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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
*Kaldon “Kal/Prez” - President*
The raucous response from the club swells around us, but her stubborn, strong-willed gaze never once stops challenging me, even through the thin film of tears clouding her brown eyes. My club can wait; this cannot.
“See, I was right. You really are just like your father.” Her dark eyelashes flutter demurely, gaze dropping to my President patch and back up again. A single tear drips down her cheek from the movement.
I knew it was coming. I knew but still see red — just like him. Hand shaking, aching to twist around and backhand the mouth that just spewed those filthy words, I do the opposite of what my body wants to do: I drag my thumb through the line of wetness and spread the fluid down to her dainty collar bone and along her shoulder. “I am nothing like Stoney,” I say, not for the first time tonight and probably not for the last time where she is concerned.
“How is bartering me any different than selling me? I am not cattle, Kaldon,” she grinds out, her teeth clenching and chattering from the aggravation and the drug my father dosed her with.
Taking a controlled breath to cover up the sudden need to grind my own teeth, I defend myself… again. “The difference is that I am not personally going to use you. You are a gift for my club. A failsafe. Genius idea, really. If only I had come up with it myself. Guess Coty’s obsession is enlightening sometimes after all.”
“I find it really hard to believe that Coty approved of this.” Her focus drifts over my shoulder toward him before snapping back to me, belatedly realizing what I said. “Am I really so vile that you can’t even bother to join in on the festivities?” she asks, arms twitching at her sides, desperate to lift and cover her nakedness. She mimics my body language instead — a trick she learned early on in her job.
Damn, I want to match her cockiness and say something stupid like “blondes are not my type,” but Lace is a brunette underneath all that platinum. Of course if I say blondes are my preference, she would have a comeback for that, too. Since I really don’t have an answer I want to give her, I state the first thing that comes to mind, regardless of how ridiculous it sounds. “I prefer grown women.”
The comeback sounded better in my head. She has a tendency to make me trip over my words without trying, which is one of many reasons why I usually avoid speaking with her at all. She is too quick to the draw. I hook a finger under the collar of my undershirt and casually puff it out to get a little air.
My wrist brushes against the top of her heaving breast due to our closeness, and her eyes fan upward, gaze piercing. Despite the temptation to drop my own gaze, I stand firm, ready for the killshot. “I was barely legal drinking age when you buried that thick cock inside me the first time, and the second, and the third.”
Eyebrow raised, she starts ticking off how many times we made love the night of my first assignment. The only night we made love. Due to circumstance, I had to shut that shit down right away.
There are no more tears; they all dried up. Her brown eyes brighten to life, pupils large and angry. Yet another reminder of both my father and her obstinance — two things that get under my skin more than anything else. “Now, three years later, suddenly I am not old enough?” She pants, passionate. “Why? Because you’re the big three-oh and that is so much older and wiser than those of us half a decade, give or take, younger than you?”
“Whatever you’ll believe,” I respond, growing tired of the conversation and ready to bolt before she starts guessing correctly. The farther away those memories become, the easier it is to pretend they never happened. “Have fun this weekend, Lace.” I turn away from her. Each step creates even more distance between what might have been and brings me closer to what will be.
On my way to the office, I snap my fingers above my head, calling a meeting. But before beginning club business, I stop at Coty who is still foaming at the mouth and is now being detained by Baylor. Coty and I might go way back — the definition of “thicker than blood” — but I refuse to let his insubordination go unpunished.
“Time to take it wide,” I state, repeating his brazen comment from earlier and fixing his bent lapel from the fight he put up. “Since you already placed your vote, you should be fine waiting out here.”
What he doesn’t realize is that it was within those very words, “Take it wide,” that Lace’s Universe whispered its secrets to me, revealing the opportunity I have been waiting on for far too long.
