Unmistakably Us (Imagine Ink Book 5) Read online

  While Volbeat blared in her ears, she let the rumble between her thighs soothe her soul. This was an experience that had a shelf life, and it was fast approaching its expiration date. When it went sour, so would her life. No “Heaven Nor Hell”, no dancing, no hot Logan offering her a sample of a physical experience she would never know, no…nothing.

  No freedom.

  “Fuck!” Logan chided himself once again. He seemed to do that a whole hell of a lot since coming here. He was always fucking up something. Of course, I am, it’s in my messed up fucking DNA.

  He was too socially awkward to even consider this. He should cut his losses and head out of here and forget everything and everyone associated with this God-forsaken place.

  Michael and John, their job at the airfield, January and this second-rate strip club…the whole lot of them. What did he need with them, anyway? Logan Chotke...No! I will never honor that man. Logan Chapman was doing just fine without them, had been for decades.

  As the thoughts flapped chaotically through his mind, he stalled a bit on the second-rate strip club part. Why was a girl like that dancing here, anyway? It was obvious she had never even seen the inside of the free clinic or food stamp office. Why was she shaking that perfect fucking ass at this sports-themed trailer park of strip clubs?

  At first, he thought it was to piss her sister off, but that was before he had met most of the Reid clan, including Augusta. There was another driving force behind her choice, and for some inexplicable reason, Logan genuinely wanted to know what it was. He’d hinted at it a few times, but he tried to keep the strip club separate from their friendship.

  January’s dance skills were way beyond any of the daytime level strippers Pole Position featured. She’d talked about her ballet and gymnastics lessons less than enthusiastically. Another question he added to the list of things he wanted to know.

  "Domino" was mesmerizing when she took the stage. Her moves were purely hypnotic, and not just because she had the best pair of tits he’d ever laid eyes on, either. It was something else, something deeper. It was the story she conveyed with every sway of her hips and roll of her head.

  Yes, she shook her ass like a naughty fucking schoolgirl, but it was more, every movement was a verse, a line, a chorus. No effort was wasted on meaningless actions. She flowed with an indescribable, yet haunting, mobility. Logan wasn't the type to wax poetic so if he thought she was honestly poetry in motion, she sure as hell was.

  Although, when she wrapped her thighs around that pole, the poem got real dirty, real fast. A raunchy rhyme it felt like only he could read. More times than he could count, he imagined those thighs tightening around his head to the verge of pain as he feasted on her, dreaming of how they’d quiver against his cheeks as she crested. Or the delicious friction they’d cause to his flanks as he pounded into her.

  Just thinking about the naughty fucking schoolgirl get-up had him adjusting his cock in his pants. Plaid barely-there skirt, knee-high socks, and sucking a fucking lollipop. Damn. But the topper on that cock-hardening sundae? Pigtails, fucking braided pigtails with cute, little disheveled ribbon bows trailing down her breasts.

  More than once, he pictured those ribbons around her wrists and her pigtails wound tight in his fists—like reins he’d use to ride her ass to the finish line. He always knew when that outfit was coming, because Gene Simmons’ voice filled the stale atmosphere of the club.

  The spotlight would flash after he said, “It goes like this.” And there she would be at the back of the runway, twirling gum around her finger or sucking on a Blow Pop.

  He knew the song and the routine by heart. She’d snap her hips at the end of each line and freeze, the lights mimicking her and highlighting every motion. The first time they sang “Domino,” she’d toss the sucker or pop a bubble. After that, she’d twist her hips down at the end of a line, then back up at the next.

  When the pace picked up, she’d drop to a full split, drag her legs sensually behind her and crawl a bit toward the pole. At “balls,” her long legs would rise up behind her, controlled and seemingly guided by the music, and land on the stage in front of her, and then, she’d be standing.

  Even with the sensuality of her dress and the routine, her level of muscle control and coordination always fascinated Logan. That was one of the reasons it puzzled the fuck out of him why she was here instead of some upscale joint, a place he could never get into. She’d be making ten times what she made here.

  That fascination always ended, or rather shifted, when she made her way to the pole. She’d grab the pole, hook a knee, and do a flirty spin, shedding her top with her free hand before a full rotation. After that, her pole work was a show of skill and power. Domino was in complete control of her body motion the whole time. When she gripped the pole with her thighs, Logan would groan. For a good minute, her hands never touched the pole, yet she never stopped moving.

  Whereas most strippers used the pole as a crutch, let the pole work them, Domino worked the pole. Used it like an extension of herself and an accessory that enhanced instead of a main prop.

  When it got toward the end of the song, where Gene was talking again, she bent over when he said “bends over,” and she’d shake her tight little ass, giving it a slap that seemed to echo in his ears, even above the music. The sound of flesh on flesh always revved him up.

  The finale was a stripper staple, bent knees, spreading wide then closing. A sensual and roaming hand groped her tit and the other acted as a guide inside her knee. Both were caressing and offering. That would morph into sitting on her knees and twirling her pigtails and looking innocent as fuck.

  “Fuck that shit.” Logan cursed himself for even entertaining the idea of getting in deeper than he already was or some shit. When they were both at the Reids, they gravitated toward each other, but to take it beyond that was a fool’s mission.

