Wicked Need (The Wicked Horse Series Book 3) (4 page)

Pish offered to
teach me how to tattoo, but I’m
just not interested. For one, it takes a long time to get good at it
and, honestly, I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I’m
pretty sure it’s not working at a tattoo shop forever. Besides,
I end up spending a lot of time at The Silo and I’m not
interested in working more hours at Westward. So Pish settled on me
being sort of a manager of the shop, coordinating schedules of the
other artists and keeping things running smoothly. I’m in
charge of opening every day except on weekends.

In his spare time,
he taught me how to do piercings. That isn’t hard at all and
while Pish did my tongue, I’m proud to say I did my own nose
and eyebrow. So if someone walks in and wants a piercing and the
other artists are busy, I can do that in a pinch.

Right now, however,
the shop is dead. Pish is off today and the other artist, Josh, is
finishing up a small piece at his station. He’ll
head out to a late lunch after, and I’ll hang here until he
gets back to handle any walk-ins. I’m scheduled to work all day
today, but if it’s really slow in the afternoon, Pish won’t
care if I take off a bit early.

About every five
minutes, I’ve
been looking at the front glass windows and door of the shop that
look out over Pearl Street, expecting Cat to come walking in any
moment. It’s nearly two and I haven’t heard a word from
her. I don’t even have her fucking phone number as it wasn’t
something I thought to get before I rushed out this morning. I just
assume she saw my note, got dressed, and went to the attorney’s
office. Frankly, I expected it to take no more than a few minutes to
obtain a copy and then she would come to the shop. I thought she’d
be here a long time ago, and I’m wondering if she packed her
stuff up and left.

It’s
a possibility I’m not liking at all.

I hear Josh’s
southern twang as he walks out of his cubicle. He’s a
transplanted southerner who came out this way about ten years ago to
work at Yellowstone and never left. Josh is giving his customer
post-care instructions, and then he’s walking out the door to
lunch while I handle the payment. Just as I’m counting out
change, the front door opens with the clang of a large cowbell, and I
see Cat walking in.

She’s a
stunning vision of elegant wealth. It’s
how I know she probably dressed most days of her married life to
Samuel—in designer clothes and expensive jewelry. I’ve
never seen her this way because whenever Samuel brought to her The
Silo, she was dressed in leather, vinyl, or hardly anything at all.
It didn’t really matter what she wore through the doors, she
was usually naked not long after that. Looking at her now as she
walks toward me with a large, black purse slung over her shoulder and
her sunglasses perched on top of her head, I’m having a hard
time even imagining that this woman and I have ever fucked. Or done
some of the really fucking dirty stuff we’ve done together.
It’s almost surreal.

She waits patiently
while I finish with the customer, her arms casually folded in front
of her and looking at some of the design options framed on the wall.
Once the dude leaves complete with his bandaged biceps because he had
barbed wire inked around his pale, skinny arms, Cat turns to me.

“Did you get
the will?” I ask.

She reaches into her
purse with a grimace. “That
asshole attorney made me wait for almost two hours.”

Cat pulls the thick
document out. It is folded into thirds. She opens it as she steps up
to the counter.

I walk out from
behind and ask, “Why
did you have to wait so long?”

She practically
growls when she says, “I
was being given the run around. At first, his secretary said he
wasn’t in, but I told her that was fine. I didn’t really
need to see him, just needed a copy of my late husband’s will.
Then she admitted he was in and would need to approve it, but was in
a meeting and I’d have to wait. When he finally came out to the
lobby, a fucking hour and a half later, he admitted he didn’t
have a signed copy on him. Just an unsigned copy that Kevin had given
him.”

I come to stand
beside Cat at the counter as she flattens the thick document out
before us. Before she starts to read, she flips to the last few pages
and sure enough, there are no signatures there.

“If it’s
not signed, then it has no power, right?” I ask.

“Supposedly,
but the attorney said the signed copy’s in Vegas.”

“And he never
asked to get a signed copy before forcing you out?”

Cat shrugs. “Guess
not.”

