Chapter 27: The Past Catches Up
The word “Champagne Room” hung in the air between us, a greasy, unwelcome specter. It wasn’t just the phrase; it was the way he said it, with a knowing, proprietary curl of his lip that reduced the emerald dress, the intimate dinner, the fragile trust we’d built, to a transaction he understood perfectly. Jessie’s hand in mine was a cold, stiff mannequin’s.
“Vincent,” she whispered, the name tasting like ash.
“Vincent,” I echoed, my voice flat. I didn’t stand up. Not yet. I kept my grip on Jessie’s hand, my thumb stroking over her knuckles, a slow, deliberate counter-rhythm to the panic I could feel vibrating up her arm. I finally looked at him, really looked, my gaze traveling from his overly polished shoes up to those Arctic eyes. “You’re interrupting our dinner.”
He chuckled, a sound like gravel shifting in oil. He finally deigned to notice me, his glance dismissive. “And you are?”
“The guy asking you to leave.” I kept my tone conversational, bored even. It was the tone I used in boardrooms when someone was about to get eviscerated. A calm before the quiet severance.
His smile didn’t falter. If anything, it widened, revealing teeth too white and even to be anything but expensive caps. “I see. Jessica’s found herself a protector. How novel.” He leaned in, closer to her, ignoring me again. His cologne was oppressive, a cloud of sandalwood and something chemical. “You look healthy, kitten. Rested. Business must be good.”
Jessie flinched as if he’d slapped her. The ‘kitten’ did it. I saw the memory flash in her eyes—a dark room, that name hissed in her ear, hands that weren’t mine on her body. Her free hand went to her throat.
That was enough.
I stood up. Not quickly, not with a dramatic scrape of the chair. It was a smooth, uncoiling of muscle, my average height squaring off against his taller, looser frame. I placed my body fully between his line of sight and Jessie. The candle on our table guttered in the displaced air.
“You’re leaving now,” I said, my voice dropping, losing all pretense of civility. It was just a statement of fact.
Vincent’s cold eyes met mine, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of assessment. He was used to bullying scared girls and intimidating drunk customers. This was different. I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t scared. I was just in his way, and my stillness was more threatening than any bluster.
“This is a public place,” he sniffed, trying to regain the upper hand.
“And you’re creating a private disturbance. I’ll ask the maître d' for the check and a complaint form simultaneously. I know the owner. Alessandro and I golf.” I didn’t golf. I’d met the owner once at a charity thing. But Vincent didn’t need to know that. The lie was specific, plausible, and delivered with utter conviction.
The mention of the owner’s name, the casual claim of intimacy, did the trick. Vincent’s smirk tightened. He’d pegged me as a sugar daddy, maybe a low-level producer. Not someone who might have actual pull in this discreet, moneyed world. He took a half-step back.
“This isn’t over, Jessica,” he said, his voice pitched low, meant to snake around me and into her ear. “You and I have unfinished business. I’ll be in touch.”
He turned and walked away, his shoulders a little too stiff. He rejoined a group of similarly slick men at a corner table, their laughter suddenly too loud, too forced.
I didn’t sit back down. I tossed a stack of cash onto the table, far more than the check, and held my hand out to Jessie. “Let’s go.”
She took it, her movements wooden. She stood, clutching her small purse, her eyes fixed on the floor. The beautiful, confident woman from ten minutes ago was gone. The dress that had felt like armor now seemed like a costume she’d been caught wearing. I guided her out, my hand a firm pressure on the small of her back, shielding her from the stares of the other diners and the cold blue gaze I could feel burning into us from the corner.
The valet brought the car. The night air was cool, a relief after the cloying atmosphere of the restaurant. Jessie slid into the passenger seat of the Audi and sat perfectly still, staring straight ahead through the windshield at the neon smear of the city below. I drove, not toward the hills immediately, but just driving, giving the silence room to breathe.
After ten minutes, she spoke, her voice a thin, cracked thing. “He owns the club. The one where I… where I worked.”
“I gathered.”
“He’s not just the owner.” She took a shuddering breath. “He’s a… a collector. Likes to have things. People. He’d let some of the girls do private dances. Off the books. More money. But it was never just dancing. There was always… pressure. He liked me. Said I had ‘authentic fire.’” She spat the last words out like poison. “I got out before… before it went too far. Or I thought I did. I owed him money for a costume deposit, some stupid thing. I just left. I thought he’d forget. I’m just another girl.”
“He didn’t forget,” I said.
“No.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “He saw me tonight and he didn’t see me. He saw something he thought belonged to him that had walked away. And he saw you, and he saw the dress, and he knows.” Her voice broke. “He knows I’ve got something good now, and he’ll want to spoil it. That’s what he does. He ruins pretty things.”
I pulled the car over at a scenic overlook, killing the engine. The city sprawled beneath us, a galaxy of indifferent lights. “Listen to me, Jessie. He doesn’t know anything. He knows a restaurant. He knows a dress. He doesn’t know about the house. He doesn’t know about Steph, or Zoe, or Izzy. He doesn’t know where you live. He doesn’t know me.”