  Yes, she would fuck him, and they’d both enjoy every single second of it, but Logan liked his ladies a little less, well, ladies. Zero maintenance was ideal. January Thorne…Domino, as she went by at the club, was certainly not low maintenance.

  She would be slummin’ to do Logan. That truth didn’t bother him one bit; it was simply a fact. Logan Chapman was not the “take home to the family” type. He was the more of the “let him ride you to the best orgasms of your life in a cheap motel and part ways” type. But that was not how he should play it.

  He needed to be more “boy next door” instead of “All American Nightmare.” Which was where he took a wrong turn tonight. But January short-circuited some important part of his brain. Domino, he could handle. Raunchy, cynical, and best of all, disconnected. Just like him, a perfect fractured match. But January, she was a different story all together.

  The second she dropped the heels and stepped off stage, she was none of those things. Instead, she was wholesome with wide-eyed innocence, adorkable, and hopeful. That was the one that threw him off his game.

  Hopeful. This chick was doffing her clothes and gyrating on stage for fucking truckers, but when she put on her street clothes, there was hope and wonder in her eyes. The fractures were still there, he was sure of it, but her hope overrode all that. There was something about it that he wanted to touch…and taint, at the same time.

  Every word he spoke to her was the truth, but it wasn’t the best way to achieve his end goal. Actually, my mid-goal. I don’t even have an end game yet. Hell, I don’t have any goal at all except, fuck if I even know. That bothered him. He thought for sure by the time he made it to a Reid family barbecue and tasted Mrs. Reid’s famous pecan pie, he’d know exactly what he wanted, and how to get it, but he was wrong.

  Both Michael and John had been inviting him to one gathering or another; that’s how he’d met January. But he viewed the big ones, the barbecues, differently. He wanted a genuine invitation, and John’s and Michael’s were only because they worked together.

  While he wanted an in, an in like that wasn’t really an in. It was an obligation brought on
by social convention. Everyone would know it, and he would be viewed differently than everyone else. Been there, done that, and got the fucking broken bones to prove it.

  Logan wanted to be accepted and embraced by them, and that’s where January came in. If she invited him too, well, that wasn’t a social obligation but a genuine invite, and the vibe would be different. Then, he would get to see everyone with their guard down and maybe that view would help him know where he was heading and what he was doing.

  He was sick and fucking tired of always being on the outside looking in. Everyone seemed to have such perfect lives. Perfect women, perfect jobs, perfect…everything. Not him. Nothing in his life had ever been perfect. Perfectly horrid maybe, but never picture-perfect like the Reid’s extended family.

  Hell, look at Michael. The man was born into perfection. Taken in by parents who treasured him. He had a few bumps in the road but had a smoking hot wife, and he played in a rock band, for fuck’s sake. How? How does someone luck out like that when I had to live with a monster? Monsters. No one was there to save me but me.

  The more Logan thought about it, the angrier he got. Why didn’t someone care enough about him to get him away from a shitty situation like Michael’s mother had?

  Anger made him want to fuck even more, but looking at his watch told him January would be long gone by now. “Guess I’ll need to handle it myself,” he breathed as he unlocked the door to his weekly rental. It was basically a hotel room with a mini kitchen, but it served his purpose.

  Tossing his keys on the dresser, he was practically naked by the time he hit the bathroom. Logan stroked his cock slowly while waiting for the water to heat up. After testing the temperature, he stepped in and let the lukewarm liquid soothe his tense muscles.

  The pictures running through his mind of January had him pumping his fist harder and harder, dragging his hand all the way off the head and wrapping around the heavy gage piercing there before returning to the root. Faster and faster, he pumped.

  He gritted a “fuck” through his teeth when he realized his thoughts were of January and not Domino. That didn’t slow him down. He just twisted harder as he came up toward the piercing. He dropped his head and practically dug his teeth into his own shoulder to dull the intensity that was barreling down on him.

  “January,” her name escaped his lips despite his efforts to the contrary. He grunted as he came into his own hand in a sleazy hotel room shower.

  “Fuck!” Logan cursed himself and her and his no-good sperm donor and Michael and John and Florida and everything that led up to this moment in his life. He cursed his biological mother for leaving him with the poorest excuse for a father a boy could have before he was even a week old. And he cursed Lucinda for not squirreling him away with another family the way she did her biological kid. I guess I was only her son for as long as she was his wife.

  But mostly, he cursed himself for thinking poetic shit about a chick who probably wouldn’t give him the time of day and would likely spit on him if she knew who he was and how he ended up in the Panhandle in the first place.

  Two

  The calm of January’s run was fouled yet again by a call from her mother. And as always, she let it go to voicemail. She knew she’d have to deal with it, and soon, but she just wasn’t ready for her taste of freedom to end. Nor was she as ready to end her time with her sister as she thought she’d be.

  Her original plan would have had her heading back home to the fate and future the Thornes had planned for her within the week. But plans had changed. She had changed. The baby was with Andy and Marco full-time now. She visited, but she spent most of her time with her fathers.

