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Dante
I’ve built an empire by staying focused, ruthless, and always in control. The past?
That’s where it belongs—buried and forgotten—until she walks back into my life. Eleanor Nichols.
The one woman I swore I’d never see again. She’s just as stunning, fiery, and capable of unraveling everything I’ve worked so hard to create.
But this time, I’m not letting her go without a fight.

Eleanor
My life is a mess. Starting over wasn’t supposed to be this hard, but here I am—jobless, heartbroken, and desperately trying to figure out my next move.
The last thing I need is Dante West waltzing back into my life—the man who shattered my heart a decade ago.
He’s charming, infuriating, and way too tempting. I don’t know if I can trust him.
Worse, I don’t know if I can trust myself around him.

Chapter One

Dante

“Congratulations, Mr. West. You own a new club in Las Vegas.” Blake Reed, my business manager, shook my hand once I signed the last of the paperwork. “It’s about time. How long did it take me to talk to you into this?”

“I love it when you can’t leave well enough alone.” I gave him a sour look, heading to the bar on the other side of my office on the second floor of my club. The action was unfolding downstairs, with monitors revealing images of happy, horny customers who paid handsomely for admission to one of the most exclusive establishments in LA. Within only a few months, we would be ready to expand to Las Vegas for the first time.

My hometown.

I most certainly needed a drink.

“What finally convinced you?” he asked. The distant, distracted quality of his voice made me glance over my shoulder. What I found wasn’t surprising. He was watching the feed from the main floor, observing the revelry taking place as people dressed in all levels of club and kink gear mingled, drank, and danced. His work took place behind the scenes. I doubted there were many chances in his everyday life to observe the sort of foreplay going on in the middle of the dance floor moments after he’d completed a deal.

“I ran out of reasons not to.” That was pure bullshit, not that he would know any better. Blake and I had worked together for years, and there wasn’t a day I had come close to regretting our relationship. That didn’t make us good friends. Truth be told, I didn’t have many. Close business relations, sure, but those relationships carried strict boundaries. There were aspects of my life no one knew about. Parts of myself I kept private.

Like the fact I’d promised myself I wouldn’t go back there. Spending the weekend was one thing—scoping out the competition, seeing what the club owners in Sin City considered elite, exclusive, and coming up with ways to outdo them, to make my brand the go-to in discreet, adult entertainment.

But expanding there?

Blake considered it a no-brainer, and maybe it was. I mulled it over as I took the first sip of my scotch. People traveled to Vegas to be bad. Some, if not most, longed to forget the so-called real world, to live like kings and queens, if only for the length of time it took between flights. They paid through the nose for the privilege too. Why not get in on some of it?

“I’m damn glad,” he announced, still distracted by the decadence downstairs. “Talk about untapped potential. Now that the Jones’ clubs are closing, there’s a vacuum.” Dick Jansen had run three of the most popular and profitable adult clubs in Nevada, but he was an old man and no longer had an appetite for business. Rather than sell out to someone like me, he had chosen to close down, take his money, and live the rest of his days on a beach somewhere.

Once rumors of his retirement had started circulating, there was no feasible way to turn Blake down when he suggested expansion yet again. I couldn’t come up with an excuse that wouldn’t get me laughed out of the room.
To me, though, it was no laughing matter. Vegas held nothing but darkness. Memories I’d suppressed for years, telling myself the past was dead and gone. That there was no need to dig up what remained.

Because there was another side to the sparkle of the strip. The city was a beast built only to consume. To take. Sure, the façade was pretty, and it fooled a hell of a lot of people every single day. It destroyed lives too. Preyed on those too weak to recognize the pile of shit they’d landed in. “That pathetic son of a bitch gambled away the mortgage again.” A familiar childhood refrain.

I drained my glass and went back for more.

“Honestly, I don’t know how you stay up here all night with so much going on down there.” Blake could not stop looking at the monitors, and I couldn’t blame him. He worked in an office, took meetings, handled our legal team. What was every day for me was still exotic for him.
“I love a good steak,” I mused, joining him with my refreshed drink. “Prime rib, preferably, but I wouldn’t turn down a porterhouse if it landed in front of me. Medium rare, tops.”

“Your point?” he asked, chuckling as he managed to pry his gaze from the feed.

Lifting a shoulder, I concluded, “If I ate it every day, I would get tired of it.”

“Gotcha. I see how it would get boring.” He finished his drink, checking his phone. “Better go. I don’t feel like getting bitched out for running late.”

“A new woman?” I asked, vaguely curious but more interested in a blonde lingering on the fringes of the crowd below. She was a virgin to the scene—anybody with eyes could tell once they observed the way she stood with her arms folded over her middle, chewing her lip, her eyes shifting around. Most of her face was concealed by a black lace mask, but she could not conceal her nerves when a man with a neck as wide as his head approached her. His body language screamed his intentions, something she picked up on immediately.

Those intentions left her shaking her head before moving on.

Good for her.

“The same woman for the last few months, hence getting bitched out. Take a woman to dinner enough times, and she thinks it gives her the right to carry your balls in her purse.” He shook my hand one final time after gathering the contracts I’d signed. “I’ll follow up with you tomorrow.”

I was really glad to see him go since there was only so much sidestepping I could do when it came to explaining my reservations about expanding. I didn’t have the luxury of warm, happy memories when I looked back on my youth. There were good times, sure, and plenty of people had it worse than me.

