CRAVING MY FORBIDDEN STEPBROTHER

Chapter4: Debt

I sit in my car for ten minutes before I can move.

The rain hammers the roof and the windshield fogs from my breathing and I just sit there with my hands on the steering wheel and my coat pulled tight around the lingerie I bought with three shifts at the diner and I try to remember how to be a person.

I can't go home.

Can't sit in my apartment with these walls and this silence and the feeling still living in my body that I cannot think about directly. I try not to and it comes anyway ,his hands on my hips, the snake tattoo against my skin, the way he said say my name in that voice that had no right to sound like that, and then I'm pressing my thighs together in the front seat of my car like an i***t and I catch myself doing it and I actually say out loud to no one:

"Are you serious right now."

My own voice in the dark car sounds insane.

I close my eyes and his mouth finds my breast in the dark of the guest house, his teeth scraping, and the sound that leaves me is soft and involuntary and I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles go white because I am not doing this. I am not sitting in a parking lot two streets from Jace's house moaning about Cain Russo in the dark like some desperate—

I start the car.

Drive.

I cannot believe I f****d him.

Of all the nights and all the people and all the ways this evening could have gone wrong I did not have loses virginity to stepbrother-to-be in a stranger's guest house while crying about her cheating boyfriend anywhere on the list. And yet. Here we are. My body still aching in ways I don't have words for, still carrying the ghost of his weight, still—

No.

I turn the heat up and drive faster and do not finish that thought.

The club is twenty minutes away. I'm not scheduled tonight but the building runs twenty-four hours and there are rooms in the back with couches and showers for girls who need somewhere to land. I've used them before. Tonight I need them badly.

The parking lot is mostly empty when I pull in. I grab my bag and head for the back entrance, key card, slip inside. The hallway is dark except for the red glow of the exit signs.

I'm almost to the changing rooms when I hear footsteps.

"Well. Look who showed up early."

My blood goes cold.

Marco. Leaning against the wall in an expensive suit, gold rings on every finger, that smile that has never once reached his eyes.

"I'm not working tonight," I say.

"I know." He pushes off the wall. "But you're here. So we can talk."

I keep my voice level. "I have nothing to say."

"Thirty thousand dollars, Layla." His voice is the particular calm of a man who doesn't need to raise it to be frightening. "That's what your father owed when he died. You've paid fifteen. Which leaves fifteen still outstanding."

"I'm working on it."

"Are you?" He steps closer. "Because from where I'm standing, you're not working fast enough."

"I need more time."

"How much."

"A month."

He laughs. Real and genuine, like I said something funny. "Fifteen thousand in a month."

"Yes."

"How."

"That's my business."

The smile disappears. "No, Layla. It's mine." He's right in front of me now, his cologne thick in the back of my throat. "One month. And if you don't have it—" He touches my face. I slap his hand away. Something moves through his eyes that I don't let myself name. "We'll have a very different conversation about how you settle this."

Then he straightens his jacket and walks away.

I stand in the dark hallway and breathe until my hands stop shaking.

I make it to the changing room and sink onto one of the couches.

Fifteen thousand dollars. Thirty days. I make two thousand a month dancing, three with good tips. There's no math that gets me there clean but it's all I have so it's what I'll do.

My father was a good man who made bad decisions and died before he could fix them. I took the debt because the alternative was Marco showing up at my mother's front door with a different kind of offer. So I dance. I don't apologize for it.

I love it, even.

I did ballet for eleven years. My body already knew how to move for an audience, how to hold a room without saying a word. And the one thing nobody tells you about this job is the power of it. Men come in thinking they're in control because they have the money. They're not. They're watching. Waiting. They'll sit perfectly still for however long I decide and when I walk away they'll still be thinking about me. There's something deeply satisfying about that.

Until tonight when I handed it over myself.

I press my palms over my eyes. First Jace. Then Cain. Then Marco.

Three disasters. One night. And I'm still thinking about the wrong one.

I must fall asleep because the next thing I know Carmen is shaking my shoulder.

"Layla. Wake up."

I jolt upright. She's already in stage makeup, robe over her costume. She takes one look at my face and hands me a water bottle without a single question. That's Carmen. She never pushes.

"What time is it."

"Eight PM." She studies me. "You look like shit."

"Thanks."

"Do you need to go home?"

"I need to work." I stand. Everything hurts. "Is Vincent here?"

"He's been looking for you actually." She pauses. "VIP request. Someone asked for you specifically."

"Who?"

"Don't know. But they paid triple rate. Private room."

Triple rate. Six hundred dollars for one hour.

I go to the mirror to fix my makeup.

The hickey sits high on my neck where foundation can't fully reach. The bite mark on my shoulder is worse — dark and deliberate, the kind that takes days to fade, the kind that was never going to be hidden. I cover what I can and look at what I can't and tell myself it doesn't matter because the lighting in the private rooms is low and nobody is looking at my shoulder.

My fingers slow on the brush.

In the mirror I can see the edge of my hip where the tattoo sits. His thumb traced it last night. In the dark of the guest house his hands were everywhere and his mouth — god, his mouth — I feel it again before I can stop it, the scrape of his teeth on my n****e, the way the pain dissolved into something that made my back arch off the wall, and the sound that leaves me in front of this mirror is soft and embarrassing and completely involuntary.

"mhmm"

I press my thighs together.

Catch myself doing it.

Look at my own face in the mirror.

"Pull yourself together," I say quietly.

I still cannot believe I f****d Cain Russo. I cannot believe I let him touch me and I cannot believe how much I liked it and I cannot believe I'm standing in a dressing room at eight PM with a bite mark on my shoulder that his mouth put there and I'm — I'm—

Stop.

I finish my makeup. Put my hair up. Step into the black lingerie and the heels. Do the job. That's all this is.

Vincent is waiting in the hallway. "There you are. You good?"

"Yeah."

"Client paid triple. Standard rules." He lowers his voice. "Make it good."

I take the key card.

I don't know why my hands are shaking.