Change

by Willow, Jevenna

  He’d already gone inside the room.

  He was seated behind his desk when she entered the lion’s domain.

  “Close the door,” he ordered.

  It was most unusual for the boss to call a bartender from the masses on a Friday night for a quick conversation inside his office. Generally, he would wait until after closing to tell the girls what he wanted of them, or yell if they’d done something they were not supposed to do.

  Lace got the first of many reprimands from him last night. She let one of her customers touch her. The rules clearly stated, to all their guests, touching was not allowed. A man could look all he wanted—but he wasn’t to touch unless truly desiring physical escort to the door.

  None of his girls were to be touched by sex-starved assholes with too much money in their pockets and hardened dicks in their pants.

  He’d soundproofed the private rooms for a reason. The groans and moans were to stay inside those four walls. He’d installed the safe button for his higher-priced strippers. He knew what could happen. Sometimes it did.

  Lace was lucky she’d gotten to the button. Things could have been much worse for her had the creep pinned her to the opposite wall, away from the safety mechanism.

  She’d left the building in tears after the lecture given her last night. And not much ever gets to Lace to make her cry. Mr. Griffen accomplished what others could not.

  Sara cautiously closed the door, knowing she hadn’t done anything wrong for a closed-door meeting in the middle of the Friday rush, or a potential tear-stained face.

  It took her boss a few minutes to start the conversation. In all those minutes, he merely stared, making her extremely uncomfortable by the unnatural silence.

  She became even more uncomfortable when he asked, with meaning, “When was your last period?”

  His eyes waited for her answer.

  Sara could see his jaw was clenched tight. “My…what?”

  Casey’s blue eyes hardened in on her faster than expected. “You heard me.”

  “Um…yes. But I’m not quite sure what it should matter to you,” she reasoned.

  Those hardened eyes narrowed into thin slits. “It just does.”

  “My menses is none of your fucking business, Mr. Griffen.”

  He glared, as if Sara being inside his office during regular hours was her fault and not his. That nasty glare turned swiftly into a sinful smile. “Well, if you do not remember…I will tell you when it was.”

  “You’ll what?”

  The shock on her face must have been comical, for he seemed all the more amused by her reaction.

  “You had your period eight days ago.”

  Sara put her hands on her hips. “Where, exactly, is this conversation headed?”

  Casey wouldn’t deter from his thoughts, however. And the sudden smile on his lips stated he didn’t give rat’s ass about her startled fury.

  “Twelve days ago you were a real bitch.”

  “And?” she recklessly snapped at his face.

  “In another two days you are going to be as horny as hell,” he continued.

  Sara felt like smacking this man over the head with a huge brick. “And?” she baited.

  “And…in two days…you are going to dance for me.”

  When his words finally sunk in, Sara nearly jumped for joy. A whole month…and he was finally going to let her use the pole! Then the words sunk more fully into her brain and her joy dissipated in a hurried rush. He’d said…for me. Not for paying customers.

  “And if I say no?” she bargained against.

  He was only allowing her the opportunity because of one reason, and one reason only. Her menstrual cycle, the days she would be at her best form. For what? The view she would certainly give him. Because it sure as hell would not be for another finger fuck he’d likely punish her with if she pushed him too far.

  His brow furrowed as if he could read her every thought, making her knees weak. “You won’t say no to me, Mecenna,” he said, his voice a lowered rasp.

  “Oh, really?” Now who is pushing whom?

  Casey nodded. His blue eyes found hers and they held a ton of mischief within their depths. “Yes. Really. Two days, Sunday night, no other time, no other offer. Take it or leave it, Mecenna. Like I’ve said before…you’ll dance for me first before I ever let you dance for any other man.”

  Sara’s voice caught in her throat as she tried to whisper out, “Why?”

  Her brain couldn’t process much of what had come out of his mouth, to any certain degree of coherency. In fact, Sara’s brain was stuck on the fact Sunday the club was closed. The two of them would be here alone. She’d have no one to protect her against this man if things got out of control…or complicated.

