Well Hung

by Pratt, Lulu

  I racked my brain, but still couldn’t decide where I knew him from.

  “Hey, Sonia,” I said, tapping her on the shoulder. “Who’s that?”

  I pointed in the stranger’s direction as she reluctantly arched up from the table, her eyes following my finger.

  There was a long pause, and then:

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “Uh… no?”

  She chortled. “Sometimes I forget you’re technically new around here.”

  I rolled my eyes, and said, “Oh lay off, just tell me who he is.”

  Sonia could mock me all she wanted, but is it so criminal to try to get a positive ID on a hot boy?

  “You don’t even recognize him from the posters?” she asked with some earnest skepticism.

  The wheels in my brain jolted, clanging and shifting together over the sound loops of pings and ca-chunks pouring out of nearby machines.

  Oh, I recognized him all right. It made sense now.

  Holding my hand low at my side, I flipped him the bird.

  Sonia caught sight of my erect middle finger, and murmured with some amusement, “Remember him now?”

  “Yeah. Unfortunately.”

  Much to my dismay, the hottie across the floor wasn’t some hunky stranger who I recognized from my past life, someone who could offer me a fresh start and my general store in Washington.

  No, he was much worse. Because this was Tate, the infamous and infamously absent owner of Dazzlers, and literal poster child for the disasters of unmitigated intergenerational wealth.

  And for the first time since I’d begun working here, he was strutting around the casino, like… well, like he owned the place.

  My pulse quickened, and I averted my eyes, focusing on the green felt of the poker table. This man who I didn’t even really know, who for a moment I’d mistaken to be just a passing handsome gentleman in the night, had undone my family and by extension, forced me into this miserable job and this unfulfilling life.

  Who was he to strut the floor, peacocking like a prince?

  Face hot with rage, I gritted my teeth and focused on my work, hoping that the blood tingling in my cheeks (and, much to my embarrassment, in other places as well) would circulate normally in a moment.

  Why are the hot guys always so damn evil?

  CHAPTER 2

  Tate

  I EXAMINED MY finger nails. They were, as usual, perfect milky half-crescents, clean, trim, without a scrap of dirt beneath their white arches.

  “Am I boring you, sir?”

  “Yes, Jack, I imagine you are.”

  The squat little man at my side gulped.

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Don’t be sorry, just don’t do it.”

  Sweat was beading on his bald brow, but I wasn’t in any particular hurry to assuage his anxiety. After all, as my father used to say, “fear keeps them on their toes.”

  Besides, there was absolutely no way to feign interest in a tour of the casino. Blah blah money blah blah sales blah blah blah. Dazzlers had been the same since the day my dad had cut the ribbon — cheap, gaudy, and a final resting place for many a gambler. There was no innovation, no heart. Just vodka and polyester thongs.

  “If I could just—” Jack, who I suppose I might also mention is my business manager, swallowed.

  “Yes?”

  “Shall I continue with the tour, even though I am boring you, and am also very sorry, so sorry, for boring you?”

  You’d think those words would be laced through with sarcasm, like some kind of arsenic cocktail, but nope. He was, much to my dismay, dead serious in his earnestness. Jack was so eager to please me it was almost disquieting. Have you ever seen a dog jump on its hind legs at your bidding, but then never return to all fours, out of worry that you may one day want it on its hind legs again? That’s Jack.

  Today, though, I would have to allow him his tricks. It was my bi-yearly tour of the casino, during which time I “made sure everything was running smoothly.” Or at least, that’s what I’d tell the board at our meetings. In reality, I just nodded and signed on dotted lines. I suppose, in a way, I too am an obedient little puppy.

  We veered left at tables set for Texas hold ‘em. I saw rows of seats filled with asses which clearly hadn’t moved in hours, possibly days. Men had sunglasses riding low on the bridges of their nose, and women were chain-smoking with such gusto that I imagined they must occasionally swallow the cigarettes, mistaking them for food. These were the bottom feeders of society, and this casino their sea floor. What did that make me? Poseidon?

