“You’re just full of tricks. Is there anything else you feel I should know?”
“I love working here. No job is perfect, but this one’s pretty close. Most nights, it’s a fun job and I enjoy myself. I get sexual energy from the men even while they watch me from a distance, and it empowers me. Like a battery, it fills me. Charges me. I have four tails, and most twenty-year-olds just have one.” She looked at me a second, as if deciding how much to say. “I was worried about things changing, after the riots, when so many of your brothers died. I’m so sorry for the loss. You seem capable, but you have big shoes to fill. As long as you don’t make too many changes, I think Blaze is going to be fine.”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence. If you think I’m making a bad decision, please come see me in my office and talk to me about it behind closed doors. I’ll listen to your counsel. I may or may not be able to follow it, but I’ll appreciate hearing it, either way.” No way would I make this offer to most employees, but Jade had a good head on her shoulders.
She glanced at the clock, and I stood. “Yes, that’s our time. I’ll walk you out.”
Jade drove a black Acura RDX. Not cheap, but about as practical as you could get in a luxury vehicle. I watched her drive away and went back inside. I’d asked Enigma to wait for me — one of the two sweetbutts Mad Dog had enlisted as a dancer. She seemed to have done okay, working the crowd and giving lap dances. She even helped the waitresses a few times, and I wanted to encourage that.
She’d put jeans and a hoodie on, and she was lost in thought when I came back inside.
“How was your first night?” I asked.
“It was okay. I made more money than I expected. I wasn’t sure about getting on stage, but after watching the other girls all night, I think I’ll be able to work something up. It’s like Mad Dog said — I just need to find my style.”
“There are extra helmets here, I’ll get one for you. You’re going home with me tonight — watching strippers all night has my dick all kinds of frustrated. Do we need to stop and pick anything up at your place?”
“Mad Dog put three of us in an apartment together. I can walk home when you’re finished with me, but I need to text Squatch and let him know where I’ll be.”
We don’t keep track of our sweetbutts. If they want to fuck, they show up. Sometimes we call them in for events, but otherwise, they’re pretty much on their own. Though, I realized that may not be the case in Birmingham, where most of the sweetbutts lived in the complex. I wondered how that was going to work long term.
“He got a claim on you?” I hadn’t picked up on it. Plus, it didn’t make sense. They were both wolves — if they had a thing, Enigma wouldn’t be giving lap dances. Wolves don’t share.
“No, but if we aren’t coming home, he wants to know where we are. I think losing so many people...” She shrugged. “They’re careful with us. The family’s a lot smaller now.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket and called Squatch. “I’m taking Enigma to my place for the night. She said you’d want to know.”
“I do. Thanks for letting me know. How’d she and Crystal do?”
“Seemed to handle everything okay.”
“And how was your first night?”
“I have no idea why ya’ll thought running girls was the same as managing a damned titty bar. Not the same thing at all.”
He chuckled. “Dementor says you sailed through it.”
“I don’t know about that, but I didn’t flame out.”
Bobcat
Enigma undressed and stepped into my shower without asking if she could use it, but I wasn’t too upset. It didn’t feel like my space yet. Plus, I wanted her to take a shower. Too many men had touched her. The cat didn’t much care, but I did.
Her dark skin contrasted with the white shower, and I stood and watched her through the clear shower curtain a second. She’s truly beautiful, with curves in all the right places, and I suddenly couldn’t wait to get my dick in her.
However, my hand was still a foot from grabbing the shower curtain and moving it so I could get in when she scowled at me and shook her head. “Oh no. I ain’t getting’ my hair wet. You need to wait until I’m done, pretty kitty.”
The sweetbutts are supposed to do as they’re told, but I couldn’t get upset with her over this. I’d long ago learned you fuck with even a submissive woman’s hair at your own risk. I showed her both my palms and backed away slowly. “Wouldn’t dream of fucking with your hair. I’ll grab a quick shower when you’re done.”
