Still Standing (Wild West MC 1)

“So, what you’re saying…your advice is I should sleep with you to keep you sweet so you’ll take care of me?”

“Actually, yeah.”

I stared at him through the dark.

I was being facetious.

He was not.

Then I asked, my voice pitched higher, “Is that clean?”

He lifted a hand and glided his fingers through my hair, down, pulling it over my shoulder and his voice was gentle when he replied, “Yeah, Clara. It’s honest. We both know what it is. We both get somethin’ out of it. So it’s clean.”

Oh God.

I was going to cry.

I thought my life couldn’t possibly get worse, and here it was, worse.

This really cool, handsome man who listened well and was great at sex wanted me to prostitute myself to him so he would take care of me and I could “make a good ally.”

“Please…please get off me,” I whispered.

“You bring Tia with you, I’ll keep her safe too.”

Oh God.

“You can’t, he won’t let her go,” I replied.

“Babe, he’ll have to get through me and all of my boys to get to you or her.”

“And all I have to do is sleep with you?” I asked.

“Well, no,” he answered.

“Does Tia have to sleep with you too?” I pushed, and his body went stone solid again.

Except maybe more stone solid, something I wouldn’t think was possible.

But it was.

“Babe,” he growled.

A warning.

Definitely.

I’d gone too far.

I also didn’t care.

“Okay, so then does Tia have to sleep with one, or, say, all of your boys?”

“Don’t do that shit. You know that’s not what I’m talkin’ about.”

“So maybe you’ll explain what you’re talking about.”

“I would, you shut your trap.”

I shut my trap and stared at his shadowed head.

He stared at mine.

Then he muttered, “Christ, need my head examined.”

“You could get off me,” I reminded him.

“Is this shuttin’ your trap?”

I shut my trap again.

“You take of care my house and my business as well as me.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means you move outta your apartment before they kick your ass out. You move into my house. You keep it clean. You keep me fed, that is, when I’m not feedin’ you, and I like to cook, so mostly, I’ll be feedin’ you. You come to work with me and take care of the office, and you go home with me.”

Wow.

Was he serious?

That sounded like…it sounded like…

My God, it didn’t sound like a sex-for-safety arrangement.

It sounded like a relationship.

“What?” I whispered.

“The office work, I pay you for,” he went on.

He’d pay me for it?

As in, a job?

“What?” I repeated.

“And give you a car since the repo men, babe, just gotta say, they’ll get yours before you get a chance to sort that shit out.”

Good God.

He knew everything about me.

“Do you know everything about me?”

“Everything from your master’s degree up. That foster care shit, no. We didn’t have the chance to dig that deep.”

“Why did you dig at all?”

“Toots, I knew he was gonna send you and you don’t go up against an enemy you don’t know. Word about you was all over the street. Anything on radar that may touch my Club, I find out about it.”

That made sense and it was thorough and protective. It kind of made me wish I had a club. Then again, I’d always kind of wished I’d had a club.

Buck kept talking.

“Clara, listen to me, I’m offerin’ you a home, a car, a job, protection for you and your girl and the opportunity to stay clean. Are you seriously gonna turn that down?”

Something occurred to me.

“Did you know that you’d…that you’d try…that we’d—?”

“Saw pictures of you, babe, lots of ’em. Can’t say they didn’t catch my interest but in the flesh…” He tugged my hair, let that finalize his point and moved on. “So no. I didn’t know you’d be where you are right now and I didn’t know I’d make that offer because I didn’t know the offer needed to be made. Though, considered an offer after our abbreviated twenty questions and definitely was movin’ toward it after you got smashed, chatty and seriously fuckin’ cute.”

I missed the last part, which was too bad, but it was because I was stuck on what he said earlier.

“So this is pity?” I asked, my voice rising again, and I watched him arch his neck back and listened to him sigh.

Once he’d done that, I listened to him mutter, “Fuckin’ hell.”

“Well?” I demanded.

It was then I watched him tip his head down and felt his eyes burning into me.

“Let me sum up,” he stated with unhidden, barely restrained patience. “You…are…fucked. You haven’t worked in nearly a year. You’ve come to the end of the money you had in your own account, as well as the end of the money you got when you hocked anything they left you with that had value. You haven’t paid on your car in six months. You’re three months out on rent. You were six, but the money you earned from Esposito caught you up, just not enough. You were served an eviction notice a week ago. Your three credit cards are maxed. You haven’t paid on them in six months either. They’re with collection agencies who are at your door so much, they could move in.”