Betrayed By Beauty - Ashley Lane Page 0,4

I can get.” she admits quietly, causing Malcolm to snort.

“Listen Quasimodo, I think you’re in the wrong place. This ain’t no Burlesque Club. Our dancers don’t wear masks…” he trails off, making a show of eyeing her up and down. “And the only way a man’s dick would get hard for you is if he was blind or desperate.”

Her intake of breath is swift and quiet, but it flays my chest open with the power of a thousand knives. I’m off my stool before I can comprehend what’s happening.

My hands fist in Malcolm’s shirt and I easily haul the waste of space across the bar. “That’s enough,” my words are gritted through clenched teeth and even though I know I have murder dancing in my eyes, he doesn’t back down. Looks like he’s stupider than I thought.

“What’s the matter, lap dog? You don’t want to hurt the stray’s feelings?” he sneers.

“Fuck you,” I seethe as I shove him away from me and into the counter opposite the bar. He barely hides his wince as his back meets the unforgiving wood, and I get a thrill knowing I caused him even a small amount of pain. Choosing to ignore the scum, I turn to address the girl, but the seat she once occupied is empty.

My eyes dart around the darkened club, searching for her black hoodie, but she’s nowhere to be seen.

“She’s gone,” Shelly, a sweet single mother and one of our dancers tells me. “Ran out the back exit by the bathrooms.” She nods her head in the direction the girl went.

I squeeze her arm as I run past. “Thanks, Shell.”

Pushing my way through the tables and lingering bodies by the stage, I reach the back hall where the bathrooms are located and I zero in on the exit. The door slams against the building as I exit, bouncing off the wall from the force of my push.

My arm instinctively lifts to cover my eyes as they struggle to adjust from the dark of the club to the harsh midday sun. My head swivels left and right as I search for the woman, but the alley is empty.

“Fuck!” She couldn’t have gone far. The woman’s a complete stranger, a drifter for all I know, but the need to make sure she’s alright after the hate Malcolm spewed at her eats away at me.

All my life I’ve been a fixer. It’s part of the reason I’m tethered to Maddox. From the moment I met him, I saw the broken man he hides within. A man scarred by demons of his past, a man who refuses to set them free. No one wants to open themselves up and reveal the darkness that resides within. To be flayed open and have every buried secret escape into the light of day would be torture. But it’s more than that with Maddox. His demons feed off him. His love, his happiness, and the light I catch in his eyes in those brief, fleeting moments when we’re together. They take and take until he has nothing left to give, and then they take some more.

For years I’ve tried to pry open the steel cage he keeps them in, to free him from the hold they have on his soul.

He never lets me.

Even knowing the pain they cause, Maddox chooses to keep them locked inside. He says it’s too much—too hard to face them and the scars they’ve left behind. Indelible, poison ink beneath his flesh that he believes he deserves.

That’s a lie.

I know the real reason Maddox keeps them inside, and it’s a fact that destroys what little of my heart I have left. Maddox refuses to free his demons because without them, he’s worried he won’t know who he is. And I wish more than anything he trusted me enough to help him find out.

I’m pulled from my torment when a quiet whimper and the scuffle of shoes on the pavement comes from behind the dumpster.

My heart hammers in my chest as I approach, hoping—no, praying it’s the girl from inside. I slow my steps and advance, much like I would with a scared dog.

“Miss? I’m not going to hurt you,” I start. “My name is Jax Mendez, my boyfriend Maddox and his friends own the club. I just want to check on you and see if you’re okay.” My movements are slow and methodical as I round the rusting dumpster.

A wave of relief followed quickly by anguish hits me when I see her. Cowered,