Protect & Serve(93)

I sighed, trying not to cry over the phone as I did my best to come up with some sort of plan.

“I’ll need to make a statement—a message to our clients apologizing for bringing them into the spotlight. At this rate they’ll all be investigated to find out whether they were slept with as well. By the time the day is over they’ll be trying to make it sound like I’ve been running some sort of escort service.”

“I’ll prepare something within the hour, marm,” Tina said dutifully.

“Thank you, Tina,” I said. “I’m not sure what I’d do without you.”

“You’ll not see me abandon you, marm, that I can promise.”

After I hung up the phone I descended into a mess of tears.





18





Chapter 18





The music pulsed through me, the bass thrumming in my ears as I watched the countless men and women on the dance floor grinding and pressing into one another to the rhythm. I hated clubs

I need somewhere that I could drown myself in enough alcohol to kill an elephant all while having the excuse to ignore anyone who decided that they knew who I was. I wanted to be surrounded by people, while at the same time be alone with my thoughts.

I sat there as the world moved around me in a constant motion, while I felt like I alone stood still, watching everything pass me by, changing and evolving while I stay the only constant. I laughed at myself, and at how every single word that Gwen had said about me was true—I would never change, and that I had done everything within my power to make her life a living Hell all for my own selfish needs and desires.

She had every right to hate me for what I’d done, for who I was and would always be. I was a burden, an embarrassment, and if that was who I was meant to be, then why hide from it? If life wanted me to play the Fool then who was I to deny it? The best thing that I could do for Gwen was to stay out of her way—to disappear and never show my face anywhere near her again. I’d hurt her enough, and I was more than willing to put an end to all of it right then and there if it meant sparing her another minute of the pain I had caused.

I looked up from my drink to find my eyes draw toward a woman only a few seats over from me at the club’s bar, her eyes half-opened in a sultry stare that I couldn’t deny was utterly enchanting. She smiled at me, her full lips turning up at the corners like a cat that was about to eat the pet canary.

“All alone tonight?” she asked, sliding over into the seat next to me and shouting about the noise. “Sort of shocking for a guy as gorgeous as you are.”

“I had something of a breakup,” I said, my gaze drawn to the plunging neckline of her dress. “I thought I could come here to get over what happened.”

She laughed in a way that made my spine tingle.

“The only way to get over a lover is to take another, darling,” she cooed in my ear. “And I’m more than available for a gorgeous thing like you tonight.”

Why not? I thought, wondering whether it even mattered at this point if I could ever win Gwendolyn back. What was the point of staying true to her if no matter what I did I’d always be a plague on her life? Maybe it’s better if I try my best to forget these last few days ever happened.

“You think you’ve got what it takes to make me forget?” I asked, trying my best to sound coy, though no matter how much I wanted to I couldn’t stop thinking about Gwen. I’d never fallen so hard for any woman in my life, and now that I lost her it was hard to let her go. “She was the best I’d ever had.”

“I’m better,” the mysterious vixen purred in my ear. I felt the soft touch of her hand sliding over the leg of my slacks and up my thigh until she caressed the bulge of my cock. “Trust me, I’m all you’ll be thinking about tonight.”

I should have wanted her. I should have done what I would have normally done and used that woman to make me forget, to devour her in bed to feed my own need for something to fill the holes in my life. But the more she came onto me the more I kept thinking about how disappointed Gwendolyn would be. She would hate me for betraying her, for being the man I told her that I would never be again. Despite what she said I knew that I couldn’t be that person again. I had to prove them all wrong.

“I’m sorry,” I said, gently pushing the woman’s hand away from me. “But I just can’t do that.”

“Suit yourself,” she said, shrugging her graceful shoulders as she slid off the bar stool and strutted out onto the dancefloor. I watched her go, feeling that she took something of my old self with her. The old me would have taken her into some VIP room and bent her over for my own pleasure. But that wasn’t me, not anymore.