Undeniable: Dom & Gigi Read online

  Until I looked up and saw him. Our eyes met as I placed my foot on the top step. As if hit by a powerful force, I wobbled and swayed. Swift and sure, he reached out a strong arm to steady me. I gasped and leaned against his chest, my fingers spread against his muscles, hard under his black shirt. I breathed in his masculine scent, a musk all his own.

  “Watch yourself,” he warned in a low, gruff voice. Heat radiated off of him and a lick of a tattoo crept up his neck. I never wanted to leave the circle of his arms, holding me against him hard.

  But then he righted me, steadying me on my feet. “You all right?” He looked into my eyes. His were a dark gray. I’d never seen eyes that shade before, almost like liquid silver. I stood there mesmerized.

  “She’ll be OK. Thanks.” Penny took my arm and led me toward the entrance. I could barely take my eyes off of him. He watched me leave, guarding and predatory at the same time. If she hadn’t started walking me away, I didn’t think I could have moved.

  “What’s up with you?” Penny whispered as we passed through the opened doors of the club.

  “I’m a little…” I brought my hand to my forehead, feeling swoony and lightheaded. “I don’t think I ate enough for dinner.” Penny still looked at me with curiosity. Light eating wasn’t exactly unusual among our set. “I’ll be fine. I just need a glass of water.”

  “That guy out there was huge. You don’t know him, do you?” she asked, hand still on my arm. “It almost seemed like you guys knew each other. But, I figure there’s no way—”

  “No,” I confirmed before she could say it. I understood what she meant. There was no way a girl like me would know a guy like him. I knew nothing about the man, but I could tell he wasn’t exactly an undergraduate student at Vanderbilt. I knew her assessment was true, but somehow I didn’t want to hear her say it. It felt a little too much like reality.

  I wanted a few more moments of fantasy. I wanted to close my eyes and bask in that feeling of electric connection, feel his heat and strength and the intensity in his gaze, hear that deep, low rumble of his voice. I’d never wanted to climb up a man like a vine, entwining my legs and arms around him so I could cling and kiss. But I did now.

  Suddenly, a party at the club seemed a lot more promising. Sure, I’d go into the ballroom. I’d chat and flirt and have a glass of champagne. But before the night was over, I’d see if I couldn’t make my way outside again. I was sure I could find some excuse to need to talk to security. Maybe I could pretend to lose my cell phone. Hell, I’d throw it into the woods just to have an excuse to talk to him again. Whatever it took, I needed to get close to him again, and soon.

  2

  Dom

  It was the type of night that made most people relax. Warm with a light breeze, it had summer written all over it. Not me, though. I’d seen enough in my 23 years that I knew better. Shit went down at night. The second you let your guard down, that was when it happened.

  I was playing for the good guys now, working security, keeping some of the richest motherfuckers on the planet safe and sound. But deep down, I knew exactly how bad guys thought. I knew how they planned things out, when they thought to attack, exactly when defenses were down. I knew because that had been my world up until six months ago.

  It already seemed surreal to me, standing there in the middle of beachfront country club real estate worth over a hundred million. But six months ago I’d watched my father get gunned down in an ambush from a rival MC. He’d bled out before my eyes, nothing I could do to stop it. I’d sat there, filled with grief and rage, with two paths before me. I could go all-in, step into his role in the club, work my way up, and if I didn’t die first, I’d get a shot at avenging his death. Or I could walk away.

  That second choice? That’s exactly what the president had told me to do. He’d come up on me before anyone else and found me there with my father. Then he’d knelt down and said real low so only I could hear, “Get out.” I’d looked up, shocked, tortured fury and loss fighting with his words for space in my brain.

  “Get out now while you can.” He’d locked me in his gaze, dead serious, and I’d understood. He was offering me a once in a lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card.

  He’d known me since I was a baby, watched me get passed around among my MC gun-toting dad, stripper mom and anyone else who’d say yes to watching me in between. He’d watched me grow into an adult living right on the edge, down with the boys in the club but not one of them, trying to make my own way even as I continually got sucked into theirs.

