Lies That Sinners Tell (The Klutch Duet 1)

CHAPTER ONE

“Karson, she’s in a white dress, strawberry blonde, no tits. Nice ass.”

“Got her, sir.”

Jay sat back on his chair, watching the sea of bodies part for Karson. Even in a nightclub where ninety percent of the clientele were drunk off their asses—in addition to being high on coke, E, or whatever they could get their hands on—the throng moved for him.

A latent survival instinct, Jay supposed.

The man wasn’t overly tall. Not hugely muscled either. He was wearing a sleek black suit and a barely visible earpiece. Handsome in a traditional way. Dark hair. Sharp features. Ice blue eyes.

All of this shouldn’t have been threatening. But the man himself was. An air of pure menace cut through even the highest of highs and the thickest of inebriations. Karson had a history that Uncle Sam had either erased or had never written down in the first place. A history that made him one of the most valuable members of Jay’s staff.

This errand was above his pay grade, but Jay paid him more than enough to complete the task without comment. Beyond that, he didn’t want to fuck around with the club security, who spent far too much time checking out the ass that Jay already considered his.

Despite the fact that the club was absolute packed with beautiful women, women with technically better asses, tits and faces, this woman in the white dress was something else. Which was the entire reason why Jay had interrupted his plans for the night to send one of his best men on an errand for pussy.

Such things weren’t unusual; he had needs and owned a club that attracted beautiful women. Women who were eager to get into bed with him, who obeyed commands and who he could dispose of without incident.

They were easy. No complications.

Jay had enough complications in his life.

But something about the way his eyes caught the woman’s hair, her ass and how he wanted to beat the shit out his bouncer for just looking at her made Jay realize that things were already complicated.

I just wanted to dance.

Sometimes I did this.

Got all dressed up in a vintage Alaïa dress I found on eBay or a Halston Heritage jumpsuit I’d been given at a shoot, heels, hair, makeup—all of it. No friends, and definitely no man of any kind.

I had plenty of friends who I went out with. Got dressed to the nines and attended fabulous parties, drank fabulous drinks and had a fabulous time.

There were men too. Maybe not as plentiful as the friends, but a good amount. Though I wasn’t vain, I knew I was pretty. Could pass for beautiful with makeup, hair and a kickass outfit. Which was what I was always wearing.

Part of the job.

Part of who I was.

And part of who I was was someone who needed to dance at an obnoxious club with insane cover charges and exorbitant drink prices. I didn’t care much about the club itself or the status people hoped to gain by getting into the exclusive VIP section. I didn’t even take notice of the people. I certainly didn’t care about the rumors swirling about the mob owning the club or some shady, millionaire businessman who was king of the underworld. That was just talk. People in L.A. liked to talk. Make stories, blockbusters out of things.

The club itself was my choice only because I liked the music, and it was close enough to my apartment that I didn’t need to eat up too much of my shoe money—or rent or grocery money—by taking an Uber back and forth.

Plus, walking was not an option in the area between the club and my place.

Sure, if I wanted to save my money—which I was never good at anyway—I could’ve forgone my pilgrimages and stayed at home. Or, at the very least, gone to a party with friends, gone on a date, doing something less expensive while still being somewhat social.

But I needed these nights.

Nights where it was just me, the thump of the music and bodies moving around me. It was calming. Some people took baths, put on face masks—I had three hours of straight dancing.

I had no goals of attracting a man, or attracting anything for that matter. This wasn’t for anyone but me. I was single, I was living paycheck to paycheck, and sometimes I got lonely. Sure, I was a romantic. A romantic realist. So I knew that any man I encountered at a club a criminal may or may not own, was not a man I would have any kind of romance with.

Not that this was about men.

It was about me.

I’d tried to tell that to my girlfriends, and they tried to understand. But though they were good friends, they couldn’t quite understand it.

So I stopped trying to explain.

And they stopped trying to understand.