Page 11 of Thrill Me (Dark Odyssey 3)

Put simply, while I may be all dolled up in my outfit, I’m a hot mess inside.

Pushing my thoughts aside I draw in a breath and take comfort in the vibrant atmosphere I can feel from out here as I walk down the corridor.

For me The Dark Odyssey is more than just a sex club. That would sound so strange if I said that to anyone, but that’s the truth. The club with its nightly Venetian Masquerade themed parties is like a show to me. Every night we put on a show and people come for the show and the lure of living out their wildest fantasies.

The echo of my heels clicking against the floor takes me back to the beginning. It was my idea to get the marble floors. The guys fit the whole club with marble two years after it opened. I suggested it and that was enough for Salvatore to make it happen. He’s like that with my ideas. Always showing me that he values me.

I was with the guys from the beginning, right from when the doors opened.

Salvatore, Gabe, Nick, and their cousins Christian and Georgiou. Those are the five owners. The five sex crazed members of the Giordano pack.

When they opened they didn’t even ask me to work with them they just included me like it was a given I’d say yes. I literally got a call one day from Salvatore, telling me this is what we’re doing and I’m supposed to look after the girls who’d be working for them. The waitresses and exotic dancers.

That was it. That and a salary I couldn’t say no to. I was nineteen at the time. Not even old enough to get in the club let alone work right there in the open with the guys and all the crazy sex.

I did it though and practically signed my life away to the crazy Giordano pack who claimed they wanted a woman’s touch to the place.

Vincent likes to think he’s above the obsession with a sex club and all loved up with Sorcha, his wife, but he’s only just become the cool collected under boss people know him to be in recent years. I guess though, to be fair, that with a wife like Sorcha, who is literally like an angel, it’s easy to understand why he’s so loved up. All the more understandable because they just had a baby.

The man was as sex crazy as the rest of the boys in his younger days though. I think he was a little worse. Nick, the youngest brother, always used to spy on him when Vincent got up to all the shit with the girls who went crazy for him. What Nick didn’t know, and doesn’t have an inkling to this day, was I was always watching and spying on him.

We have a similar personality –Addicted to trouble.Many times that trouble landed my ass in more trouble. Like the time when I tried to spy on him, fell out of a tree and into the river and would have drowned if Salvatore hadn’t saved me.

Or, like the time I followed Nick into a den of drug lords because I thought he was sneaking into the cinema to see an R rated film. That time was the last time I followed that boy because when bullets started flying and nearly hit me I knew my little pushbike couldn’t get me away fast enough.

Who came to save me on his motorcycle?

Salvatore.

It was like he just knew to look for me. For a long time they all thought I had the hots for Nick but it wasn’t that. He just fascinated me because he’s the wild child.

That night, like always the boys all knew what Nick was up to. But Salvatore knew that if Nick was in trouble little Mimi wouldn’t be too far behind. He wasn’t wrong.

All those times he did something like that, always watching for me, it never crossed my mind that we could be more than what we were.

He taught me to pick a lock, he taught me how to use a gun, he taught me to dance, but it was the day he started teaching me how to protect myself and Gabe thought he knew better that the tides changed.

It swayed another way. Right in the direction my little heart moved, because of the wild bunch, Gabe had been the cool one in my eyes.

He was different then and almost seemed the most mature and level-headed. Basically, not willing to jump headfirst into trouble like the others. Maybe that was it. I don’t know. I still don’t know because nothing I’ve done since has made sense to me.

I walk through the large oak doors leading out to the dance floor of the club and my legs start shaking. My soul quivering.

I’ll see Salvatore in about five minutes and I still feel the roil of emotion I’ve had all day. All day I’ve been thinking about my answer and I’m still in limbo.

I call him my boy.

I’m so crazy… Salvatore and the other guys haven’t been boys in years but to me they still are. And he’s mine whether we’re a couple or not.

My heart knows what it wants but that’s just my heart. That’s the problem.

My heart. I get in trouble when I follow it.

Thank God for the music blaring around me. The music and the people around tune out my inner turmoil. It’s distracting.

I walk past the cubicles designed for sex. My idea again. I thought something that looked more stylish would be sexy. The cubicles on the main floor are different to the ones above. In these ones the people can hook up on the night. The other cubicles on the floors above have to be booked just like the theme rooms and the sex dungeon.

The ones I pass by have long padded leather sofas and, Jesus Lord is it seriously crazy tonight. I think it’s the Chicago heat.

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