Beneath the Burn Read online

  Around the table, bodies shifted, hands dropped to laps, and lips twitched. Nathan selected a sweet bun and chewed indifferently.

  “Convince us, Charlee.” Roy’s pose, with hands in his pockets and the wall holding him up, was not in agreement with the turbulence rotating in his eyes.

  Her head fell back, and her fingers massaged the way Noah’s would have. No way would she get there unless Roy interacted. She breathed deeply, circled her clit, and staged a good act.

  Without warning, a hand brushed her breast and returned for a squeeze. She jerked, slapped it away.

  Chair legs screeched. The table wobbled, and teacups tipped in their saucers.

  “Don’t, Wes.” Nathan’s command reverberated in her chest. Oh no. Was his reaction the right one? No, he should’ve stayed out of it.

  Wes smiled, oblivious to his fuck up. “My God, how could I resist? She’s a sexy little thing.”

  He was dead. He was so fucking dead. Her fingers froze as the pressure built in the room, seeping from the corner Roy occupied.

  “Salvador.” The one word held finality. Salvador’s exit through the kitchen door confirmed it.

  “Sir? What’s wrong?” Lines etched Wes’ forehead. A heartbeat later, his face paled. His brain must have caught up.

  The kitchen door swung open, and Salvador walked through clutching a meat cleaver. The men huddled together, backing up and forming a wall of death, all eyes on Wes.

  She slid off the table and panted through uncontrollable tremors. “Sir, don’t do this. He didn’t know.”

  Roy leveled her with a look so menacing, she regretted opening her mouth. “One more word, Charlee, and this time, I will not replace your teeth.”

  He grabbed the cleaver from Salvador, his other hand circling Wes’ wrist. Salvador slammed the man’s arm onto the table, stretching it as Roy pinned Wes’ bucking body and heaved the ax-like blade in a downward arc.

  Wes’ screams shook the chandelier crystals. Blood soaked the white linen. He stumbled to the floor, convulsing and pawing at his fingerless hand.

  Roy turned, his expression terrifyingly blank. His movements were so fucking methodical as he wrapped his fingers around Nathan’s arm.

  No. No way in hell. She moved to them, driven by sheer purpose. Holding her mouth and cheeks slack, she tried like hell not to let him see how concerned she was.

  For a fleeting moment, Nathan’s eyes narrowed on her. Disapproval? Then it was gone, replaced by a Marine with a raised chin, hardened jaw and rolled back shoulders. “You hired me to protect her.”

  Wes let out a long, lamenting cry from the floor.

  Roy pressed the cleaver beneath Nathan’s chin. “And you failed. What do you think, Charlee?” He didn’t want her to defend the Craigs. He wanted her to fear them. “I gave you permission to speak. Do so.”

  She traced the edge of the table. “The truth, Sir?” His glare struck her like a fist in the chest. Deep breath. “I don’t give a shit about your Craigs. Do whatever you want. You’re going to anyway.” She sniffed for effect. “Sir.”

  His laughter drowned out Wes’ moaning. Then it cut off and his dark eyes pinned her. “Apparently, my time would be better spent beating the impertinence out of my beautiful girl.”

  A rush of air punched from her lungs.

  He passed the blade to Salvador and gestured to Wes. “Take care of this.” Then he coiled her chain around his arm and prowled over to her. Hooking his arms beneath her thighs, he lifted her to straddle his hips and carried her out.

  She looked over his shoulder. Nathan bent above Wes, talking to him, but she knew he was aware of her gaze. It was in that moment, clarity struck. The dinner, the maiming, it was all recorded. Roy would revisit the video feeds and scrutinize every detail, every glance. Nathan knew it and ignored her deliberately.

  She dropped her head on Roy’s shoulder. Had she sabotaged Nathan’s efforts? As far as punishments went, maybe she deserved this one.

  He carried her into the stockroom, and she assembled her shield. This time, she did it with hope, and all the messy emotions that came with it.

  13

  The crowd roared. “Encore. Encore. Encore.”

  Jay clung to a shadowed corner behind the drum kit on a makeshift stage. His body trembled from exhaustion after playing a two hour set. Or maybe it was from the everlasting misery he struggled to mask.

