“Quiet and calm. Focused. Not annoying and whiny. Just so . . . mysterious. I could see myself with her.” I feel my teeth grinding together as Ben leans in toward me. “You’ve got a little while longer to grow a pair, but when I leave here . . . I make no promises. Except one.” His brow arches. “She won’t turn me down.”
“Get to work, Morris.” I’m ready to knock a few of his pretty-boy white teeth out of that arrogant mouth. But mostly, I want him to go away so I can focus all my attention on my girl.
Shit, not my girl.
Ben leaves with a triumphant grin on his face. I don’t know if he’s just goading me or if he’s not kidding about going after her. With Ben, you never really know. But what if the cocky bastard’s right and she doesn’t turn him down?
Ah, fuck.
I turn back to watch Charlie’s hips roll in a provocative twist, the tiny bikini bottoms beneath her skirt reveal enough ass to stir the all-too-familiar throb between my legs. She doesn’t even have to be naked for that to happen. She’s drop-dead beautiful, fully clothed. I’m kind of glad that she does herself up the way she does onstage, with the curls and the heavy makeup and the contacts. It means the crowd doesn’t get to see her as she is. The real her. What I got to see.
And maybe that’s what she’s hiding.
“She’s as good as Penny was.” Those words feels like a punch to my gut. Nate never brings Penny up. In fact, he hardly ever refers to this place by its name. It’s always just the bar, or the club.
“She is.” Maybe even better. The crowd loved Penny. She was beautiful and sweet and, despite working the VIP rooms, she still somehow maintained that air of innocence. I think she was just looking for someone to love her. Using her body as enticement was the only way she thought they might.
“Is that what all this is about?” Nate prods. “She reminds you of Penny?”
I run my tongue over my teeth, deciding what I want to say. Nate’s not a guy I brush off. Not after everything we’ve been through together. Not when he brings up Penny. “No. I mean, she looks like her and dances like her, but . . .” Charlie doesn’t seem so innocent. And where Penny was bubbly and sweet and transparent, Charlie is reserved and impossible to decipher. I don’t think she’s devoid of emotion; I think she just internalizes it more than most. But why?
“She seems to have her head on straight, from what I’m hearing. And she can’t keep her eyes off you.”
Here we go. This is what I’ve been putting up with from Ben and Ginger. Apparently, now I’m going to get it from Nate. “I don’t know when this place turned into a fucking high school cafeteria at lunchtime, Nate.”
He ignores me. “You know, everyone here would be happy if you’d make a move.”
I peel my focus off Charlie’s muscular legs looping around the pole to look my giant confidante straight in the eye now. “Oh, yeah. They’d be really happy to watch the boss exploit the fresh twenty-two-year-old stripper,” I mutter, my voice full of sarcasm. Nate’s voice turns rough as he crosses his arms. “Yeah, they would, Cain. Well,” he adds, “maybe not China, but she’d get over it.”
My eyes roll. China’s had a thing for me for years now. While she’s respected my insistence that we keep our relationship platonic, I’m no idiot. I know her interests have lingered.
“My point is that you’ve proven your point. You’re not in this for the ass or the money or a power trip. You’re not a fucking criminal.” He levels me with one of his more ominous Nate stares. “You’re not your parents.”
I turn to match his stare and lower my voice. “Charlie doesn’t need to be tied to someone like me. I can’t do that to her.” He knows what I’m talking about. He carries my guilty secrets with him as if they were his own.
A loud round of cheers erupts and I turn back to the stage in time to see Charlie’s top fly off, a coy smile curving that wide mouth of hers as she watches me take in her black lace bra. Beneath that . . . My breath hitches. Damn. I’m pretty sure I could have that. Tonight, if I wanted. If I were a complete asshole.
Thank God my office came equipped with a private shower. I’ll have that dial cranked to ball-shrinking cold tonight. Just like every other night since she started this whole game of hers.
I never expected this from her.
And I never expected to enjoy it so much.
“Why haven’t you let her work the rooms yet, then?” Nate asks.
I take a sip of my drink. My fourth of the night. “I don’t think she’s ever worked a V.I.P. room before.”
“So what? Neither had Mercy. Or Hannah. Or Levi . . .”
