by Drew Elyse
You’d think after half a year of her living in the house, I’d remember she was there and not walk around with my junk hanging out. Hell, most people would probably think the repeated threats of castration from the men who used to live here would break the habit. Clearly, I was meant to live alone.
I didn’t, though. I hadn’t in longer than I could remember.
Since I’d been sprung from prison after five years, I’d been living in the old farmhouse I called home. The house, like me, belonged to the Savage Disciples MC. The building and sixty acres of land it sat on had belonged to a brother ages ago. He left it to the club when he passed. At the time, it was the center of all Disciples shit. We’d moved away from that when we landed a foreclosed warehouse at a steal and converted it into the new clubhouse. Still, we kept this place because it was off the beaten path, and it gave brothers like myself a place to crash when we didn’t want to stay at the clubhouse.
For me, it was easier than trying to get a lease with a felony record. I knew damn well I was lucky to be part of the club and always had secure jobs through them, or I’d really have to experience how hard it was for guys with that shit in their background.
The stomping feet brought me back to the moment a second before one of my club brothers, Ace, followed the sound of his woman’s distress into the hall.
“Motherfucker,” he bit off before averting his eyes too. “Again with this shit? One of these days, I’m going to cut your fucking junk off. Keep your cock away from my girl.”
See? Castration threats. Always. Part of me wanted to criticize the lack of creativity there, but I was just smart enough to know that wasn’t in my best interest.
“Can’t a man free-ball in his own home?”
Quinn gave another squeak, probably recalling the eyeful of those balls in question, and Ace shot me a glare that repeated his threat without words.
“Hey, you got a problem with it, why don’t you put your woman up in a place of your own where you don’t have my special form of companionship?”
I was really, really tempted to make a quip about showing Quinn even more companionship, but she was a sweet girl. If it’d been Ember—another brother’s woman, as well as a brother’s daughter—I might have done it, even at the risk of Jager turning his years of underground fighting experience on me. She was able to take it and give back as good as she got. Quinn, though, was a little too shy for me to pull that shit with.
“One fucking month,” Ace snapped. “Just keep your fucking pants on until then.”
Without letting me get another word in, he herded his girl back into their room with her hands still blocking her likely shut eyes muttering about “fucking escrow.” Rather than sticking around to see if he would come back out and serve up retribution, I got my ass in the shower. Hopefully some hot water would wash away the whiskey cloud or I was in for a long fucking day.
The hangover was receding with the help of food and pounding back an energy drink by the time I got to the strip club.
Candy Shop was my baby. It was a club investment, but I’d been the one to buy it from my buddy Rick when he decided to get out of the business.
Okay, so Rick was my friend because I’d been his customer first. What the fuck ever.
Point was, I hadn’t just rallied to take over the place because I wanted to hit a strip club for free whenever the hell I felt like it. I’d brought the issue to my brothers because Rick ran a good club, a profitable one, but I knew I could do better.
I maneuvered my bike into the designated motorcycle parking—an addition I’d made, and one that seemed to be working better than having guys who came on their bikes taking up a whole parking spot each. As I made my way to the door, I checked my phone. Nothing to see there except the time glaringly pointing out I was late. I wasn’t big on schedules and meetings, but even I recognized the necessity of monthly sit-downs with my managers to cover the bases. Even though I communicated with them regularly, it was good to get everyone in one place with nothing else distracting them.
There was no point in trying to contain the shit-eating grin that crept onto my face. My being late was going to piss Avery off. It always did. Actually, it seemed like everything I did pissed her off. Particularly when I half begged her to let me take her home.
A nice guy would drop it and let her off the hook.
I wasn’t a nice guy.
I sauntered through the empty club to the table Avery and the bar manager, Roy, were sitting at. When I got close and pulled out a chair, I made no effort to contain the moan of satisfaction at the cupcakes on the table. I fell on those fuckers like they were the last scrap of food in twenty miles.
“Hello to you, too,” Avery sassed, but I kept my focus on the delicious little morsel in my hand before I took in the one seated across the table.
One feast at a time.
Today’s cupcakes were as good as ever. Chocolate with a hint of coffee. It didn’t even matter that I’d already scarfed down two eggs, hash browns, and pancakes on a less-than-steady stomach. I could eat a dozen of those sweet treats.
Once I’d gotten a taste, I let myself enjoy my other treat.
Avery was watching me with a mix of annoyance and amusement twisting those plump fucking lips of hers. Her skin was makeup free, showing off the freckles covering her cheeks and nose, and her long, red hair was pulled into a ponytail.
Christ, that hair.
It was the first thing I’d noticed about her—fuck, it was the first thing anyone noticed about her. The bright, coppery color wasn’t some bottled shit. She kept it long, so long it draped all the way to the small of her back. When she was on stage, she’d wear it down, curled a bit, and just messy enough to make you think all kinds of thoughts about how you could give her the same style without her sitting in front of a mirror, though a mirror would be a great addition.
All that hair on her sexy as fuck body was an image few men wouldn’t get sunk by, and she played that shit up. From the second she hit that stage to the moment she left, that hair was as much a part of the show as the clothes she took off.