  They were somewhere in rural Texas, compassed by endless fields and a low hanging ceiling of clouds. The muggy atmosphere clung to his skin and the exhalation of cigarette smoke vied with the earthy aroma of loam and dug up peanuts.

  Several hundred fans congregated on the acreage, keyed to a state of crazed anticipation. Sexy people. Ugly people. Posers. Punkers. All ages and stages of life rocked and bobbed beneath the temporary field lights and the haze of smoke. The atmosphere was buoyant, hearty, and energetic. All the things Jay was not.

  The Burn’s popularity cast a blinding light on his future. Their impassioned fan base grew virally. Their newly signed record deal loaded their pockets. Their upcoming album promised more recognition, more fans, and more money. And after this show, their nights of playing in bowling alleys, bars, and peanut fields were over.

  Yet the bright light also pitched shadows. A celebrity lifestyle didn’t lend itself to someone who fell apart under large crowds and intentional touching. For that, there would never be a treatment as effective as the two months he’d spent reforming himself for Charlee.

  That remedy had died in St. Louis two weeks earlier. He remained committed to being the man she would’ve wanted, but he couldn’t ignore the terrible loneliness in never being able to hold her. That ever-growing chasm inside him consumed him more and more every night.

  He turned, facing the nylon backdrop behind the stage, and struck an Fm7 chord on his Les Paul electric. The amplification pealed into the dark wall of night, and the crowd rallied with such thunder and force he couldn’t hear himself think. Didn’t matter. For this last song, he only needed to feel.

  When they calmed down, Laz switched on his mic. “You fucking rock, Lubbock, Texas.”

  The screams waxed with ear-stabbing intensity.

  “One more song.” Laz waited for the hush. “This is the first time we’ve played this one live. And since Jay locked himself in his room for ten hours writing it, I think he should sing it front and center. What you guys think?”

  Shrills and roars echoed hollowly in Jay’s chest. He scrunched his neck farther into the shelter of his shoulders. He respected what Laz was trying to do. The relentless nudging was backed with nothing more than good intentions. But Jay’s reason for performing from the isolation of the dark corner was beyond a sane person’s understanding. Triggers and traumas and murdered dreams. He was a walking manual on mental disorders.

  “Welp.” Laz laughed. “Jay must be getting a blowjob back there. Guess we’ll hear how he sings while he’s cumming.”

  More screaming. “Jay. Jay. Jay.” His name rolled into a chanting staccato.

  Jay blew out a ragged breath. Laz teased him about blowjobs, knowing he’d committed to abstinence from alcohol, smoke, drugs, and sex. Laz also knew he had been teetering precariously on that straight edge ever since he learned about Charlee.

  The burn in his throat spread behind his eyes. She was gone, but she could never die. She was alive in him, guiding his thoughts and holding together what was left of his heart.

  He strummed the beginning chords. He didn’t hear them. He felt them. In the stretch of his chest. In the heat of his blood pushing through his veins. In the burning around his eyes. He felt her.

  He cleared his throat and turned on his mic. “This is called You Weren’t Just a Girl.”

  The drugging tones of Laz’s guitar joined his own through a slow-building chord progression. Then the instruments fell silent for his vocal solo.

  “When I walked into your eyes, I saw tomorrow.” He swallowed. “I saw you sleeping next to me. I saw you holdin
g me.” He licked cracked lips. “I saw you loving me.”

  He pushed heavy breaths through the mic. “You weren’t just a girl.” His heart ached, bending with the refrain. “You were a vision. And without that vision, I would perish.”

  Laz eased back in with a crawling tempo, accompanied by Rio’s tap-tap-tap drum beat in 4/4 time. Wil’s pulsating bass guitar brought the measures together with a deeper modulation.

  As Rio opened up the hats and played quicker, Jay moved the chords up the fret in a fast, even legato and raised his voice. “I know something about pain. I have enough to liberate. I don’t know how to let it go.” His vocals cracked. “I don’t know how to let you go.”