My inner cat wasn’t thrilled with the unknown wolf in our space, but he was used to it enough, I could get him to chill. He’d grown accustomed to our brothers in Chattanooga, but he still needed time around wolves he didn’t know well. There’d been a sweet little mountain lion sweetbutt in Birmingham he’d been particularly fond of, but she’d been killed during the battle. They’d lost all their human sweetbutts and ol’ladies in the fire, and about half of the supernatural sweetbutts. Velvet was the only surviving ol’lady.
I took a fast shower when Enigma finished. When I returned, I found her in my bed, curled up under the covers, nearly asleep.
I stood over her, looking down. “Some of the dancers say they get energy from the crowd. It’s as if when someone’s focus is on them, they get that person’s sexual energy.”
“Sounds more like an energy vampire than a shapeshifter.” Her voice was drowsy, but comfortable.
“So, you didn’t get any of that tonight?”
“I got their money. That’s enough.”
“Where’d you work before?”
She named a high dollar restaurant — another casualty of the riots. She’d likely made damned good tips.
“That’s why you didn’t think filling in for the waitresses was a big deal?”
“Right. The other dancers got pissed at me for helping, but it seems to me, the customers’ needs come first.”
“They do, and I’m not going to implement the changes this week, but eventually, that’s gonna be the rule. Dancers won’t take orders, but if you see a food or drink order ready for a table you’ve been working, you’ll grab it on the way. Keep doin’ what you’re doing. I approve.”
I’d planned to take her ass so I wouldn’t have to deal with a condom, but with her this tired, it seemed a better idea to start with her pussy. My dick was standing proud and ready, impatient.
“Any chance I can talk you into doggie style?” she asked.
I rolled a condom on, told her to stay put, and slid under the covers behind her. She was curled on her side, so it wasn’t at all hard to spoon in behind her and let my dick find her heat.
We both groaned when I entered her, and she said, “Need this. I’m exhausted, but the night was like a big tease.” She groaned again and then chuckled. “Also, it’s kinda nice not to be the one doin’ all the work.”
I readjusted the angle of her torso a few inches and pressed the rest of the way inside her. I scented arousal over the exhaustion, and I groaned in bliss, buried to my balls. I ran my hand up her side, found a nipple, and pinched it harder than was probably necessary, but I was ready for her to wiggle and squirm.
He cunt clamped down on my dick and her back arched, but she reached to move my hand, so I pinched harder. “Move your hands, sweetheart. You don’t get to push me away.”
She moved her hands six inches away and squeezed them into tiny fists. “Fuck. Don’t like that much pain. Please!”
I backed off slowly and let go of her nipple. “Please goes a long way with me. You say you don’t like it, but you’re humping my cock now, so your body does.”
“Please tell me you aren’t going to try to tell me I cain’t come!”
So many things wrong with that sentence, but I understood what she meant. “Usually, yeah, but you’re tired and I’ll make an exception. Come when you want, but you have to know your orgasm doesn’t mean I’m finished. If coming will take the edge off enough you’ll want to be
done, you should deny yourself until I’m finished.”
She shook her head. “An orgasm don’t mean I’m done.”
I popped my hips forward hard and slammed into her. “You know your body. Come when you want.”
I fucked her a good forty minutes before I was ready to nut and fall asleep. She had around a dozen orgasms, and I reveled in her pleasure. Not to mention the way her pussy contracted and spasmed around my dick. Pure heaven.
I was going to give myself a few moments to recover before I cleaned us up, but she removed the condom, went to the bathroom, used the toilet, and returned with a damp washcloth to clean me.
“Thanks, I was going to do it in a few.”
“Not a problem. I needed to pee anyway. Sleep. We both had a rough first night.”
Chapter Five
Bobcat
I took Enigma’s ass the next morning before I fed her a giant breakfast and walked her home. Yeah, the complex should be safe, but we didn’t have enough people to properly patrol it at this hour. Someone manned the control room and watched the cameras, but no one was scheduled for patrol in the early morning hours.
