Page 4

After clocking in, I walked across the hall to our dressing room. Missy and Renita sat at their vanity stations glamming up for their shifts.

“Ladies,” I said while heading to my locker, deciding on the metallic purple sequin number for my first dance.

I liked the bling—not that it mattered because I wouldn’t be wearing it for very long.

The men liked big hair so I gave them big hair.

They liked heavy makeup so I gave them heavy makeup.

It suited the situation, as I didn’t need any regulars to recognize me outside the club.

In my day to day, I wore my hair natural and very light makeup.

Since they mostly looked at my tits anyway, I felt confident that I looked different enough as to not be harassed in public.

I went by Sapphire because Diamond, Amber, Crystal, and Jade were already taken when I’d started work here.

Most of the men had their favorites and I relied on those tips. We got paid well, but the tips helped me the most. Once they announced me, I took to the stage and when the music started, I got to work.

Jesus, I remembered the fear of showing my tits to a room full of strangers for the first time. Given only two men had ever seen me naked up till then, I had to fight back tears throughout the routine. This is for Benny . I kept chanting that over and over in my head for the entire first dance.

Now, whatever. They were just tits.

I shook my ass in a new guy’s face, and he slid a crisp hundred into my garter without blinking. Don, one of my regulars, wasn’t about to be outdone. By the time the first song ended, he’d tucked five hundreds into my thong, and I knew he was just getting warmed up.

My routine built with each set. First number: the top came off, revealing sparkly heart, diamond, club or spade shaped pasties, depending on the costume I wore.

Second set? No more pasties. Full-on nip.

And by the third and final dance of the night, the thong disappeared, too.

Don really got generous once the thong came off.

Technically, men weren’t allowed to pleasure themselves in the club, but I’d seen Don’s hand dip below the table the first night I’d gone full nude.

Gross? Sure. But he kept it in his pants and brought the mess home, so I figured we were even.

I never said a word to management. As long as he didn’t cross the line, we had a solid, if unspoken, agreement.

Big tips. Minimal drama. Win-win.

At the close of the song, I picked up the bills that hadn’t made it into my garter or my thong and ran off the stage. Renita went on next.

Dancers were allowed to keep locks on our lockers because even though I trusted my fellow dancers, you couldn’t trust everybody who worked the club and all the staff had access to the room.

After counting out my first take, I shoved it inside my purse and dressed for my next number.

I strictly worked the stage. Some clubs had their dancers do private dances and lap dances for the men—or sometimes women—in the audience who paid for one.

But when I’d come in as a new hire, I’d been warned by Renita that a lot of the high-paying customers expected more than a dance—especially in the private rooms—and management did nothing to protect us.

The girls threatened to call the owner. We all knew McLovin was getting kickbacks from those dances.

If he forced any of us, he’d be acting as a pimp and that meant jail time.

Instead, he hired on dancers who strictly worked the floor and private rooms. Whatever they did or didn’t do was up to them. I didn’t judge.

Since I didn’t get to see very much of my boy on days when I worked both jobs, I FaceTimed him before he went to sleep for the night.

Mrs. Grazia did the talking for him. He loved seeing my face and hearing my voice. I loved seeing his sweet face. She had him tucked into his little toddler bed and I read him one of his favorite stories. Yes, I kept a small library of books in my locker for just this purpose.

“Night, buddy,” I whispered, watching his eyes lull closed. Mrs. Grazia gently ran her hand over his hair and walked out of his room, flicking off the light as she passed the switch. “I’ll be there bright and early tomorrow.”

She swatted my words away like always. “No. You need your sleep. You work too hard.”

“I do what I have to do.”

“He’s lucky to have you.”

God, I loved Mrs. Grazia. If anyone ever needed a boost to their self-esteem, they only needed to talk with Mrs. Grazia.

Building people up was her superpower. My mother had passed from cancer when I was seventeen.

My father lived in California with the family he’d wanted and just because my mother died didn’t mean he’d changed his mind.

Thus, I’d quit school my senior year, didn’t re-up the lease on the house because I couldn’t afford it, and moved to Charleston, where I’d found the job at the arena.

That was how I’d hooked up with Dane, Benny’s father.

The man played for the South Carolina Stingrays out of North Charleston.

