Taming His Wild Girl by Lee Savino

Chapter 2

Joel

Ten more minutes, and I was getting the hell out of there and going back to my hotel room. Judging by the state the stag, Deacon, and a few of my other buddies were in, they wouldn’t even know I was gone. I knocked back my overpriced scotch and waved to the waitress for another. She was over in a second, red lips curved seductively. I ignored her schtick and gave her a generous tip anyway. She was just doing her job—as were the girls on stage. I just wish I didn’t have to watch the whole ugly charade. It wasn’t that I didn’t like to look at naked women. I just preferred it when they were tied to my bed or bent over my knee, and the ecstasy on their faces was real.

I looked around the strip club wearily. A pink neon sign over the stage read Beyond Hope—the club’s name. I bet they thought that was real smart. It was all black marble, gleaming chrome, fake leather. A sad simulacrum of luxury for someone who didn’t know real pleasure. Who’d never galloped across a wild plain on a snowy evening, then come home to a roaring fire and a willing submissive. Who’d never taken a beautiful, all-natural girl over a hay bale and fucked her until she’d begged them to stop.

I’d only been away for a day, and already my soul yearned to get back to my ranch. The trouble was, I was never going to find the kind of girl I was looking for in the small town that I called home. Ashcroft was the prettiest town in the whole of British Columbia, probably in the whole of Canada. But I knew every single girl who lived there, and they were either married, or we’d already dated and figured out we weren’t right for each other. I wasn’t interested in finding my Little One among the buckle bunnies I met at rodeos, either. Sure, they might be submissive, but when it came down to it, they were as fake as the girls here. I envied my buddy, Steele, who’d had the perfect excuse not to come tonight—he was at home with his own Little One, and the two of them were blissfully happy.

Suddenly, the music turned way up. And—what the hell was that?—some kind of children’s song, mashed up with heavy beats.

The last straw, basically.

I yelled to Caine to tell him I was leaving. He couldn’t hear me, of course. That dang nursery rhyme was loud enough to split my skull in two. I heaved back my chair and got to my feet… at the same moment that a ballerina appeared on stage.

A ballerina.

I froze and ice filled my veins, like I’d plunged overboard into a cold, cold sea.

I stood frozen, my fists curling and uncurling like the dancer was in my grasp. Once upon a time, there’d been a girl. A perfect little ballerina. The most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. Too young for me, so I’d cared for her as a family friend should. I was the only one who could make her laugh, make her smile. But then came that fateful night at the rodeo, and I never saw her again.

I took a seat and leaned forward to study the stripper on stage. She was petite but curvy, her tits swelling from the low V of her costume. Her hair was white-blonde, not the shining mahogany so like a bay mare’s coat. But something about her reminded her of my tiny dancer. She danced with a regal air. Not slutty, but elegant, with trained precision. Like she’d studied ballet once. As she turned pirouettes on the stage, her limbs lithe and graceful, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her.

The music changed to hard, pulsing rock—and her eyes darted across the room, as if she was looking for instructions. Her whole face tensed, then her hands went to the back of her white tutu, and she tore it off and cast it across the stage. Underneath, she was wearing a black skirt that didn’t cover her ass, and lacy stockings. She took a step forward and lifted her hands up to her hair as if she was going to loosen it—

And at last I saw her.

Isabelle.

The dancer on stage didn’t just look like my tiny dancer. She was her. My heart plummeted, and my throat closed up. Four years older than last time I’d seen her, and evidently a helluva lot more screwed up.

I didn’t stop to think. I leaped toward the stage and called her name.

Her eyes locked with mine. They looked different—heavily made up, I guessed—but they were the same ones that had watched me all those years ago. Big blue doll’s eyes. I’d lived to watch them light up with life. I’d missed them when she’d gone. I’d know them anywhere.

She opened her mouth and those perfect lips framed my name. Joel.

A heavy pair of hands grasped my shoulders, dragging me back from the stage. “Sit back down. And don’t try to touch the dancers,” a voice grunted in my ear.

I threw him off me. I was too keyed up to do anything else.

“Isabelle, please—” I tried again, hands braced on the stage, leaning as close to her as I could get.

This time, the hands dug into the sides of my neck, seeking out my pressure points, while a deft fist landed in my right kidney. I crumpled, my vision blurring from the pain. Suddenly, there was a meathead on either side of me, dragging me out of the club.

“I warned you already,” said a menacing foreign voice. They hauled me through the exit and tossed me into the foyer.