The Chattanooga Chapter had started with a half-dozen members, but they’d only had one business to start. Those first months, they’d run the bike shop and they’d patrolled an ever-growing claimed territory as their membership grew. Now, with the bike and classic car shop, restaurant, gun store and shooting range, martial arts studio, workin’ girls, and laundromats, it took a huge membership to make sure every business was well staffed.
Birmingham had a bike shop, restaurant, fake spa, titty bar, apartment complex, and laundromats — and not even close to enough members to handle every business. Members were pulling double duty, and the club was borrowing people from other chapters until they could build their membership up again, but you need time for people to prospect in before you can trust them, so it wasn’t going to be a fast process.
I didn’t walk Enigma all the way to her door, just far enough I could see her go inside, and then I made my way to the clubhouse. Why had I thought of the damned mongoose attorney while I’d been in the wolf’s ass? That shit wasn’t going to fly. The lawyer was a bitch-on-wheels and hadn’t given me a single reason to think she was interested in me. She was clearly off limits.
Mad Dog was scheduled to be in the control room, and I went straight to it and took a seat beside him, watching the monitors of all RTMC properties in town.
“I need to learn to help out in here,” I told him. Everyone was handling a shift in here on a rotation, but they hadn’t put me on the schedule yet.
“Yeah, but not yet. Big D tells me you had an eventful first night.”
I’d noted a few of them referring to Dementor as Big D or sometimes The D. “A few people warned me about ongoing diva drama. I don’t have time for that shit.”
“If you can stop it, you’ll be the first. Waitresses and dancers have always drawn battle lines.”
“Do you have issues with your girls being at war with each other at the spa?”
“Not nearly as much. We have two actual massage therapists who think they’re better than everyone else. Surprisingly, the yoga teacher gets along with everyone. I’d worried about her, but she’s chill.”
People who made an appointment and didn’t specify they wanted sex got the real massage therapists. The yoga classes were legit — a way to throw off the cops and the IRS. There was some kind of new-age aromatherapy thing, too. It was done in a separate building, far from the others because the supernaturals couldn’t stand the smell. Our noses are way too sensitive for that shit.
“If you don’t have any submissive sweetbutts who like pain, I may need to schedule a few hours with a pro-sub at the spa. Enigma was better than nothing, but not by much. I don’t have the time or appetite for a relationship right now, but I need to wield a whip and hear someone scream.”
“None of the sweetbutts are into heavy impact play. They have to take the belt or paddle if they get in trouble, but otherwise, we don’t push them in that direction too much. Squatch does some OTK stuff with his hand to warm them up sometimes, but that’s about it.”
“You need more people.”
“We aren’t the only chapter that lost brothers. Ya’ll got lucky, especially considering the biggest battles happened there.”
“Dawg’s in Orlando bartending, but he’s only staying three months, or whenever their spring break rush is over. Nix and Tippy are only in Asheville to manage their gun store a few months. You brought me in for a year. Why?”
“We’re hopin’ you’ll bond with us and stay, but if you don’t, no hard feelin’s.”
“McGyver’s Blueberry probably wouldn’t have a problem visiting her dad for a month. That’d tide us over here until Orange Crush and Khan can come up from Mobile and get settled in.”
He didn’t look away from the monitors, but I could tell I had his attention. “Mac’s a geek. You’re saying we should put him in here?”
“Yeah. From what I can tell, you’re working twenty-hour days since you’re taking on so many control room hours. You can’t do that forever.”
He sighed. “I’ll talk to Duke.”
Bobcat
Waitresses have to be at work thirty minutes before we open, kitchen staff arrives an hour early. Dancers just have to be ready to go when the doors open to the public, which Mad Dog told me usually means coming in around thirty minutes early, but some can get ready faster. Looking over past timecard data sheets, it looked like at least one or two people per shift clocked in from two to ten minutes late, but no one was late Saturday night. Soul’s screams had done the trick.