  “This life isn’t for you.”

  I’d stood up when he’d said that, covered in my father’s blood, and given him a nod. He had every reason to pull me in. He knew I’d be loyal and tough as nails. Hell, he could even groom me as his replacement one day. But he was giving me a chance to walk away. He knew I didn’t want it, any of it. He was doing the right thing.

  I’d ended up in the last place I ever would have expected—living in the same town as my mother.

  “You’ve got to come out here,” she’d pleaded once I finally took one of her calls. She’d heard about my father’s death. They’d never been married and hated each other with a passion, but word that big had reached around to the other side of the country and found her, from Fresno all the way to Long Island.

  She’d told me all about her sweet gig, how some rich lady was charging her next-to-nothing to rent out her pool house. She’d gotten herself a job as a receptionist in an esthetician’s office and was on the serious prowl for a sugar daddy.

  “It’s the good life out here,” she’d told me. “You’ve got to come see for yourself.”

  No other plan in place, I’d headed out to the Hamptons, and within a month I’d gotten myself two gigs, working security at a country club, plus a bouncer at a bar. I rented out a decent apartment with a couple other guys and started building myself a life.

  Only I knew it wouldn’t stick. I was killing time, figuring out my next step. This whole living in the lap of luxury wasn’t going to do it for me in the long run. I wanted more. I just hadn’t figured out the who, what, when and where yet.

  That night, for the first half of my shift I was working the perimeter. Then, as the night wore on I’d move to the club interior, lurking in the shadows, watching every move. I stayed vigilant, even though it was an easy gig. In my few short months there I’d stopped a couple of guys trying to break into cars, a pickpocket or two, plus broken up some drunken fights. It was nothing I couldn’t handle with one arm tied behind my back, but that was a lot more than I could say for some of the other guys working with me. They were less concerned with security, more concerned with pussy.

  “Three o’clock.” One of the guys working with me spoke into my earpiece. To the firm hiring security, he looked the part, all juiced up and packed with muscle, but he wouldn’t last a day back in the world I’d left behind. He was a gym rat joker if ever I’d met one.

  My eyes drifted over to three o’clock and, sure enough, a fine piece was walking up the stairs, her hips swaying back and forth, her eyes locked on me.

  “Dominic,” she exclaimed as she reached the top step, reaching out her hand to touch my shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re working here tonight.” She had gigantic tits, the best money could buy, and a husband too old to do much with them. She and a bunch of her rich, bored and horny friends had been trying to jump me since the day I started on the job.

  “Have a good night.” I gave her a curt nod and returned my attention to the cars arriving, the valet parking attendants, the guys going for a walk around the side of the property. I might need to go check that out.

  “I will if I get to see you later,” she murmured breathy. I managed to keep my face expressionless, but she and her cronies weren’t getting anywhere with me. I had no interest in playing pool boy to their housewife fantasies. They might think they wanted a walk on the wild side, but with me they had no idea what they were dealing with. They wanted a Chippendale, a trophy who could mak
e them giggle and let them slip a $20 bill into his G-string. They talked big, but really they wanted some hunky boy-toy to give them a massage and listen to their bitching about how bored they were.

  That was not me. But plenty of other guys were more than willing. Seemed to me at least half the staff were earning extra tips the old fashioned way.

  The bar where I worked as a bouncer saw a lot of action, too. People came to the Hamptons to party. They might be wearing designer labels, but the shit I saw go down looked a hell of a lot like what I’d seen back in the MC. It was all dressed up and made to look pretty, but a blow job in the backseat of a car was a blow job in the back of the car, whether it was a brand-new Mercedes or a banged-up old Ford.

  It wasn’t that I was above it all. Hell, I had appetites as wild as they came. Back when I was 17, 18, 19, if I was breathing, I was fucking. I’d had girls all up on me from the get-go, and I’d let the beast out of the cage in a big way.

