The House of the Wicked (The snake and the raven #1)

38. Nora

Nora

all I can think about is you

“ A strip club, really?” Yanking the helmet off my head and glaring at August as the neon pink GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS sign washes his face in a blinking rose glow.

“Gracie’s at the house. He’ll watch Dima for a bit. Let’s have a drink?” His hands land on my hips as he helps me off the bike.

“Surely there are other bars we could get a drink at?” I ask, eyeing the entrance to the club skeptically.

“There are, but I have some shit to do here.” He threads his fingers through mine and leads us to the dark entrance. “Come on.” The club’s above a hair salon, but the entrance is on the street, marked by an ostentatious and out of place red carpet. There’s a line forming already. Only men, most of them old and gross looking. I amble closer, practically fusing myself to August’s back as he walks up to the bouncer guarding the entrance like his life depends on it.

T he hallway behind me is wrapped in darkness as August closes the staff door he’s just ushered me through. He leads us up a steep, rickety set of stairs. We pass a landing that I assume, based on the loud music vibrating from behind the closed door, leads to the main floor of the club. We keep moving up the stairs, passing another landing until he takes a sharp turn left.

“I need you to wait here. It’s a private lounge. The bartender, Sam, will get you whatever you want. I’ll be back in ten minutes,” he says, before pushing the door open. I’ve taken one step inside when his hand lands on my shoulder. Turning, I look at him. “Do not leave this room, Nora.”

Nodding, I turn away from him again and walk into the empty room. It’s dark here, and aside from the collection of black leather sofas and glass coffee tables, the space is mostly empty of furniture. In the far corner is a bar that stretches along the length of the back wall. And there, behind the bar, is a middle-aged man dressed in a ridiculous white tuxedo. Sam.

“You new?” he asks, setting down the glass he’d been busy shining to focus on me completely.

“Just waiting for August,” I offer him the closest thing to a smile I can manage. I feel completely out of place in my ratty leggings and baggy t-shirt.

“Well, Curves—”

“My name’s Nora,” I cut him off.

“I don't care what your name is, you’re Curves right now and later you’ll be someone else's problem. What can I get you to drink?” He leans on the counter as he waits. I take too long to decide, and when his impatience becomes obvious, I blurt out a random beer order and watch as he ro lls his eyes before turning to the fridge behind him.

Sam returns moments later with my ice-cold beer. I take a deep sip before turning around to take in the room once again. The previously vacant space is slowly filling with men who seem close to my age, one or two a little older. I shuffle over to the opposite end of the bar and place my beer down.

The noise from the strip club downstairs drifts in through the open door of the private lounge. They’re playing a song I love, one Thalia and I danced to more times than I could count. An ache so deep blooms in my chest. I’ll see her again. Once all of this, whatever this is, has settled, I’ll see her again, I promise myself.

Trying my best to discreetly take in my surroundings, I move back down the bar, closer to Sam. The counter’s positioned against the main wall of the room, while the remaining three walls are almost entirely made of tinted black glass. I can’t be sure, but I suspect the glass is the one-way kind. We can see out, but no one out there can see us. I try not to let that thought unsettle me.

“You good with that beer?” Sam asks and I nod, looking between him and the men who now fill the room. He winks at me just as the room falls into a vacuum of silence. I turn in time to see someone kicking the door shut. Guess the party’s officially starting. Sam fidgets with something below the counter, and a second later, the room fills with music. It’s loud enough to be distracting, but not loud enough to make it hard to talk.

Groups of men sit on the couches. Some gather along the windows to chat and conspire while they watch whatever performance is happening below us. Most of them don’t acknowledge me as they rattle off their various drink orders to Sam.

When my beer’s done, I lean over the bar, trying to signal Sam for another. I’m still trying to g et his attention when someone steps into the space directly behind me.

“I don’t believe we’ve met.” The voice is unfamiliar, a hint of an accent, nasally and cold.

Straightening, I turn to face him. “Oh, most likely not.” I offer him a saccharine smile before turning my back on him. Waving to flag Sam down, as the man behind me steps forward, his icy fingers wrapping around my arm as he roughly tugs me back.

“A new girl, hmmm. I can tell. The girls here usually look like they’re one hit away from an O.D. You, on the other hand, look…”

Straining to pull myself free of his hold, my arm moves in a desperate tug as I attempt to put some distance between us. My eyes meet his. Cold, that’s the perfect word to describe everything about him, from his voice to his touch to the hollow gaze currently running over my body. I’m about to say something, to ask him to let me go, when I see it.

