Page 2 of Black Sheep

My mouth twists, and I swear the impossible happens, and I hate her even more than I did one second ago. “What are you now, his messenger?”

Her gaze flicks up to me before she shrugs, her bare, slender shoulder gleaming under the pulsing lights. “You’ve ignored all his emails and your brothers’ calls.”

“They’re spineless assholes.”

“Are you going to talk to me?”

“No.”

“Then why keep me here?”

“I told you the terms of admittance. You come of your own free will; you don’t get to leave until the club closes. That’s in two hours.”

“This is ridiculous, Axel.”

My stomach knots just from seeing her type my name. “Then don’t come again.”

She looks up. Our eyes meet across the dance floor. Her hatred washes over me in filthy waves. I want to roll around in it. She holds my stare defiantly for a minute before she lowers her head to her phone again.

“It’s not that simple. Please hear me out.”

Again my stomach clenches, but this time it’s accompanied by a crude little jerk in my pants that grabs my attention. “Please? You begging now?”

Annoyance flickers across her features. Her thumb hovers over the screen for the longest time. Then my phone buzzes. “Yes.”

I didn’t expect that. The Cleo I knew never begged unless it was to plead for my cock inside her. My mind circles around why she would do so now, and my erection hardens. A few crazed seconds later, I decide it’s safer for my sanity not to know, and I settle back into sublime hate. “Too bad the first time I hear you beg has to be via text. Answer’s still no.”

“Axel, this is important. Let bygones be bygones and hear me out. It won’t be more than five minutes. Please.”

I’m doubly pissed off that I can’t hear her say that word. I’ve waited a long fucking time to hear it. I’m even angrier that I can’t cross the distance between us to ask her to repeat it. I put everything into the two words I text to her. “Fuck bygones.”

It may be a trick of the light, but I swear she feels my new level of rage. Her lips part in an inaudible gasp as she reads my reply.

Turning away, she stalks to the private bar in the lounge. The waiter nods when she murmurs to him. He slides a shot glass across the counter and reaches for the premium tequila sitting on the shelf behind him. He pours. She picks it up and raises the glass to me before she downs it in one go.

I stride to the edge of the dance floor, hating myself for being concerned about the consequences of what she’s doing. Then I remind myself that it’s been years since I witnessed Lightweight Cleo topple over after one shot of tequila.

All the same I watch her, narrow eyed, as she downs another shot before heading for one of the velvet booth seats. There is the tiniest weave in her walk, and I have to clench every single muscle to stop myself from charging across the space between us.

The simple, undeniable truth is I can’t.

Because of Cleopatra McCarthy, my life exploded in a billion little pieces. Pieces I didn’t bother to put back again because I knew the exercise would be futile.

So for over eight years, I’ve lived with this new, permanently-altered-for-the-worse version of myself. A version I’m not in a hurry to reassess or remodel. A version that keeps me steeped in the obsidian fury that fuels my existence.

I stay on my side of the divide because to come within touching distance of her is to succumb to the carnage raging inside me. After all this time, I should have enough of a hold on myself to smother the compulsion.

I don’t. If I did, I would’ve stopped her from stepping foot inside my club the first time she turned up.

But even worse than the control I sorely lack is the fact that I’m a glutton for punishment. Hell, it’s the reason I run the highly successful and exclusive Punishment Club. In the handful of years it’s been open, I’ve made over twenty million dollars in membership fees alone. Who the fuck knew there were crazies out there like me seeking to be exposed to the very thing they hate the most?

I derive a little perverse satisfaction from the fact that I’m granting them an outlet, even while I’m unable to find one for myself. I accepted my fate a long time ago. What haunts me can only be cured one way—by the moment I stop breathing.

“Macallan. Triple. Neat.”

I reel back my thoughts and turn at the sound of the deep, raspy voice.

Quinn Blackwood.

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