I went down hard, but I bounded up and dusted myself down, fury boiling in my veins. That was stupid. I was bursting to go back in there, but there was no point getting into a punch-up. And something told me those thugs didn’t only fight with their fists. I had to be smarter than they were.

I was smarter than this. Isabelle made me stupid.

Isabelle. I had to see her. Had to speak to her.

I couldn’t believe she was here. I’d thought I’d never see her again.

Every part of me screamed to take her in my arms, find out where the hell she’d been all these years.

A month or so after she’d kissed me and her parents had freaked out and cut their vacation short, I’d read about them in the newspaper:

The entire family had gone to buy a horse, and on the way back, their car and the horse trailer had been hit by a semi. They had all been killed—except for one, who’d ended up in the hospital with broken bones. Isabelle.

I’d gone crazy looking for her. I managed to track down the foster family that she’d been placed with. But she wasn’t there—her foster father told me that she’d stolen from them and run. And then the trail had gone cold. I searched for her on Google and social media at least once a week, but there was never anything after those heartbreaking news stories. Promising ballerina loses entire familyin tragedy.Sleeping driver slaughters four. I’d hoped that she’d changed her name and was managing to find some happiness somewhere. Had picked up the pieces of her wrecked life, and created a semblance of normality.

But here she was—stripping on a stage in a trashy club. My heart cracked again.

“You gonna leave by yourself, or you need some assistance?” the cash booth attendant bellowed through a microphone. She had big frizzy black hair and a mean mouth. She looked like the madam of a brothel. I sure hoped this place wasn’t a brothel. The thought sent a shard of pure ice down my spine.

There was no way I was leaving without seeing Isabelle again. But I also knew there was no way I was getting back into the club.

I stormed through the set of heavy double doors that led outside. I was on a featureless street, lined with commercial buildings barely a step up from shipping containers. The entrance to the club was discreet—a plain black door with Beyond Hope written on a brass plaque. You’d have to be looking for it to know it was there. I stood on the edge of the sidewalk and looked at the dark upper windows, hoping to god there weren’t bedrooms up there. The building was halfway along a block. There had to be a back entrance somewhere. I went along the sidewalk and made a right on the corner. A few meters along, an alley brought me to a bunch of dumpsters and a row of back entrances. As I arrived, one of the doors opened and a girl slipped out. She was wearing jeans and a shapeless T-shirt, and a big holdall was slung over her shoulder. She cast me a quick, watchful glance and hurried on her way. One of the strippers? I cast my mind back to the shows I’d seen tonight. I’d barely been watching them—mainly zoning out and wishing I was in my playroom with a willing sub. Her curly blonde hair looked kind of familiar though. This had to be the back door to the place. I’d just wait here until Isabelle was done with her shift. My throat tightened. I hated the thought of her stripping. I’d seen what the other girls did—all that bent-over, in-the-splits kind of thing, while drunk guys stuffed paper money into their garter belts.

I was going to speak to her, make sure tonight was her last night in this dump, whatever it took.

A good couple of hours passed while I paced up and down, kicking at leaves and trash. My buddy Kevin texted to say they were leaving, and to ask where the hell I was. I told him I’d overdone it and had to go back to the hotel. He lol-ed and called me a pussy. Whatever.

Every nerve in my body, every single part of me, was fixated on seeing Isabelle again. I felt the years falling off me, back, back to that moment when she and her family were staying on the ranch. That beautiful half hour where I’d driven her to the rodeo, and it had just been her and me, alone in the truck, and she’d suddenly blossomed like an unfurling bud.

One girl after another came out through that door, and I started to worry. What if Isabelle had left out the front entrance? What if she’d guessed I was waiting and tried to avoid me on purpose?

At last, a small girl in gray sweats and a beanie came out of the door, hauling a bag that was almost as big as she was. Relief burned through me like a shot of scotch.

“Isabelle!” I called, louder than I meant to. She looked up, eyes filling with alarm.

“Thank God. I was scared I’d missed you.” I reached for her automatically. But at the fury in her face, I stopped short, hands splayed at my sides like a clown.

“What are you doing here?” she said in a cold, even tone.

“Hey, it’s Joel, from the ranch. You remember me, right?”

“I remember you,” she said, and her expression didn’t change.

I swallowed hard. She still hated me. After all these years. Thought I was nothing but a dumb cowhand.

“I was here for a bachelor party. This place is not my scene, at all.” I was talking fast, suddenly aware how bad it looked.

