Page 5 of Owning Nicci

“Forget it.” I straighten, uninterested in her proposition and put off by the lack of anything decent to drink in this place.Nicci must have really pissed someone off, to end up here.It’s clear to me that she’s being punished in some way, though I don’t know why, and I don’t really care. Whatever punishment this is, it will be nothing compared to what I have planned for her.

Although, if she complies, there might be some pleasure in it for her, too. I doubt she’s felt even a flicker of pleasure in this place since she’s been here.

There’s no sign of her out on the floor, so I head to the back. That same lazy-looking man is leaning up against the wall, puffing out a cloud of candy-scented smoke. He sees me stride towards the curtain and straightens up, holding out a hand.

“Can’t go back there. Rooms are full. But you tell me what girl you want, and soon as she’s available?—”

“Nicci Armand.” I grit out the name. “Is she back there?” Annoyance surges through me, but I hold it back. I’ve spent years cultivating control. Discipline. I remind myself that my lifeis orderly and precise. That I don’t lose my cool any longer. That hasn’t been me for years. Not since I saw the consequences of it.

“I don’t know who the fuck that is. But you can pay me the door fee, and soon as there’s an opening—” He holds out a palm. “Two hundred for access.”

My jaw tightens. I happen to know he doubled the price. He did the same to me last night, but he clearly doesn’t remember that I was here before, or that I knew he was trying to screw me.

“Don’t play games with me. You know very well who the boss’s daughter is. I don’t know what fucking trash name she goes by in this place, but I’m looking for Nicci.”

Slow down. Be calm.I can hear the anger in my voice, the irritation at being denied. My adrenaline is running too high. I’m too eager. I should have gone to the gym, found someone for a quick fuck, anything to work out this feeling buzzing in my veins, so I could be aloof and disinterested. But I’m struggling, andshe’sthe reason.

She’ll pay for that.I’ll punish her for it until this feeling is wrung out of me, and the thought of the relief that will come after makes me ache.

“She’s busy,” the man says, clearly annoyed that I’m still pressing the issue. “She’ll be done when she’s done.”

That anger surges through me again, and before I can breathe through it, before I can stop myself, I shove past him, flinging the curtain back as he yells something behind me. I stalk towards the room where I found Nicci last time, only to see her on her knees in front of the couch, her face buried in the lap of a short, fat man who has his hand knotted so tightly in her hair that I can see it must be painful from here.

I feel that anger flood me again, threatening to drag me under like a wave, and that one word pounds through my skull.Mine.I suck in a breath, trying to calm myself, because no woman should have this effect on me.

Least of all her.

I force myself to stand there, sucking air into and out of my nose like an angry bull, watching her suck the man’s cock. He’s too far gone to notice me at first, and she can’t move her head enough to look, so I have no idea if she knows I’m here. But he whips his head around when the floor creaks as I shift my weight, possessive anger flaring into his lust-glazed eyes.

“Hey! Who the fuck are you? Get the fuck out—” He snarls the words, only for them to break off as Nicci rears back, lifting her mouth off of him as she tries to look at me as well. “Fucking put your mouth back on it, bitch.”

He shoves her head back down, and my hands curl into fists. Every muscle in my body goes rigid, and I have the sudden vision of lunging forward and dragging the man up from the couch by his collar, slamming his head into the wall until the dingy off-white paint is stained red with his blood and his face is unrecognizable. He’s touching what’s mine. Insulting what’s mine. I should kill him for it, and yet I force myself to remain perfectly still, nails digging into my palms hard enough that I can imagine them drawing blood.

I shouldn’t care enough to react like this. She deserves this humiliation—all of her past actions have made that clear. And I haven’t laid claim to her yet. I shouldn’t want to defend her. To kill this man for daring to even look at her.

I stiffen my shoulders, shrugging them as I lean back against the door. “I’ll wait until you’re done,” I tell the man carelessly, smirking as if I’m completely unbothered by the scene in front of me, and not as if I just imagined his brains leaking all over the scuffed floor. “Don’t mind me.”

The man’s eyes narrow, but he shoves Nicci’s mouth back onto him. The beat of the music pounds a relentless hammer against the back of my skull, and impatience rears its ugly head again—but I don’t have long to wait. For all the man’s protests,it’s clear having an audience gets him off. It’s all of twenty seconds before he shudders, gripping Nicci’s head with both hands, and then he shoves her off of him, sending her sprawling to the floor as he tucks himself back in and zips up.

“Was gonna tip you,” he slurs, standing up unsteadily from the couch. “But since you stopped, you don’t get nothin’.”

A look of frustrated anger crosses Nicci’s face. I watch as she pulls herself up from the floor, and I stand aside just enough that the man can push past me out the door before I elbow it closed again. Outside, I hear the doorman yell something about me needing to pay, but I ignore him.

She looks wrecked. Her lipstick is smeared at one corner, faded from rubbing off on that man, and the black makeup around her eyes is smudged. But where the woman at the bar looked ridiculous, like a feral raccoon, something about the messy makeup only makes Nicci look that much more enticing.

That man was an amateur. A drunk, sloppy waste of air who can’t begin to imagine the many ways that it’s possible to break a woman like this. Nicci might look wrecked now, but once I get my hands on her, I’m going to fuckingruinher.

“You were here last night.” Her words are thick, and she wipes at the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, retreating to a table on the far wall where there’s a basket of water bottles. She grabs one, twisting off the top as she takes a deep drink, and I smile, calm washing over me again. I’m here. I’m looking at her. No one will bother us until I’m finished. I’m the one in control.

“You remember me.” I glance at the couch. “Are you going to clean that off? I’d rather not sit down where that sweaty lump of flesh was a moment ago.”

Nicci eyes me. “Depends,” she says slowly, taking another drink of water. “Are you going to want something? Because last night you just walked out.”

“I told you what I want already. You.”

She rolls her eyes, and lust surges through me. When she’s truly mine, when she’s in my playroom on her knees, she won’t roll her eyes like that at me. If she does, she’ll find out the consequences. My cock hardens, and it takes everything in me to remember that I want to do this a certain way. I’m not going to enjoy her for the first time here, where countless other low-class men have had her.

I’ll do this the way I want. In my own way, in my own time. And no one—not her, not even my own restless body—will change that.

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