Give Me a Reason: A Single Dad Enemies-to-Lovers Romance Read online

  I chuckled a dark sound.

  Was she serious?

  I sank back into the booth, no clue where this girl thought she was going with this, but some sick part of me liked the idea entirely too much.

  “So, tell me about this dancing, Kitten, that you’ve done your whole life.”

  She flinched, her delicate throat bobbing when she swallowed, the words hard when she pushed them out.

  “I’ve done ballet since I was a child,” she said. “Now I teach classes to children.”

  A rough chuckle scraped from my throat. “Ballet?”

  “Yes. I can demonstrate, if you like?” A clear challenge tilted her head to the side when she said it.

  Hard laughter slipped free, and I took a sip of my scotch, raked my teeth on my bottom lip as I sank back farther to take her in.

  “What I want to know is how dancing has anything to do with you gettin’ hired as a server here? This look like a strip club to you?”

  “No. I just…I thought it might…” She trailed off, chewing at her bottom lip.

  Hiking a brow, I blatantly let my gaze rake over the bits of her I could see from over the top of the table. Girl was wearing a fucking baby-blue blouse that she had buttoned to the base of her throat, a suit jacket over the top like she was applying to be a teller down at the local bank.

  Hot as fuck, but not even close to fittin’ in around here, though I got the sense she was trying to convince me that wasn’t the case.

  Nah, we might not have dancers, but it was no secret our servers weren’t shy to tempt imaginations. To tease minds into desire with bits of flesh rather than showcasing everything hidden underneath.

  Untouchable where they roamed like fallen angels through the raving pack.

  Girl sitting across from me might be an angel, but not the kind who owned these floors.

  The scrape of my laugh was like razors. “Sorry, Kitten, know exactly what you’re sayin’. Think it’s safe to say you don’t quite fit the bill.”

  The offense that flashed through her expression almost overrode the desperation. “And what exactly is that supposed to mean?”

  Pushing to standing, I moved over to plant my hands on the table and leaned her way.

  I was slammed with another shockwave of energy.

  That fear and distrust.

  But this time, the other piece was unmistakable—stark, terrified attraction.

  My mouth moved close to her ear. “It means you’d get eaten alive.”

  Most likely by me.

  Shivers raced her spine.

  I felt them.

  Her nerves ricocheting against mine.

  Had to restrain myself from leaning in and licking her jaw.

  Because fuck, I wanted a taste for myself.

  I edged back an inch, figuring she’d slip out in the bare space and run the hell to safety.

  But no.

  Not this girl.

  She lifted that defiant chin again. “I’m far less fragile than you think.”

  I inhaled her honeyed scent. Had to force myself to be a good little boy considering I was dying to test that theory. “Believe me, sweetheart, I’m doing you a favor. Girls like you don’t belong in a place like this. Now go home and lock your door behind you before you regret walking through my door.”

  “Are you always so condescending to the women who apply here?”

  Desire and disdain.

  They seeped from her skin.

  This time, I let my nose run the edge of her ear as I murmured, “Only the ones who look like you.”

  I pushed back and started to walk, only to freeze. Struck by the bolt of lightning that speared through my body when her hand wrapped around my wrist.

  She gasped like she’d felt it, too. Then she gritted, “I don’t need your protection, Mr. Lawson. What I need is this job.”

  Two

  Eden

  Flames ignited in the spot where I’d grabbed him by the wrist. Heat blistered, searing up my arm and spreading like a flashfire through my chest. It jumpstarted my heart into mayhem. Into a confusion, chaos, and greed I couldn’t fathom this stranger could invoke.

  The second I’d stepped through the doors of this club, I’d known I was treading into dangerous territory. Dancing into a devil’s den.

  This guy was right.

  I’d likely get eaten alive. I didn’t belong here. Didn’t fit in. Not that I wanted to or was ashamed that this place had me feeling on edge. Completely out of my element.