We stand beside each
other, our shoulders touching, and lean over the document. It’s
long and cumbersome, but within the first few paragraphs, we see the
offending language.

I, Samuel P.
Vaughn, being of sound mind and body, do hereby will, devise, and
bequeath my entire estate, including all real and personal property,
in equal shares, to my sons Kevin Vaughn and Richard Vaughn, share
and share alike.

The next few
paragraphs direct what do with his property if his sons
predecease him, including distribution to his grandchildren as
apparently, his younger son Richard has two kids. The real kick in
the teeth is the next paragraph that states:

I specifically
make no provision for my wife, Catherine Lyons Vaughn, in this Last
Will and Testament, other than her clothing and other personal
effects accumulated throughout our marriage as well as any jewelry I
have bought her through the course of said marriage.

Cat makes a sound of
disgust low in her throat and flips through the rest of the thick
document. We can’t
see any other provisions that really apply to her and again, the last
few pages are conspicuously bare of signatures.

“This document
means nothing,” I say as I stand straight and turn to face her.
“Without signatures.”

“Agreed,”
Cat says with loathing. “I’m thinking about calling
Richard who lives in Vegas. Even though he’s the youngest, he’s
the more ‘reasonable’ of the two brothers.”

“Where’s
Kevin?” I ask.

“I think at
the Jackson house. That’s what the attorney said when he kicked
me out. That I had to vacate because Kevin was coming to stay.”

“So he
essentially told you to leave your own home without having a valid
copy of a document giving him the power to do so, probably only on
the word of Kevin Vaughn telling him one had been signed?”

“Pretty much,”
Cat admits.

“Yeah, that
doesn’t fucking work for me,” I mutter as I grab the will
off the counter and fold it back up. Handing it to her, I say,
“Listen… you really need to hire an attorney. That’s
the best thing you can do at this point.”

Cat shakes her head,
grim resignation evident. “I
can’t do that, Rand. I just don’t have the money it would
take. Maybe if I could get a job, I could save up or something.”

Well, fuck. She’s
between a rock and a hard place.

Ordinarily, I’d
see the damsel in distress, particularly one as lovely and alluring
as Cat, and I’d step in to save the day. Jake teases me
mercilessly because I have this inherent need to nurture, care for,
and develop others. Not sure where that comes from, but it’s
something I can take to the excess sometimes.

I should offer to
loan Cat the money to hire an attorney, or maybe take it upon myself
to do that. But I don’t
make those offers because, frankly, I don’t think Cat would
accept. She seems to have the art of “stubborn pride”
down to a science if the fight over her sleeping on the couch is any
indication.

Besides, there is
something I could do that’s
more behind the scenes.

“You should
feel free to go hang back at my apartment, or whatever,” I say
as I lean my elbow on the counter. “I’ve got about
another hour here and then I’m heading over to The Silo. If you
don’t have any objections, I’m going to talk to Bridger
about this and get his take on it.”

“Why Bridger?”
she asks, her head tilted curiously to the side.

“Because he’s
one of the smartest dudes I know. Plus, he’s well connected.
He’ll probably know something about this attorney who forced
you out of the house. If not, maybe Woolf will. Do you mind if I tell
them about this?”

She doesn’t
hesitate as she sticks the document back in her purse. “No, not
at all.”

“Okay, good
then,” I say with a smile, reaching out and touching my hand to
her shoulder, where I give a reassuring squeeze. “We’ll
get it figured out.”

As I start to pull
my hand away, I’m
stopped by hers coming up to latch onto my wrist. Her grasp is
delicate, barely touching me, but it holds such power. Cat steps into
me, her soft brown eyes shining with gratitude. She goes to her
tiptoes, which isn’t much more of a stretch given the sky-high
heels she’s wearing, and leans into me. Placing her lips
against my cheek, she kisses me just barely and pulls away. “Thank
you, Rand. For everything.”

Christ, she smells
good. And that body is just inches from mine.

She releases her
hold, and my hand falls away from her shoulder. I want to grab her
back to me and…
what?

