I bit my lip and cupped his face in my hands. “I think I love you, Tucker.”
“What would convince you?”
I smiled, despite everything that had happened, because of him. “You could tell me how you feel about me in that accent of yours.”
He tugged me into his lap. “I love you, cher.”
Then he spent the rest of the night showing me how much he loved me and how glad he was that I was okay. There were no nightmares for either of us that night.
PART FOUR
Chapter 1
Vince
Maker’s Mark, Arkansas was a hole in the wall. It boasted one stoplight and two bars. If you hadn’t caught it with the name, the fact that there were more bars than stoplights should’ve clued you in on the fact that the townsfolk liked to drink. Like fish. Fish who’d been hauled out of the water and left on the shoreline for a little too long.
The two bars were next to each other and it wasn’t uncommon for the locals to stumble over to whichever bar they hadn’t started at whenever they got cut off. It was convenient. No one had to drink and drive to get their next fix.
Both bars also had bars on the windows and enough motorcycles parked out front of them to start a dealership. The buildings were charred from a fire that had almost gutted the both of them a few years before. They both had a few letters out of their neon signs and neither of them had a proper liquor license.
It made for a great stomping ground for a guy like me.
My bar of choice was Maverick’s. The owner was a navy man and he had a lenient rule about fighting. As long as none of his shit got messed up, he didn’t give a fuck. He also sold ice-cold beer for dirt cheap and had a gal in the back who fried up pretty much anything you could think of. Anything.
I usually sat at the bar and ordered a basket of fried pickles before throwing back a few beers and watching whatever game was on the tiny-ass TV Maverick hung over the tower of empty beer cans he was always building. That was how I started my evening, anyway. It normally progressed into more than a few more beers and an argument with a biker or two. Another reason I liked Maverick’s so much. There was always someone willing to fight.
There were also usually plenty of women who found their way in. Women who weren’t looking for Mr. Right. Women who liked men like me.
That night was no different. I ate my fried pickles and drank a few beers while watching a football game and then I turned around on my stool and watched the makeshift dance floor. Two couples turned slowly to the old country tune playing on the jukebox in the corner.
Just past them, I saw my score for the night. A woman probably a few years older than me who licked her lips when our eyes met. Blonde, pretty, and chesty enough for me to have something to hang on to. She was at a table with a couple of friends, but she’d checked out on them.
I nodded at her and gave her a slow smile. She immediately started walking over to me. I watched the sway of her hips and was only slightly disappointed in the lack of curves outside of her impressive chest. It didn’t matter. She was still a knockout and she was still coming over to me.
I turned my body to face her as she pulled herself up on a barstool. Closer, she was innocent-looking. There were freckles across her nose, and her mouth naturally turned down in a pout. It wasn’t that I had a type necessarily, but she wasn’t it.
“Don’t change your mind on me now, cowboy.” She leaned closer and dragged her finger down my chest, stopping only once she hit my belt. “That dark look in your eye promised me a good time.”
Dark look. That dark look had nothing to do with her or her good time. I swallowed another healthy gulp of beer and stood up. If she wanted me, I’d take her. “Bathroom or back alley?”
She stood up and smiled. “That’s what I thought. Come on. My car’s outside.”
I wasn’t seventeen. I wasn’t going to break my back to fuck inside of a Ford Focus. “Bathroom or back alley, honey? Lady’s choice.”
She looked like she wanted to argue, but shrugged. “I’ve seen the bathrooms. Back alley.”
I took her elbow and we made our way outside. Once we were around the side of the building, where no one would bother us, I leaned against the wall and stared down at her. “Normally, I’d tell you not to go into dark corners of the world with men you don’t know.”
She went to her knees on the wet pavement and looked up at me. “Dark corners of the world? I didn’t realize I’d followed some sort of wordsmith out here.”
I grunted as she undid my belt and made quick work of getting my pants down to my knees, freeing my dick. “Funny.”