  I couldn’t imagine sitting still for ten minutes, let alone ten hours. I loved the feeling of earth moving beneath my feet, of smelling new things and hearing new chords. To remain in one spot as day lapsed into night, the same buzzing whirls filling my ears and cheap smoke cloying at my nose… it sounded like hell. In fact, between the smoke and the sinners, the resemblance was actually quite pronounced.

  We were moving past the blackjack section when Jack noted, “The casino is having one of its best years yet, sir.”

  “Oh. Is that so?” I wasn’t particularly interested in an answer, but it seemed to be the thing to say.

  “Yes, yes indeed. Player engagement has gone up, the new events booker for Hall Three has been getting stellar acts, and even drinks sales are on the rise. Quite an achievement, sir.”

  Jack looked at me with ever-wet eyes that begged for my approval. Love me, they said. Tell me I’m your special boy. Tsk, tsk, Jack, only one person in this miniature tour group can have deep-seeded daddy issues, and I’ve already assumed the role, thank you very much.

  I ignored Jack’s moist gaze, cracking my knuckles with the heel of a palm. I was itching to get back in the gym, maybe do a little boxing, anything to separate myself from the people before me.

  But my business manager was persistent.

  “I’d love to tell you about the new show,” he chirped, tugging at his necktie, some kind of Hermès knockoff.

  He waited, as if for my cue. I gave a half-nod, which he took with glee.

  “We’ve just brought in an act from China. It’s very high concept, with lots of special effects and exciting music cues and big, like, art thoughts.”

  “And?”

  Jack appeared lost. “And what?”

  “There must be a reason they were booked here,” I snorted. “We don’t peddle in high concept and whatever ‘big art thoughts’ are. We’re low-down snake oil salesmen. So what’s the hook?”

  He sighed. “In between their many excellent acrobatic numbers, or stunts, whatever you call them… they also do some stripping.”

  Yup, there it was. If a pitch ever seems vague in Vegas, dig a little deeper and you will, without fail, find some nudity in there. I wasn’t offended by the nudity so much as the predictability.

  “Well, that’s nice,” I said finally, not able to muster up much more enthusiasm. As it stood, I was stifling yawns. “Jack, bud, you know I don’t care about the day-to-day operations of Dazzlers. I leave all that shit to you. So why am I hearing about strippers from China? The strippers could be from anywhere — Jakarta, the Netherlands, Portland. Not my problem, as long as they can shake some tit and keep the business afloat.”

  Through the thick mask of keen servitude, Jack twitched with annoyance. Well, that was something. At least he was still capable of having human reactions.

  I didn’t care for men like Jack, men who bent the knee and then went a step further, insisting that you step on their knee and use it as a vault to the next step, hoping that in the process, you’d take them with you. By extension, I didn’t care for Vegas. It was a town of bent knees, in every sense of the expression.

  This shit wasn’t my dream. That goes without saying, right? How many kids grow up, hoping that maybe one day, they can give booze hounds and lotto addicts a teat to suckle at? Not quite as noble as your run-of-the-mill firefighter or astronaut. Casino owners don’t help communities, or have b
old ideas, or get fancy medals from the President. Casino owners make money and die rich.

  That’s what my dad did, anyways. He built Dazzlers, put his life blood into it, and then kicked the can, leaving one ungrateful son who he’d never cared about as anything other than an heir to the throne. Hi, hello, it’s me — the ungrateful son. Kinda suits me, no?

  Dazzlers was my father’s vision, and now I was stuck with the scraps. Yeah, I know, to complain about being born into wealth, and in this economy… it’s not charming, I get it. The good news is, I could not give a shit if you or anyone else likes me. I have enough money that societal approval no longer appeals. And that right there is how rich guys end up being assholes. We can do whatever we want, whenever we want, and if you don’t like us, we’ll buy someone who at least will say they like us.