  Perhaps this was the point of the sudden request. Neither wanted protection from the other, but both desired it more than life itself.

  His face a stoic mask, his next words were even colder. “You wanted one night, Mecenna. Sunday is the only night I will allow you into that room.”

  Sara licked her bottom lip. She weighed out the pros and cons. There were certainly more cons than pros with his offer, but if she said no, she knew the offer would never come again. And damnit! She needed the money.

  “Fine. Sunday night. All rules apply.” This meant he was not to touch her in any way, shape, or form…unless given permission.

  “This is my club, Mecenna. I make the rules. Not you.”

  “Not this time, Griffen,” Sara threatened.

  In point, it was Casey who now had to weigh out the pros from the cons while Sara watched his face as he put thought through his head. Sunday night, with her in fittest form, would certainly be a definite pro to the man.

  “Fine. Agreed. No touching and all rules apply.”

  Sara held out her hand to Casey to shake on their deal, but he did not take her offered hand. He rounded his desk and pulled her in his arms by his unbroken wrist to settle her pelvis against his large arousal. The next words out of his mouth shocked her even more.

  “See what happens every time you come inside here?” He lowered his eyes to the front of his jeans.

  Sara looked down there as well. When her gaze returned to his face, his mouth descended and with no time to react she simply let the kiss happen.

  It was a quick kiss, a hard kiss—a brandishing kiss, nevertheless, the kiss passionate that left her visibly shaken as he eased away.

  Two seconds later, he was back to all business. “Don’t you have a shift to do?”

  Sara put her fingers to her mouth. She could taste Casey’s drank scotch on her tongue. All she could do was nod her head.

  “Then shouldn’t you be doing it?”

  It never took a boss to ask an employee twice. Sara nearly ran from the room.

  For the remainder of her night and well into the next, she couldn’t think of anything else, but of what he would get from her—body and soul—come Sunday night.

  ****

  Lace was the first to make her feel guilty about Sunday night. And Sara hadn’t even done anything to feel guilty—yet.

  “And why are we trying to perfect something you so obviously will never achieve?” Lace threw at Sara, her tone crisp.

  Lace was still smarting over the wretched lecture their boss gave her because of one lousy mistake by an all-hands, hard dick customer. And that roommate was now taking it out on anyone within her sight, namely Sara.

  Again, Sara’s ass hit the floor. Perhaps if she did not try to jut out her leg and did something completely different from Lace, it would work to her favor. Her next move only made things worse. She nearly hurt herself.

  Sara dropped to the floor and snapped her thoughts quite viciously at her roommate. “You’re not helping me, Lace…by criticizing me.”

  “Fine. I am not helping you at all.” Lace disappeared off the stage.

  PMS was more pronounced in some, than others. Pissed, money-hungry stripper, that was.

  Sara would have to lear
n on her own. She had half a day to do so, because in less than eight hours, Casey expected her to pole dance for him. How the bloody hell she’d be able to do this, prove herself worthy of a back room, and gain access to where all the money was made, if she could not stay on the pole longer than ten seconds, was beyond thought.

  The sound of pealed tires informed her Lace had truly abandoned her in her hour of need.

  Her mind intent on doing a routine cued to music, she set the stereo system to a melody of hard beat, bass-induced thumping. Rhythmic sounds—primal, and with just the right punch.

  Sara hadn’t been aware of his presence until the song ended; saw his shadow much too late to do anything about it and she slipped to the floor.

  The man of the hour was standing at the bottom of the stage, watching her. He had on faded blue jeans, a pale gray T-shirt, and an easy smile. His feet were bared.

  He jumped on the stage and actually helped her to get back onto the pole.