She took me into her hands and stroked me until I was hard and at my full length. Her eyes went wide and she licked her lips again. “Very impressive. I was honestly terrified that you’d come out here and have the smallest dick I’d ever seen.”
“Enough talking.” I flexed my hips in her hands and blew out a rough breath. “Take me in your mouth.”
She moaned and did as I said. She couldn’t take very much of me, but she was a master at sucking. Her head worked back and forth until she’d had enough and stood up. Hiking her skirt up, she pulled her panties to the side and winked at me. “Got a condom?”
I huffed. I’d kind of been hoping that she’d suck me off and I could go back inside and get another beer. I pulled a condom out of my pocket and rolled it on. “Like I’d do this without one.”
She pressed her top half against the rough siding of the bar and arched her back so her ass was sticking out. “Fuck me, smartass.”
I wasn’t slow as I thrust into her. When she screamed for me, I wrapped my arm around her and covered her mouth with my hand. Then, I fucked her like she wanted. Hard and fast. I pounded into her as she bit my hand and raked her nails against the wall. Her core pulsed around me as she came. Instead of finishing in her, I pulled out and stroked myself to finish as she stood panting beside me.
I came and then it was all over. Whatever excitement there’d been was gone and in the haze of a half-lit neon sign, I felt annoyed and tense. I yanked my pants up, somehow angry at the experience for not dimming whatever was brewing inside of me.
“Thanks. I needed that.” She slowly straightened and smiled at me. “I have the LSATs coming up and I just needed to relax for a bit. Maybe I can call you when I’m stressed out while studying next week.”
I scowled. How the fuck young was she? Feeling sick with myself, I just shook my head and went back inside. I needed something harder than beer.
“Well, shit, Vinny. Did she bite your dick off? Why the fuck do you look so angry?” Maverick shook his head and tried to offer me a beer. When I shook my head, he pulled out a bottle of the whiskey I liked and topped off a glass. “She have something? You can get it treated, son.”
I couldn’t help the laugh that spilled from my mouth. “Shut the hell up, old man.”
He pushed the whiskey to me and opened his mouth in what he might’ve considered a grin. With the few teeth he did have tilting every which way, it was more grimace than anything. “One of these days you’re going to catch something that you can’t wash off, boy. Your dick is going to fall right off and then you’re going to be like Ole Jim Dan over there.”
I made a face and looked over at where he was pointing. “What the fuck?”
“Jim Dan. Cheated on his third wife and she put the barrel of a .45 to his dick and pulled the trigger. I’d say he’s lucky to be alive, but let’s be real. He ain’t lucky.”
The older man in question looked up at us and scowled. I turned back to Maverick and shook my head. “That’s fucked up.”
“Yeah, well, lots of things are fucked up in this world. Watch it that you don’t become one of them.” He moved away to give someone else a beer but looked back at me with a shake of his head.
I blew out a sigh and downed my whiskey. I felt the burn in my stomach and turned to watch the crowd again. In the back a group of bikers were playing pool. The two couples had moved to a corner of
the room, dancing closer and touching more.
I needed to go home. The idea of it soured my stomach, though. There was nothing at home. It was too quiet and too full of shit that needed doing. Ghosts, too.
With work in the morning, if I didn’t get some sleep, I’d be shit at whatever job we had lined up. Whatever trivial guard job we had. The same thought that always threatened to push me over the edge rang out from the back of my head. Was this my life? Drinking, fucking, guarding? It wasn’t too far from my reality that I’d been jumping out of planes and going to war with bad guys. Instead, we were guarding TV princesses and writers.
That little thought wedged its way to the front of my mind until I felt like screaming and breaking shit. Had we survived to do nothing?
I shoved out of my chair and came to my feet. Someone bumped into me and I looked up to find a big biker glaring down at me. My fingers itched. I could let him beat the shit out of me and feel alive for a few minutes, or I could go home and get in bed and pretend like life was everything it was supposed to be.