Hug her? Fuck her?
Tell her it will all be okay?

Tell her to suck my
dick?

Please Cat, suck
my dick?

Instead, I turn away
from her and walk behind the counter. “I
probably won’t be home until really late tonight, so I guess
I’ll see you then.”

“Okay,”
she says with a smile and starts to turn away.

“Unless you’re
coming to The Silo tonight?” I throw out, hoping my voice
doesn’t sound anything more than casual.

She gives a small
shake of her head. “I
don’t think so.”

The weight of
crushing disappointment hits me again. While I’ve
firmly made up my mind I am not touching Cat while she’s at my
apartment because I’ve invited her there out of friendship, I’d
reasoned in my mind that she was still fair game at The Silo. I mean,
if you walk in those doors, it means you want to fuck.
No-strings-attached sex to be precise.

Right?

So, if Catherine
Lyons were to walk into that door tonight, technically she would be
fair game.

I think.

But that apparently
isn’t
happening.

Cat

I can’t
believe I’m here.

I promised myself I
wasn’t
coming back. Not after Rand found me sleeping in my car in the
parking lot last night.

Not ever again.

Yet here I am,
nervously smoothing down a simple black, form-fitting strapless dress
as I stand outside the entrance door to The Silo.

One of the most
truthful things I’ve
ever admitted to myself is that my feelings for The Silo are
complicated. It’s a place I’ve loved and hated at
different times.

It’s
made me feel beautiful and ugly.

Needed and abhorred.

Powerful and weak.

The times I’ve
felt good walking out those doors were fleeting, the buzz and
adrenaline of great sex already a cold, distant memory. The lingering
happiness that filled me from being desired and needed by others soon
fizzling into nothingness.

But those times I’ve
felt bad walking out… those stuck with me a lot longer.
Usually through a scalding hot shower to wash away the sweat of
others, while I sat on the tiled floor and chanted over and over
again that this was what I needed to do to survive.

Oddly enough, The
Silo helped me survive the sick perversion Samuel was intent on
forcing me to endure. It was the lesser of two evils, and so I made
sure I put on quite the show whenever my husband brought me here so
he could watch me get fucked and debased because that made him happy.
He watched with clouded eyes from his wheelchair, his mouth twisted
into a feral grin, and I made sure he believed I loved every bit of
it, because it was one of the few ways I could assert my independence
from him. It was also how I could hurt him, if even only a tiny bit,
because he’d
much rather believe I hated it.

Sadly, sometimes I
did love every bit of it. My lips curve upward as I realize, many of
those times involved Rand. He’s
an amazing lover and he’s adventurous. He is wide and varied in
his kink, and even if he wasn’t fucking me, I loved watching
him get off with others.

And that is the
reason I’m
here.

Rand Bishop.

A man I’ve
fucked and sucked several times in the past.

A man I am immensely
attracted to.

A man who has
provided me unparalleled kindness in the last twenty-four hours.

I want him, and I
want him tonight. It has to be here because I get the sense he’s
deemed me to be off limits in his apartment. He wouldn’t accept
my body as payment to him for his generosity last night, but that’s
not what The Silo is all about. It’s about people making free
choices to get their rocks off in an environment with like-minded
people. It’s about sex with no strings or expectations, and
pleasure as the only end goal.

Taking a deep
breath, I reach into my little clutch purse and pull out my security
fob. I punch the digital code it provides me into the wall panel, and
the door unlocks with a soft click.

The Silo is the
brilliant brainchild of business partners Bridger Payne and Woolf
Jennings, although Woolf recently sold out. It’s
a round concrete building with a white-domed top that looks just like
an authentic silo. It sits just off the back of Bridger’s
nightclub, The Wicked Horse.

While it might look
like a colossal bin to store grain in from the outside, the inside is
a massive round space with glass-walled rooms around the perimeter.
It’s
a sex club and all kinds of kinky, nasty, sexy stuff goes on inside
this place. It’s a no-holds-barred type of club and anything
goes as long as it’s consensual. Some of the things I’ve
done in this club would make the devil blush.