I know exactly what Nate’s getting at. I’ve never stopped any of the girls from doing what they want to make money, as long as they’re safe and it’s legal, because I’m smart enough to know that if they’ve wrapped their heads around the idea of doing it, then me telling them no isn’t going to stop it from happening. They’ll just end up at some sleazy place like Sin City or Teasers. Or worse . . . in a back alley. Somewhere no one’s looking out for them. “You know, for a man with a daily word maximum of ten, you’ve gone way over today.”
The only response I get is a snort. And that lethal stare.
“Fine. I don’t want Charlie doing that shit with anyone.” I don’t judge these girls for what they do and I won’t treat them with less respect because of it. Hell, I’m enabling them. But, I remember the knots in my stomach every time I saw Penny go back into a V.I.P. room. I hated her going back in there. I hated the idea of her on those guys’ laps.
But I let it happen.
And every time I tried to picture myself with Penny, the knowledge that I allowed her to sell herself like that crept into the image, like dirty fingerprints on an otherwise beautiful canvas. When I clued in that Charlie likely hasn’t worked the V.I.P. room before . . . I’m not going to lie, excitement coursed through me.
She’s not tainted by those dirty fingerprints.
Yet.
And I selfishly don’t want to let it happen.
“With anyone except you, you mean,” Nate cuts into my thoughts with that knowing tone of his.
“I haven’t laid a—”
“But you want to. Admit it.”
I say nothing.
“She’s the first person I’ve seen you look at twice since Penny was around. And you never used to come out and watch Penny onstage like this. Charlie’s gotten under your skin. That’s gotta mean something, Cain.”
“It means I must be really hard up.” That’s the understatement of the fucking century. The night I moved Charlie into her new place, Grace—a twenty-eight-year-old heiress to a prominent Sonoma Valley vineyard—was in town and paid me a late-night visit. I couldn’t keep Charlie’s violet eyes and doll face out of my head. That would have been fine, had I not called her name out as I was coming.
After that night, I’ve avoided calling Vicki or Rebecka or any of the others on my speed dial, figuring I’d get my infatuation with the girl under control before I risked insulting another woman like that. Two weeks later, my balls are ready to burst. I don’t know how the monks survive. Probably by not watching live strip shows daily.
I inhale sharply as Charlie unclasps the black lace bra, wincing with a spasm of pain in my groin as two candy-pink nipples appear. Ben is right. They should be fake, they’re so perfectly round and . . . perfect. I both love and hate that she’s up there on the stage. Love because it’s the only way I’ll get to see her like this and it feeds the sick fantasies constantly swirling around in my head. Hate because everyone else is seeing her like this and having those same fucking dirty thoughts.
Looking at those strong yet delicate limbs, I can’t help but wonder if her abusive father had dirty thoughts of her. My teeth instantly clench at that question, taking my desire down a few notches. How many times were those beautiful body parts bruised and broken by that jerk-off? Thank God he’s in jail or I’d hunt him down and make him really suffer.
“John got back to me, Nate. Charlie’s got a past, full of assholes. She doesn’t need another one to add to her collection.”
Nate heaves a sigh, shaking his head. “Shit,” I hear him mutter under his breath. If there’s one guy whose soft spot for these girls is as sensitive as mine, it’s Nate.
“She’s here to make money, not deal with her boss hitting on her.” Even though she seems intent on torturing me. “And I have enough to deal with. I don’t need to add an affair with an employee to my own plate. I’m doing the right thing by staying away from her.” I can hear the tone in my voice. It’s solid and convincing. I’m not really trying to convince Nate, though.
It’s me who needs the convincing, as I watch her, imagining what her sweat tastes like.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be standing out here like a starving kid waiting for a piece of fresh bread, then,” he scolds in a dry tone. “You’re tormenting yourself, you dumbass.”
“Fuck off,” I throw back. A heavyset guy on the side of the stage catches my eye. He’s hollering something at Charlie. I can’t hear him but I can read his lips, the vile words forming in his mouth. The way he’s gesturing crudely at his lap.
“And get that fucker in the yellow shirt out of my club, right now,” I bark. Normally, I don’t kick patrons out for yelling things and gesturing. It’s an adult entertainment club where women grind on guys’ laps until they explode in their pants, for God’s sake. And yet I’ve been booting out customers every night for two weeks when Charlie comes on.
Nate doesn’t say a word. He simply strolls over and, with a heavy hand on the man’s shoulder and what I imagine is a forceful instruction in his ear, he escorts the guy out without argument. No one ever argues with Nate.
From where Ben is standing, I catch him shaking his head at me.
Yeah, I probably deserve that.