“Watch where the fuck you’re going.” Biker man gave me a shove that would’ve knocked a lesser man to the ground.
I smiled. Then, there was option three. I fucked up the big, bad biker and lived through the feeling of my knuckles busting on his fucking face. I twisted my head from side to side, popping my neck, and blocked a second shove. Throwing my fist out, I connected hard with his cheekbone and his head snapped to the side before he fell like a big tree in the woods.
I would’ve been disappointed in the fight if his friends hadn’t stood up and moved towards me. As it was, I had a whole group of bikers to face off against. My body vibrated with tension, eager to throw itself around and get in on some action. Sex hadn’t been enough that night. I needed more.
The first biker threw a punch and I let it connect with my chin before driving my fist up under his, knocking him backwards. One after another they came, until they realized that attacking singularly wasn’t going to get them anywhere.
They rained more hits on me and I roared while fighting them off. I felt more alive than I had in months and I loved it. It was what I needed. Something hard and rough, painful enough to get my attention off of the rest of the world. Off of Luke and off of lost brotherhood.
I took a solid hit to the stomach that knocked the wind out of me and as I fell to the ground, I took two of them with me. Wrestling on the dirty floor of the bar with dirtier men, I knew that I had problems. I’d been an upstanding member of the U.S. Navy SEALs. I was a war hero. I’d done what other men couldn’t even dream of doing.
The bigger they were, the harder they fell.
Someone sent a kick to my stomach and I gritted my teeth. I’d taken worse. I fought back to my feet and continued the fight into the parking lot. The bikers seemed to multiply, but from a glance, I could see there were other people fighting them, too. The fight continued until cops showed up. The bikers split and the rest of the men were left there, licking their wounds and telling tall tales of how they’d fought back a group of rabid bikers.
I silently sank back to my truck and pulled down the visor. I was going to have a hell of a time explaining my beat-up face. I was going to have a black eye and my lip was split. Most of the damage was going to be in the form of bruises on my stomach. I’d live. Mercer and the guys at Black Dog were going to be pissed, though.
They didn’t get it. They didn’t work through shit the same way that I did. Not that I could really say I worked through anything. I did feel better, though. Fucking hadn’t done it for me, but fighting had. Even stiff and sore, I drove home with a light smile on my face, and the idea of sleeping in my bed for the rest of the night didn’t make me want to run.
Chapter 2
Cookie
Marilyn Manson’s “Tainted Love” came over the speakers of The View. Scratchy acoustics in the old building added to the gritty sound of the song. Dressed in a loose black dress and seven-inch heels, I worked my hips to the beat while walking across the stage to grab the pole. Grasping it and arching my back, I bent over with my ass in the air and slowly trailed my hand up my leg.
The music was fast and heady, demanding. I worked my body hard and made eye contact with the front row of men. Sitting at the waist-height stage, they held stacks of money that I wanted. I went to all fours and crawled towards a big spender. I could spot the itch he wanted to scratch that was raining money over my body while I undressed. Stopping in front of him, I bit my lip and held his gaze as I went up on my knees and slowly worked my dress up my hips.
The money quivered in his hand the higher I worked the dress. When I flashed a glimpse of my panties, his eyes dilated and he wiped his brow with his free hand. When I did drag the dress over my head, he lost it. His fingers twitched and then he was standing and dropping money over my undulating hips. I moved closer to him and lightly touched the underside of his chin while smiling at him. That was what he got for the money he’d just flooded me with. I moved to the next man and when the song ended, a guy named Mark ran onto the stage and collected all the money for me while I held my hands over my tits and tried to get to the back room as fast as possible.
The back of The View was the same as any strip club. Trixie, Lola, and a new girl named Tara sat in front of makeshift vanities, touching up their makeup and fixing their hair. The names were always the same. Not that I could say anything. Cookie wasn’t exactly not a stripper name. The heavy makeup to combat stage lighting was always the same. Even the outfits were the same. It was just like any of the other strip clubs I’d worked in before finding The View.
