They found me. They’re going to kill me.
I need...God, I need…
I’m moving. I don’t know when it starts but somehow, I get my feet to move because I’m pushing away from the crowd, slapping at any hand that tries to reach out to me, to steady me. I can’t bear to be touched. It feels like ants on my skin and I can’t scratch them away.
I push through a door, finding relief when I realize it’s a bathroom and barely make it to a sink before I lose all my dinner into the bowl. My stomach heaves painfully when I’ve poured everything and I don’t realize I’m crying until I reach up to touchmy wet cheeks but Christ, I don’t have time to cry. I rinse my mouth and splash water over my face but it’s no use as the tears continue to fall.
I scramble for my phone in the back pocket of my skirt and contact Henry, the US Marshall assigned to my case but the call sends me voicemail. My fingers are trembling when I send him a text with the emergency codeword to alert the agent of danger, but I receive no response. I dial his number again, choking back a sob when it sends me straight to voicemail again.
When my knees go weak, I stumble into a stall and lower myself on the toilet seat, dialing the number over and over again but it keeps sending me to voicemail. A wretched sob tears through my chest and the tears blind me until I can’t see the screen anymore.
For years, I’ve made do with the cards the universe dealt me. A naive part of me believed a white knight would come to save me, rescue me from the hell I was forced to live in.Stupid. Yet, I held onto that hope when I lost my parents and when I saw that poor man murdered in a dark alleyway. I didn’t break down when I was forced to uproot my life in Austin, drop the name my parents gave me and start a whole new life in Las Vegas. Alone.
It all comes bubbling up. Like a reel of my life, it all plays through my mind and wrecks me. Alone, as I’ve been for so many years and in the bathroom of a casino run by dangerous men, I let it all pour out of me. I’m helpless to do anything else.
Chapter Two
Ghost
No one warns you of how dangerously easy it is to fall out of one addiction and into another. It’s reckless for a recovering alcoholic like myself to fall into yet another pit just as I was done pulling myself out of the last. And yet, here I am, letting myself grow addicted to yet another substance. More lethal. Scarier than anything I’ve ever taken before.
Iris Turner is a drug.
A sweet little drug, rolled in a swinging, shiny brown bob with curves that tempt me every fucking night. I have no business coming down to the casino floor, but every night, I find myself wandering here under the guise of making sure the tech executives, crypto bros, hedge fund managers and the real estate moguls that can afford our membership behave. But really, all I want is to catch a glimpse of her.
One look is all I need. A few minutes to fix this dangerous need that crawls at me.
Just one look. At least that’s what I’ve convinced myself. I can’t touch her, or anyone for that matter. Still, I have demons that haunt me. A past that I cannot shed long enough to allow myself a shred of normalcy. An addiction I’m working toovercome. I know better than to allow myself to get attached to anything. Or anyone.
But I can’t quit her.
So I come down here every night for a couple of minutes to watch her walk around the tables in her tiny little skirt, hips swaying in a way that would tempt any man to sin. I track every movement of that sexy body, growling deep when a man looks a little too hard. A second too long. I pretend that my cock isn’t steel hard behind my jeans and that I don’t want to cross the distance between us and ravish that sexy body in front of all these men. Show them who she belongs to.
Goddamnit. I want her!
So does nearly every man in here, it seems. They can look, hell, no one is stopping them from admiring the sexy little thing that is Iris Turner, but that’s all they are allowed to do. No one can touch her! The casino provides privacy rooms and escorts for that exact purpose.
I should leave, get back to my actual work.
Like every good recovering addict, I should know when I’ve had enough and I’m about to turn around to leave when the customer she’s talking to leans close to her to say something, no doubt soliciting her. Something dark and possessive unfurls in my chest when he grabs her wrist, pulling her across the bar to whisper into her ear. Rage coils in my gut, obvious enough on my face to send men scrambling out of my way as I start to make my way across the room.
“Ghost.”
“I’ll deal with it,” I tell the floor security when he rushes after me. “Find out who that fucker is and how he got in.”
The man lets go of Iris before I can get to them. He grabs his beer and disappears into the crowd. I watch him, conflicted whether I should go to Iris or go after the fucker and teach him a lesson for laying his hands on a woman I’ve claimed as mine, but before I can make the choice, Iris runs in the opposite direction and toward the bathroom. And then the choice is taken from me.
“Make sure he doesn’t leave this place,” I instruct one of my fellow MC members, jutting my chin toward the direction the fucker disappeared to.
“Sure, boss.”
People jump out of my way as I follow Iris and when I see the women’s bathroom door swing closed, I consider it for a minute or two before following her in. It’s thankfully empty but I’m drawn to the sounds of the wretched sobbing coming from the second stall. It’s open so I move toward it. The heart I didn’t know I still had clenches when I spot Iris seated on the toilet seat, head buried in her arms as she cries like one who’s lost the will to live.
I crouch in front of her, clenching and unclenching my fist as I fight with myself. The need to touch her is strong but I’m not sure I’ll be able to walk away once I do. I can’t afford her. Not with the demons I’m still battling.
“Iris,” I whisper, and her head shoots up, those tear-stained, large blue eyes blinking up at me, and I realize there’s no walking away, whether or not I touch her. Christ, she looks so fucking beautiful, the most stunning woman I have ever met in my life and I am crushed with the realization that I don’t just want her in my bed, under me. No, I want to wrap my arms around her, hold her close. Protect her from the world. Punish anyone stupid enough to bring tears into those beautiful eyes.
I feel the tug between us. The heat burns into me in a way that cannot be healthy.