They were an ECHL farm team for the Washington Capitals.

As farm teams worked, the Capitals got their talent from the AHL Hershey Bears, and the Bears got their talent from the Stingrays.

Being young and vulnerable, it was safe to say he’d impressed me right out of my pants. We’d dated for a year before I’d found out I was pregnant. Dane hadn’t taken the news well and had gotten drunk before practice. One good fall on the ice later and his career on the ice officially ended .

Now most of our interactions involved me trying to get him to help me with Benny’s bills.

Something he never seemed able to do. Go figure.

It was my fault. I needed to go through the courts to have it enforced, but every time he started with his sob story, I just didn’t have it in me to fight it.

The man was responsible for half of my son’s DNA.

But our interactions always left me feeling low.

Cut to Mrs. Grazia. If you asked her, I’d never made a bad decision in my life.

And I planned to keep her in Benny’s and my lives as long as possible. If the day came when she couldn’t take care of herself any longer, I’d step up. One hundred percent. Without a second thought.

Not all heroes wore capes. And Mrs. Grazia was definitely my hero.

“Let me take you and Benny out for breakfast, then. I’ll come get him about ten.”

“Okay,” she said. “Eleven is fine.”

“Mrs. Grazia?—”

“Sleep,” she ordered before hanging up on me.

At the end of the night, I changed into my street clothes, clocked out, and drove home. First thing first, I showered the night off my skin. I’d just rinsed the conditioner from my hair when there came a knock on my front door.

What in the…? Who’d be knocking at this time? I wrapped a towel around myself and walked out to the living room, grabbing up my phone from the coffee table where I had it charging. The pounding needed to stop so my neighbors didn’t wake up, but if I needed to call the cops, I would.

I looked through the peephole. Reece? What was—and then it hit me. The deal. He’d said he’d be over tonight.

He raised his hand to knock again and I opened the door. His eyes heated when they took me in with wet hair and in nothing but a towel. “How’d you get in?” I asked. “You have to be buzzed in.”

“Some drunk guy held the door open for me. ”

“Well, that’s great. I told you tonight wasn’t a good night.”

“Yeah, and I demanded your address and you gave it to me, so I guess it’s a fine night.”

Fuck. Why’d I give him my address?

Well, he’d made the drive here and he looked particularly hot in his jeans and that tight T-shirt. “How does this work, then?”

“What do you mean? I think you know how it works, Bree. Is your kid here? Do we need to worry about that?”

“No. And I mean, do I offer you a drink? Is there kissing? Or am I supposed to just drop down on the sofa and spread my legs?”

“Do you want to just spread your legs? Because I’m good with whatever.”

“You said this is just fucking. Well, I’ve never done this with a man I didn’t pick up in a bar. In a bar, there are drinks and small talk, a build-up. So I’m not sure of the rules.”

He snickered. “You want me to kiss you, just say so, babe.”

“Never—” I couldn’t even get the rest of the sentence out before he stepped forward, capturing me in his arms, that tractor-beam gaze dropped to my lips for a hairsbreadth of a moment before he crushed his mouth to mine.

It took me so completely off guard that I hardly had time to suck in a breath first, but the power in his lips made asphyxiation worthwhile.

This time, he let me run my fingers through his hair.

His warm skin prickled with goosebumps when I touched it and he groaned, lifting me.

I wrapped my legs around his waist. Reece walked me over to the sofa, dropped a knee to the cushion, and let go of my bottom without releasing my lips.

He pulled the towel from my body. I wanted every part of this man to touch me.

And as if he read my thoughts, Reece moved his hand down my stomach, over my pelvic bone, to play with my sex.

When he found a small thatch of curls there, he groaned again and began twisting the strands around his finger.

To show him I wanted more, I yanked his T-shirt up.

It took a couple of tugs to get it over his broad, muscled shoulders, but while I busied myself with that, he found my center, pressing and rubbing my clit with all the finesse of a man who knew how to pleasure a woman.

It’d been so long since a man had touched me this intimately.

Yes, I flirted with the men at the arena, but actually getting time to go to a bar? It’d been about a year since I’d last gone out. Mrs. Grazia offered, but I didn’t want to take advantage of her kindness.

I shifted my pelvis forward to make greater contact with the skin of his finger. “Need more?”