Surrender To Me

BANE

It had been thirty hours since Wren finally gave me what I wanted. Thirty hours of me getting fucking hard at work just thinking about her. I was ready to have her again, but the deal we had was one night only, and I had to make her see I was her only choice.

I picked up my phone and dialed Bianca.

“Don’t tell me you’re canceling,” she said by way of greeting.

“Fuck, no, I’m still coming, Bianca.”

“Oh,” she replied, stunned. “What’s the reason for the call, then?”

“Can’t a brother call his sister more than once a week?”

In the background, Valentine started to fuss. I glanced at the clock. It was just after eleven, so she must be getting ready to nap. “You can,” she replied, shushing Valentine softly. “But I guess you caught me by surprise. So, we’re still on?”

“Yeah, but I wanted to see if I could bring someone.”

There was a long pause before my sister demanded, “Are you seeing someone? You’ve never seen someone. Who is she? What’s her name?”

“Pump the breaks, Bianca. Fuck.”

“Sorry, but it’s true. You haven’t dated… like ever.”

Propping my feet up on the desk, I thought about that statement. It was true, I’d never had a proper relationship. I fucked around when I was at school and all through college, but I could never bring myself to settle down with just one woman. “I’m aware of my track record with women.”

“So, who’s the lucky lady?”

I reached for my whisky and swallowed what was left in the glass. “Her name’s Wren.” “Wren,” she cooed. “Tell me more.”

“What more is there to tell?”Published by Nôv'elD/rama.Org.

“Loads, Bane. Seriously. You’ll bring her, then?”

“Yeah.” The thought of Wren meeting Bianca made me smile a little. They were similar in many ways, and in others, completely different, so we were either going to have fucking fireworks or a fucking campfire where we all sang Kumbaya together. “We’ll see you at seven.”

I hung up the phone and then drained my drink. The Dollhouse was closed due to it being a Monday, but I always seemed to come in anyway. Call it a habit or call it fucking pathetic, but I lived and breathed this club. Grabbing the bottle of whisky, I poured myself another and sat back in my office chair. I hadn’t told Wren about dinner tonight. But she would come, I knew she would.

“Fuck.” I stood, rearranging my erection that was insistently pressing against my zipper. I had to

do something with this energy battering my body. Otherwise, I was liable to skip dinner and just take Wren back to my apartment to fuck. Pocketing my phone, I stalked from my office to downstairs, where the cleaning crew was working hard. A couple of them nodded to me as I passed, and then I stepped outside.

My car was by the curb, and I got in.

“Where to, boss?” Andy asked.

“Take me to the gym. I need to beat the shit out of something.”

We drove in silence, and by the time we pulled up at the boxing gym, I was ready to knock someone the fuck out. So much energy was under my skin, making me fucking jumpy.

“I’ll be about an hour. Come back then,” I told Andy, then walked into the grimy gym. After getting changed, I shut my locker, wrapped my hands, and pulled on my gloves. I went to one of the bags first, hitting it with a combination of jabs, hooks, and uppercuts until my upper body was screaming.

There were other patrons in there, but none of them paid me any attention. At the back of the room, two men circled each other in the ring. I let myself go on the bag, letting out all my frustrations in the hope that when I finally saw Wren again, I wouldn’t unleash my dark side on her too strongly. There was no way I could avoid showing it to her, but I had to do it slowly.

With each combination I worked through, I thought about my little problem with my dealers, wondering what I could do to find out more. Dagger had exhausted his contacts, but I still had one more ace up my sleeve. Bianca’s husband was a cop in LA. Surely, he’d know something about dealers being shot at. I made a point to ask him tonight.

By the time I was done, sweat had poured off me. Outside, it was in the nineties, but here, it was nudging one hundred. Pulling off my gloves and the wraps, I drank an entire bottle of water and then threw it into the trash. Back at my locker, I grabbed what I needed for a shower, then moved to change rooms taking a peek at my phone while I was at it. It was only a little after twelve.

After showering quickly, I then went back outside. Andy drove me back to my apartment, where I would stay for the rest of the day.

Just as I opened my apartment door, my phone rang.

“Boss?” Dagger said when I answered.

“What is it?”

“Another one of our guys has been taken out.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I let out a deep breath. “When? Who?”

“That kid, Santiago. In his apartment. Cops are crawling over the area right now, but I managed to get the drugs out before they got there.”

“Fuck!”

“What do you want to do?”

I ran a hand through my hair, thinking about my options. We still didn’t know who it was, and going around killing either Manzetti’s or Sanderson’s men was a bad fucking idea. We needed concrete proof of this.

“I’m going to get in contact with a potential source and find out what the fuck is going on.” I hung up the phone, then stalked to the wet bar. After pouring myself a drink, I drained the amber liquid. What the fuck was happening? One of those fuckers was fucking with my business, and I couldn’t not retaliate. Weakness was a disease I had no intention of catching. “Fuck!” I threw the crystal tumbler at the wall, where it smashed. My breath was barreling out of me as I stared at all those shards of glass. I didn’t like not being in control. I didn’t like the feeling of hopelessness that engulfed me when it happened, so I made sure it didn’t happen in every facet of my life.

Wren had been pushing my goddamn buttons with her reluctance to toe the line. My breathing eased as I thought about her, her blonde hair, and those eyes that seemed to miss nothing.

Fuck, I had to see her. I had to touch her. I needed her to ground me.

On the ride down in the elevator, I texted Andy that I needed him. He was waiting for me when I stepped from the foyer of the building. I slid inside the cool interior of the back seat and sat back, waiting for Andy to get this fucking show on the road. Drumming my fingers on the top of my thigh, I

tapped my other foot, desperate to get to my Little Bird.