Page 15 of Under Your Scars

Illicit nightclubs aren’t exactly the type of establishments Reeves Enterprises invests in.

I hear him laugh against my neck. “I wonder,” he mumbles, and then he looks back up at me. His eyes have been invaded by his own pupils, gone so dark and large with lust that the blue of his eyes is nothing more than a thin line. “Does that bother you? That I’m here with him?”

I keep my mouth shut. I remember what Kate told me earlier, but if I say anything and it gets around to him, there’s no telling what Frank will do to me. Christian ruts against me to catch my attention again.

“Are you scared of him?”

I shake my head. “I don’t want to start rumors.”

His mouth hovers millimeters from my lips. I can taste the whiskey on his breath, but he doesn’t kiss me—only lets me bathe in the ghost of his lips against mine. “It’ll stay between us. I promise.”

My breath shudders again. “All night, his friends haven’t taken their eyes off me. He won’t either. I…I pointed it out to one of the girls here and she said that sometimes if he really likes a girl, he eventually takes her downstairs, and she’s never seen again.”

Tension fills every line of his body, and his eyes darken again, not with lust, but with anger. “What happens downstairs?”

“Kate told me to use my imagination.”

Christian finally sets me down, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the heat of his chest against mine—the heavy weight of him straining behind his zipper against my core. He lifts a thumb to trace over my bottom lip, and then with the same hand, he laces his fingers with mine and tugs me over to Frank and his friends, who have watched the entire interaction with curious eyes. Christian stops at his chair, fumbling through his suit jacket until he pulls out a small bank roll secured with a rubber band.

He slowly stuffs the roll down the valley of my breasts, and then uses his thumb and forefinger to lift my chin. He gives me that billion-dollar smile that makes me weak at the knees.

“Until next time,Elena.”

Oh yeah, I’m definitely going to imagine him saying my name like that with my vibrator against my clit tonight.

After my shift is over and I’m back home, I sit on the floor of my apartment and count the roll of bills Christian stuffed into my bra. I’m pretty sure I blacked out for a second.

One thousand dollars. He tipped meone thousand dollarsfor…whatever the hell we did tonight.

Rich people are nuts.

I wonder if the richest man in the world even knows other denominations of bills exist, or if he’s only ever seen Benjamins. The latter wouldn’t surprise me.

While I appreciate his generosity, I’m actually fucking mortified at the thought of ever running into him in the office again. I really don’t know how we’re going to come back from our ‘dance’ tonight. For a dance, there sure wasn’t a lot of dancing but a whole lot of him making out with my neck and grinding his dick against me.

Not that I minded it.

I shove all my money into my nightstand, and I take a long shower. I’m so exhausted I barely have the strength to wash my hair. I want a night off from the club so bad, but I know if I asked, I’d probably be skinned alive or something equally as terrible. I should have never gone to that club. I should have just swallowed my pride and asked my parents to front me the money for a new phone.

But I unfortunately inherited my father’s stubbornness.

When I get out of the shower, I wrap one of my fluffy purple towels around my body and step out of the bathroom to grab some clothes from my dresser. When I open the door, two large hands grab me, one going over my mouth to cover my scream, and the other holding me flat against the wall next to my nightstand.

I’m forced to choose between holding up my towel or fighting against the Silencer’s grip, and I choose my towel easily. I use my foot to kick him in the shin and he chuckles before letting me go.

“Get out,” I snarl. “How the hell did you get in here? Don’t you have someone to murder or something?” I narrow my eyes at him and cross my arms over my chest. I glare at him while he looks me up and down, and I feel unnervingly exposed in nothing but my towel. “Why don’t you go bug someone else and leave me alone!”

“Now where would be the fun in that?” He quirks up an eyebrow at my frustrated stance. “You look adorable when you’re trying to be intimidating.”

“Yeah, and I bet you’d look real adorable bleeding out in the alley again with a knife in your gut, which is exactly where you’re about to end up if you don’t get the fuck out!”

He plops down on my bed across from me, and I stay with my back against the wall with my arms and ankles crossed.

“Aw, not happy to see me?” I roll my eyes at his teasing tone. I want to smack the smile off his face that I’m sure is under that mask. “You looked real cozy with Christian Reeves at that club tonight. No wonder you haven’t been home all week.”

My face drops. “How…how do you know about that?”

“I can’t say I was expecting to see such a clean-cut girl like you in that place. Tell me why you started working there.”