I believed.

For one magnificent second, connected to Nick Sebring, I believed.

I believed in a better world.

I believed I could feel complete.

I believed I could have someone by my side.

I believed I could feel safe.

I believed I could be happy.

I believed I could be loved.

I believed in a dawn coming where I would open my eyes and have all of this only for it to lead to another day dawning where I’d have it and then another day…

And another…

And another…

And another…

Until I no longer existed on this world.

Thus I made an uncontrollable noise of loss when Sebring lifted me away from him and our connection vanished.

The moment was over too quickly.

Way too fucking quickly.

As always.

I dropped my legs.

He put me to my feet and stepped back.

Lifting my eyes to his, mine I knew shuttered, his equally blank, I shimmied down my skirt.

He did his fly.

It was me who looked away in order to walk to my panties. I bent as ladylike and dignified as I could to nab them before I shimmied them up as best I could. I smoothed my skirt over them when I was done and walked to my seat. I took the last sip of my drink in a way I hoped appeared casual before I grabbed my phone, shoving it in my purse.

I tucked my purse under my arm, turned and moved back Sebring’s way.

I again caught his gaze as I walked to him standing where I’d left him but turned to watch me, shoulders against the wall, arms crossed on his wide chest.

I dipped my chin as I walked past him and began to make my way up the rises, thinking now I’d lost the club. The only thing that was mine. Like Tommy, being foolish, thinking I could have something I wanted and going for it, I’d lost the only thing that was truly mine.

I could never come back.

Not because I’d broken the rules. Sebring would have to complain and I had a feeling he would not be doing that.

But because I’d made a huge mistake fucking a man who existed in my world. A man who had the power and resources to hurt me if he so wished. A man my father could hurt if the whim struck him.

And it would.

This I knew with absolute certainty I could not have. I could not do. I’d learned that.

I’d learned it.

“I want more of that.”

It was the pleasantly deep voice which was far more pleasant now due to being roughened by sex.

He wanted more.

Of me.

My heart turned over, my stomach flip-flopped and for another nanosecond, I believed.

I turned to him, my mouth opening to tell him that would never happen.

It was a grave mistake.

The instant I caught sight of him, I froze.

He was tall.

His eyes were the color of the ocean.

And he made me believe that I could want something, take it and have it.

Own it.

Keep it.

Something precious would be mine.

Even if that belief only lasted seconds, I’d waited all my life to feel that feeling.

To really, really believe.

My feet took me to him.

I stopped a foot away.

I bent my head and opened my clutch, shoving my fingers into the side pocket until I found it.

I pulled out the pen and reached for his hand.

And like a girl at a club who had hopes for everything from getting thoroughly banged to having just met the father of her future children, I wrote my cell phone number on his palm.

When done, without a word, I walked out of the room, pulled out my phone and texted Harry so he could reverse fifty feet in the alley and take me home.

Chapter Four

Cool Customer

Nick

Nick walked down the stairs to find the girl waiting at the bottom, her eyes slits, her arms crossed on her chest, her fury unhidden.

When he got close, she leaned in and hissed, “You fucked her.”

The bitch didn’t turn off the cameras.

She’d watched.

Aggravating.

Without hesitation, he grabbed her upper arm and dragged her with him toward the back room.

The security guy came out of the vestibule as did the coat-check guy.

“Move another step, you’re both looking for a job,” he warned.

They stopped, as they would, considering six months ago, the Sebring brothers had secretly purchased the club. To keep it on the down low, both were silent partners. The old owners still ran it with the only change being that they didn’t pay Benito Valenzuela protection money. Knight and Nick were perfectly capable of protecting the club.

Valenzuela backed off without a fight considering he had recently drawn Knight’s attention and not in a good way. He was smart enough, in his current war with Chaos and the moves Georgia Shade was making, not to court a new enemy.

But as it served Nick’s purpose, the staff of the club now knew he was their boss.

Therefore, unimpeded, he pulled his employee into the back room and through it to the door at the rear.

“Nick, you’re holding me too tight,” she whined, twisting her arm against his hold.

He wasn’t. His hold was not tender but it wasn’t causing pain.

He knew how to cause pain in a variety of ways.

Deacon Gates had taught him.

He also knew how to contain someone and not to cause pain.

Hettie and Turner had taught him that.

Her fear at his actions and the fact she’d fucked up and was freaked was causing her pain.

He yanked her to his side as he hit the code into the keypad. He heard the latch unlock and pushed the door open.

He looked to the man inside watching a bank of twelve monitors with visuals that shifted every five seconds. Visuals that fed from the thirty cameras throughout the club.

The man took one look at Nick’s face and immediately lifted his hands, not at all happy he’d watched his boss fucking a woman considering that boss was right there, clearly about to get in his shit about it.