  Gus seemed to handle it all with grace, with John firmly by her side, so she didn’t exactly need January, but there was something keeping her here just a bit longer. She needed to convince Augusta she was fine and that the future her parents wanted for her, she wanted for herself. That’s a big, fat fucking lie.

  Gus hadn’t exactly confided all her deepest darkest secrets about growing up, or her departure, but they had touched on the subject. Gus was a master at saying little and saying much at the same time. It was crystal clear she harbored way more guilt than any human soul was meant to bear, guilt that wasn’t even hers.

  January’s mother had no problem trying to tarnish Gus in January’s eyes. Melody Thorne saw anything different as an unacceptable imperfection. When Gus was diagnosed bipolar, her mother treated her so differently and shamed her to the point that Gus felt less than and tried to hide that from everyone.

  January had to make her see that moving on with her life wasn’t something to feel guilty about, not at all. She wasn’t less than and shouldn’t feel shame over being bipolar. Their parents wouldn’t have changed the way they saw either of their children, no matter what. Had Gus stayed and done exactly what they had wanted, they still would’ve turned to January when her time came. The only difference would be, Gus would be miserable, and they’d have more leverage because they’d use Gus to keep January in line and vice versa.

  She was grateful Gus got out when she did. It was one less thing for them to use to pressure her, to control her. Whenever she tried to assert her own will, the pressure would become suffocating. “Well, dear, diamonds aren’t created under comfortable conditions.” Yep, her mother actually said shit like that. Usually while fluffing her hair and smoothing her suit.

  Until recently, January never thought of her parents as abusive. Intense, controlling, snobbish, for sure, but never abusive. These last months of college and hanging with the Reids were starting to change the way she looked at things.

  That line of thinking will only make things harder on yourself, chicky. Suck it up and do what needs to be done. “Nothing lasts forever. Do things their way for now, and in ten years, you’ll be free, and so will your sister.” She breathed the words aloud as she stretched to cool down. It was something she told herself often, and it usually put her back in the mindset to deal with life, but this time, it just irritated her—irritated her because Melody and Thomas Thorne would win yet again. And this time, they had effectively shut down her only escape plan. When she initially called her sister for this visit, she had a plan, one that would free her from the asshats who spawned her and the asshat they were forcing her to marry.

  But in true manipulative Thorne fashion, her mother had shut that down. That bitch had a sixth sense for when she was losing control of her property. Couple that with a keen sense for what tool worked best for compliance, and here January was—ready to head back and marry that repulsive little snake and allow him to touch her and bear him a child so she could finally be free.

  She was just going to ask for another month. Just one. Of course, knowing her mother, she would gladly give her a month to extend her commitment for another year. “God damn it, that woman is like a fucking loan shark with my life.” January seethed.

  “What’s this about a loan shark?” John’s voice cut through her post-workout fog and pity-party noise. She realized she had spoken out loud when John asked the question, but Augusta looked pale.

  Shit, how long had they been standing there? January extended her hands toward her sister’s bags in an effort to avoid the question. “Here, give me some of those.” As she took a few bags from her sister and proceeded up the steps, she glimpsed John over her shoulder.

  He looked so much like his sister that her mind drifted to Stacy. In her heart, she kind of believed Stacy, with Andy’s help, could probably help solve her issues with her mother. Stacy could likely rip those contracts to shreds in court, eventually. But she didn’t have eventually and to go against her mother without victory in her grasp, well, there was foolish and then there was downright self-destructive. Gunning for Melody Thorne would make self-destructive look like a vacation in the Bahamas.

  Plus, if she went against her, Augusta would find out everything, and she wouldn’t allow her sister to shoulder any more guilt. Not to mention their mother dragging Augusta’s perso
nal business out in public. She deserved a happy life, one without the bullshit her mother would bring. Besides, what’s ten years and one child in the grand scheme of things? She’d still be young; she could have a full, rich life…after.

  “You’re one of those people, I see,” January quipped, nodding toward the gazillion bags in John’s hands. “A one trip or death person. Respect.” Anyone who knew John could have guessed he’d never make two trips for groceries, but she enjoyed ribbing him every chance she got.

  John set his considerable burden on the counter with a sound of relief. January busied herself with putting away groceries in hopes he wouldn’t further question what she had said outside. She knew it was a long shot, but it looked like it might pay off as he turned toward her sister. Wrong.

  He quickly turned back. “What was that—" Her sister saved her from having to answer by wrapping her arms around him and informing him he was going to be late. A glance at his watch produced a frustrated sound and a suspicious glance between the two of them.

  But January was devastated; Gus hadn’t saved her but condemned her. She was no fool, and if the look she cast outside at John’s mention of a loan shark was an indicator, Gus knew exactly what January had been mumbling about.

  John said his goodbyes and headed right back out the door. “Where’s he off to in such a hurry?” Maybe a diversionary tactic will work.

  Sweet as Francis’ pecan pie, she answered, “He is off to the airfield to meet with Logan and…” Gus glanced at the door. Once she saw whatever it was she was looking for, presumably John gone and the door closed, she turned back with a fury and horror January had never witnessed before. Well, that’s not exactly true, she had seen it once before.