Hell, even her stage name was Cherry Pie.
I leveled her with a stare that made most women squirm right off their seats and into my lap. Avery didn’t so much as shift.
“You finally gonna give me what I want today?”
Her expression was bored, but she couldn’t quite keep the flicker of heat from those hazel eyes. It was that little tell that kept me at her. If I genuinely thought she wasn’t interested, I’d have given up the ghost a long time ago. That wasn’t the case, though. Avery thought I was an asshole, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want a taste.
“Not a chance,” she shot me down.
Unaffected, since I knew that was what I was going to get, I took a shot at the other battle I’d been locked in with her for far too long. “How about you just finally tell me where you get these fuckin’ things?” I tried, lifting my half-demolished cupcake up a bit.
Her eyes darted to the side when Roy laughed. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?” I asked him.
“Nothing,” Avery clipped before he could respond. The fucker chuckled while she started sorting through the papers in front of her, all business as always. Then, like that exchange hadn’t even happened, she said, “I’ve got the schedules—”
“Wait. Just wait one fuckin’ minute,” I cut in. I kicked out a thumb to Roy, the smug bastard now reclining in his chair. “Why the fuck does he know where you get the sweets, but you won’t tell me?”
“She likes me,” Roy goaded.
Everyone liked Roy. That’s why he was good behind a bar. He was in his mid-forties, rough enough that drunk patrons weren’t likely to fuck with him, but still charming enough to keep the women who came in happy. Though, that charm was all an act. He had a woman at home he was gone for. They’d been together nearly twenty years. Sheila was an ER nurse. She worked nights, so Roy was happy to work the bar here so they could keep the
same hours. Sheila also knew exactly what kind of injuries you could and couldn’t come back from, so if that charm ever stopped being an act, Roy would be in for a world of hurt.
“Can we focus, children?” Avery interjected.
“I don’t do the whole mommy play thing, but we could do some sort of school teacher bit if that’s what it takes.”
“You’re fucking sick,” Roy muttered, but it wasn’t like he didn’t experience this enough.
“Mommy play? Seriously?” There was no spark in her eyes that time, which I’d take. I’d be willing to do a lot to get her into bed with me, but playing at being a little boy really did not do it for me.
Though, I was going to get some mileage out of that teacher thing.
Or maybe a schoolgirl.
What I could do with Avery in a short plaid skirt. Maybe I’d get a ruler out. I wasn’t really into the pain thing, but a little spanking before I—
“Daz? You okay there, buddy?” Roy’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts.
Too bad. That shit was getting good.
“I’m straight,” I assured them. Just some minor blood flow issues making my pants snug.
It didn’t help that when I looked up, there was a fire blazing in Avery’s eyes. She knew exactly what she did to me, and she could play it coy all she wanted, but she enjoyed that shit. If she wanted to play games, I was right here to be her toy. I held her gaze from across the small table, not disguising for one second how badly I’d love to lay her out right there and devour her. I’d give her credit, she held out longer than any other woman I’d ever looked at that way. Usually, they either glanced away, acting—or actually being—shy, or threw themselves at me. Avery didn’t do either.
Like a door slamming shut right in my face, that burning heat disappeared from her eyes, and she calmly said, “Can we get to this now?”
She was good. A lesser man might not have seen the signs, or would have just given up anyway. I wasn’t that man, and she wasn’t getting me off her scent so easily. Not until I got a taste.
Snatching up another cupcake, I kicked back in my chair and got down to business.
The insistent whirring coming from the countertop rang out over the song playing, but I didn’t care. The sound of the stand mixer running was music to my ears.
In the metal mixing bowl, egg whites that would become a perfect Italian buttercream were whipping into a fluffy mass. Meanwhile, the sugar and water were reducing into a syrup on the stove.
I’d long since stopped needing the battered, hand-written instructions I had sitting open a few feet away, safely removed from the baking mess. Still, I always kept the old thing around when I was in the kitchen. It felt a bit like having my gran beside me.
“The trick is not to let the syrup hit the side of the mixer bowl, sweets. You do that, it’ll harden and you’ll have yourself some crunchy bits in the frosting.”
We were making a birthday cake. My birthday cake. Today, I was nine years old. Gran had asked a few days ago what type of cake I wanted, and I told her I wanted to try to make it this year.
Gran didn’t tell me I couldn’t, not like Mom had when I told her we were going to. She just asked what flavor I wanted so she could make sure we had everything we needed.
I loved being in the kitchen with Gran. Even though she said the kitchen in her apartment at the assisted living place was “not worth the spit to shine it,” being there with her was always better than being at the trailer. Mom usually wasn’t home, even after her shift ended, and there wasn’t much to do. That was why I rode my bike to spend time with Gran most days when I wasn’t at school.
Picking up the pot of hot syrup, I poured the clear liquid in nice and slow like I was told, aiming the stream right between the bowl and whizzing whisk.
“Nice and easy, child. That’s good,” Gran coached.
Good. In this kitchen, with my gran, I did good. I was good at baking, and Gran would teach me more. It was the only place I heard that. And it wasn’t just Gran. The other old folks around who tried the things we made said it too. I was good at this. This one thing was mine, and I would learn everything Gran could teach me to make me even better.