  She glanced once at his bared feet, smiled, then her smile faded. Casey had put his hands on her waist and his gentle touch sent shockwaves throughout her entire body. His breath, as it fanned over her left shoulder, while he guided her palms higher onto the metal in near slow motion, sent bolts of electricity throughout her system. His eyes, as the blue darkened into a shade of the deepest sea, caused her to slip off the pole and directly into his arms.

  “Try again,” he said, his strong voice with a catch in it.

  Again, his hands found her waist, lifting her off the floor. This helped Sara to wrap her one leg around the metal and steady her center of gravity.

  A soft brush of air went over her lips as his mouth moved forward and he whispered, “We have all night to teach you how to do this the right way.”

  His mouth then caught up to hers as Sara remained on the pole.

  Casey kissed her until he left her breathless. She never knew her feet found the floor until he maneuvered her into his arms, turned her body to his, and thrust his tongue deep inside her mouth, farther than before.

  Sara did not want this kiss to end. The sudden ache growing inside of her felt great, and its need wouldn’t be satisfied by mere kiss alone. If she ruined the dance and her one and only chance at access to the private room, at least she would have this as compensation to her loss.

  Sara pressed her hips firmly to his. Compensation of such an enormous size, anything had of him would be a damn good thing.

  ****

  Even though all the outer doors were now locked in the club, Casey did not trust Lace to come back here, ruin a good thing, and save Mecenna from harm. He wasn’t going to hurt her, only instruct, so any saving would be more than detrimental to his plans for this evening.

  He intended to teach Mecenna the ways of sexual tension by way of dance. Moreover, any lesson taught her would be while inside a private room where there were mirrors. He wanted to watch her lithe body try to please a man by a woman’s natural sensuality. He wanted to stare at her from head to toe—allowed to do so without the slightest interruption from anyone else. And he wanted to be where nothing could interrupt them, free from conventions, rules, and judgment.

  The guarded room in which to do all this was inside the depth of his lair.

  That lair was his home.

  The woman wrapped in his arms did not know this, but she would soon enough.

  Casey slid his hand down the length of Mecenna’s arm, gathering her wrist in his grasp. He had only one good hand for use, the other out of its brace but hurt like hell if he moved it the wrong way. With a gentle tug, he guided her toward the edge of the stage, jumped off the platform, then eased Mecenna down to him.

  She tried her best to avoid his injury, but could not help collapsing into his arms. Tonight she’d put on clothes, more the pity. Casey had wanted to see her incredible body from the moment he’d entered the club. Now he would have to wait.

  A gentle rasp slipped out of his mouth as he told her, “We are going to do this at my place.”

  Mecenna stopped her forward momentum. She slammed on the brakes as her eyes widened. “But you said I would get to do this inside the private room.”

  He grinned out the playfulness a mere kiss had started. “And so you will.”

  Mecenna looked confused.

  Casey deferred this confusion. “My private room is inside my house, Mecenna. You will do this there.”

  He needed not come out and say the words, because the brain easily grasped upon the fact that, by the end of this night, she would also be in his bed. But hopefully, this fact had been made perfectly clear by the way he’d touched her on the stage, by the way he could barely keep his eyes off her now, and by the kiss.

  Casey was so in control of his thoughts and actions, they physically dwarfed any she might have had. It was her vulnerability she could not hide from him, scaring him the most.

  Nevertheless, his smile came easy and it lingered on his lips as he read her mind, contributing more to the adrenaline rush inside his muscles than anything ever before.

  “And yes,” he started, adding more when her iridescent gaze rose to his. “By the end of this evening…you will not be disappointed.”

  He smartly kept the words, neither will I, hidden inside his thoughts.

  Only a fool of a man would have said them aloud, and perhaps scared away his prey. As hot, horny prey as Mecenna was, Casey wasn’t a fool. If she resisted, balked, or even tried making his life miserable in any distinguishing way, he was quite capable of punishing her in the worst possible way.

  Abstinence.

  Casey wasn’t a fool and he wasn’t ignorant. Both he and Mecenna wanted what they should not have, and it was now time to put that want to the test.