  Not that all this self-awareness is gonna keep me from throwing my life down the drain or anything, but it must count for something. Hey, it kept me from developing some kind of early onset gambling addiction.

  When I was twelve, I rolled my first dice on a casino board, my dad standing behind me, eyeing the green as the plastic flipped and tumbled in the air. In a single toss, I won a cool one thousand dollars. People at the table grumbled that the owner’s son, besides being underaged, had the game rigged for him. Though of course, I knew I’d won that money fair and square. My father was a big believer in Lady Luck, and would never interfere with her locomotions.

  But that one roll had felt a little too good. It made my mouth water, gave me tingles along the back of my hands and through the knots of my shoulders. The dice bubbled in my stomach, releasing intoxicating fumes. My life flashed before me. Rather, not my life, but my father’s. And let’s just say, it was grim. I haven’t gambled since.

  Jack interrupted my acidic thoughts with the flap of a hand.

  “Whaddya say?”

  “To what?” I grumbled, peeved out of habit rather than for any definitive reason.

  “To coming to the strip— I mean, the acrobatic show?” Jack asked. “It would, uh, bolster morale. Be good for the team.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Did I give you the impression I care about the team?”

  My business manager bit his tongue, but I saw him clench a fist in the pocket of his lightweight linen pants. Good to know he wasn’t entirely devoid of fire.

  “It’ll help market the show, sir,” he said in a monotone. “If you show up, get a few pictures, do the rounds.”

  Ah, now that made sense. I was, technically speaking, the face of Dazzlers. I’d recently done a single photo shoot with some big magazine, and shortly thereafter, my picture was plastered around town with Dazzlers written in a glittery pink scroll across my chest. Overnight, I’d become a sex symbol. As a twenty-seven-year-old man, this isn’t the worst outcome, but it did have the negative side effect of making me synonymous with my casino, as though it was somehow my brainchild, and forcing me to do additional publicity for Dazzlers, once the public realized that I was conventionally attractive.

  The upshot was that it kept the investors happy. They saw me posing and preening, and interpreted it as me being committed to the cause. The cause, in this case, being their bank accounts. This was hilariously off base, of course — spend any time with me, and I think it becomes fairly apparent that I’m not ‘committed’ to shit — but there was no harm in letting the men have their fun. Besides, if my press kept them from looking too closely at my daily involvement with the casino, so be it.

  “Fine,” I agreed. “I’ll go to the show.”

  Jack heaved out a breath he’d been holding in for far too long.

  “Excellent, sir, we’ll be thrilled to have you in attendance.”

  We were maneuvering to a row of craps tables. Jack had resumed some speech about switching alcohol vendors while I tuned him out with ease. I looked into the crowd before me, trying to pick an individual and guess their story. It was a trick I’d learned as a kid, when my dad used to make me watch him play a round of poker, his specialty. While he played, my eyes would wander to Dazzlers patrons, and I’d make up whole worlds in my head for them. Vegas may be the average person’s fantasy, but my fantasy was just, well, average people.

  Today, I was met with nothing distinct, just a sea of khaki and sunburns.

  Except…

  There, in the corner, not more than five feet away, was a waitress bent over a table, cleaning something up. Normally, my eyes glazed over the wait staff — not because they’re dull, per se, but because in their uniform getups, they become one with the gilded décor.

  But this girl, she was something else. I couldn’t see her face, just hair draping over her shoulder and hanging down like a thick divider between her and the world. Her body was lovely, yes, but that wasn’t it, either. Maybe I was drawn to the determined set of her shoulders, the way they squared off. Though her face wasn’t visible, I could imagine her biting her lip in concentration as she worked at a particularly challenging stain.

  It was right about then that I saw her eyes dart to me, then return to her fellow waitress.

  In a voice I’m sure she thought was too low to be audible, she whispered to the other woman:

  “Don’t look now, but Mr. Evil Prick has arrived.”

  “Excuse me?” I said, loudly enough that other patrons eyeballed me with mild interest.

