What About Love (Club Decadence Book 6) (26 page)

It didn’t recede afterward, finding more joy as she felt him tense against her, pumping his hips harder. He shuddered, his head falling forward as he groaned along with his release. The sound a low, deep, sexy rumble in her ear.

After a few slow, indolent thrusts, he stilled against her, motionless except for the rapid rise and fall of his chest. In that instant, she felt him pull away, not physically, but in the way he had in L.A. She could tell before he raised his head and she saw the look on his face.

Frustrated and confused, she gripped his hair and tugged. “Don’t do this again.”

“I told you, Angie. I can’t—”

“You can’t?’ With all her strength, she shoved at his shoulders. Having well over one hundred pounds on her, he didn’t budge. Hurt and anger in equal proportions crept into her voice as she choked back tears. “At least tell me why. You owe me that?”

His eyes burned with regret as he stared down at her. Silent moments dragged on until he lowered his head, whether to kiss her or something else, she’d never know because she jerked her head away.

“Let me go,” she whispered, her voice raw with emotion.

Something must have penetrated, maybe her desperation, or her anguish because he released her and stepped back.

“You have to stop this, T,” she pleaded, as she righted her dress, her misery so acute it was a physical pain. Her voice was a ragged whisper when she continued. “I deserve to be more than a meaningless fuck against the wall.”

In the quiet that followed that verbal blow, she heard him grunt, as if someone had slammed a fist into his gut. She ignored it, knowing from experience it wasn’t what she thought, or hoped it to be.

Holding to the wall, she stepped back into her shoe and bent to collect her bags. Standing, she straightened her shoulders and looked him dead in the eye. She didn’t know how, but she did it even though she wanted to cry for what he was passing up or worse, begging him to love her. Then she told him what she did out of a deep need for self-protection. “Since you don’t want to be a part of it, you’ve got to let me live my life without you in it.” Although it killed her to do so, she walked away, in the end rushing down the hall, slamming through the exit and into the stairwell. As she took the steps at a near run, which wasn’t easy in heels, she gave thanks that he didn’t follow because if he had, she couldn’t have found enough strength to push him away again.

Chapter Nineteen

A fringe benefit of working for Rossi was free club membership, otherwise she’d never be able to afford the exorbitant annual fee. Not that she had any need of it, when she never planned to go beyond the lounge again. But it made check-in for Elena’s show easy. By the time she arrived, she was an hour late and had seriously considered not coming at all, but she decided alcohol and the girls were better medicine than crying pathetically at home over a man who could never be hers.

Been there, done that. And in T’s case, she’d done it far too many times.

As she pushed through the doors, she stood still for a moment while adjusting to the low light of the room. A tall, thickly-muscled, dark haired man walking through the bar made her start with alarm. On second glance, she realized this man was not as tall, and was nowhere near as broad shouldered as T. He also didn’t have the command of the room like T did.

Conceding that she’d been searching him out, she damned him and the control he had over her. An hour after she’d left him, his presence continued to surround her. Her thoughts were consumed by him. She could still feel the heat of his hungry kisses, the grip of his demanding hands in her hair, and his strong but gentle fingers gliding over her breasts, pinching and rolling her nipples, and torturing her clit in the same delicious way. And his glorious cock, the length and breadth of which had filled her so completely, beyond that of any man who’d come before him, and left her tingling with an internal ache that she never wanted to fade away.

No. She cut off that train of thought abruptly. Twice now he’d fucked her—might as well call it what it was—both times against a wall, and then walked away leaving her devastated. It was enough. She knew what she had to do. It wouldn’t be easy. Cap had called it. This was her town. She’d grown up here, her friends and family were here, and it was all that she’d ever known. On the other hand, she’d be a fool to think she could stay, working where he did, having the same set of friends and playing at the club he co-owned. Being smack dab in the center of his world brought nothing except more pain and trouble for her.

It was time to move on. She’d give herself one more night with her girls then tell Cap to make it happen.

Winding through the crowd, she smirked as Elena belted out the perfect song for her situation, Kelly Clarkson’s
What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger
. Lord! She hoped that was true.

Pulling out a chair at their usual table, the girls’ smiles of greeting disintegrated as they got a glimpse of what she knew was her exceedingly harried expression. Ignoring them for the moment, she saw to priorities and flagged down a waitress. “Tequila shooters, make it two, and keep ‘em coming.”

“Uh-oh.” Lexie was the first to comment. “I recognize that face and the order. Man trouble.”

A nodding, Megan agreed. “I’ve seen that exact look in my own mirror. Talk to us, Ang.”

“Not in the mood, cuz.”

Her drinks arrived. Needing immediate liquid fortification, she salted her
hand, licked it off, and downed the shot. While slamming her glass upside down on the table, she picked up a lime slice and sucked it, vigorously.

“Ready now?” Mara asked, eyes wide.

Angie shook her head, thinking two was not going to be enough as she repeated the process with the second shot.

“How about now?” Meg prompted as Angie dropped the second decimated lime onto her cocktail napkin.

“No,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “I need to marinate in tequila for a good half hour before I’m ready.”

They gave her that and she took it. Letting the liquor soothe her frazzled nerves, she watched and listened without uttering a single word as Elena finished her first set, took a short break, and came back for her second.

As she walked on stage, she made an announcement. “Our next set settles a debt I have with a dear friend. Joanna, this is for you.” The band opened up on a sick guitar lick that brought Joanna to her feet with an excited squeal.

“This is it,” she cried out, bouncing up and down as the band played a 1980’s classic,
Pour Some Sugar On Me
, by Def Leppard. She whooped and hollered, singing along and dancing up a storm as the girls looked on with mystified amusement.

“Joanna!” Lexie cried at the end of the song. “Are you drunk?”

