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“When the club is mine, that won’t be any of your concern,” I say with a sharpness to my tone.
“Each of the performers work incredibly hard, have their own fan base, and bring something different to the club.” He looks at me with a serious face, his fist clenched on the tabletop. There is no way he is anywhere near hitting me, but Brent takes a couple of steps forward, his hands held together in front of him. He says nothing but his demeanour is threatening enough, especially mixed with his height and width. Amiri flattens his palm against the desk and his whole body seems to slump in defeat.
“Do you have the information?” I ask again, quieter.
He reaches into a drawer of his desk and pulls out five folders. Gaby Paulson. Flynn Marcel. Emma Dyke. Rio Gordan. Elle Maxwell. I flip open each of the covers and review the contents, I am only skimming everyone else’s, trying to get a base level so I can find a reason to force Elle to leave the club once I take over. Unfortunately, the file with Elle’s name on it is like one accolade after another. Customer reviews spouting her praises, ticket sales for the nights Elle performs are on average thirty-five percent higher than everyone else. The nights she is on stage are the most profitable, by a long way. Others have one or two complaints inthe files, stupid petty complaints, but there are none for Elle.Well, fuck. This isn’t going to work.
I feel my final flame of hope go out. “Could you give us the room for a few minutes?” I ask Arash. He nods, looking defeated and exits the office, closing the door quietly on his way out.
I lose it for a second and throw Amiri’s fancy pen across the room.
“Lance?” Hayden comes to my side and rests his hand on my shoulder.
“I’ll, uh, give you some privacy.” Brent steps out.
“I don’t know what to do,” my voice is barely a whisper. Hayden doesn’t say anything, but he crouches in front of my chair and his hand moves from my shoulder to the bare skin at my neck, his thumb gently stroking my jaw. “It can’t have been for nothing, Hayden. It just can’t.”
“It wasn’t. You know it wasn’t. You had a difficult decision to make in a short time and you did what you had to do. What you thought was the right thing. We’re all different people now, Elle too. You don’t even know her anymore, none of us do. Don’t assume she can’t handle herself with whatever happens next.” His sage gaze is soft and sympathetic.
“Don’t pity me, Hayden.”
He wasn’t put off by my bad mood, keeping his soothing touch on my face and narrowing his eyes as his lips curve into a smirk. “Don’t play the martyr, Lance.”
I am ready to argue but he rises to lean over me, crowding me with his warmth and the smell of ocean waves. Bending his head, he takes my lips in a soft, slow kiss.
“You’re not alone in this, Lance. Remember?” He strokes his nose over mine, a blatant distraction technique to take my mind away from the whirring and screeching thoughts of Elle. “I’m with you. I’ve always been with you.” His voice is a low rumble that vibrates straight to my cock.
I stand so quickly he has to step back and the back of his legs hit the desk. I grab on to his hips and slam into him, my kiss unforgiving. I plunge my tongue into his mouth and groan at the taste of him, the pressure that I have felt rising over the last few days is building and building. I’m trying to erase his commentfrom earlier with my lips and I’m pretty sure I’m about to cross a line.
Hayden reaches for my cock but I bat him away, grabbing his belt with all the aggression I feel, I unbuckle him with fumbling fingers. The grunt he makes when I fist his growing erection has my hips jerking against his, gaining nowhere near the friction I desire.
“Brent could come back any second,” he mumbles into my mouth, but he doesn’t seem any more intent on stopping than I am.
“You want me to stop?”
“Fuck no.”
24
ELLE
Was it really fucking necessary for them to be here again? I finished my set and did just ten or so minutes of the obligatory dancing and interacting with the crowd afterwards. After downing a shot of tequila, courtesy of my favourite bartender, I decide to talk to Arash. I think the three amigos have left as I haven’t seen them around since I came out from backstage. I head through the staff door and up the stairs to the first floor that splits off in two directions. One takes you to the gallery balcony used by security to watch all the goings on at the club, and the other takes you to the offices. There’s one for security where the CCTV is, and one is Arash’s.
I see Brent in the doorway to the Security Office, talking to the guys in there; he doesn’t see me. I assume Lance and Hayden are in the office learning about the systems for their takeover. I’m quiet as I approach the door to Arash’s office, not wanting to draw their attention. Never have I been quite so glad about Arash’s insistence that you don’t have to knock, I can slip inside without detection. I open the door and my jaw hits the floor.
“Oh my God!” I shriek, unsure what to do, turn around or pretend I haven’t just seen what I think I did.
Lance jumps back from where he has Hayden pressed against the desk, his hand retracting from his trousers in a snap. I get a brief glance of Hayden’s dick bobbing at half-mast before he turns his back to me to tuck himself away. When he once again faces me, his lips are kiss swollen and around his mouth is a hot pink, likely from the rough scrub of Lance’s stubble against his own. Hayden looks almost apologetic, but Lance? Lance looks terrified. He stands gaping at me, his eyes blinking, his body stone still.
“I…I was, um, looking for Arash,” I say, trying to look anywhere but at them.
“He’s not here,” Lance says quietly.
“No shit, didn’t think this was a ‘more the merrier’ type situation,” I snap back. Why I am feeling so angry and hurt and sick, I can’t say, but I find myself fighting the sting of tears at the back of my eyes.
“What’s going on?” A voice behind me has me jumping slightly. Brent is scowling at me, like I’m the one to blame for the commotion. Okay, it’s stupid, I get that, so fucking stupid. But that scowl is what breaks me, not because I think he’s angry at me but because I’ve missed that scowl. The first tear breaks free, rolling down my cheek and when he sees that, his face softens slightly, and his eyes go from hard to confused.
“Nothing,” Lance answers, finding his voice again and drawing our attention back to him. He clears his throat like he is about to say something. But before he can get his words out, his eyes go wide again, and the colour drains from his face as he looks over my shoulder. Hayden, too, suddenly looks nervous and I feel Brent tense next to me.