  But I didn’t have another choice.

  There were times in your life when you had to suck it up and make the sacrifice. When you’d step out of your comfort zone if it meant it might help the ones who meant the most to you.

  Even if my efforts only made the smallest bit of a difference in my father’s life, it would be worth it.

  I squeezed his wrist tighter while he glared at me like I was going to regret having the audacity to touch him.

  No question, I would.

  I swallowed my pride, the fear, the apprehension, and tried to put on a brave face. “Please.”

  His darkly beautiful brow curled in cruel disbelief. “So, the dancer needs a job.”

  He was mocking me. I could hear the tenor of it sliding off his tongue. Baiting me on his hook.

  Why had I told him that? But that was the thing when you were desperate.

  You’d say anything—do anything—to fix your situation. To help those you love.

  “She does.”

  “And does she have…any other talents?”

  He cracked a menacing grin.

  It sent another rush of chills skating my flesh. Sent my belly tipping, sloshing with a sensation I didn’t want to recognize. Like every nerve ending in my body had suddenly sparked to life.

  “Like I said, I used to be a server for many years, and I’m a quick learner at what I don’t know. I’m sure you’ll teach me whatever that is.”

  There was no keeping the bite out of my tone. No stopping the way my hackles rose. The way he had me feeling something I couldn’t pinpoint.

  Like I was teetering a razor-sharp edge between disgust and desire.

  And I’d met him not five minutes before.

  It was a terrible sign, if I was being honest. A sign that warned I should just leave. But I remained rooted to the spot.

  The man laughed again in this unholy way.

  How he made stepping back a foot appear predatory, I didn’t know, but I felt the threat created in the movement. In the way he hovered and writhed in the small space. A gorgeous wraith who eclipsed me in shadow.

  His aura was this seething electricity. A compulsion that led the weak toward destruction.

  His hair was a raven shock, shaved on the sides and longer on top, and his eyes were a sooty, smoldering gray.

  Lures that drew you toward temptation.

  He wasn’t as thick as the bouncers. Instead, he was slender and tall, his frame rippling with fierce, sinewy muscle. Somehow, it made him appear even more intimidating.

  Ink covered most of his exposed flesh. It rode out from under the sleeves of his leather jacket and onto the back of his hands and over his knuckles. More climbed from the neck of his tee and rolled up his throat where the designs disappeared behind his ears.

  And there he stood, taking me in with a face that was cut into the most distinct, unforgettable lines. This daunting, terrifying beauty.

  I wasn’t sure I’d ever encountered a man as electrifying.

  As darkly alluring.

  A jumpstart to the senses.

  As hard as I tried, the only soft thing I could find about him were his plush, pouty lips—that was if you could look past the sneer they seemed to be permanently curled into.

  I could feel it shivering across my skin and shouting from my soul.

  This boy was bad.

  Bone deep.

  And there I stood, the fool begging him for a chance. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  Wrong thing to say because he cracked a smirk. “Ah, I see how it is, Kitten. You like to play with fire.”

  “I don’t,” I told him. Honestly. Truthfully.

  I didn’t want any trouble, and he clearly had plenty of it to offer.

  I just wanted a job.

  No matter if he made my belly quiver and my fingers tremble. No matter if he stirred something inside me that had been dead for a long, long time.

  His gaze raked me again.

  Calculating.

  Analyzing.

  Then he jutted his chin. “Follow me.”

  Spinning on his heel, he started across the bar without further warning.

  This guy gave me whiplash.

  I scrambled to follow. “Where are we going?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he parted the crowd as if every person there felt him coming.

  I tried to keep up as we crossed the bottom floor of the bar that was completely packed.

  Anticipation high. Inhibitions freed. People letting go while salivating for the band that was setting up on stage.

  I peeked to the side as if I were looking for a buoy. For a raft in the middle of a stormy, toiling sea.