  But things had changed. I knew objectively that 23 was young. I was just starting out in life. But man did I feel old. I’d seen people do shit to each other no one should ever know about. I’d seen kids neglected, abused, overdosing to their deaths. I’d seen piece-of-shit men beat their women within an inch of their lives, then watch those women get out of the hospital and climb right back into bed with the ones who’d hurt them so bad. Hell, I’d watched my own father bleed to death in my arms.

  I was tired. I didn’t want to play any more games. I wanted something different, real, new, something that lifted the fucking lead blanket heavy over my chest so I could take a goddamned full breath of fresh air. I knew what I wanted.

  But when it came, it felt like it knocked the wind right out of me. She stepped out of a town car and it was like everything else stopped. The rest of the people arriving for the party, the guys talking into my earpiece, it all faded into a dim buzz. She looked like a ray of sunshine beamed down onto the steps. Or moonlight might be more like it, with the sky a dusky purple backdrop as she shone, radiant, in a simple white dress like an angel. Tipping her head back in soft laughter at something her friend said, her strawberry blonde hair cascaded in ringlets. She closed her eyes for a moment, a sweet smile on her perfect face, the portrait of bliss.

  Watching her, I felt hungry. A dark, ravenous hunger arose from a place deep inside of me. As if I’d been starving for so long I’d become accustomed to the ache, barely conscious of it any more, until I came upon a juicy, mouth-watering meal. I wanted to devour her whole.

  I clenched my fists by my side, steeled my jaw, tried to look away as she walked up the steps. I told myself this was just another country-club princess burning through Daddy’s money until she snagged a husband of her own to whom she could do the same exact thing. But she looked so unaffected, there in the middle of it yet without any of the artifice, none of the carefully crafted “look at me” attitude or the cunning and worldliness beyond her years. She looked like an untouched flower bloomed from untended soil, a surprise that stopped you dead in your tracks as you marveled over what nature could do all on its own.

  When she reached the top step, our gazes met. It was like a truck ran into me. She felt it, too, teetering on those heels at the top of the stairs. Instinctively, I reached for her, scooped her against me right where she belonged. Never let her go. The words flashed through my mind, crazy, fierce, possessive.

  She looked up at me with wide blue eyes, trusting and amazed, full of naïve innocence. She had no idea who was holding her. I told her to watch herself, and I meant it in more ways than one. She needed to watch her step, but more than that she needed to put her guard up around men like me. All I saw in her eyes was an open eagerness, a fresh excitement and breathlessness as if she wanted to stay right where she was, wrapped in my arms.

  That was why I pushed her away, set her standing upright on her own two feet again. The woman needed more sense in her head. She needed to turn right around the other way. But she kept looking up at me as if dumbstruck with wonder. Until her friend ushered her away and into the club. The entryway doors closed behind her.

  “Lucky fucking dawg,” one of the guys near me muttered. I knew what he was talking about, but I didn’t want to hear it. He wanted to turn it into a cheap thrill, how I’d copped a feel. He probably wanted to snicker and place a bet on how quick I could get her on my cock. I’d seen the guys do it before, placing bets with each other, and nine times out of ten the guy with the quickest guess won.

  “You gonna tap that later? Cause if you’re not—”

  I grabbed the little shit by his country club staff collar. His eyes opened up big like he’d never had anyone get rough with him before. “Shut. The Fuck. Up.” I spoke low and controlled and set him down nice and easy. He swallowed, nodded and did as he was told. Good boy. Kids out in the Hamptons were soft as goddamned pudding, even the ones who thought they were tough.

  Time for me to move. I started prowling the perimeter, almost hoping I’d find something going down so I could kick some ass. I felt all wound up, coiled and tense, and my mind kept hammering back, again and again, to that girl in the dress.

  It wasn’t as if I’d never seen a rich girl before. Sure, during the first couple weeks I’d moved to the Hamptons my eyes had bugged out of my head a few times. Rich girls smelled good. Their skin was polished, their hair soft. A lot of them were too damn skinny for their own good, but some weren’t. Some were rounded and curved in all the right places.

