F*CK CLUB_SHAME
Table of Contents
F*CK CLUB: SHAME
Copyright
F*CK CLUB: SHAME
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Bio
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The Doubted
Shame
Groaning, he went to pull his hand away.
She caught his wrist.
“Let go, Charli,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because.”
“That’s not a reason,” she said, her voice a challenge.
“It’s reason enough,” he told her. “Let me go. I shouldn’t have come in here.”
“But a monster might have been hiding under my bed,” she teased.
There was a monster standing in front of her and she seemed blind to it. He wasn’t, though, and he needed to be stronger than this. Pulling back, he twisted his wrist, breaking contact with her face.
Charli moved with him and somehow their hands ended up entwined and she closed the distance between them once more.
“Why did you come inside, Max?” she asked.
She was standing so close he could feel the faint disturbance in the air as she spoke. He wanted to eliminate the few scant inches between them and fist his hand in her hair, kiss her, taste her...take her.
But this was Charli...
When he didn’t answer, Charli swayed closer to him.
He didn’t move.
Even when she let her lips ghost over his, he didn’t move.
But when she leaned in closer and pressed her mouth firmly to his, he did move. He caught her chin in his hand and yanked his head back, staring at her. “Don’t, Charli. I’m not one of your pretty, polished doctors with soft hands. You don’t want the kind of things I’d do to you,” he warned her.
“Says who?” she asked, that challenge still in her voice.
F*CK CLUB: SHAME
By
Shiloh Walker
Copyright
© 2018 Shiloh Walker, Inc.
Cover Design © Angela Waters
ISBN: 9781495639210
THIS BOOK IS A WORK of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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F*CK CLUB: SHAME
Part One
Chapter One
THEY WERE BUSIER THAN hell, which was a good thing, in Max “Shame” Schaeffer’s opinion. Good, because not that long ago, one Charlotte Steele had walked through the doors of Ballz & Bellz, the sports bar with its assortment of pinball machines in the backroom.
He was putting in the time his two best friends had conned him into doing when he became a silent partner—note the word silent. He hadn’t planned on actually working in the damn place. He was just giving the guys the money they needed to open up, because he knew opening the pub was what they wanted, and he had more money than he knew what to do with.
But for some reason, Riley and Connor Steele seemed to think that he needed to be out in the land of the living, not hiding away in his studio or locked away in his library where the rest of the world couldn’t touch him.
He wanted to hide away in his studio, preferred to be locked away from the rest of the world.
When he was hiding or locked away, he didn’t have to deal with people.
And he damn well didn’t have to worry about running into Charli.
Charli Steele, the one thing he wanted more than anything, and the one thing he’d never let himself have.
Currently, she was sitting at the bar talking with her brother while he hauled trays of empties to the kitchen, the one job he could tolerate doing at B&B. Riley had offered to show him how to work the bar or get one of the guys in the kitchen to show him the ropes there.
No, thanks. Hauling trays of empty glasses and plates was easy. Wiping down a cleared-off table was even easier. He didn’t have to think, didn’t have to communicate with anybody, and it wasn’t like he was in this for the money anyway.
Still, even though he’d spent most of the time in various parts of the large, open room, he was acutely aware of Charli and how she sat perched on the edge of the chair.
He just needed to keep his distance until she left.
Of course, that was what he told himself, but when a table opened up close to her, where did he go? To clear that fucking table, even though it wasn’t in his assigned area.
Charli rose on her stool, half leaning over the bar toward Con. It gave Shame an excellent view of her ass, the way the fabric stretched across her curves. He clenched his jaw and tore his eyes away.
“Damn, boy. Kiss her better than that,” came an overly loud, drunken voice.
Shame glanced up just as Con sent the commenter a smile that was just this shy of a sneer. From where he stood, Shame could see the way Charli rolled her eyes as she slid off the stool and grabbed her purse.
“No, thanks,” Con said, his voice easy. “She’s pretty, but I don’t see my sister that way.”
The drunken idiot seemed confused for a moment, then he smiled at Charli. “You need company then, sweetheart? If your brother’s the best date you can find—”
“I’ll pass.” Charli nodded at her brother and barely even glanced in Shame’s direction.
Shame noticed, but he noticed everything about her.
Including the fact that the drunk casually slid off his stool and followed her out the door.
Shame left the table half-cleared and turned on his heel, ice spreading through him like a malevolent disease.