  My attention landed on the bartender who’d let me set up post for the entire day. He’d been kind to me, but right then, he was grinning the smuggest grin I’d ever seen.

  The kind that screamed, sucker.

  I didn’t know if it was meant for me or the man who cut a path to the opposite end of the bar.

  Mr. Lawson hooked a left into a narrow, dank hallway. There was a sign at the side that read employees only. I skated around the sharp corner, clutching my purse to my chest and rushing to keep up while my heels slid on the slick concrete floor.

  Great.

  Scoring all the points.

  A second later, he suddenly stopped to toss open a door to the right. He held it open as he spun back to look at me.

  On a gasp, I skidded to a stop, unable to keep up with the turbulence vibrating through the dense air.

  Still standing in the dim shadows, he quirked a brow. “So, tell me Eden Murphy, is it the thrill or the money? Trying to piss off your daddy?”

  Those sooty eyes gleamed and glowed with the challenge.

  Wow. I wanted to tell this guy where to shove it.

  The only reason I was there was because I was trying to save my daddy.

  My daddy who was in dire straits.

  And I would do absolutely anything to help the man who’d sacrificed so much. The one who would do anything for me. Lift me up. Support me. Hold me.

  Now, it was my turn to return the favor. But this jerk didn’t deserve an explanation, no matter how gorgeous he was.

  I gulped down the irritation and anxiety.

  “I told you I needed this job. The answer to that should be obvious.”

  “And I also told you that you don’t belong. Plenty of other jobs in the city.”

  Hurt curled through my senses. Of course, a guy who was clearly rolling in it would spout it as truth.

  “Are there?” I couldn’t help but sneer it.

  Those fierce eyes sheared through me as if I were standing there bare, dragging from my eyes and down my quivering throat to where my trembling hands were clutching my purse.

  Down, down, down, along the length of my legs exposed by my pencil skirt, to my heels, before he was somehow both leisurely and voraciously dragging them back up.

  Shivers raced beneath the unabashed perusal, my stomach churning with a mix of revulsion and fascination.

  The man was nothing but a smolder when his gaze met with mine.

  “I’d take you as the type who’d show more…caution.” He said it like an insult.

  “You think you scare me?” I spat the words like they could become steel around me. A hedge of protection.

  He suddenly reached out and fluttered the tips of his tattooed fingers across the erratic thunder at the pulse point in my neck.

  A wild, reckless pound.

  Shivers raced and my knees nearly buckled.

  He tilted his head. “Don’t I?”

  I struggled to swallow. To breathe. I gave a harsh shake of my head to break the trance. “Do you have a job for me or not, Mr. Lawson? Because I’m not here to play games.”

  He cracked a wry, cocky smile and widened the door. He gestured inside. “After you, Kitten.”

  Gritting my teeth, I strode into his office with as much confidence as I could muster. It wasn’t that hard. I might appear delicate and fragile. Unworldly. Naïve. But I’d experienced enough tragedies, enough heartache in my life, to know when I needed to dig in my heels and get done what needed to be done.

  He gestured at a chair set in front of a desk that sat facing out on the room.

  “Have a seat.” He said it like a proposition.

  I had to stop my eyes from rolling when I sat down, but there was nothing I could do to keep them from jumping around the office that was much larger than I’d anticipated. Taking it in. The massive black desk and black leather chair. But it was the glass case against the side wall that stole my attention.

  It was filled with relics and treasures and paraphernalia from another time. Guns. Swords. I gulped when I saw a few pieces of ancient, rusted torture devices on display like a prize behind the glass.

  I shifted in discomfort.

  Everything in this room screamed sadist.

  My chest tightened and I itched in my seat.

  He was suddenly there, leaning over me at my side, dragging a finger down my cheek while he murmured in my ear, “There’s still time to run, Kitten. I promise I won’t even chase you.”