  Like that girl in the white dress. She was money, no doubt about it. Every inch of her gleamed with perfection. Hell, even her feet were sexy, pretty little things in strappy heels. Her shoulders, bare in the darkening night. Her throat, pale with a delicate chain and a diamond at the center. Her billionaire daddy had probably given it to her for her 18th birthday. If she even was 18.

  Damn it. What the hell was I doing fixating on some country-club teenager? I’d never fixated on anyone. That wasn’t what I did.

  I didn’t plow through women for the hell of it, either. But the whole mooning after a girl, sighing with my head in my hands, thinking of her when some love song played on the radio? I didn’t do that. And I sure as hell wasn’t about to start now.

  But damn she looked sweet, that gauzy white dress teasing in the wind, caressing her creamy, bare thighs the way I wanted to with my hands. It made me wonder. Some things I knew. I knew her skin would feel soft and warm, velvet and smooth with honey waiting for me, beckoning to my fingers as they made their way up. But how would she sound? Would she pant and twist, shocked by her own reaction to my touch? Would she moan softly? What would it take to make her beg, whisper my name with urgent, desperate need?

  I rounded the far corner of the club. All quiet on the eastern front. I rolled my shoulders, releasing some of the tension coursing through my body. It was strange to feel so worked up. I’d grown up surrounded by so much fucked-up, over-the-top sex and violence, the type of shit that made Sons of Anarchy look like a Disney movie. It took a lot to get me rattled.

  Even when my old man got gunned down, I mostly felt numb. It wasn’t that I didn’t care. It was that I’d seen it coming from so far away, like watching a train crash in slow motion. A man didn’t get in deep with the devil, deal in the kind of evil, sick shit he did day after day and live to see a ripe, old age with grandkids on his knee. My rock-solid composure was part of why the club had fought hard to suck me in, make me one of them. I didn’t get rattled, no matter what.

  Until some teenage virgin in a white dress walked toward me up a set of stairs.

  “Hey, man.” A voice buzzed through my earpiece. “Come on in. Let’s switch it up.”

  “There in five.” I picked up the pace, covering ground as I headed toward the back entrance. Nothing happening at the club tonight. Working there had to be the easiest job I’d ever had. Most of the guys with me were thrilled to have it and saw themselves working there for years to come. I was the odd man out. Security at the country club was fine for now, but it
wasn’t where I wanted to be ten, five or maybe even one year from now. It wasn’t that I had some big, alternate plan, but I knew that wasn’t it. And for the first time in my life it felt like I had some breathing room to try to figure one out.

  Inside, I got the nod from the guy I was switching shifts with and started my circuit. Staying in the shadows, no one noticed me, but I caught all of them. I watched the ones getting too drunk to stand steady on their feet. I kept an eye on the ones with shifty glances or nervous tics that made them look like they were up to something.

  There was a long list of things I didn’t know. I’d never been to college. I’d finished up my less-than-stellar high school career with a G.E.D. But I did know one thing and I knew it so well I could sense it before I even saw it. I knew how to spot trouble.

  In the main ballroom, a couple hundred of the richest people I’d ever set eyes on milled around with hundred dollar bills falling out of their pockets. OK, that last part was an exaggeration, but not by much. The jewels dripped off these women. The men were buffed, polished and groomed until they looked like…well, women. Sometimes I felt like I’d been dropped onto another planet.

  I skulked in the shadows, lurking, the unseen dark force on the lookout for those even darker. Then I saw her. In the middle of the mess, she glowed like sunshine. She laughed, tilting her head back, baring that pale throat. That’s where I’d start, I decided. Not with my hand along her thighs, but my tongue along her throat, tracing a slow, hot path down to the hollow at the base of her neck where I’d lick and suck and maybe give her a bite to show her she was mine.

  A hand snaked around her slim waist. Not my hand. A low growl formed deep in my chest, quiet, restrained, but there nonetheless.