CASE

I walk down the stairs as the lights come on in the club. It had been a pretty normal Saturday night. There were some fights but nothing too bad. The last person walks out the front door as Miller comes toward me from the back hallway.

“Case,” he calls out before he reaches me.

“What’s up, Miller?” I ask as I look down at my phone. I’ve been checking it like crazy since I gave Taylor my card earlier today at the coffee shop. So far, nothing! I figured she would at least call or text me once she got home and saw that I had dropped off some things for their house.

“We have a problem,” he yells from across the club.

I place my phone in the back pocket of my jeans and look up at him. “What is it?” I demand.

He starts to walk off, and I follow him.

The club has a reputation, but what club doesn’t? People go out for a night just wanting to have some fun, and they end up drinking too much. They may even end up finding someone in the club who had a little something that will help them get high. It may be illegal, but it’s nothing new. However, it does tend to cause problems and fights.

Miller is in a mad dash for the back exit of the club, and I know shit isn’t gonna be good. Whenever we have a problem or a fight breaks out in this club, security throws them out back in the alleyway. And that’s where we take care of it. It’s hard to calm down a fight or find out the problem when you have music blaring in your ears and lights flashing all around you.

My jaw tightens as I watch Miller lift the back of his black security shirt and draw his gun from his holster right before he shoves the double doors open.

He’s always extra cautious while I, on the other hand, am not. I like a fight. I fucking welcome them most of the time. Beating the shit out of someone with my bare hands helps me relieve stress.

We step out into the dark alley. A single light humming and flickering on top of the building is all that allows us to see anything. Two men stand with their backs to us. They both turn to face Miller and me as they hear the door shut close. Brecken is holding another guy on the ground, arms pinned behind his back, blood dripping from his busted face.

“What’s going on?” I ask with a sigh. I’ve seen worse. It looks more like a nuisance than a problem.

It’s as if they just realize Miller has a gun because they both take a step back at once, throwing their hands into the air in surrender.

Brecken is the first one to speak. “Seems this sorry piece of shit likes to put his hands on women.” The man he holds on to lets out a whimper.

I look at the other two men standing around since the man on the ground is no threat to us at the moment. “Why are the rest of you out here?”

They both stand, their eyes darting back and forth from Miller to me. “He asked you a question,” he shouts.

“We had no idea what his intentions were,” one says as he stumbles backward.

“And what was that?” I ask looking back at the man Brecken holds. He moans in pain as he tightens his grip on the man’s arms.

“He’s fucking some bitch. He said she was cheating on him and she wasn’t answering his phone calls, so he needed to come up and see her. When he said where she worked, we all decided to come up here and party. But I swear we took no part in what he did to the woman.”

“Where is the woman?” I demand looking around once more, hoping this isn’t going to end with her needing a hospital visit. I stay away from them. Too many questions.

Brecken looks up at me, jaw tight and dark eyes blazing with rage. “Rachel. The woman is Rachel,” he answers through gritted teeth.

I drop my head and run a hand through my dark hair. The woman we shared a bed with this morning. The woman we share quite often. Of course, it’s fucking Rachel. The only woman in this world who knows who I truly am. The only woman who knows just how fucked up I am. And this is typical Rachel drama. She picks men who like to get physical, and I don’t just mean during sex. But you can’t feel sorry for her because she’s not all that innocent. She likes the drama. She feeds off it. And I know very well that she is cheating on this guy. Just this morning with Brecken and myself.

I look back up at Brecken as he smashes the guy’s head into the concrete and he cries out. “You take care of him,” I tell him.

He smiles widely, and I look at Miller. “You know what to do with them.”

I turn around with a flick of my wrist, open the back door, and enter the club on a mission to find Rachel. The first place I look is the women’s bathroom. When I find she’s not in there, I go to the locker room shared by the employees, and after there, I go to the bar thinking maybe she is counting out her tips. Still nothing. I make my way up the stairs, heading to my office because I can see down over the club best from up there. After several minutes go by and I don’t see her below, I figure she just went home, which would surprise me; she wouldn’t just leave after getting into it with anyone. Fighting turns her on. Maybe she left with another guy. There’s no telling really.

I spend the next few minutes shutting down my computer and then lock my office up for the night. I walk down to the end of the hallway and take the next set of stairs that leads up to the third level where I’ve been living for the last nine months since we opened the club.

It’s nothing fancy. I like that it’s all open. It has a small entryway and you can walk right into the living room. The kitchen is right behind it with a cutout window to see into the living room and front door. A hallway to the right leads to two bedrooms. The last door on the left is my bedroom. Tossing my phone onto my kitchen table, I start to unbutton my shirt as I proceed to the bedroom.

When I open my door, I come to a stop as I see Rachel lying on my bed. Already naked. I think back to the first time Brecken and I ever saw her. She was lying on a bed like she is now, but only she was unrecognizable, her face bloodied and bruised. Eyes swollen shut. Face and chest covered in blood. She had been beaten and left for dead. Thankfully, we found her in time.

I couldn’t get her out of my mind. She made me feel something inside I hadn’t felt in years. I had saved her. For once, I had made a difference. Three months after her accident, I took her on a date. I remember the first time we made love. I had looked down at her and wondered how someone could hurt this beautiful woman. Who would want to bruise her face? Because she was beautiful. Big brown eyes that were so beautiful, you could get lost in them. A touch that could set the coldest person on fire.

The second time we made love, she wanted it harder, rougher. It didn’t take long to realize what I was giving her wasn’t enough. By the third time we made love, she begged me to fuck her like a cheap whore. As if she were a slave, needing me to order her to do the naughtiest things she was too hesitant to do unless commanded.

I did it. I realized the more aggressive I got, the wetter she became. She loved my hand around her throat to the point of suffocation. She loved me to pull her hair to the point I ripped some out while I fucked her roughly in the ass. She loved the way I made her kneel as I fucked her mouth in a way that would be brutal to some. There were even times I stopped because I thought I was being too rough. But she begged me to continue. To push harder. To fuck her longer.

On our first date, I thought I saw myself falling in love with her someday. I thought she could be the woman to save me. But the more time I spent with her, the more I realized it wasn’t love. She was just another woman who was fucking crazy. And it turns out, my cock loves crazy!

The worst part is that I couldn’t feel sorry for her ‘cause it all felt so good to me. And who was I to judge what she liked? Needed? Everyone has an addiction to help them ease the pain. She had a rough life growing up. Her father had beaten her mother on a daily basis. She heard it night after night as he beat her and then fucked her. At the age of sixteen, she lost her virginity to a man who was twenty-one. After he was done with her, he ordered her to lay there while his friend had his way with her. After he was done, they both took her at the same time. I felt heartbroken for her, but she told me how much she liked it. Wanted it. How she begged them to do it over and over again.