  I swallowed the screaming reservations down, the ones that told me coming here was hunting down trouble unlike anything I’d ever experienced in my life. Self-preservation urged me to get up and go and never look back.

  But I had a mission, and I wasn’t backing down. “Like I said, I need this job.”

  He hovered there, at my side for far too long before he let go of a long sigh and rounded the desk. He folded himself into the huge leather chair. He dug into a drawer and then shoved a stack of papers my direction. “Everyone signs an NDA.”

  Shocker.

  Who knew what he ran through here. Everything about him shouted mayhem. That his darkness went so much farther than skin deep. That his hands were dirty.

  Nerves roiled in my belly.

  Was I really doing this?

  He rocked back, an elbow propped on a chair arm and his head rested on those fingers. Somehow, he’d lost his jacket in my moment of stupor, as if I’d lost a period of time, lost in the insanity of what I was doing.

  And there he sat like some wicked king. His arms a portrait of depravity. Those eyes a vacuum to the sins deep within.

  I guessed it was that moment that I remembered my father’s words. When he’d say we’re all brought to the altar of temptation. We either kneel at it or turn our backs on it, but we can never, ever straddle it.

  Call me a fool, but I was going to try.

  I lifted my chin. “I won’t do anything illegal.”

  He cocked a salacious grin. “Don’t worry, Kitten. I have something much more fun planned for you.”

  Was he serious?

  He had something much more fun planned for me?

  I gritted my teeth, scrubbing the last of the pots that had been piled high in the industrial sink and fighting tears. I’d never been so offended in my life.

  I’d told him I was qualified.

  I may never have been a cocktail server before, but I knew how to take care of people and how to do it well. Caretaking had been what I’d done my entire life.

  Instead of telling me to come back for training, he’d handed me a freaking apron and sent me into the kitchen, still wearing my heels and skirt, mind you.

  Jerk.

  Music vibrated the floors, rumbling from the depths of the bar while I fought an irrational rage.

  Or maybe it wasn’t irrational at all.

  He’d wanted to insult me. Put me down. Shame me into subjection.

  The fact I wouldn’t let him was the only reason I hadn’t walked, not that I was ever going to return.

  I glanced at my watch.

  Two a.m.

  I had to be to my real job by seven.

  Crap, I was going to be a zombie come tomorrow. A very irate, disgruntled, broke-ass zombie.

  I would have gladly lost sleep for some actual money.

  But this?

  I swiped at the tear that got free.

  Damn it. I wasn’t going to let him see me cry. That’s what he wanted. To belittle me. But more than that? I had been relying on this being a break. Had hoped to find some sort of blessing, but I should’ve known better than to look for it in a place like this.

  Maybe it was a sign. My salvation. A gift hidden in the mirage of mockery.

  I didn’t belong here. Didn’t want to be. We all had choices in how we lived our lives, and I knew the choices I wanted to make for mine were out of tune here. The fact the fine hairs prickled at the back of my neck when I felt the shift in the air was proof enough.

  The way my stomach flipped at that seething intensity that rippled through the air and covered me from behind. The way they wrapped me in these chains that I refused to become hostage to.

  “Kitten.” His voice was a rough scrape.

  My teeth ground harder. “What can I help you with, Sir?”

  I spat it like my own insult.

  “Your shift is over. Tom will finish loading the washers and cleaning the floor.”

  I tried to draw a sane breath into my lungs and not lash out. I pinned on the fakest smile ever faked, but I was sure I still looked like a lunatic when I whirled around and shot it his direction. “Great.”

  I started to wind around him. He grabbed me by the hand.

  Fire streaked.

  Flames that screamed up my arm and jumped into my veins.

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  I froze, barely looking at him, and then my brow curled when he extended an envelope for me to take.

  A very fat envelope.

  With a shaking hand, I warily accepted it. “What is this?”

  “Your portion of tonight’s tips.”

  Confusion flashed so quickly I couldn’t keep it out of my expression. “What?”