  His throat was on fire. Not from the strain of his vocal chords, but from the mass of grief simmering to escape. He sang the refrain hushed and pained. “You weren’t just a girl.” He choked, and Rio threw a concerned expression over his shoulder.

  “You were a vision. And without that vision, I would perish.”

  The harmony of instruments began the complex climb of the song. Jay grasped at the next verse, couldn’t feel it. So he altered it. “In my vision you hear me. You hear me say. There’s no metal. No rivets. No man of steel.”

  The guitar pick in his hand shook and screeched the chords. His heart pounded painfully. “Take me to your grave. You weren’t just a girl.”

  Sudden vertigo quaked his knees. He sang an improvised verse. “It’s getting dark. So dark. I can’t see you.” His fingers locked up. “I’m losing you.”

  The pick dropped to the stage. His guitar followed, and the music crashed to a deafening silence.

  He walked away. Down the metal stairs. Across the field. Away from the lights. Away from the crowd.

  He walked until the burr of cicadas drowned out the distant roar of people. Then he dropped to his knees and pressed his fist on his sternum as if it could hold in his sob. It couldn’t.

  Footsteps crunched the dried grass behind him. A moment later, a slender shadow fell over him. He looked up into blue eyes. They weren’t exquisite or unforgettable. Just…blue.

  “You have a beautiful voice.” She knelt before him. “In fact, you are an incredibly beautiful man. And I think you could use a little lift. Allow me.”

  His cloud of grief labored his breath, squeezed his chest, and fogged his mind. He wasn’t alone in the fog. There was a spark. His beacon in the dark. “Charlee.”

  She smiled. “You can call me Charlee.” She pulled on the chain around her neck and a small vial appeared from between her breasts with a tiny spoon attached. She dipped it in the vial and held up a scoop of powder.

  Her plain features blurred, fading in and out and morphing into the visage of his dreams. His fantasy raised her little spoon to his nose and blinked huge inimitable blue eyes. “Sniff, baby.”

  Charlee wouldn’t tell him to sniff. She would never be able to tell him anything. Looking into the face before him, she was all he could see. Christ, he needed to let her go. He needed to forget.

  He sniffed. A zing pulsed through him. His senses opened. The sky deepened. The soil smelled richer. And the powder-coated finger sliding over his gums and the roof of his mouth trailed ice.

  His mind fractured in memory. Don’t be so cold, little boy. The shed loomed against the night sky, waiting.

  A tongue replaced the finger. It stabbed in his mouth and his own lay limp and numb. “Charlee?”

  “Mmm.” She purred and rubbed her tits against him.

  The numbness trickled down his throat and enveloped the chasm in his chest. The ache at the center melted away.

  He fell upon his back, arms stretched out above him, and gave into the high. Gave into the hands in his pants. Gave into the mouth around his cock.

  The loneliness lost its grip. Charlee was all around him. Her smile, her body, her mouth, her hands.

  Hands. Petting his thigh. Squeezing his dick. Dragging him to the shed. Shoving him into the belly of hell. Oh God. He pushed her off him and jumped to his feet, swaying through a wave of dizziness. “Hands flat on the ground.”

  Blue eyes stared up at him. Then she smiled and turned on her knees, bending at the waist and offering her ass.

  Nausea turned his stomach. He pushed it away. “Move your hands from where they are and we’re done. Clear?”

  She nodded.

  The girl he’d spent one eternal hour with was gone. Yet she wasn’t just a girl, and she could never die. Submerged in the haze of hallucination, he visualized her skin beneath his palms, her pussy wrapped around his dick, and her strong-willed voice filling his ears. She was alive in him and always would be.

  He dropped his head on his shoulders and shouted his release. “Charrrrleee.”

  14

  In the two weeks that followed, the penthouse had taken on a kind of tense stillness. Maybe because Charlee’s perception was limited to the confines of the stockroom, bedroom, and office, with Roy and Salvador as her only visitors.

  She perched on the floor beneath Roy’s desk, her back pulled against his leg where he sat in the chair above her. She tried to tune out his conversation and focus on the drawing in her lap. If she could recall Jay’s scars better, she could perfect how the sketched flames should lick and curl around them.