There were too many people in the way, although most of them practically tripped over themselves to get out of his way once they saw him coming.
Shame still didn’t make it in time.
When he got outside, it was to find Charli cornered against one of the patio tables while the asshole dipped his head over hers. She shoved him back and the guy retaliated with a backhand that Charli wasn’t able to block in time. She reacted fast, though, punching him, and the man’s head snapped back from the sharp, short jab to his nose.
He howled, but before the bastard could do anything else, Shame was on him.
He’d touched Charli.
Charli had blood on
her mouth.
An ominous silence filled his head as he took the bastard to the ground. He heard nothing, although the man’s mouth was opening, and logically, he knew there were likely screams coming from his prey.
He’d touched Charli.
Charli—
Her voice caught his ears, but he shrugged the sound off and drove another fist into the man’s face, which was unrecognizable by now. He squirmed under Shame like a landed fish and Shame lifted a fraction, adjusted his angle and drove a knee into the man’s balls, then prepared for a kidney punch.
Charli was still yelling.
Something cold and wet splashed his face, and for one brief moment the icy liquid stunned him into stillness. In the next second, a brawny forearm came around his neck.
“Let it go. You can’t kill him.”
Con.
Panting, struggling to breathe around the restriction of Con’s arm, Shame stared down at the man who’d put his hands on Charli.
“That fucking psychopath!”
That sounded like what he’d said.
His nose was broken, and he was likely missing a couple of teeth. But it wasn’t enough. He’d touched Charli.
“I want the cops here! I want him arrested.”
Shame struggled and jerked at Con’s grip. He was going to kill the bastard.
Then Charli was there and he went still once more. He couldn’t risk her getting hurt.
“You don’t want to call the cops.” Charli crouched, her elbows braced on her knees. “If you try that road, I’ll be filing a complaint myself. You assaulted me.”
“I— Fucking liar!”
Shame snarled. Nobody talked to Charli like that. Shame practically threw Con off while his best friend shouted at him, the words nonsensical.
“Max.”
When she said his name, Shame shuddered. But he didn’t look at her.
Not until she said, “Shame, look at me.”
Slowly, Shame did, but he was reluctant. She wasn’t going to let him tear this bastard apart. He knew it.
“Don’t make us have to bail you out of jail.” Her grin was teasing, but her eyes were strained.
“Fuck.” He shuddered again, then nodded. “Let me up, you dumbass,” he said to Con.
As he ran his bloodied hands through his hair, Con moved over to the man who struggled to get to his feet. “You’re lucky I don’t take over. Now get the hell out of here.”
“I want to call the cops,” he said again.
A low noise came from Shame.
“Fine, we can do that. But we got security cameras all over the perimeter of the property,” Con said calmly, agreeable even. “If we see you putting your hands on my sister, I wonder how that’s going to go for you?”
Shame focused on Charli, cupped her chin in his hand. She sucked in a breath and he swayed the slightest bit closer before he stopped himself. “He put his hands on you,” he said gruffly.
Dimly, he was aware of Con leaving.
Dimly, he was aware that the bastard who’d left this mark on Charli had disappeared into the night.
But what he was mostly aware of was Charli, and the faint swell of her lower lip where that fucker had backhanded her.
“I wanted to kill him.”
She closed her hand around his wrist. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
They stared at each other for the longest moment. He was the one to break away, because if he didn’t, he’d do more than just touch her face, and he could never let himself do that.
But as he turned away, Charli swayed. Attuned to her in a way he couldn’t explain, he spun back around and caught her, steadying her body against his.
Everything in him came to life at that light touch. Everything.
His cock stood at attention while his blood began to pulse, thick and hot, through his veins. All from the simple act of him laying his hands on her arms and her swaying a bit as she fought to steady herself.
“Wow,” she muttered, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “Head rush. I think that got to me more than I thought.”
“Are you okay?” he demanded.
She eased backward, giving him a tight, somewhat forced smile. He knew it was forced because he knew Charli’s smile. “I’m fine,” she lied. “I just... I need to go home and lay down.”
WHY DIDN’T YOU KEEP your mouth shut?
Shame cruised down the twisting road that led to the house where Charli, Riley and Con had grown up—the only place that had ever felt like home to Shame.
He hadn’t meant to open his mouth and say those four words, but he had.
I’ll drive you home. He’d seen her swaying on her feet, the faint swell to her lip, and he’d said it—“I’ll drive you home.”
And Charli, damn her, hadn’t argued.