The tattoo. The broken dagger inked onto the pale skin of his neck. My eyes dart back to Sam, momentarily stunned. Struggling to break free from the man's hold, I urgently signal Sam, silently communicating my desperate need for help. But stupidly, I’ve again turned my back on the predator behind me. The entire weight of his body pushes against me, anchoring me to the bar counter, ensuring it’s now impossible for me to escape.

“New things have always fascinated me,” he whispers, the stale booze-soaked heat of his breath rushing against the skin on my neck.

“Get away from her, Jude.” August’s voice drips over me like dark venom, delicious and magnetic and so fucking deadly. The instant the words fall from his lips, the menacing cold weight of the man behind me disappears, moved to the side, away from me. “She belongs to me.”

Those few words, the claim that I’m his, that I belong to him, burrow into every part of me like a brand. They consume me… My mind floats in the void where it’s just him and me, a void where a concept as simple as being his is possible. I lose my anchor holding me in the ‘right now’.

“I’ve never seen you with any of the girls here, Auggie,” the man—Jude—says.

His words strike my heart like an icy dagger, leaving me numb as the ‘right now’ bleeds back through the void. August comes here enough to know this man. This man who carries a Knight’s tattoo on his neck like a badge of honor. This man who seems incredibly comfortable with August.

“You’ve never seen her here before, either.” I shrink further against the bar counter, away from August’s voice. His words are devoid of emotion, light, joking on the surface, but where the hint of a smile should’ve lingered in his voice, there’s only an unending darkness.

Drawing in breath after breath, each one a desperate gasp as anticipation wages a relentless battle within me. The air in the room is electric with conversation, the music now booming in the background.

Before my racing heart has a chance to calm, the steely weight of August’s arms band around my waist. He steps into the space behind me, the space Jude previously occupied. August’s fingers press against the soft skin around my waist as he turns us, forcing me to face Jude once again. His hand drifts up, over the swell of my breast, and God, I fight the urge to close my eyes and lean into that delicate touch.

“W as there anything else?” he asks condescendingly, brushing his thumb along the side of my breast.

“No, sir,” Jude says, smirking at me. “Nothing else.”

With my back pressed against his chest, I can’t see August’s expression. But based on the way Jude pales in front of me, I assume it’s violent. He turns us back toward the bar, that powerful grip around my waist not letting up.

“Sam, get me a beer.” August waves at the bartender, who acknowledges his request with a slight dip of his head.

I follow the retreating lines of Sam’s back as he busies himself with the beer getting. When the slow, gentle brush of August’s lips travel down the slope of my neck, and fuck, I finally give in and close my eyes. The space around us empties of people. Jude scurries away. And I’m stuck, prone, helpless, horny, and pressed against the bar as August drops tender kisses along the side of my throat.

“Sam’s going to bring me that beer,” he murmurs, tightening his arm around my waist. “And then we’re leaving.”

“You’re not going to drink it?” I practically whimper as Sam returns, carrying the beer. He slides it over the counter toward August.

“I’ll be in the office if you need me,” August snaps at him, the violence in his voice lingering in the air as he takes a swig.

“Sure, man,” Sam replies. I look up in time to catch the almost sympathetic look he offers me.

August takes another sip, then drops his head until his mouth is once again level with my ear. “Ready?”

I don’t know what I’m supposed to be ready for, but I’m nowhere near ready for whatever it is.

Before I know what’s happening, the world tilts. My body goes from standing upright to dangli ng over August's shoulder. A loud chorus of cheers fill the room, catching me off guard before I can even feel a hint of shame. The men egg August on in his assumed conquest of me and, to my horror, he makes it worse by slapping the flat of his palm across my ass.

“Give it to her good,” someone in the room shouts.

August’s completely silent as he walks us out of the lounge. Other than the hum of an ancient ice machine, the only sound in the corridor is his footsteps. We pass a few doors before he turns into a dark room. With a swift kick, he slams the door shut. He flicks a switch; a flood of warm, incandescent light fills the space. Like the lounge, the main wall in this room—this office—is made entirely of tinted black glass. The window looks down over the stage of the main floor of the club.

Then he walks us over to a large desk in the center of the room before lowering me down, inch by excruciating inch. He drags the front of my body along the front of his, until my feet land on the hard, dark carpet.

“Did you enjoy that?” I ask quietly. “Humiliating me?”

His eyes trace every inch of me. “Don’t ever let another man touch you, Nora.”

