Give Me a Reason (Redemption Hills 1)

He suddenly reached out and fluttered the tips of his tattooed fingers across the erratic thunder at the pulse point in my neck.

A wild, reckless pound.

Shivers raced and my knees nearly buckled.

He tilted his head. “Don’t I?”

I struggled to swallow. To breathe. I gave a harsh shake of my head to break the trance. “Do you have a job for me or not, Mr. Lawson? Because I’m not here to play games.”

He cracked a wry, cocky smile and widened the door. He gestured inside. “After you, Kitten.”

Gritting my teeth, I strode into his office with as much confidence as I could muster. It wasn’t that hard. I might appear delicate and fragile. Unworldly. Naïve. But I’d experienced enough tragedies, enough heartache in my life, to know when I needed to dig in my heels and get done what needed to be done.

He gestured at a chair set in front of a desk that sat facing out on the room.

“Have a seat.” He said it like a proposition.

I had to stop my eyes from rolling when I sat down, but there was nothing I could do to keep them from jumping around the office that was much larger than I’d anticipated. Taking it in. The massive black desk and black leather chair. But it was the glass case against the side wall that stole my attention.

It was filled with relics and treasures and paraphernalia from another time. Guns. Swords. I gulped when I saw a few pieces of ancient, rusted torture devices on display like a prize behind the glass.

I shifted in discomfort.

Everything in this room screamed sadist.

My chest tightened and I itched in my seat.

He was suddenly there, leaning over me at my side, dragging a finger down my cheek while he murmured in my ear, “There’s still time to run, Kitten. I promise I won’t even chase you.”

I swallowed the screaming reservations down, the ones that told me coming here was hunting down trouble unlike anything I’d ever experienced in my life. Self-preservation urged me to get up and go and never look back.

But I had a mission, and I wasn’t backing down. “Like I said, I need this job.”

He hovered there, at my side for far too long before he let go of a long sigh and rounded the desk. He folded himself into the huge leather chair. He dug into a drawer and then shoved a stack of papers my direction. “Everyone signs an NDA.”

Shocker.

Who knew what he ran through here. Everything about him shouted mayhem. That his darkness went so much farther than skin deep. That his hands were dirty.

Nerves roiled in my belly.

Was I really doing this?

He rocked back, an elbow propped on a chair arm and his head rested on those fingers. Somehow, he’d lost his jacket in my moment of stupor, as if I’d lost a period of time, lost in the insanity of what I was doing.

And there he sat like some wicked king. His arms a portrait of depravity. Those eyes a vacuum to the sins deep within.

I guessed it was that moment that I remembered my father’s words. When he’d say we’re all brought to the altar of temptation. We either kneel at it or turn our backs on it, but we can never, ever straddle it.

Call me a fool, but I was going to try.

I lifted my chin. “I won’t do anything illegal.”

He cocked a salacious grin. “Don’t worry, Kitten. I have something much more fun planned for you.”

Was he serious?

He had something much more fun planned for me?

I gritted my teeth, scrubbing the last of the pots that had been piled high in the industrial sink and fighting tears. I’d never been so offended in my life.

I’d told him I was qualified.

I may never have been a cocktail server before, but I knew how to take care of people and how to do it well. Caretaking had been what I’d done my entire life.

Instead of telling me to come back for training, he’d handed me a freaking apron and sent me into the kitchen, still wearing my heels and skirt, mind you.

Jerk.

Music vibrated the floors, rumbling from the depths of the bar while I fought an irrational rage.

Or maybe it wasn’t irrational at all.

He’d wanted to insult me. Put me down. Shame me into subjection.

The fact I wouldn’t let him was the only reason I hadn’t walked, not that I was ever going to return.

I glanced at my watch.

Two a.m.

I had to be to my real job by seven.

Crap, I was going to be a zombie come tomorrow. A very irate, disgruntled, broke-ass zombie.

I would have gladly lost sleep for some actual money.

But this?

I swiped at the tear that got free.

Damn it. I wasn’t going to let him see me cry. That’s what he wanted. To belittle me. But more than that? I had been relying on this being a break. Had hoped to find some sort of blessing, but I should’ve known better than to look for it in a place like this.