PROLOGUE
JONAS PORTER
My knee bounced with impatience I didn’t normally display.
Out of my foster brothers, whom I shared a connection with that ran deeper than blood, I was the one they considered the quiet one. The calm one. I kept my composure in the worst of situations, no matter what. Or I used to. Until her.
Kitty Ortega.
But here I was—knee bouncing, a light sheen of sweat prickling to life at the back of my neck while the collar of my button-up dress shirt felt too tight to breathe in a full breath. My heart felt like it was about to burst out of my chest. That was if the butterflies flapping their wings in my gut didn’t get out first.
Just minutes ago, I’d been fine. Okay, not fine, but I’d had my crap together while she danced. I hadn’t blinked while she was on the stage. Didn’t look around to see the men gawking and coveting what was mine. If I had, I would have been tempted to take over my brother Lucas’ place in our family as the muscle who took care of things with his fists and any other weapons he had at his disposal.
But why would I look anywhere else when those captivating wide brown eyes locked with mine as if she couldn’t get herself to look anywhere else? Because regardless of the silence that had laid between us in the hours we spent together, she knew she belonged to me.
Just at the reminder of how she’d looked while she was dancing to “Too Sweet” by Hozier made me adjust myself. My cock, long and thick, was throbbing beneath the material of my dress slacks, begging for relief.
I rolled my neck, trying to calm my pulse down, but it was useless when the private room I’d heard the other dancers and bouncers call the Kitty Room when they thought I wasn’t paying attention smelled like her. I should have named the room that from the moment we reopened the doors to the Velvet Leopard.
They called it that because only Kitty Ortega had been in there with me. No one else but the cleaning crew was allowed past the threshold. I called it that now because I had the space designed and decorated and stocked with solely her in mind.
The woman unknowingly shook up my entire goddamn life before we’d even exchanged a word.
Four months ago, an old acquaintance of mine had reached out to me and unknowingly set my life on a completely different course. Hank was a loan shark and a man you most definitely didn’t want to owe shit to.
But someone did owe him, and they owed Hank BIG.
The problem was, Hank could only get his money if this dipshit sold off the one thing he had to his name: a strip club at the edge of town. A strip club he liked to talk about until he was blue in the fucking face to anyone who would listen because he thought it made him a big man around town to have so many women under his thumb. My eye twitched at the reminder of the motherfucker and how fucking arrogant he’d been that first time I’d walked into the club.
A strip club.
Hank had thought of me, because like my brothers liked to say, I had the Midas touch with businesses and investments. Turning shitshows into exciting ventures was my thing.
But the first thought I’d had when I’d stepped foot into the Velvet Leopard was that even I wasn’t capable of that kind of miracle. Not when it had probably been more than two decades since anything had been updated in the place. The carpets were old and dingy. The place smelled like stale beer, sweat, and years of cheap cologne mixed with bad decisions that clung to every surface throughout the years.
Lucas had shot me a look after the dipshit sat us at his best table. The motherfucker had been desperate to pay Hank back. But then again, Hank wasn’t someone you ever wanted to owe anything to.
I’d been about to call Hank and tell him he was going to need someone else to help his colleague unload the club off on, when she’d stepped up onto the stage.
I’d been like a goddamn moth to a flame when Kitty hit the stage.
Kitty Ortega.
I’d assumed that was her stage name, but when the dickhead who owned the place returned and I started talking to him, prying all the information out of him as subtly as I could, I’d realized something else.
His intentions with all his female staff were less than pure. He bragged about things no man should ever do to women. Quickly, like pieces of a puzzle coming together, I watched the way the girls watched Lucas and me. The fear in the eyes of some. And it didn’t settle well in my stomach. The thought of Kitty in his clutches killed me.
So, I did the only thing I was capable of after being raised and brought up the way I had been. I bought the place, and the moment the ink was dry on the contracts and Hank got his money, Lucas taught that miserable piece of shit a lesson. Funny how easily assholes could go missing without anyone blinking an eye when no one heard from them.
I’d shut the place down for two weeks, paid each girl for her time, and when we reopened, the Velvet Leopard was a different place.
Nicer.
Cleaner.
Renovated.
Classy.