It wasn’t as if I’d be going home with my tail between my legs either. Far from it. I was more successful than I ever dreamed of being only ten years ago when I left home for the last time after graduating college. I had packed up my things, along with a shit ton of bitterness and regret, and I’d moved to Los Angeles. Since then, I’d opened the clubs both here and in New York, where countless patrons relied on my staff to be discreet, professional, keep them safe, and let them feel free in a way they couldn’t in their daily lives. I was providing a service, and I had made a mint.

I could sail into town with my head held high.

What a stark contrast to the way I’d left, with my ex’s sobs still fresh in my ears while Mom begged me not to go and leave her on her own. “Who’s going to be the man of the house when I don’t have you?”

My hand tightened around the exquisite crystal tumbler until I felt every facet beneath my fingers. This was why I didn’t want to remember. Why I had gone out of my way to avoid my hometown for anything longer than an overnight or weekend stay. There were too many memories of too many fuck-ups. Too many times I’d fallen short. I wasn’t that stupid, thoughtless kid anymore, and I didn’t owe my mother a damn thing either. She had lived comfortably from the moment I started making real money.

Mom wasn’t my true concern. She existed on the periphery, a vague, shadowy obstacle I could easily avoid if I chose to. I was only thinking of her to avoid my real problem.

It was a big city. There was practically no chance at all of me ever seeing her again. No, I was more concerned that the proximity would drive me out of my skull, and I would have no choice but to find her. Just to take a look, to hear her voice again.

Lenny. The thought of her stirred something in my chest that had been dark and cold since the day she walked out of my life. The day I forced her out. It hadn’t been a mistake, not really. I couldn’t have risen as high as I had with a woman tied to me, adding extra weight.

It was a practiced technique, pushing thoughts of her aside, locking them behind a heavy door once again, where they belonged. Sometimes, they slipped out when I wasn’t careful. When someone or something reminded me of her, I’d scour the internet in those moments, searching for Lenny, following her perfect, beautiful life.
She was still there. Unlike me, she had stayed, tied down in marriage to the safe choice. The easy choice who would give her the easy life she wanted. Even now, more than a decade later, there was enough bitterness behind the memories to damn near choke me. I swallowed the lump in my throat and squared my shoulders, determined to leave it all behind. That was the past. It had nothing to do with me now. So what if I went back? She was living in a three thousand square-foot home provided by her accountant husband. From what I remembered of him, he was about as exciting as overcooked oatmeal. I doubted time had changed him very much.

We’d both made our choices. In my case, those choices had led me here, seated atop my empire and looking to grow. I couldn’t pretend I would’ve done anything differently if given the chance, including breaking Lenny’s heart since everything had worked out for the best. She had her security, country club membership, and a vacation home in Aspen. If anything, she should’ve thanked me for breaking us up.

The blonde wandered the floor while I continued watching, a lost lamb in a room full of wolves, who were being observed closely, not only by me but by bouncers whose sole job was to keep rulebreakers from ruining anyone else’s night. There was no room for second chances in a business like this. One strike and the person responsible wasn’t welcome in any of my clubs ever again. My clients trusted me to keep both their bodies and their reputations safe.

At that moment, the guy she’d turned down was watching her as I did, following her, waiting for his opportunity to strike again. He would only spook her if he came on too strongly.

It was none of my business. I paid people to take care of shit like this for me. Yet something compelled me to grab a mask from my desk drawer and tie it in place over my eyes and nose on my way out of the office. For some reason, this was not the sort of job I wanted to leave up to my staff.

Perhaps because it would mean not getting the chance to protect that beautiful blonde lamb myself. Perhaps because I needed the distraction badly enough to break one of my cardinal rules and head downstairs to handle things myself.

My suit wouldn’t set me apart. While many of my patrons chose to wear fetish gear after changing out of their street clothes in our highly supervised locker rooms, there were plenty who preferred suits and ties, cocktail dresses, the sort of thing they might have worn to a business dinner earlier in the evening. After descending the staircase leading to the rear of the main floor downstairs, I checked the mask over my eyes, ensuring the silk strips were securely at the back of my head before running a hand over my dark hair to make sure it was in place. I then opened the door to the party taking place.

Immediately, a familiar smell washed over me. I had come to associate it with sex, money, and power. It pulsed in the air to the rhythm of the music pumping from the speakers, something bass-heavy with a driving beat that left the bodies on the central dance floor writhing in response. Drinks flowed, and sins were committed. It was something out of ancient history, an orgy thrown by a king.

I was that king, and this was my kingdom. Yet, rather than demand fealty from my subjects, I blended into the crowd, staying close to the wall, searching for my little lamb. Taking advantage of the shadows meant to conceal all manner of activities.

The blonde was only feet in front of me, hesitating in the presence of a couple going at it on a small sofa. They were still fully clothed, but the intensity of their sensuous stroking and kissing told me they wouldn’t be for long. No one would stop them if they stripped down and fucked each other senselessly in front of everyone.

I wasn’t interested in them. It was the blonde I watched, the way her throat worked when she gulped. A full bottom lip vanished under her teeth. She was fighting with herself, probably caught in the middle while the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other fought it out.

If she asked, I would tell her a secret I’d learned long ago—better to let the devil have his way. He always did, eventually.

Movement behind her caught my eye. The tall, thick-necked prick stared at her with his lips parted, his body tensed, waiting to strike. He was probably hoping the action in front of her would turn her on so that she’d change her mind once he offered to show her one of the private rooms.

A growl stirred in my throat when I imagined it. No fucking way

Tonight, this little lamb was mine.

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