Carter, Beth D. - Lawless Hearts (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) by Unknown Page B

door and stepping inside. The small entrance was partitioned from the rest of the small room with a curtain of lace. Scharlie heard a moan, the crack of a whip, and curiosity edged her to peek through the lace more closely. She used a finger to brush it aside far enough to see a man lying on the bed facedown. His hands and legs were secured to the bedposts with white scarves.
    The woman standing over him was dressed in a red satin corset with a red lace skirt over it. Her hair was pulled back and her face painted heavily in dark colors. She cracked the whip, and the leather tails scraped over the man’s buttocks, causing him to moan rapturously and writhe against his bindings.
    Scharlie remembered a chapter in her lost book, one that described this very scene in which the man obtained pleasure with pain. The woman administering it wouldn’t hurt him too severely, only enough to have her client climax.
    She went to back out of the room as quietly as she came in, but as she let loose the lace curtain, Scharlie’s gaze landed on a coiled whip on the table next to the door. Before she could think things through, Scharlie took it and then left the room.
    Luckily, the hallway was clear. She checked the stairway and hurried down it, taking a chance to exit the way she had come even though the cook might have returned. Scharlie peered around the door into the kitchen and discovered the cook had her back to the stairs. Quietly and quickly, Scharlie hurried through the kitchen to the back door.
    Once she was outside, she took a deep breath, willing her stuttering heart to slow down from the fear that had driven it. No one was in the alley, so she started hurrying back the way she had originally come from, trying to make it back to the hotel before Garrett or Cassidy knew she was missing.
    From out of nowhere, a hand came down and grabbed her arm. Scharlie screamed and backed away from the hand, banging into the next building. She snapped her head around and saw the glow of a cigar, smelt the acrid stench of ash. Fear rose sharply in her stomach, and she had to swallow bile back down. She wrenched her arm away and took a few steps back from Breaux Cox.
    “Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be wandering the streets of Willow City at night,” he said in a husky voice. It sent shivers down her back.
    Scharlie couldn’t think of a thing to say to him. Fear had robbed her temporarily of speech. She backed up a few more steps.
    “Going somewhere, Scharlie ?” he asked.
    “I—It’s Miss Thorn to you,” she said.
    He laughed. “I’m glad to see a little backbone from you. Your brother had spunk too.”
    At the mention of Harlow , all her fear disappeared. Scharlie’s shoulders went back, and her eyes narrowed. “You have no right to mention Harlow .”
    “I don’t? Why? Because Webb and Brooks told you I killed him? I didn’t, you know. Brooks did. Shot him in the back.”
    Everything inside of her froze. He must have seen the doubt and confusion on her face because he laughed, a nasty sound devoid of all amusement.
    “So I am vilified, and, naïve you believed him.”
    “Shut up! Are you saying you were friends with Harlow ? That you knew him?”
    “No, I’m not. I wasn’t friends with Harlow Thorn, but I respected him.”
    “Because you were both outlaws!”
    “No, because Harlow saved my life once. We didn’t like each other, but we were comrades.”
    The idea of Harlow being friends with this man made her sick to her stomach. She took a few more steps backward.
    “You left me that doe to find,” she accused.
    “I did.”
    “You searched my house.”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    “Because you’re Harlow ’s sister. And I told him I’d take care of you.”
    His words would have sounded nice and safe if he hadn’t smiled at her, because she saw all his poison and hatred come out in that twisted slash of lips.
    She didn’t believe him, of course, didn’t trust him at all. But then she realized she couldn’t trust