She shook her head, as if she didn’t want to hear any of it, and walked right past me.

“Isabelle, please—” I could hear the desperation in my own voice. “Please, just stay and talk to me for a second. I-I heard what happened with your family.”

She stopped walking. In the dark of the alleyway, her eyes were like two pits. The color drained from her face, and she looked exhausted. Broken and exhausted.

Then she started to shake all over. Her throat worked, and she swallowed convulsively. “I don’t want to talk about my family,” she said.

“Okay.” I put my hands up in surrender. “But, please tell me, what are you doing working here? I was so shocked to see you.”

“Minding my own business,” she snapped.

“Isabelle, you shouldn’t be here. This is not you. You were so talented.”

“That’s all gone now, Joel. In the past.” There was such flatness to her, such an absence of hope, that it about killed me. She’d become a doll—a hollow, lifeless thing in truth.

“Who’s this guy, Tinks?” a voice bellowed. I looked up. The back door had opened and a thickset figure in a black turtleneck was filling the doorway.

“You know we don’t allow boyfriends here.” He folded his arms, looking very pleased with himself, with his greasy ponytail and manicured beard. I itched to step over and flatten that belligerent face of his.

When I looked back at Isabelle, the fear in her eyes disturbed me. Real, animal fight-or-flight panic. She was terrified of this asshole. What had he done to make her so scared of him? The back of my neck prickled, and my fists bunched.

“I’m not her boyfriend,” I told him. “Just a friend who’s looking out for her.”

He gave me a nasty smile and cracked his knuckles. “Well, friend, how about you get the hell out of here while you can still walk?”

I looked from him to Isabelle’s pale, pinched face, and back again. She didn’t need the situation to escalate right now. I took a step back, and Isabelle took her cue and started walking as well. I turned and followed her around the corner. She was going fast, almost at a run, and I took long strides to catch up with her.

“Just stop and speak to me for a moment,” I called after her. I followed her out of the side street and onto the main road.

She came to a dead stop beneath the streetlight and spun around, eyes flashing with the feistiness I remembered from that day. “You have no idea of the shit you just got me into,” she spat. She turned, and started walking again.

“Isabelle, you have got to get out of there. Do you hear me? Don’t go back. Ever.”

She stopped once more. We were at a bus stop, I realized. “I have to go back. I need to live my life like anyone else.”

“No. No there.”

“Then what do you want me to do? Beg on the streets?”

“Come stay with me,” I blurted out. “I’ll take care of you.”

She’d been rummaging in her pockets for something. Now, she froze. “What?”

“I said, I’ll take care of you. Give you everything you need. You don’t need to work in that place with those thugs.”

She yanked out her purse, spilling a few coins at the same time. “I don’t need anyone taking care of me. People taking care of you is what screws you up.” Her voice was loud, furious.

“These guys are going to screw you up. They’re as dangerous as hell. I don’t think you understand that, Isabelle.”

She squatted down and started scraping the coins off the sidewalk. “Oh, believe me, I understand very well what they’re like.”

I tried to help her, but she was already straightening up, and an intercity bus pulled up to the stop. The destination was Tayleworth, a town I’d never heard of.

“Isabelle,” I called after her as she headed toward the bus’s opening door. “At least tell me where you live.”

“Leave me alone, Joel. I don’t need this in my life.” She climbed up onto the bus. The door folded shut and I watched as she paid the driver and walked the length of the bus. She picked a seat on the far side, away from me. And she was gone.

My insides ached. I slumped against the shelter and stared up at the strip of starless sky showing above the buildings. She still hated me. Still thought nothing of me. Like that teenage girl who’d used me for kissing practice, then treated me like rancher trash the second her parents turned up. That terrible episode was alive in my mind again.

Her parents had believed her version of events, of course. She’d been hysterical and underage drunk in the presence of a guy who’d promised to take care of her. Of course, it was all my fault. And actually, it was. I’d sensed she was up to something when she snuck away from me. I never should have let her go to the bathroom by herself. I wished so badly that the scene had played out differently, that we’d kept having a nice time together, enjoying each other’s company. And when her parents had turned up to check on her, they would have seen us hanging out, drinking colas. We would have gone back to the ranch, and she and her family would have enjoyed the rest of their vacation.

The last thing they ever did together.

She wanted nothing to do with me, and I couldn’t blame her. But I was going to get her out of that dump. I wouldn’t fail her this time.