“Looking good out there, girl.” Lola pinned a few more pieces of her shiny black hair up and looked at me through her mirror, past a taped-up picture of her daughter. “You’re making Mark work for his share tonight.”
I shrugged and sat down at my vanity. I needed to take off my stage makeup and get changed. I worked a bar shift after dancing and I had the best night for both. Saturday nights brought in tons of tips for the dancers and the bartenders. I’d be leaving the club that night with over a thousand dollars.
The upbeat tempo of whatever song Shayla was dancing to on the stage was grating on my nerves, but she danced best to fast music. I’d seen her sway to slow music once and it was like watching your grandmother stripping in front of angry strangers. Not pretty. My head throbbed and my ankle hurt from where I’d twisted it falling over my neighbor’s shovel.
Steve, the owner of the club, stuck his head in the back and grunted at me. “Lap dance. The red room.”
I swore and pulled my bra back on. In just a tiny black bra-and-panty set, I fixed my makeup and then hurried back out onto the main floor. I smiled and winked at men as I moved through the room, drawing them in and making sure I’d stay one of the most requested dancers. I was a pro at it after so many years. An old pro at twenty-eight. Who would’ve thought?
The rooms off of the main area in The View were split up by color. No one was going to call Steve creative anytime soon. There was a red room, of course decorated in all red, even down to the leather couch, a blue room, a yellow room, and a black room. No one liked the black room. It was dark and the clients always felt free to get super handsy. Most of the girls liked the yellow room because the couches in it were the most comfortable. I preferred the red room because the leather couch was stiff and dug into the client’s bodies while I danced. It made for a shorter lap dance for most of the men. Plus, the leather was so easy to clean that Gary, the janitor, couldn’t fuck it up.
I pushed through the beads, into the red room, and stopped short when I saw the client was a group of women. Grinning instantly, I dropped my head and looked up at them through my lashes. I loved the rare occasion that I got to dance for women. I was plenty straight, but women were just more fun. They tipped better, as if there was some silent understanding that what I was doing wasn’t just for my own pleasure, the way some men acted.
“What’s the special occasion, ladies?�
�� I cocked my hip out to the side and zeroed in on one woman watching me with interest. “Promotion? Wedding? Divorce?”
They laughed but the one watching me raised her eyebrows. “People celebrate divorce like this?”
“Honey, people celebrate everything like this.”
She shook her head and laughed. “Promotion. I got the big job I’ve been wanting for years.”
I moved closer to her and nodded. “So. A lap dance to celebrate?”
One of her drunker friends giggled. “Sammie is our favorite lesbian, so it seemed fitting.”
I cocked an eyebrow at Sammie and moved even closer. Standing over her, I watched as her eyes trailed up my body and darkened. It was the right response to a woman standing in front of you in lingerie and a plan to straddle you.
“Come on, guys! Let’s give them some privacy!” Another drunk friend stood up and they all filed out in a single line, only stopping to look back at Sammie and wink.
She actually looked embarrassed once they were gone. “I’m not drunk enough for them. Or maybe this.”
I sauntered across the room and stood behind the makeshift bar. “Pick your poison.”
“Tequila. Straight.” She stood up and moved closer to me. “It’s my first time getting a lap dance.”
I poured the drink and handed it to her. “Well, then, that shot’s on the house. Want me to tell you how it works?”
She nodded. “That could help.”
I took her hand and pulled her across the room to the smaller club chair instead of the couch. Gently pushing her down in it, I leaned forward so I could whisper in her ear while she got a good view of my cleavage. “You sit. I dance. You enjoy.”
She sucked in a sharp breath that I loved to hear and downed the shot. “That sounds doable.”
“Before we start. The rules.” I took the glass away from her and dropped it on the couch. Hovering my lips next to her ear, I gently breathed out. “I can touch you as much as I want. Within reason, of course. I touch, you don’t.”
Black Dog Security- Complete 5-Part Series Page 48