“I haven’t had a drop of liquor,” Jo called back as Elena plunged from the first song right into the next, a sultry rendition of White Snake’s
Is This Love
. “This is it.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Megan shouted, in order to be heard. “What’s it?”

“An 80’s rock set!” Joanne explained. “Elena’s payment on our bet!”

“What bet?” Lexie asked, also shouting.

“Silly girl thought I couldn’t get her the gig to play at the Mayor’s wedding. I did. She lost. So I get this.” She threw her arms up in the air, enjoying every minute.

“You mean Peter’s brother’s wedding?” Lexie demanded.

Joanna turned and put a finger over her mouth, hushing her.

“You cheated!”

Joanna grinned. “Ah, but she doesn’t need to know that, at least not yet.”

They laughed at her exuberance because it all made so much sense. A child of the seventies who came of age in the eighties, Joanna was a rock, power ballad, hairband junky. It blared from her car stereo and was always queued up on her sound system at home. She’d been pestering Elena for years to add eighties music to her covers, but she always put her off. Until now, when she had no choice.

So for the next thirty minutes, they watched Joanna Davis in her element, as she danced, sang and played air guitar like a teenager to the songs of Pat Benatar, Bon Jovi, the Scorpions and
Heartache Tonight
by the Eagles that got the whole lounge on their feet clapping and singing along. No vanilla club girl walking in and seeing this would suspect this was a kinky sex club.

Angie looked on, somewhat distracted from her misery by Joanna’s infectious joy in the music and surprised at how many of the songs she knew. With the next one, Joanna stunned them all as the conservative suburban housewife, mother of two, grandmother twice over, a fundraiser for the local USO and military families, former director and volunteer at the safe house network for abused women, and wife of a highly decorated two-star general, climbed onto her chair. Caught unawares, the girls could only stare when her next step put her on the tabletop where she began dancing in her sky high red heels.

Lexie, who knew her the best, shook her head with worry. “Ohmigod, did she have to play Steve Perry? She goes apeshit over him. The only reason her bedroom isn’t wallpapered with posters of the man is because the general put his foot down.”

“Who?” Angie asked clueless. No one answered because Elena did it for them as she belted out the first line of the Journey classic,
Anyway You Want It
. Every eye at the table was glued on Joanna, every woman on alert, ready to catch her if she tumbled. They hadn’t hit the second chorus before a tall, sexy, still handsome as sin and looking as if he were twenty years younger than he was, Peter Davis appeared at their table. He peered up at his bride of three decades with a completely smitten look on his face while waiting for her to notice his presence. When she did, he shook his head, unable to contain his grin as he held up a hand for her. No one could mistake it for other than what it was, a silent command to get down.

“But Master,” she implored with a pretty pout, “this is my payment for winning our bet. Besides, it’s Journey.” The emphasis she put on the band’s name, told everyone clearly that it held a special place in her heart and her past.

“Dance, sing, and play to your heart’s content, my love, but do it from the floor. I have plans for you tonight, Joanna, and they do not include a ride to the emergency room when you take a header off a table.”

She stopped dancing and returned his grin.

“What kind of plans?”

“That’s a surprise for later. Come on down.”

With a look of adoration for her husband, that rivaled his of a moment before, she bent and placed her hands on his broad shoulders. Her friends, every one of them, entranced by the scene playing out in front of them, sighed as he caught her around the waist and swung her down from the table. He didn’t let her go when her feet touched down, instead he bent her over his arm in a deep, dramatic dip and kissed her passionately. As Elena segued into the heart thumping beat of Journey’s
Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’,
the general made them all melt, as he plastered his wife’s body against his, hip to hip, chest to chest, one large hand gripping her behind, and began to dance—well, more like slowly sway—with a beaming Joanna entwined in his arms.

At the end of the song, Elena announced another break. The lights came up a bit, while the general handed Jo back into her seat and gave her another long, lingering kiss. Then, he warned with a hushed, “be a good girl, now,” and in a blink was gone.

Angie, who had taken it all in, was convinced she’d never find a man who could share that depth of feeling, or the same love and connection that Joanna clearly shared with her man. It was the same for the twins, Elena, Lexie and Mara all of them had found love, the kind she wanted to have with T. Despondent, she threw back another shooter and laid her head on the table, muttering downheartedly, “Men suck.”

Joanna, still flushed and dreamy eyed from the unexpected dance with her Master, turned her way. “They can, honey, especially ones of the dominant variety, although they usually have redeeming qualities that make up for it. Tell us what happened.”

Angie snorted derisively, then with the buzz of four tequila shots flowing through her veins, the alcohol did as it always did. It loosened her tongue and had her zipping off a response to Joanna’s directive without thinking. “Just because they
can
fuck you insensate against a wall, doesn’t mean that they should.”

As one, the other women gasped.

“It’s Lil T, isn’t it?” Megan guessed.

Seeing no reason to hide it any longer, Angie nodded unhappily.

A pink tipped finger pointed at her as her cousin exclaimed. “I knew it. Ever since you got back from L.A., both of you have been moping around like heart sick teenagers.”

“I have, but I doubt he has moped for a minute.”

“Not true,” Lexie put in. “He hasn’t played in weeks. Jonas commented on it just the other day. He’s been either away on Rossi business or on DM duty.”

“Well, that may be the case, but he hasn’t changed his tune. At least not as of an hour ago.”

Megan reached for Angie’s hand across the table and squeezed. “Oh, cuz. Why didn’t you listen when we told you he was a player?”

“I did, but I guess I’m more into pain than I realized, and apparently, I like mine self-inflicted.” Angie stood, searching for the waitress. Flagging her down, she promptly ordered two more shooters as her friends looked on with concern.