  Chapter Six

  Sara Rogan had been kissed many times; more times than she could possibly count. She had sex more times than she should’ve and with far too many men than the required—perhaps moralistic amount—for a woman her age. But this was different. Casey was different.

  In a way, this difference scared her…more than Mecenna Jones ever found out as really being Sara Rogan.

  Casey had made her life difficult from the moment she first took the job at his nightclub, and he’d continued this difficulty as though it gave him tremendous power—even infinite pleasure. He wanted her to work hard, be civilized to the paying customers, care about her looks, and made certain she never gave out any personal favors to anyone confirmed as ineligible for those favors; meaning men who were fucking rich and worth the hassle of a pliable woman.

  Thus far, Lace had been the only one of five girls with an agreed confirmation; which netted Lace’s paycheck nearly four thousand dollars bonus, on top of the thirty-five dollars an hour she made working the pole. Stripping was highly profitable.

  No one was certain if Griffen pimped out Lace, or if consent had been mutual with the customer and the dancer. All his girls knew was Lace had a hell of a bonus for a few crummy hours of work, and none of them really asked too many questions afterward. They all privately hoped a windfall like it would someday land in their backyard, but not one of the girls was holding their breath for it to happen.

  Griffen had his favorites, and they all knew Lace was at the top of the list. She’d been with him the longest.

  Not so, for Sara. She’d been hired last among the five. Besides, she already had her windfall. Boyd McCarlye rang that bell—the hard way.

  She knew more than anyone one bad apple dropped in the backyard could easily draw in the dangerous hornets. Sara did not want to go through pain like that again. It would hurt too damn much to endure twice.

  So, yes, she could honesty say Casey had made her life difficult from the first moment she met him. He gave her the third degree a long time ago, the required drug tests every other month, even the once over with a leisurely roam of the eyes and done within the first five rapid blinks upon introduction. And all this difficulty made, he’d done as a prerequisite toward tonight. Sloppy, careless, and heartless
would have been a real turn off with the man. He liked things neat, precise, and warm. He wanted a woman to think while on her feet. He wanted her to care about people, which Sara had, in a roundabout way. And he wanted her to stay fit and trim.

  Fit, she was. Trim, most definitely. Pilates was a fucking Godsend to a woman.

  But thinking on her feet or caring too much about others? Hell, no. If she’d done that, she would not be inside this man’s car, contemplating having sex in her imminent future with the person who signs her paychecks and could take those funds away in the blink of an eye.

  For this one moment in time, she’d be little more than his dancing whore—and she was fine with that, if the reward worth the effort.

  Her eyes darted to his lap. The anticipation of any reward was wetting the panties in a real bad way.

  Casey drove the sports car into an underground parking garage beneath his home. She quickly knew why he’d done all he had to her. He did it for himself.

  Her eyes slid cautiously over the entire man, a man who had complete control. She could see a profile of determination, a twitch of muscle in the jaw-line that stated he wasn’t playing her the fool, as first suspected. When his ice-blue eyes turned her way, the heat he was trying to hold back hit Sara like a ton of bricks; its affect caused the sharp intake of her breath.

  Casey wanted her to dance—but only for his view. He wanted this dance done as a private show. And he was not about to take any argument against this otherwise.

  The only thing Sara wasn’t certain about was if a private show would actually escalate into the physical act of sex. Controlled men could pull back from want when need overtook all else. Controlled men, at times, eventually became too controlled—they could easily turn into almost frustrating.

  With any hope, Casey wanted her more than he needed her, because she sure as hell desired both. In fact, Sara’s need was so great, the clothing on her person felt claustrophobic. She couldn’t wait to get out of her jeans and tank top and start on her night with this man.

  First, however, she had to get out of his car, and for the moment, she could not make her hands work to save her soul. Sara was nervous. An entity of fate that made otherwise normal decisions inside one’s head excruciatingly painful.