Page 9 of Turn Me On (The AfterGlow #2)

rider

I was going to give him a piece of my mind. And my fist.

Michael would most likely be holding him behind the front desk in the security room. I sprinted down the hall, taking a sharp right at the end. My dick slapped against my pelvis, flopping from side to side as I dashed toward the entrance to the club.

“Rider,” Lilah’s boyfriend, Adam, called as I tore through the lounge. His eyes bugged out of his face at the sight of me speeding through the place buck naked. “You good, man?”

“Charlie’s ex is here!” I hollered, not stopping to explain further .

How fucking dare Brad show his face back here after everything he put Charlie through?

I didn’t give a shit if I sent him one thousand videos of me and her doing every unspeakable thing under the sun.

He had absolutely no right to taunt us against the glass like that.

To slam his fist on the wall. To demand her attention.

What a ginormous prick.

Yes, I’d own my part in this. It was a dick move to send him that video, but it’s not like he hadn’t sent Charlie pictures of him and his insane number of new lays over the past year.

The photos were always accompanied by a whoops—wrong number or other lame-ass excuse, but we all knew he did it on purpose.

He wanted Charlie to see who he was with.

He wanted to rub her face in how much ‘better’ he was doing without her.

Jackass.

So, we retaliated. Partially due to too much alcohol and partially due to the taboo of it all, but in the end, I just wanted him to fucking stop.

Somehow, it didn’t matter that she’d blocked his number.

I heavily suspected he bought burner phones or downloaded those stalker apps that changed a person’s number to text her ludicrous pictures of his new situationships.

I emerged in the reception area and clocked Michael standing guard in front of the door behind the desk. “Where is he?” I snarled.

He reached out, twisted the doorknob, and let it swing open.

“About time you came to your senses,” Brad’s condescending voice boomed as he crossed the threshold.

He straightened his sleeves, toying with his diamond cufflinks for a moment, before glancing up. And what did he do when our eyes connected?

He goddamn smirked.

“Oh. It’s you. I assumed it would be Charlie high-tailing it out of that porn-star suite to beg my forgiveness,” he scoffed.

One look at his lean frame, decked out in a three-thousand-dollar suit surely paid for by his daddy, versus my hulking mass, which lacked any clothing, and anyone could tell there was no contest. Still, this little prick had the audacity to act like I wouldn’t set him straight.

He ran a hand through his overly-styled hair. “Here to give back your sloppy seconds?”

I leaped across the front desk, cocked my fist back, and punched the motherfucker square in the jaw. He went down like a bag of bowling balls. Couldn’t even manage to stay upright, the twat.

Brad wiped the back of his palm across his mouth and stared down at it. A small smear of blood painted his hand. “You can be sure the owners will be hearing about this.”

“And you can be sure,” Adam said, low and threatening, from behind me, “that the owners will not give a shit that a spoiled fuck like you got what you deserve.”

Relief washed over me. If anyone could take care of a problem at the club, it was Adam. Not that I needed any help when it came to disposing of a fuckwit like Brad, but the not-so-silent partner of The AfterGlow would handle it in a much more civilized way than I would.

If it were left to me, well...Charlie’s dope of an ex-boyfriend wouldn’t be moving right now.

Brad grabbed onto the corner of the desk and hauled himself to his feet. “You don’t speak for the entire board.”

The silver strands scattered throughout Adam’s dark hair glinted in the soft overhead lights of the space.

He adjusted two of the tungsten rings he wore, turning them slightly, before raising his gaze to meet Brad’s.

He studied him, taking his time, before replying, “My voice is the only one that fucking matters.”

“Rider!” my wife’s voice called out.

I spun on my heel and there was Charlie, wrapped in her robe, eyes bulging as she stopped a few feet from Brad.

“What is going on?” she asked, looking between the three of us.

“Enough, Charlie. Enough of your immature games,” Brad barked. “It’s time to come back to me and quit this vacuous pastime of yours once and for all. You know this neanderthal can’t compare to me. Break off your insane sham of a marriage and get back where you belong.”

I tensed, my hands balled into tight fists, ready for whatever she wanted me to do. All she had to do was look at me and I’d deck him in the face again, leaving him spitting out his teeth on the floor.

Charlie was completely silent for a moment before she burst out laughing. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am. And if you don’t, I’m going to post that little video of you and your brawn-over-brains idiot husband that you sent me on the internet for all to see,” Brad sneered.

She cocked her hip and crossed her arms. “That’s it? That’s your big shakedown?”

Brad’s mouth flopped open and smacked closed, like an oxygen-deprived guppy.

She flipped her hair over her shoulder and smirked. “I posted that video myself three hours ago.”

“What? You did—why—wait, what?” Brad stammered.

And people thought my brain was slow.

“Get out,” Adam growled.

Brad shook his head and finally closed his gaping mouth. “What are you going to do if I don’t? Let this imbecile”—Brad jutted his finger in my direction—“take another crack at me?”

Adam gave me the slightest nod, and I snapped my arm out and wrapped my hand around Brad’s throat. “If I ever catch you in here again, if you ever text Charlie another picture, if you ever even think about my wife, I will find you and make you pay.”

“I’m not scared of you,” he managed to gasp out as my fingers tightened around his scrawny neck.

“You should be. You should be terrified of any man who loves their woman as much as I do,” I rumbled, enjoying the feel of his body shaking in my grip more than I probably should.

“And you should be shitting your pants over the fact that you’ve been harassing my club’s top talent,” Adam added.

A feeble squawk bellowed from his lips. “My lawyers will?—”

I rolled my eyes. “Your daddy’s lawyers will do fuck all, Bradley.”

“Get out of my club, or I will ruin you. And you know exactly how I’ll do it,” Adam threatened, raising an eyebrow.

“Fine!” he hissed through his teeth.

I released the human shitstain from my grasp, and he rubbed desperately at his neck while making a beeline for the elevator.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Adam asked, strolling to Brad’s side and holding out his palm.

Brad mumbled a string of curse words while fishing his membership card out of his pocket. He slapped it in Adam’s palm and angrily punched the down button.

“See that Mr. Calloway successfully exits the building, Michael,” Adam directed before signalling for Charlie and me to follow him into the lounge.

She reached her hand out for mine and I joined her, following quickly after Adam and away from where Pissbag Brad was waiting to be escorted out of the club—and the building—for good.