All the waitresses were human when I first started, and one of them is as redneck as you can get, but it works for her. Barbara Ann Billingsly, and she goes by Billy. She isn’t pretty in the classic sense, but the way she animates her face, and her general outgoing friendliness make her attractive. Not beautiful, but far from ugly. She’d signed up to meet with me before her shift, and I looked forward to learning a little more about her.
“Why do they call you Bobcat?” she asked as she came in and took a seat without waiting for an invitation. “Mad Dog, Sasquatch. The old bartender was Moon Pie, but we just called him Moon. Ya’ll have some funny names. My mama was terrified when I told her I was going to work for the bikers, but I told her there was no place safer than being your employee. You know, so long as I don’t rip ya’ll off or nothin’, but I wouldn’t do that. Why’d you want to meet with all of us alone?”
I couldn’t help my smile. Billy’s happy outlook on life was infectious. “So I can get to know all of you a little better. Tell me, where do you see yourself in five years?”
She sat back and frowned a few seconds, and then gave me a look that clearly told me she hadn’t considered the question and thought I was rude for asking it. “I just live one day at a time. I figure at some point I’ll get married and have kids. I might need to waitress somewhere else once my kids start school because I won’t want my job reflectin’ poorly on them. For now, I can make more here than I can at most any other place, and the hours are reg’lar. I don’t like wakin’ up early. I’ve always been a night owl, and I love a party. Here, I get to go to a party every night, and I get paid for it.”
“You didn’t stay with the MC during the rioting and looting. Where’d you go?”
“My parents have a place outside of town. Me and my brother and sister went. They keep plenty of food stocked. We managed fine.”
Her last sentence had something off. I looked her body language over and asked, “Ya’ll had to kill people who tried to take your shit, didn’t you?’
She shrugged. “Best not to talk about what has to be done in times of war.”
I nodded. “Exactly right. What do you do when you aren’t working?”
“Just, whatever. Hang out with friends, or cook for people who are down on their luck. My mama’s neighbor’s daughter had a wreck and she’s in the hospita
l. I cooked a big creamy chicken noodle bake casserole when I woke up this afternoon, and I took it to her house on my way to work so her husband won’t have to deal with what to feed the kids. My Rufus is a certified therapy dog, and I take him to the hospital on Mondays, since we don’t work then. The cancer floor gets separated by those allergic to animals and those not allergic, so we don’t make some of them worse. I know where I can take him and where we need to stay away from. Same with the children’s hospital, but we don’t go there much anymore because the new director’s an ass and life’s too short to deal with assholes.”
I swear, Billy talked the entire twenty minutes. I barely got her stopped to let her know our time was up. I was exhausted just listening to her, but I had a really good handle on her character. She came off as a brainless human at first glance, but she had grit and common sense. I liked her, though I wouldn’t voluntarily spend a whole lot of time around her. The girl could talk your ear off.
There wasn’t any need in asking whether she might consider dancing. She was an open book about her life, and stripping requires a bit of guile. Lap dancers must pretend the person she’s squirming on makes her hot, even if she’s disgusted by him. Or her. Billy wasn’t capable of that kind of deceit. She knew when to keep her mouth shut, but that was different than pretending to be something she isn’t.
The chatter in the dressing room quieted when I walked in. I’d listened to their conversation as I approached, and they hadn’t been talking about anything they’d want to keep from me — just general girl talk. Their silence showed their discomfort around me, but we’d get beyond that. I’d meant to intimidate them as a group, but I hoped to fix that one-on-one. They needed to know I had zero patience for drama, but that I was in their corner so long as they didn’t make me have to deal with petty shit.
“Fifteen minutes until the doors open. Is there anything I need to know? Something I screwed up last night that I need to not do again? Something I could do to help ya’ll that no one’s told me about?”
Bobcat (Rolling Thunder MC Birmingham Book 2) Page 4