all this time when so many other strippers had cycled through Lagrange and then disappeared into some or other downward spiral. But none of that was why he headed straight for her.
It was Lanie who had been the one to dare Merritt to walk into Petit Joe’s that first time five years ago. Greeley had liked how that dare had ended back then, but he didn’t really love that it was apparently an ongoing thing with those two. Or he wouldn’t be here tonight.
Lanie looked over at him as if she’d known he was coming. She didn’t look worried, which he thought she should, with a pissed-off biker bearing down on her like a nightmare. Instead, she smirked at him—something he might have addressed if he didn’t have a little too much rage coursing through his veins just then.
Because of course Lanie Latour was the only person alive who could get Merritt Broussard to consider getting up on a stage at a strip club. Not just any strip club—this strip club, where a good number of the scumbags in the audience were men who’d probably been beating off to Doc Broussard’s looker of a daughter since back when she really was jailbait.
Greeley wanted to burn the fucking place down and roast every last one of them. With his own two hands.
“What did you do?” he demanded when he reached Lanie’s side.
If anything, Lanie only looked more amused at that. She flicked her long, silky hair over one shoulder. “Hello to you, too.”
“Merritt doesn’t strip, Lanie. You do. What the fuck.”
“Oh, you figured it out.” And Greeley had been around enough women in his lifetime to know that no good could possibly come of that sugar sweet tone mixed with the warning look she had in her eyes just then. “I went to welcome her home and I accidentally got my stripper germs all over her. It all happened too fast after that. There was no saving her. It was hot pants and a string bikini or death.”
Greeley told himself he was pissed, that was all, and the thought of Merritt—his Merritt—in the usual Petit Joe’s uniform wasn’t currently pounding into him like his pulse was a hammer and his cock was the nail.
But there was no time to untangle that shit or get right with it, because the lights were changing and the announcer was shouting his usual crap.
“This is not happening,” he growled at Lanie.
She only nodded toward the stage behind him.
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“Oh, it is,” she said, still smirking. “It definitely is.”
Greeley turned toward the stage like he expected to find a gun in his face. Then he turned to stone.
The crowd disappeared. The place might as well have been empty. There was only the woman sauntering out onto the stage, wearing exactly what he’d half-feared, half-hoped she’d be wearing, because it was burned into his head now. It was never going anywhere. It was a brand and he was scarred by it, forever.
Halle-fucking-lujah.
Slick little gold shorts barely cupped Merritt’s ass and rode down low on her hips. She wore a pair of hooker heels so high and sharp it made his cock ache to watch her walk on them, all that extra sway in her while she did. And the only other piece of so-called clothing on her was a tiny little gold string thing with triangles that was too small to be a bikini and holy fucking shit everything else was her.
All her.
Her unmarked body without a single tattoo or scar because she’d grown up easy and pampered, her skin so obviously soft and gleaming even in the flashing fluorescent lights, and he knew how she tasted. Her legs, long and firm and perfect, and he knew how they felt wrapped around his back with his cock rubbing up against her hot little cunt. That sweet curve of her belly that he’d barely got his hands on last night, that made his fucking mouth water. And all that hair of hers, dark and heavy and moving with her, dancing over her shoulders and calling attention to her small, perfect tits barely covered in sparkly gold.
He’d had this wet dream, he was pretty sure. He wasn’t wild about revisiting it in public. There were all kinds of pussy he was happy to sample with the world looking on, but not Merritt. She was his.
The crowd made noise as she started to dance, and it killed him. She was clearly not a pro. She was something much, much better than a slick routine and a few practiced moves designed to part a horny bastard from his money. She was smiling like she was having the best time of her life, looking wildly enthusiastic about what she was doing no matter—or because of—the slightly glazed look in her pretty blue eyes that, if memory served, meant she’d treated herself to way too much tequila.
She was going to be the death of him, here and now.
That was his last conscious thought.
Merritt shimmied her hips a few times and hung off the side of the pole for a minute like she’d never touched one before in her life. She probably hadn’t, up there in her Ivy League schools. Then she stepped back and reached up for the tie of her bikini—and Greeley was done.
He thought he heard Lanie laughing as he moved, but he didn’t care about that. Not now.
He shoved his way through the crowd, not giving a single shit if the other patrons had an issue with that, then he launched himself up and onto the raised platform like he was part of the goddamned show. Merritt was still tugging at that bikini string. Her smile toppled from her face when he landed hard on the stage down at the farthest end away from her, and there was no question she saw him coming at her.
But she didn’t stop tugging at that string. Of course not. And a little harder once he was right in front of her.
He saw all that go fuck yourself in her eyes then. But he wasn’t a little bitch like half the douchebags here tonight who liked it when soft, small women cowered before them and made them feel big and tough. He liked a little fight, especially from Merritt. He liked her unafraid and he liked her ornery and he had every intention of expressing his thoughts on both of those things as well as her presence here tonight all over that fine ass of hers.
Greeley was going to do a lot more than express his thoughts, and it was that much better if she had an attitude about it. His cock had a long list of ideas on how best to communicate his serious fucking issues with everything that was happening right now. He planned to go down the whole goddamned list, point by fucking point, long and hard and balls deep.