“He’ll find out,” she whispered, terror lacing every word. “He has ways. He’s connected. Cops, lawyers… he’s slime, but he’s rich slime. He’ll send someone, or he’ll call, or he’ll just… show up. And he’ll say things. He’ll tell you things about me. Bad things. True things.”
I reached over, cupping her chin, turning her face to mine. Her green eyes were wide pools of reflected city light, full of shame and fear. “I don’t care what he says. I don’t care what you did. You think I’m some pristine character? My fortune is built on a pile of failed competitors and broken code. I buy people’s time and their pleasure. I live in a palace of hedonism. I am not a good man, Jessie. I am a generous one. There’s a difference. His version of ‘bad’ doesn’t scare me. It probably rhymes with mine.”
A tear finally spilled over, tracing a path through her freckles. “I don’t want him near my life. This life. Our… whatever this is.”
“He won’t be.” The certainty in my voice was absolute. It wasn’t bravado. It was the cold, calculated confidence of someone who had faced down existential threats before—market crashes, hostile takeovers—and who had the resources to make problems disappear. Vincent was a pest. A malignant, nasty pest, but a pest nonetheless. “He’s a small-time predator who’s used to preying on the vulnerable. You’re not vulnerable anymore. You’re with me.”
She searched my face, looking for the lie, the hesitation. She found none. Something in her unclenched, just a fraction. The rigid terror bled into a shaky exhaustion. She leaned her forehead against mine. “I’m sorry. I ruined the date.”
“He ruined the date,” I corrected. “You just survived it. And you look fucking phenomenal doing it.”
A wet, choked laugh escaped her. “The dress is pretty great.”
“It is. But I’m thinking about taking it off you.”
Her breath hitched. This wasn’t the playful, teasing sexuality of the house. This was different. This was a reclaiming. An erasure. The need in her eyes mirrored my own—a desperate, physical urge to overwrite Vincent’s slimy touch, his vile words, with something overwhelming and present.
“Yes,” she said, the word a bare exhale. “Please.”
I drove the rest of the way home like a man possessed, the powerful car swallowing the canyon roads. The mansion was dark and quiet, everyone else out or asleep. I led her not to the bedroom, but to the massive living room, with its floor-to-ceiling windows offering a panoramic, silent view of the city that had spawned Vincent.
I didn’t turn on the lights. The city glow provided enough illumination, painting everything in shades of blue and charcoal. I faced her, my hands going to the thin straps of her dress.
“This is ours,” I said, my voice rough. “This night. This space. You. Mine.”
I slid the straps down her arms. The emerald silk sighed as it pooled at her feet. She stood before me in just her heels and a pair of simple lace panties, her skin pale marble in the monochrome light. The tiger lily on her hip, the other small tattoos, were dark silhouettes against her flesh. She was trembling, but not from cold.
I backed her up until her calves hit the low, wide sectional sofa. She sank down onto it, looking up at me, her eyes huge. I undressed quickly, my own clothes joining her dress on the floor. My cock was already fully hard, a thick, upright shadow against my stomach.
I knelt on the couch, looming over her. I didn’t kiss her. I just looked, my gaze a physical inventory. I needed to see her, all of her, to reconsecrate what that man had tried to profane.
“He doesn’t get to have any part of you,” I growled. “Not a memory. Not a fear. Not even a fucking whisper in your ear.” My hand smoothed up her thigh, pushing her legs apart. My fingers hooked into the lace of her panties and pulled, not tearing them, but dragging them down her legs with deliberate, possessive slowness. I tossed them aside.
She was already wet. The scent of her arousal, clean and sharp, cut through the last ghost of Vincent’s cologne in my senses. I bent my head, not to her mouth, but to the inside of her thigh. I bit down, not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to make her gasp and jerk. I laved the spot with my tongue, then bit again, higher, marking a trail toward her center.
“Ron,” she whimpered, her hands fisting in my hair.
I ignored her, my mission singular. I used my hands, my mouth, my teeth, to map her body with a fierce, consuming attention. I sucked bruises onto the pale skin of her breasts, my tongue circling her nipples until they were hard, aching pebbles. My fingers traced the lines of her tattoos as if memorizing them. This was an exorcism performed with hunger.
When I finally pressed my mouth to her core, she cried out, her back bowing off the couch. I didn’t tease. I ate her with a driven, relentless focus, my tongue spearing deep, flattening against her clit, drinking the evidence of her pleasure which was also the proof of her ownership. My own. Her hips bucked against my face, but I held her down, my hands pinning her thighs, my assault unyielding. I was rewriting her nervous system, synapse by synapse, replacing fear with this, with me.
Her first orgasm ripped through her quickly, a sharp, startled series of convulsions that made her scream into the silent, vast room. I didn’t let up. I pushed her through it, over it, my tongue relentless until she was sobbing, pushing weakly at my head, overstimulated and pleading.
Only then did I rise up, my mouth wet with her. I positioned myself at her entrance, the broad, plum-shaped head of my cock nudging against her soaked, swollen flesh. Her eyes were glazed, her body pliant and trembling.
“Look at me,” I commanded.
Her green eyes fluttered open, finding mine.
“Who do you belong to?” The question was guttural, primitive.
“You,” she breathed, no hesitation.