Oh my God, he’s… jealous.

Gaping at him before something snaps inside me, forcing me forward into his space as my hand slams against his chest. “I didn’t let him touch me, August. Maybe you missed it, but he pretty much touched me against my will. Oh, and his tattoo! Oh my god, August. His tattoo! The one on his fucking neck. Did you think I missed that? Did you think I wouldn’t notice the entire room you left me in was filled with Knights?” The adrenaline of being alone in the private lounge surrounded by Devil’s Knights quickly wears off. In its wake is panic so profoun d, it undoes me, like a ball of wool, I unravel, thread by thread, I come apart.

“Nora.” He takes a step toward me. I instantly recoil as I try to process what had just happened. An unfamiliar need to get away from him blossoms in my heart.

“Do you own this club?” I demand.

“Yves owns it,” he replies.

“But you must have some stake in it? I mean, Knights are here, all around us, in a club owned by Yves, your friend .”

He raises his eyebrows at me. “And what do you think that means, little raven?” Is this meant to be a challenge?

“I think it means you’re one of them,” I say, as the hateful words Adam spewed at me that day on the boathouse deck come rushing back.

“And if I am, what then?” he asks, taking another step closer to me, the space between us now dwindling to nothing. “If I am a Knight, what does that change?” His fingers sink into the sides of my hips as he pulls me against his body.

“August,” I whisper his name. My brain tells me it’s a plea to get him to stop. My heart knows it’s a plea for the opposite.

“Say it, Nora. Tell me what difference it makes.”

“Stop,” I say, closing my eyes as his lips cover mine. He’s not kissing me, not yet. He’s just there, his mouth hovering over mine, waiting.

“You can’t say it, but I can. It doesn't make a difference, does it? Not anymore. Not now. Because now you know who Ricky is, you know what he’s capable of, what he makes me do. You know what it means to be tethered to him. And you know, me being a Knight doesn’t matter when the man who raised you is a devil.” His mouth settles over mine and, God help me, I part my lips, I open myself up to his kiss, to him. I let him take and take until I follow suit, greedily grabbing the comfort I need from him.

“You asked me what we’re doing at the guesthouse in Mossville,” he says, pulling away slightly. “And I still don’t know Nora. What I do know is all I can think about is you, fucking you, kissing you, holding you, keeping you as mine. I’m not a member of the Knights. But even if I was—” He spins me around, roughly bending me over the desk in front of us. “Even if I was destined to be your enemy, I’d still want this. I’d still want you.”

Cold hands slide into the space between the fabric of my leggings and my skin as he uses his knee to spread my legs apart. Slowly, delicately, purposefully, he peels the fabric down my thighs until it gathers around my ankles.

“Tell me to stop.” The words drift from his lips, settling around me like a fog made entirely of our mutual desire.

“August…”

“Tell me to stop, little raven.” His hands cover the swell of my ass before he hooks his thumbs into the waistband of my underwear and pauses.

“Don’t stop,” I whisper.

The clinking metal of his belt buckle is the only sound in the room before the blunt, hard head of his cock grinds into the seam of my ass. His fingers dig into my skin a second before he rips my underwear away. He grabs my knee, propping it up on the desk until my pussy is completely open to him.

Dragging his dick through the slick heat gathered between my legs; as I suck in a deep breath, a guttural whisper leaves him. “Are you ready?”

“I’m never ready for you,” I murmur seconds before he lances into me, sliding the entire length of his cock inside my pussy as I cry out in absolute ecstasy. “Oh f uck,” I whimper. He wastes no time, gives me no reprieve.

He draws back slowly before thrusting back into me. He does it over and over again, fucking me with raw, desperate lust I only recognize because it burns so brightly in every corner of my body.

Grabbing hold of the desk, I try to steady myself, try to meet each punishing thrust he delivers.

“Shit, Nora,” he groans as his hands slide up under my t-shirt, desperately searching for my breasts as his cock continues to tunnel in and out of me.

Large rough hands slip beneath the cups of my bra as he massages my breasts, pinching my nipples. My name leaves his lips in waves as pleasure surges inside me. I can't take it. The twin assaults on my body, the need so evident in each stroke of his cock. My release builds inside me as he pumps harder and faster into my body.

“August,” I whimper, as the walls of my pussy tighten around him. Each sound I make spurs him on, every moan pushing him to fuck me harder, deeper, until we’re both panting, barreling toward a collective climax that feels like it’ll change us forever.