  The whispering waitress bolted up from the table, her tiny skirt flipping through the air.

  I was about to demand an apology when I got a good look at her face.

  Well, fuck.

  She was just about the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

  Now what was I supposed to do?

  CHAPTER 3

  Kiki

  OLD GAMBLERS will tell you that there are days the cards are dealt in your favor, and days where they, pardon the language, “fuck your wife, fuck your kids, and kick your dog.”

  My cards today appeared to be hemming to the latter.

  I twirled around, but before my body had even arced a one-eighty, I knew that standing behind me, glowering and pissed, would be the man himself — Tate, inheritor extraordinaire of Dazzlers, in all his unfair beauty.

  Sure enough, my character heels twisted in the carpet and I was brought face to face with him.

  And damn, was it a nice face.

  If I had to pin him somewhere on a sliding celebrity scale of appearance, I’d put Tate between Chris Evans and, mmm, maybe like a Zac Efron after he got buff for Baywatch or whatever.

  His features resolved before me. From across the floor, they’d been blurrily appealing, but up close, I knew they were the kind of collection that had broken many a heart. He had bright blue eyes beneath thick brows, a strong nose with a little crick in the center that gave him some character (otherwise, he would’ve been blandly stunning), and beneath a short beard, a classically handsome jawline.

  He looked — shit! — like a real specimen of a man. A Disney prince who went off the compound, lived a little, and came back with a couple of hidden scars and a barrel of good stories. Wait, did that make me the princess?

  He also, relatedly, looked mad.

  “H-hi,” I managed to stammer out.

  In the blink of an eye, his face morphed from enraged to jovial, kidding even.

  Tate stuck his hand out. “Hi, I’m Evil Prick. And who might you be?”

  I raised an eyebrow. Was he really gonna let my insolence roll right off his back?

  I hesitated a beat — apparently, he was. Tate showed no signs of firing me. A surge of relief flooded my body, and I clasped his hand in mine, riding the adrenaline rush of, well, keeping my job.

  As I faltered for words, the small, rotund man standing at Tate’s side piped up.

  With a sneer, he said, “She’s just some waitress, sir. Far below your pay grade.”

  Okay, I would’ve been happy to just stay silent, mind my business, and be grateful to work another day, but that was a bridge too far. I might be trailer trash from the Vegas s
lums, but I wasn’t below anyone’s pay grade, certainly not this asshole’s.

  “I’m Kiki,” I declared. That didn’t feel like enough, so I elaborated, “I work here.”

  Tate’s eyes roamed over my outfit in a way that made my skin tingle beneath my bedazzled tights.

  “Yes, I can see that. The scrubbing was also a hint,” he replied gesturing to the table. “Paying customers don’t usually do the mopping.”

  My face flushed and I tried to keep my gaze from following the visual path from the top of his tie down to the waistband of his pants.

  “I—”

  “Jack,” Tate said, turning to the man on his right. “How long has she worked here for?”

  “I can check the records, sir, if you’d like.”

  Maybe it was the heat of the moment, or maybe it was a long-building resentment to Dazzlers, but in that split second, my tongue got away from me. My dad always said I had a temper like a rattlesnake — didn’t want trouble, but if you got too close, I’d shake my tail and raise hell.

  “Hey, I’m standing right in front of you,” I spat. “You can ask me the questions. No need to send your little minion running around.”

  Tate bit back what looked like a grin creasing his tan cheeks. “My minion, eh?”

  Well, I’d already started the rant that was sure to seal my fate at Dazzlers. Might as well fucking finish it.

  “Yeah, your minion.” Said minion was about to interject, you could tell by his puffed-out cheeks, but I cut him off. “The least you can do as the owner of this casino is to treat me with some basic decency.”

  “How do you know I own Dazzlers?” Tate asked, with a mixture of disturbing calm and a little something else. Was it regret? There was a taste on my tongue like he hadn’t wanted to be ID’d.