  What she did remember, however, had bound her to Jay those long painful months. Her mind remained whole, strengthening even, amidst the flames and steel of a man she hoped had gone on to fulfill his dreams. She clung to the vision of someday finishing his tattoo and seeing it displayed on stage for thousands of worshipping eyes. He deserved no less for saving her.

  “I don’t care how long the company has been in your family.” Roy’s hand settled on her head and stroked her hair.

  She leaned into the touch, craving the affection, despite the source.

  “Sentimental shit is why you are drowning in debt.” Roy coiled a finger in her short strands and yanked, making her eyes water. “Take my offer, sell me the business, or I’ll make sure your competitors push you into bankruptcy.”

  “I didn’t want to resort to this, Mr. Oxford.” The voice on the speaker shook, coughed. “Does the name Craig Grosky ring any bells? How about his daughter Charlee?”

  The hand paused, stroked again. “I don’t hear any bells, Henry.”

  “I hired an investigator. I know what that girl looks like, and I know what you did to her. I have proof.”

  She stared at her sketchbook, hid behind her calmest expression, and tucked all her nerves deep inside.

  “Are you attempting to blackmail me, Henry?”

  “Yes.”

  The stillness in the room convulsed. “Show me the evidence. This pointless conversation is nothing more than a poor attempt to weasel out of the hole you’ve dug for yourself. Until you have something useful to say or prove, we’re done here.” His fist hit the phone, and it flew off the desk.

  She held herself immobile, invisible.

  “How the fuck does he know anything about the Grosky’s? Charlee doesn’t even look the same.”

  The air crackled with his bellow, and she wasn’t sure who he was addressing.

  He rose from the chair and sent it wheeling into the bookcase. “Unless he used my facial recognition software, my fucking design when she was out fucking around for four years.”

  She curled into herself. His fury would seek her out, eventually.

  He paced the room. “No, that’s not it. The evidence he’s insinuating would’ve come from inside the penthouse. A witness.” He stopped, whirled. “We have a mole, Salvador. It’s the only explanation. No one has access to the video storage, so it must be one of the men monitoring the cameras.”

  I’m working on an undercover case…My client gave me a photo of a girl.

  Dammit, Nathan. Was he leaking information to this Henry guy? How would she get a message to him when she hadn’t seen him since the night in the dining room? Could she signal something to the cameras? But how would she know who was watching? Roy d
idn’t miss anything.

  The Craig shifted his weight. “Yes, sir.”

  “I won’t cancel our trip to Newark tomorrow.” Roy approached her, hands in his pockets, eyes boring into her. “That worthless Russian running the Dinmore shipment cannot be trusted with this job. There’s too much on the line with this one. I have to be there.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “Charlee will go with us.” He patted her head. “How’s that sound, beautiful girl. A trip to New Jersey?”

  Like she had a choice. Leaving Nathan’s vigilance rammed her heart to her stomach. She suspected he’d watched her on the cameras over the previous two weeks and that knowledge alone had made her feel protected and less lonely, despite the depraved situations he must’ve witnessed. “Yes, Sir.”

  “Very good. Salvador, make the preparations and find that fucking mole.”

  15

  That night, Roy caned Charlee harder than ever before. Perhaps because he anticipated little opportunity to beat her on the trip or maybe it was punishment for Henry and the mole. She limped to bed on heavy feet, nursing even heavier thoughts. The reason for his brutality didn’t matter. Nathan was in danger, and she didn’t intend on leaving him.

  As Roy showered, she gathered the chain beneath her pillow, one link at a time and hoped the movement wasn’t caught by the cameras.

  He joined her in bed and wrapped his body around hers. She lay still. Please don’t stretch an arm beneath the pillow.

  He settled, and she stared into the dark, listening as his breath slowed into the rhythmic pulse of sleep.

  Thirty minutes passed. If she waited any longer, she’d wimp out. She could do this. Do it now.

  At least one of the cameras would be infrared. They would see her but wouldn’t reach the room in time.

  She clutched a length of chain, her hands concealed under the pillow, her movements slow and precise. He was on his back, his chest rising and falling with even respiration.