Ray’s unsubtle hint for her to work Brody and pay off her debt that way pinged her brain. She would never do that, and as she was likely out of a job, the Brody Kane option was no longer on the table.
Daisy’s next words were tinged with remorse. “You shouldn’t be doing this for me. I could move on and no longer weigh you down.”
As if that was a possibility. Emma could never let her leave. Daisy was her blood. Her life. If Emma weren’t around, she’d just backtrack to her bad habits.
“Right now, you focus on getting better. Take care of yourself and”—have an extra serving of salad for me—“stay out of trouble.”
“Will do, Ems. Love ya, sis.”
“I love you, too, Daisykins.”
On her chuckle at the endearment Emma had christened her sister with all those years ago, she hung up.
“It’s okay,” she insisted. Now she was talking to herself, because the cab driver sure as hell wasn’t listening. Daisy was getting healthy, and Emma was fulfilling her role of big sister and its primary function: do everything in her power to keep her charge safe.
But that would be tough without a real job and benefits. Tears stung the backs of her eyelids. She was going to have to get stripper lessons from Katerina.
Another buzz of her phone drew her attention and made her sex clench in memory. Brody’s text message blared from the screen: 8am tomorrow at the office. Don’t be late.
Chapter Seven
At 6:50 a.m. the offices of Score Property were darkly quiet. Brody wanted to catch Emma when she came in, and because she was usually so efficient and dedicated, he expected she would be in earlier than his 8:00 a.m. demand.
He hadn’t slept a wink.
While waiting for her last night at the club, he had propped up a very drunk Smythe-Osborne at the bar and had his shoes puked on for his trouble. Otherwise, he would have been all over that sweet tail of hers when she sent that text message fobbing him off.
Following the Brit Puke Machine drop-off, Brody had returned home to his penthouse at the top of the Wacker Tower, disposed of his vomit-covered shoes, and considered his next move. What he really wanted to do was find out Emma’s address, race over there at two in the morning, and have it out with her.
Except he knew where that would lead. Having it out would invariably lead to whipping it out and slamming his raging cock into her again and again. All so he could drag his name from her lips as she dragged a mind-splintering orgasm from him. What the hell had he been thinking? He had f*ck
ed his assistant to keep her from giving crazily bad lap dances to anyone else.
Where was the logic in that?
No logic, just an intense possessiveness that had grabbed him by the throat when confronted with her insistence to finish her shift. At the f*ck
ing strip club. Bizarro World Emma was a stripper. With tattoos. And a brazen insolence that made him want to dominate her.
The next day should have brought clarity, but his brain was still cloudy with a chance of going nuclear. Sitting at his desk, he read a zoning report. Cleared out his in-box. Looked out the floor-to-ceiling window of his office, doing the “lord of all he surveys” impression. He didn’t feel very lordly, though. He felt like a jerk.
Preying on a woman who was clearly in dire enough circumstances that she needed to moonlight as a stripper—how f*ck
ing low could you go, Kane? What if she didn’t show this morning? The things he’d said to her, the dirty talk he’d whispered in her ear. What woman would want to endure that from a lover, never mind the man who signed her paychecks?
Thoughts of his former fiancée intruded: her horror at his lack of control, his need to hold her down, whisper sweet, filthy nothings, use her body to slake his overwhelming lust.
Just like last night. He had lost all reason with Emma and hadn’t used a condom, a lesson he should have learned after his nightmare with Kerry. The one time he’d slipped in unholstered with his ex… He condemned that memory to a dank recess of his brain. Hell, he even had a cherry-flavored one in his wallet, courtesy of one Flynn Cross.
Flynn, who’d also given him the card to that strip club. Flynn, who’d gleefully informed him about its cock-destroying women. Did his friend know Emma worked there? Had he seen her gyrating her sweet, cuppable ass over some other guy’s junk? The idea that Flynn had even witnessed Emma in anything less than a burka made Brody want to punch him into the grave.
No one should see her like that. No one but Brody.