They’d gone inside the bar and he’d told Con he was going to make sure his sister got home okay and the dumb shit hadn’t argued. Nobody had said anything to stop him, and now here he was, trapped in his car with a woman who smelled good enough to eat, who sat there with her hands lying limp in her lap and her head lolling to the side as though she was too exhausted to hold it up.
“You’re okay,” he said in a flat voice.
It was to reassure himself, and Charli seemed to know that. She turned her head and met his gaze with a wry twist to her lips. “Of course I’m okay,” she said. “It takes more than a tap on the chin to take me out.”
“If it was only a tap on the chin, why is your mouth bleeding?” he demanded.
“Because I bit my lip.”
He jerked his gaze away as she reached out with her tongue to probe the small cut.
“It’s not that bad. I got worse wrestling with Con, growing up.”
“Con never busted you in the mouth,” Shame said, feeling that anger rise inside him again.
“No. But I launched myself at him a time or two and busted my mouth on his hard head...and once on his knee.”
To his surprise, he found himself grinning, because he could see her doing that. “That must have been after I left.”
“It was the second year you were at military school,” she said, turning her head to look out the window.
The sadness in her voice twisted at things inside him he thought were dead. But she’d always been able to twist those spaces up for him. She made him feel when nobody else could.
The drive was over too fast, while he was still trying to figure out the right way to assure himself that she was okay, that she wasn’t scared after what the son of a bitch had done, had tried to do, might have done.
By the time he was convinced that Charli was okay, they were parked in the driveway and she was opening the door. That was when he figured out that maybe she wasn’t the one who needed to be convinced. He was.
“I’m going to come inside and take a look around,” he announced.
“Shame,” she said, sighing, “you don’t need to do that.”
“I do.” He opened the door and met her halfway around the car, eying her as she walked and noting that she was steadier than she had been. “You’re steady now.”
“I am. I think it was just the adrenaline. You did him a lot more damage than he did to me,” she pointed out.
“I didn’t do enough.” He waited until she started for the house, then he fell into step with her, taking the keys from her to unlock the door. He held it for her, but with a hand on her shoulder, kept her from moving deeper into the house as he hit the lights and did a quick walk through the kitchen, then the living room and the rest of the lower level.
“Are you going to go upstairs and check my bedroom next?” she asked tartly. “Make sure that guy didn’t follow us out here and somehow manage to hide under my bed?”
“You’ve got a smart mouth,” Shame said, cutting a look at her. And because he was weak, he found himself staring at her mouth.
The faint swell in the middle only made him more aware of the fullness of the entire curve of her lower lip. “I don’t like se
eing marks on you,” he said, voice raw.
“I know you don’t,” she said softly. “But I’m fine, and you can stop worrying.”
He told himself to do just that. But instead, he moved closer. “Did he touch you anywhere?” Shame demanded.
She blinked, looking caught off guard. “I... He grabbed my arms. They are sore, might bruise a little, but it’s no big deal.”
“Bruises are a big deal to me,” he said, his vision going a little hazy. He wanted to hunt the bastard down and put a few bruises on him.
“Shame...for crying out loud.” She sounded exasperated. To his surprise, she shrugged out of the gauzy blouse she wore.
His heart started to thud in slow, heavy beats as the material was peeled away, revealing pale skin that never freckled and sleek, toned arms. She turned to the side and brandished one arm, bared completely. She wore a tank top with thin straps and all he could think was that he could strip that shirt away in a second.
Then he saw the mottled discoloration on her arm.
“You are going to bruise,” he said, voice thick. He didn’t remember closing the distance between them, but he had, and now, as he reached out to gently trace the mark with his fingertip, he noticed that her skin had broken out in goose bumps. “You’re cold.”
Charli wasn’t looking at him. “No. I’m fine.”
But a light shiver raced down her spine.
Cupping her chin, he dragged her face around so he could see her eyes. He loved her eyes—steel blue and incisive, all the intelligence she had shining in them.
Sometimes, she looked at him and those eyes were soft, and emotions she shouldn’t be feeling for him would flicker there. When he saw that, it made him weak.
And now, those emotions were glinting in her eyes.
Groaning, he went to pull his hand away.
She caught his wrist.
“Let go, Charli,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because.”
“That’s not a reason,” she said, her voice a challenge.
“It’s reason enough,” he told her. “Let me go. I shouldn’t have come in here.”
“But a monster might have been hiding under my bed,” she teased.