“Do I need a reason to call you?”
I glance at the coat on the bed.
“You requested a call from the owner of Club Empire,” he says.
I close my eyes. “You’re the owner.” Every move I make, he puts me in checkmate. It would be amusing if it were a game and not my actual life.
“I’m one of them. My partners might not be so forgiving of you barging in to harass our employee without a warrant.”
Oh, I’ll get my warrant.“What are they going to do. . . punish me?”
“They will do nothing to you.” Do I imagine a hint of steel in his voice? It disappears when he purrs, “I, however, am always available to punish you.”
I shake my head. Need surges between my legs until I’m panting, but I don’t trust myself to say anything.
“Scene with me tonight, Inara.”
Images fill my mind. Me naked, tied and struggling as he strokes his hands over my bare skin.
I grit my teeth until they ache. Desire is a weight in my belly, my sex. I want more than anything to say yes. “In your dreams,” I make myself say.
“Always.”
* * *
Rex
She won’t letme get close to her.
I stand at the window in my childhood bedroom, staring down at the neat boxwood hedges that lattice the lawns of my ancestral home. Beyond the manicured grounds are acres of meadow. I keep the gardens neat out of respect for my mother’s memory. She loved the rare roses and lilac trees.
I prefer wild spaces. Growing up in the Roy mansion, life was neat and orderly. Wealth is a brilliant buffer against the chaos of life. At least, until death comes.
And in my family’s experience, death comes all too soon. All the riches in the world can’t keep it at bay.
Not that each generation of Roys didn’t try. One of my forefathers believed so strongly in fresh country air he built the manor miles away from the city on one hundred acres of private land.
My ancestral home spans forty-two thousand square feet. There are rooms I haven’t entered in years.
Hamish keeps this room clean, perhaps out of sentiment to the boy I used to be. Someone’s recently dusted the toys and gadgets I played with and polished the top of a heavy antique dresser. There’s a whole replica of New Rome and a tiny masked figure in a cape.
I hold the toy in the palm of my hand.
My father told me stories of a hero who watched over the city. They were stories his father told him, and he passed the stories and this toy on to me.
The stories were lies. There was no one watching over the city. Certainly, no one was there to save my parents when a madman gunned them down.
If I had been stronger, I could’ve saved them. But I was a child, and I was weak.
All the wealth in the world can’t save you from a feral madman. Violence only respects violence.
I’ve spent my life since then making up for that weakness. Making myself strong so that I can protect the innocent from the evil that would prey on them.
I open the top drawer and check the contents. The first evidence of my obsession. The newspapers are old and yellowed, but the print screams the headline as loudly as ever.Death Comes to Small Town.
My little bird doesn’t know it, but I was lost for years after my parents died. I had nothing to live for. And then I found her.
She is scared and prone to flee, but one day, I will tame her to my hand. And I will tell her everything.
