Page 85 of Intense
I scan the corridor.
Empty.
No cameras.
I made sure of that the first time I came here. No one’s watching. Of course they aren’t. Everyone knows what happens back here, the naughty things that the world doesn’t want to believe still goes on.
What these sick bastards make these women do, dangling wads of cash in front of their noses to push them to make choices they don’t want to.
A strip club is not a sex club. In Inferno, we have rules. The women know and willingly play. They are trained, consensually, to do so. It isn’t about money. It’s about desire. About being able to have your wildest fantasies come to life without judgment.
It is not about a drunk perv getting his dick wet with a barely legal girl for fifty bucks. This is why I go after these kinds of scum.
I don’t think a lot of people realize the psychological warfare that goes on in a victim’s head for the rest of their fuckin’ lives.
But I do. I live it. And I will continue to hunt these monsters down in their sleep.
I pull out a safety pin from my coat pocket and work the lock. I swear I can feel the fear bleeding through the wood.
When the door swings open, my breath catches.
She’s perched on the table. Her back to me, it’s the mirror that does it.
I see her watching me.
Her profile.
Her eyes.
The stuttering rise and fall of her chest.
I know that fucking face. I know that smell. And those lips. My body reacts exactly how I expect it to.
I shut the door behind me and lock it.
The silence fills the room. Yet, she doesn’t move, and neither do I.
Fuck this.
I cross the room, eyes never leaving hers.
Every second closer confirms what my blood already knows.
The curve of her jaw.
The freckles across her nose.
The quiver in her breath.
Familiar. Like I’d spent years studying her for this fuckin’ moment.
I stop just in front of her just as she turns herself to face me. Without a word, I close my eyes and breathe her in.
That scent. Floral and innocent, yet underneath it’s laced with sin.
Something dark and beautiful that’s lived in my bones for six years.
I exhale.