He saw the exact second she realized that he wasn’t slowing down as he came for her. He saw her hands move from her neck to go out in front of her, like she was going to try to hold him off, but there was no point. He ignored her hands. He bent down and picked her up, tossed her over his shoulder, and then planted a hand on her firm ass to keep her there.
Then he wheeled around and headed off the stage the way he’d come, jumping off the end of it and watching the crowd part before him like he was fucking Moses. But he couldn’t even enjoy that, he was so fucking hard and so pissed at this woman it took everything he had not to carry her into the shadows and remind her how they’d met, right up against another wall.
Merritt was punching at him as he moved, but he ignored that. He headed for the door, nodding at the bouncers on his way out. When he made it to his bike out in front he put her down, holding her upright with a hand wrapped around her upper arm when she almost tipped over in the high ass hooker shoes on the uneven ground.
“Get on the bike,” he told her, and he was not fucking around.
“I have a strip show to perform,” she told him in her snottiest tone, her blue eyes flashing at him as she made a big show of pulling her arm out of his grip. He made it equally clear he was letting her. “It’s my new passion. And I’m not going anywhere with you, Greeley. You’re a fucking Neanderthal.”
“And you love it,” he retorted.
“I’m sure that’s what you tell yourself. And who could possibly argue with you? After all, you’re a Devil’s Keeper. You rule this town.”
“We do.” He sounded as mean as he felt and she was in a public place, using that snotty tone while she talked about the club and wearing next to nothing while she did it. His brain kept flatlining. His cock, on the other hand, had never been so fucking ready to handle a situation. “So maybe watch your fucking tone when you mention the club.”
Merritt crossed her arms over her chest, but not in a defensive way. This was clearly belligerent. She even leaned forward, getting in his face in a way most people would not dare to do. Ever.
“Or what?”
He laughed at that. Not nicely. “The only thing you have going for you right now is that I still want to fuck you. That urge passes and you’re in some serious trouble, babe.”
“I bet that works on the peasants.” She sniffed. “But I’m not afraid of you. Your temper tantrum was pointless. I’m going right back in there and I’m doing what I said I would do.”
“No. You’re not.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“Are you sure about that? Pretty sure I just did.”
She glared at him like she wanted to kill him, and he was twisted enough that he wished she’d try. “What do you care what I do? It’s not your business.”
“Everything you do in this town is my business. Did you forget that, too?” And then, what the hell, he stopped pretending. He leaned down, returning the favor by getting in her face, and had the distinct pleasure of watching her pulse go nuts in her throat. “I claimed your ass a long time ago. You don’t parade around wearing next to nothing in front of every horny bastard in Lagrange. You don’t wiggle around on a fucking stage in a strip club so those assholes can beat off to you and their Princess Leia gold bikini fantasies tonight. You got an urge to get naked? That’s fine by me. You can do it in my house all you want. Now get that ass on my bike before I decide to punish you the way you deserve right here.”
He swung onto his bike then and pinned her with the kind of glare that made civilians wet themselves. Merritt, of course, only narrowed her eyes and glared back at him.
“I hardly know where to start with that metric ton of bullshit.”
“Start by shutting your mouth and getting on the fucking bike. Just an idea.”
She ignored him. “My ass is not something you can claim. I don’t belong to anyone and if I did, it would not be to an asshole biker with impulse control issues.”
Greeley laughed, dark and low. “Darlin’, if I had impulse control issues you’d be up against the back wall of the club, I’d be balls deep inside you, a
nd I wouldn’t give a fuck who was watching and recording that shit on their cellphones for personal use later. Does that sound good to you? You wanna star in some amateur porn all over this town? Because we can always make it happen.”
She stepped closer to the bike and to him, and he didn’t know if that was her natural bravado or the tequila. He watched, amazed, as she actually stuck a finger in his face. If it was anyone else’s he’d break it off.
“I understand that you’re used to life with a certain degree of deference,” she seethed at him. “You strut around this place and the men cower before you while the ladies line up to see who can suck your dick first.”
“Is that an offer?” He made his voice lazy when really, the thought of his cock between those lips of hers was almost enough to make him embarrass himself right there on his bike with the Petit Joe’s bouncers pretending they weren’t listening to every word.
“Lagrange is not the real world, Greeley,” she snapped at him, because somehow she still wasn’t finished. “I don’t care how tough you act. I don’t care if you threaten me. There are way scarier things out there than you.”
Something pricked at him then. Maybe it was the way she said that. Maybe it was that certain darkness in her eyes, hinting at shit a lot deeper than too much tequila and an attitude in dire need of adjustment.
“Like what?” he asked, his voice a little too hard.
But he didn’t think that was why she dropped her hand to her side, out of his face, and stepped back. Or in those shoes, kind of wobbled back. When she spoke again, her voice was much quieter and no longer snotty at all.
Which he was bent enough to feel like a loss.
“I didn’t ask you to come over last night and get in my face,” she said, and she didn’t even sound pissed at him. He didn’t like the way that landed in him, deep in his gut. “I didn’t ask you to show up here tonight. What I do while I’m in town has nothing to do with you.”