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“It’s a moot issue since I have no plans to go down there. Is there anything else you needed to talk to me about? I’d like to grab a shower and find something to eat at some point this evening.”
Mason took a step back toward the door. “I’ll leave you to your own devices. If you need anything at all, send me a text. I’ll be downstairs in the bar. When you’re ready to eat, come down and I’ll show you where to find some grub.”
I smiled at him for possibly the first time. “I should be down in about thirty minutes. Thanks again for looking after me while I’m here.”
Chapter 5
Mason
Iwalked downstairs, dumbfounded by our conversation. This woman might have been twenty-seven, have a sharp wit, and be mouthy as the day is long, but she also had a certain innocence about her. It was her inability to control her facial expressions that gave away that she couldn’t stop thinking dirty thoughts about the sex club atmosphere downstairs.
A sick feeling swirled in the pit of my stomach. I should have never spoken so freely about what went on in our basement. Something about my words aroused the fuck out of Aprilia. I didn’t know whether it was because we had a room dedicated to debauchery close at hand or it was hearing my coarse language when it came to sex. It was a well-known fact among my club brothers that a lot of nice women enjoyed dirty talk. I wished I had thought about that before I opened my stupid trap. It didn’t sit well with me that I had inadvertently teased another man’s fiancée that way. That’s not something I would ever have done intentionally.
I also hated how it made me feel to see her pupils blown with lust, how breathless she got the more I talked, and how she shifted to press her thighs together as if she were turned on. Fuck, no woman had ever responded to me that way before. If she wasn’t already engaged and off limits, nothing would have kept made from seducing the ever-loving fuck out of her the moment she showed such blatant interest in me sexually.
Aprilia was a seriously beautiful woman. She had short rusty brown hair, big, innocent brown eyes, and her body was strong, athletic, and she had just a hint of curves in all the right places. There was no doubt in my mind that I would be stroking my cock to thoughts of her for a very long time. I wasn’t quite stupid enough to think that what went on upstairs was anything more than physical attraction. I had literally just met this woman. For all I knew, she could be the most toxic human being in the entire world.
I had no intention of getting close enough to her to form any kind of emotional attachment even if she was going to be sleeping just at the other side of a door. As attractive and enticing as she was, Aprilia was spoken for. Her fiancé was one of our strongest allies in the fight against the mobsters taking over our town. There was no way in hell I was going to let a woman destroy the alliance my club was working so hard to build. I would consistently put my club before my cock every single time.
When I stepped off the stairs, the front door flew open. Storm came stalking into the room with a crew of our most seasoned fighters at his back. I could tell by looking at them that they had been through something tonight. They were bruised, bloodied, and some were limping.
When Storm caught sight of me, he jerked his chin toward the office. “Come with me, Mason. We need to have a talk.”
I followed him back to his office. The others either went to get cleaned up or get a cold brew.
“What the hell just popped off? Y’all look like you’ve seen some major action.” I asked, pissed that my club brothers had been jumped again.
“Those fucking mobsters hit our strip club. The girls made it out alive, but they burned the place to the ground.”
“That was a neat trick, considering the building was mostly metal.” We’d set up shop at an old-fashioned gas station built mostly of steel years ago. That business was a consistent, legal money maker for our club.
Storm threw himself down in his desk chair and glared at me. “The fucking building exterior might be made of metal, but everything inside sure the hell wasn’t. A hollowed-out metal shell does not a strip club make, Mason.”
“Did you manage to get your hands on any of them?”
Storm nodded wearily. “There were five of them this time. We caught ended up killing four, but Celt and Grit are tracking the fifth one through the woods as we speak. If they manage to catch him alive, we’ll interrogate him. However, we pretty much know exactly what’s going on. Don Diavonte is sending small groups of his foot soldiers on targeted operations to destroy our assets and kill as many of us as he can. It’s not a bad strategy. If he manages to financially gut our club, we won’t be in a position to fend off a full-scale takeover of this town. Same thing if he thins our ranks.”
Storm’s cell phone started ringing. He answered it, hit speaker, and Diego’s arrogant voice filled the room. “I heard what went down at your strip club. You should have better security, especially since you own a security firm.”
Storm growled back angrily, “How the fuck is it that you can manage to call and have a private conversation? I thought you were sending us Aprilia to be a carrier pigeon of sorts.”
“Strange that you should ask. My brothers and I bought an old warehouse down by the docks. According to public records, it hasn’t been in use for close to fifteen years. Inside, hanging on the wall, was a public payphone. Believe it or not, it only cost me one shiny quarter to make this call.”
Storm snorted a laugh. “I’m calling bullshit on that story. There are less than one hundred thousand pay phones left in the entire United States. One fourth of them are all somehow in New York and the rest are in prisons, schools, and hospitals.”
Diego’s voice turned icy. “Since this building is scheduled for demolition in a few days, you can consider this a one-off opportunity. We should make the best of it.”
Storm sighed. “Agreed. Have to say I’m really pissed, your thugs completely destroyed the strip club. It was one of our more lucrative sources of income.”
“Hey, don’t be putting the blame my way. You know the score with Don Diavonte, he may be our don but we ain’t his puppets. My brothers and I have no interest in Griffinsford.”
“That may well be true, but you’re all part of the same beast, and now we’ve got no club,” Storm growled.
“That’s a shame. Can you find another location on short notice?”
“One of our club members got hitched to a woman who owns a strip club for curvy girls. We might be able to buy the site from her and set up some kind of split schedule.”
“Curvy girl bars are all the rage right now. This might turn out to be a blessing in disguise for your club, Storm.”
