Page 17 of Lucky or Knot
And I had the uncomfortable suspicion that the receptionist had only pretended to let Declan know I was here and intended to let me rot in this comfortable chair until I gave up. Had I missed some glitter in my hair? Damn it. She glancedup from her computer and shot me the world’s fakest smile. Great.
I cooled my heels there for over an hour, with the clock ticking past five and office workers starting to leave for the day, with every passing moment totally failing to blunt my anger.
Last night kept replaying in my mind.I want you to give in to your instincts and knot me thoroughly, and I can offer you this in exchange, he’d said. Offer it to me. Not pay me, not give it to me, nothing that necessarily had to be construed as me keeping it after I’d fucked him. Of course he’d felt comfortable giving me his word that the coin was worth a lot of money, because he’d intended to take it back from me all along!
Oh, he had no idea which of my instincts I’d be giving into when I tracked him down. My instinct to wring his scrawny neck, for one. Or my instinct to put him over my knee.
More than anything, my instinct not to be cheated and stolen from. Maybe if we’d been actually dating that would’ve been par for the course, but no way would I allow that from someone I spent one night with in a cheap hotel. I had standards.
The clock had almost hit six. Scrolling on my phone couldn’t keep my attention.
He’d cried when I knotted him. Why? Guilt? Pain? Some bizarre fae emotion I couldn’t even comprehend? But my stomach tightened and twisted with something between helpless desire and rage every time a visceral memory assaulted me.
His soft, broken sounds. The clench of his heat. The sweetness of his skin. The way I’d called him that,sweetness,in my stupid, enchanted daze.
“Mr. Kaplan? Mr. Kaplan?” When I glanced up from frowning down unseeingly at the floor, I found the receptionist frowning too, standing up from behind her desk as if she thought she’d need to tap me on the shoulder to get my attention. Shehad her purse over her shoulder, clearly about to leave. “Mr. MacKenna can see you now,” she said, sounding both surprised and disapproving. “His assistant’s coming to get you.”
Well, fuck her, anyway.
I still thanked her politely as the double door opened, and I nodded and followed a much more pleasant older lady down a long and bland hallway. My whole unlived life seemed to flash before my eyes, and I shuddered. No, I really didn’t regret not answering phones and staring at a computer screen in one of the offices we passed on our walk to Declan’s.
Much better to gyrate on a stage and occasionally get not-paid for sex by gorgeous, lying fairies.
Fuck my life.
We reached the end of the corridor, where a huge glass-walled office occupied the corner of the building. It’d still been full daylight when I arrived, and I blinked at the disorienting view of black sky and Vegas lights.
The assistant put her head in, said, “Tony Kaplan, Mr. MacKenna, let me know if you want coffee,” and went back to her desk.
Declan MacKenna rose from behind his own, coming around to shake my hand. He wouldn’t have been out of place on stage at Lucky or Knot himself, to be honest, being an alpha werewolf with dark-haired good looks and quite a few tattoos peeking out of his rolled-up shirt sleeves. Not my type, but he’d make great tips if he wanted to moonlight away from his fancy executive suite.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said, the faint tinge of an Irish accent seeping into his voice. “I had a meeting that ran long. And I’ve another one coming up, so I’ll have to make this quick. Is there a problem at the club?”
Declan tended to a more friendly, down-to-earth style of management despite how many calls he had on his time, and hemade a point of knowing everyone who worked at Lucky or Knot, dropping in now and again to have a drink with us after closing. So I’d spent a fair amount of time with him, though he hadn’t come by for a while.
The way his scent had changed since I saw him last—mingled with someone else’s and with overtones of sex and contentment—confirmed the rumors I’d heard about his reasons for spending more time at home.
“No, more a personal problem, and don’t apologize, I didn’t have an appointment,” I said as I took the seat he waved me to next to a coffee table at the end of the room. He dropped into a matching one and sprawled his legs out. “Speaking of personal. Congratulations. Heard you mated?”
I’d actually heard he kidnapped another alpha, turned him into a sex slave, and then went feral and staged some kind of shootout in the desert—andthenmated, but I figured only the last part would be polite to ask about.
Declan’s flashing grin had me smiling in return, despite my mood. “That I did. And maybe you’ll meet him one day, and maybe not. I’m keeping him the hell away from Lucky or Knot. No matter how often he asks me to take him there.”
“Looking forward to it, or maybe not,” I said, laughing, and he laughed with me.
Pretty sure he wasn’t joking, not that he had much to worry about. Even if he hadn’t been a hot, rich, intelligent alpha, I could smell how happy they both were by the way their scents had almost fused into one. My nose always knew when mates weren’t devoted to one another. And Declan and his mate were, without a doubt.
“Sorry to bring you this bullshit when you have better ways to be spending your time,” I went on, and he sat back and nodded, giving me his full attention. “But I’m here to ask for a favor. Last night…”
I left out most of the more prurient details, but I had to confess that I’d agreed to fuck a club customer for money—not something you wanted to tell your employer. But he didn’t even blink, not being naïve or stupid. He knew what went on at literally every strip club anywhere, and as long as we were discreet and exercised a bit of judgment, he didn’t give a fuck.
On this occasion, well. At least I’d been discreet.
When I finished my story, Declan shook his head, sighed, and grinned. “Sorry, but it sounds like you really did get rolled by a fairy,” he said. “I’d be furious too, if I were you. But I’m also never going to let you live this down. You know that, right?”
Yeah. I’d known it going in. “Fuck you, Declan.”
He laughed again. “Fair enough. And you want me to pull the security footage for you? I’ll do it. Jeremy is doing the job I pay him to do, but in this case I’ll overrule him.”
