Provocation (Explicitly Yours 3)

He began to dial Warner. Just because he didn’t want Lola didn’t mean he wanted her staying with Johnny. This part was easy for Beau, anyway. With one phone call and a little cash, Warner would handle it. Whatever Lola needed—a ride, a hotel room for a few days, a new job—Beau could give it to her without even a word between them.

He paused, his finger hovering over the last number. His heart beat hard enough for him to notice. Lola wasn’t his problem to fix. And like Beau had told her—he wasn’t Johnny. He didn’t waver in his decisions. He didn’t backtrack. The game was over, and Warner was returning Lola to the past where she belonged. There’d be other women to fuck after an expensive dinner, new challenges to hold his interest, more ways to buy what he wanted. She had the money if she got into trouble. She didn’t need Beau. And he—he had an empire to run.

Beau set the receiver back on its cradle and glanced out the door of the balcony. The sun was cresting over the mountains. From the start, Beau had always known there’d be a moment when it would all come to an end. This was that moment.

3

It’d all started with a look.

Lola had stepped out from behind Cat Shoppe’s curtains, center stage, the night’s main feature. Nineteen, lithe and limber, but what’d set her apart most was that she’d loved to dance—the owner’s words. Then again, the other girls had been at it much longer, and they’d seen a lot more than her. If they’d ever loved to dance, maybe they’d found more reasons not to.

Seconds into her number, she’d glanced over her shoulder and met eyes with a strikingly handsome man who looked sorely out of place and with no clue about it. That man would change the course of her life. He’d buy her body for a night, and then he’d buy her heart, and that would bring her to this moment—arms full of money, legs stretching wider with each step. Unable to get away fast enough.

The doorman just barely pulled the handle in time to let her out. She fled the Four Seasons hotel. The Beverly Hills concrete was smooth under her Converse, the opposite of the sidewalks around her apartment.

“Wait!” a male voice cried behind her. She stopped. The sun was still behind the mountain, but it would be up soon. She turned around, squinting at the figure jogging toward her in the semi-dark, waving his arms.

Lola would’ve reveled in the pitiful display if the man was Beau, but he wasn’t. Beau would never run after anything—or anyone. Not that it mattered. If Beau wanted something badly enough, he’d catch it anyway.

She recognized Beau’s driver as he slowed to a stop in front of her, his breathing labored. “I’m supposed to take you home, Miss Winters.” He straightened his tie and left it even more crooked. With a nod back toward the hotel, he said, “I have the car waiting. I’m to take you home and stay out front until you’re ready to come back here.”

Lola’s broken heart ached a quick second, a longing sigh. That’d been their plan, made only minutes ago, and it’d seemed solid. She and Beau were upside down, inside out, backward—and, somehow, they were just right. Until the truth had dropped into the room, diffusing their fantasy future like it’d been nothing more than a cloud.

Lola narrowed her eyes at Warner. Her disgust for Beau branched out, disfigured fingers on a dying tree, looking to take anything down with it. “Is that what you’re to do?”

He looked from side to side without moving his head a millimeter. “Um—Mr. Olivier called about fifteen minutes ago and specifically instructed—”

“Mr. Olivier can instruct his foot up his ass. Take another step toward me, and I’ll scream.”

Warner swayed back as if she’d swung at him. “Excuse me?”

“I’ll find my own way.” Lola turned back around. She and Beau no longer owed each other anything, not even a lift home. She started the two-something mile walk back to her apartment.

Innumerable customers had passed through during the two years she’d stripped at Cat Shoppe. It was a wonder she remembered that particular night at all, but she did. That man across the club had worn a suit, not unusual for their clientele. Cat Shoppe had been more exclusive in those days. He’d been older to her then, but now she just recalled him as smooth and spotless. Not the hard, angular man he was now. How she could’ve forgotten Beau’s bottomless green eyes, she wasn’t sure, but she’d tried not to look too hard into anyone’s eyes when she’d worked there.

He’d stayed near the entrance, watching her. She’d been stared at before, but this was different. It was the same feeling she’d gotten on the sidewalk at Hey Joe—as if he’d been passing by and something had stopped him in his tracks.

Backstage, the owner, Kincaid, had pulled her aside and sent her to the VIP room. At first, Beau hadn’t demanded anything or tried to grope her. He’d seemed more interested in talking. He’d looked into her eyes when speaking to her, not at her tits. Although, he’d looked at those too. Beau was right that she’d brushed against him when she’d danced for him, even though that wasn’t allowed.

And then, out of nowhere, he’d offered her money to go home with him—and doused any interest she’d had. It was presumptuous, and in a way, disappointing. Up until then, she’d been a girl intrigued, wanting to know more about this man who wasn’t like the others who paid for time alone with her. As if it’d been some warped version of a first date.

He’d left abruptly after she’d turned him down, and she’d forgotten it by the next day.

Beau hadn’t. Her rejection had struck something deep inside him—something that’d compelled him to lead her right into the mouth of a fire just to watch her burn. It didn’t matter that he’d changed his mind at the end. It only took one ember to send everything up in flames.

She’d had this sick fullness in her gut before—an unruly customer pulling down her thong during a lap dance. She’d knocked the scrawny guy on his ass with a lucky punch. When one of her mom’s boyfriends had struck her, she’d launched toward him, claws out. She would’ve lost if her mom hadn’t stepped in, but that didn’t matter. Both times, she’d fought back.

Lola readjusted the package of cash in her arms. The sun’s fiery-orange arch peeked on the horizon, silhouetting palm trees. Even though she had the money—the money was all she had—she refused to get a cab. In her eyes, it was no different than accepting a ride from Beau.

Besides, the sooner she got home, the sooner she’d have to face Johnny. It wouldn’t be difficult to hide what she’d done—declaring her love for the enemy. She doubted Johnny’d even think to ask. The problem was that she’d meant it. No m

atter how badly Beau had hurt her, love didn’t come with an off switch. She couldn’t go home to Johnny and pretend none of it’d ever happened. And after what she’d been through with Beau, she wasn’t sure she wanted to anyway.

She and Beau were fire and ice. They were never meant to be together. They clashed. They exploded. He heated her when she was cold and soothed her when she was burning up. That couldn’t be faked. In the convenience store, with a gun under her chin, Beau wouldn’t let the man take her outside where Beau couldn’t see her.

Johnny wasn’t a protector. The moment Beau’s business card had gone missing from Hey Joe’s countertop, her trust in Johnny had begun to chip away—a gradual process she hadn’t even been completely aware of.

The first night, as she’d approached the limo idling at the curb of her apartment complex, Beau’d rolled down the window and looked up at her. Johnny had watched from the window. She’d had no idea the two men would each tear out half her heart, leaving a gaping wound in its place. She’d had no idea that as much as Johnny had loved her, and as much as Beau would worship her, it would end this way.

Lola picked up her pace, flexed her weighed-down muscles. Half a million dollars was fucking heavy. Hadn’t she been good to both of them? For Beau, she’d risked everything. For Johnny, she’d given him whatever he’d wanted the last nine years. She hadn’t asked for much in return. Just to be safe, loved—to be enough.

She wasn’t safe. She wasn’t enough. And now, she didn’t have anyone. Beau had taken all that away from her. But as sure as that money in her arms, she was still standing. They’d landed their punches, but neither of them had knocked her off her feet.

It wasn’t over yet, though. Lola and Johnny still had to face the truth. They’d made a deal with the devil, and the devil was cashing in. From Lola, he would take her heart. From Johnny, he would take Lola.