Better When It Hurts (Stripped 2)

She complies, and I sigh in relief. Having her face-to-face with Blue makes me nervous. Not that I think he would hurt her just to get back at me. He’s too fucking honorable for that. No, I don’t want him seeing her because it reveals too much about me. This run-down house that still manages to be the nicest building in a two-block radius. What must he think of me?

Then I don’t have to wonder anymore; he’s going to tell me.

He takes a step forward. Then another.

He’s looming over me, this big, beautiful, terrifying man. He looks like an avenging angel, and I’m the devil who needs to be slayed.

I’m backed against the door that was just open. I close my eyes against the sight of him.

“Hannah,” he murmurs. “You’re so gorgeous.”

It doesn’t sound like a compliment. Not when he says it. Not when any of the men at the club say it. That’s because it’s not really a compliment. I don’t want to be gorgeous or sexy. I want to be loved.

“Why are you helping me?” I whisper. “Why’d you defend me?”

Some part of me can’t help but wonder if Candy was right. Maybe he does just want to fuck me.

His job is head of security, but we both know he could’ve let it go a lot longer. He could have waited until I cried out for help. He could have kicked the guy out without putting him in a choke hold. His voice is quiet when he responds. “Like I said, we have unfinished business. You owe me something.”

No, I’d been right all along. He wants to hurt me. He wants to fuck me. I’m sure he’ll end up doing both. My throat is dry. “Your pound of flesh?”

He curves his hand around my jaw, cradling me. Threatening me. Promising. “I’ve earned that much, don’t you think?”

A tear snakes down my cheek. “Yes,” I whisper.

“I’m the only one who gets to fuck you.” He leans close, his breath warm against my neck. “I wasn’t going to let him slap you around, Lola. The only person who’s going to mark this pretty skin is me.”

Chapter Five

I wake up with a pounding headache. The sun is too bright against my eyelids, and I turn my face into the pillow. What the hell happened last night? I feel like I got wasted, but I barely even drink, much less get drunk.

As I lay there, breathing in against my lumpy pillow and worn sheets, I start to remember. The night comes back to me in hazy underwater scenes—getting pushed around in the VIP room, being rescued by Blue. And then lying on the couch while Candy hands me a pill.

That explains a few things.

My memory is fuzzier after that. Did we hang out at the club until closing? How did I get home? I hope I didn’t do anything too embarrassing. Especially if Blue was there. I didn’t even want to think of how I looked when he walked in on me in the VIP room, clothes twisted, body held down. No hint of the confident vixen persona I used onstage.

“Don’t think about that,” I mutter.

I keep my eyes closed as I sit up, partly from lingering embarrassment and partly because I’m worried I might throw up. I make my way to the bathroom by feeling along the wall. The room is small and familiar. I’ve only lived here a few years, but it’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere.

I leave the door open and shower in the dark, with only the faint light from the room itself to light the way. After standing under hot spray for ten minutes, I feel almost human again.

By the time I leave the bathroom with a towel wrapped around my body, I’m fully awake. There’s still a lingering headache, but I’m guessing that will stick with me all day.

At least I don’t have to work tonight.

I freeze at the sight of something small and square and black on my bed. I don’t recognize it, but it was clearly in bed with me while I was sleeping. I inch closer, my heart in my throat because I can already tell what it is.

A wallet.

I just don’t know who it belongs to. Or where I stole it. Or how. But why…oh, I know why I stole it. Because I’m a thief. Some of my earliest memories are of hiding in the closet holding a tube of my mom’s lipstick while she tore the place apart looking for me.

Who was I kidding? She was looking for the lipstick, not me.

The habit had continued even when she’d died. Stealing shit from other kids was a great way to get beat up in a group home, and it was only by latching myself on to the biggest, baddest boy I could find—by giving him my body so I’d have his protection—that I survived. I don’t even mean to steal. In fact, I despise doing it. But I don’t always realize it until after the fact, when I’m left all alone, holding something that doesn’t belong to me.

I clutch the towel like it’s a goddamn lifeline and stare at the wallet. I wish I could throw it under the bed and pretend I’d never seen it. Instead I force myself to sit though I’m still two feet away from the small square of soft-looking leather. It’s so intimate, a wallet. Money, identity. So intimate that people wear it on their body. And that’s what I stole.