When the syrup was all mixed in, and the meringue had to be whipped until it was cool, I looked at Gran.
“I think I want to open a bakery someday,” I said, admitting the dream I’d had in my head for months.
She smiled. “I think that’s a wonderful goal, sweets.”
Goal. Not a dream.
Yes. Dreams were for sleeping. I couldn’t bake in my sleep.
One day, I was going to own a bakery. That was my goal.
It was funny. Even as a kid, I’d never been a dreamer. I’d watched my mother hold onto her dream of finding a man with deep pockets she could leech off of, someone who could get her out of the trailer park just because she would get in his bed. And who would get her out, specifically. I’d have been brought along because I was a kid, but it wasn’t like she’d been dreaming of a better life for her daughter. She just wanted some rich fool of a man who’d be charmed into making her a kept woman.
Of course, that never worked.
It didn’t help that she looked for this mystical prince charming with padded pockets in seedy dive bars, barely dressed and usually wearing a couple days’ worth of caked on makeup. I’m not saying her single-minded pursuit would have worked anywhere, but she was definitely looking in the wrong places to even have a shot.
I’d realized young her method wasn’t the way to get what you wanted out of life. No one was showing up to hand you your dreams on a silver platter. Mom used to say her time was coming, but that was a crock. The universe wasn’t going to magically call out your number and grant your wishes like you were waiting at a deli counter.
No, in the real world you had to go out and get what you wanted for yourself. And even then, you had to prioritize.
Most of my life, I’d wanted to run a bakery, and I hadn’t managed to make that a reality. Not yet. Maybe never. What I had done was what my mother always wanted to do, and I’d told myself I wouldn’t rest until I achieved it. I got myself out of that trailer park and set myself up well enough to know I’d never be going back.
I owned my house. It wasn’t huge, it wasn’t flashy, but it was mine. My car was paid off. I had savings. And I was transitioning myself into a job I could do for longer than my dancing career would last. It wasn’t a lifetime plan, it wasn’t a dream come to life around me, but it was financial security that had nothing to do with relying on some man to provide for me.
The simple pleasure of a life I built for myself and fresh cupcakes awaiting frosting on the counter was enough to keep me satisfied.
Lubing up your whole body before going out onstage was a distinct and unpleasant torture. True, I never got dry skin—that was the one benefit. Sitting around between dances while all greasy and every bit of your skin feeling tacky as the stuff dried, however, might have been my least favorite part of the job.
Sure, one might think it was the asshole customers who thought me taking my clothes off onstage meant I was fair game. Or maybe most women might have thought it was the getting-naked-with-an-audience thing. Those didn’t bother me.
The oil did.
Still, having to choose between oiling up or going the glitter route, I was going to pick oil every time.
Anyone who thought glitter in general was a nuisance because it got everywhere and never went away didn’t know the unique hell of covering your entire body in it. If I never spent weeks randomly finding glitter in various orifices again, I’d die a happy woman.
My hair was up in curlers and I was slicking up my legs for the first time of the night when the knock came at my door.
Since the promotion, I’d had my own dressing room. That was because it also served as an office. I was responsible for taking care of the girls and scheduling them, and I needed a place to do that where there was more than the individual vanities and lockers in the
main dressing area.
Throwing on my robe, I went for the door, and instantly wanted to kick myself for not asking who it was first.
“Damn, I was hopin’ for no robe,” Daz said by way of greeting, that cocky smile on full display and his green eyes roving over the exposed skin of my legs.
“You know, women can win a lot of money when they sue for workplace harassment,” I replied off-handedly as I moved back to the vanity.
He took the unspoken cue to step inside, shutting the door behind him. “You honestly tell me you feel harassed, and not just because I’m making it hard for you to deny us what we both want, I’ll stop.”
“Did you come in here for a reason?”
Despite my best efforts, the airy tone of my voice didn’t distract him from the fact that I was changing the subject. His triumphant grin made that clear enough. Trying to appear unaffected by his flirting or the knowledge that his game was still on, I picked the bottle of oil back up and slathered some more on my calf, keeping my focus on rubbing it across the surface in an even layer.
“Christ, you don’t even need to dance. We could put you up on stage just doing that shit and we’d still have a line outside,” he grunted.
I’d never admit it aloud, and absolutely wouldn’t even consider saying it with Daz around, but I felt a thrill rush through me at the power he was admitting I held.
“If you want a show, you know as well as I do what time I go on tonight. Now, what’d you need?”
Even as I said the words, all business, I kept running my hands up and down my leg, moving up to my thigh even though I always started at the top and worked my way down. My thighs were already set.
“Need you to talk to the girls, make sure no one has any issues in or out of the club we need to know about.”
That stopped my rubbing. My head shot around to face him. “Why? What’s going on?”
“Nothing much yet. Gotten a few hang ups on the phone line over the last couple days. Could be some loser hoping he’ll get one of you so he can share whatever fucked up fantasies he’s got who’s cutting and running when he hears a dude on the line. Could be something more. Just want to get a finger on the pulse early if there’s a chance this is going to be a problem.”