The Angel
I pull up to the diner and enter through the back, heading upstairs and bypassing the doorman, who knows better than to fuck with me. Inside, I make my way from one stage to the next, working my way through the themed, private rooms in Infernal Vices, one for each of the seven deadly sins. The girls are all hot as hell—the powerful clientele who frequent the exclusive club doesn’t pay to see ugly—but Dad picked a good variety. There’s something for every inclination, from girl-next-door types to tattooed, leather-clad baddies; girls who appeal to rich, upstanding deacons like Saint’s dad to hardened criminals like the head of the Skull and Crossbones, an ugly-ass old man with big fish lips and small, dead eyes who’s in Pride tonight.
I do my last dance in Envy. The new girl on the pole is like her room—green. She’s sexy though, and I get to do my Magic Mike routine for a group of panting onlookers. Most of them are equal opportunity horndogs when it comes to watching us perform. If their trophy wives caught them at our show—hell, if they were questioned under oath—the politicians and high-powered attorneys and judges would claim they were picturing themselves in my shoes. That they were envying me as I roll my hips sensuously between Gloria’s thighs.
But if they didn’t have to give the expected response, if they told the truth, half of them would admit they’re wishing I was on top of them. It’s no coincidence that Gloria’s most popular routine is the one where I join her on stage. Eventually, men who can have anyone get bored of only having women.
Even though I’m not interested in dudes, I can’t deny the rush of being on stage, untouchable, admired, desired.
Gloria must feel it too, because she arches her back and hooks her leg over mine. I roll us over, and she kneels over me while I thrust my hips up like I’m fucking her from below. Gloria swings her long blonde hair around, running her hands up her bare body.
I run my hands up her thighs, and she throws her head back and rolls her hips, riding me hard. I could fuck her if I wanted. Maverick says she’s easy, and even though he’s fucking her, that’s never stopped me before. We’ve been known to share a bitch on occasion, and this one is smokin’ hot. The only question is, why don’t I want to?
She’s writhing on top of me like a thirsty bitch, and it’s doing nothing for me. Maybe my dick is broken.
Except that can’t be true, because just thinking about Mercy makes shit start tingling.
Is that normal? Maybe I need to go by Dr. Swift’s, have him check me out, see if I suffer from Tingle Dick Disorder.
It’s not just tingling, though. Lately, whenever I catch a whiff of her scent on my clothes, my cock instantly takes notice, and if I let myself think about why the smell of her is all over me, it’s standing at attention in sixty seconds flat.
So, it’s not my dick. That makes me wonder if it’s Gloria, or any girl who isn’t Mercy Soules. I’ll have to study the topic further, gather some data. I’m not ready to throw in the towel, admit I’m whipped like a dog.
It’s definitely never happened before. I’ve never cared about a connection beyond the physical. Sure, I’m a little more discerning than Maverick, whose motto is “If there’s a hole, there’s a goal.”
I’m not a prude by any means—my motto is “the more, the merrier” when it comes to my buddies and my bed—but I’m downright old-fashioned by Mav’s standards. I prefer my partners have at least three holes, even if I can’t use them all at once. I can always loan them to a couple friends, make a party of it, and it never bothers me if a few swords cross in the process.
The big difference, though, is that I believe in happy endings and other fairytale shit, the very suggestion of which Maverick would find hilarious. My parents remain madly in love and concerningly obsessed with each other to this day, and they’ve never attempted to hide it. It’s embarrassing, and I’d never admit it to them, but I want that.
It doesn’t matter that I’ve never had a serious relationship. I always knew I would. I was waiting for the right girl, so I could have that kind of fairytale ending. I want to embarrass my kids by fucking my wife so hard the headboard busts a hole in the drywall.
Is Mercy that girl? It’s hard to imagine someone less likely to knock a hole in the wall than an uptight little virgin, but maybe there’s a tiger in there just waiting to be unleashed. I always figured the girl would be someone more like Gloria, who owns her body and her sexuality and isn’t afraid of anything. But clearly she’s not the one. My dick has made that abundantly clear.
When I finish my set with her, I go downstairs to the diner that is both my mom’s passion project and a front for the more fun stuff that goes on upstairs.
“Angel baby,” Mom calls, hustling from a table to wrap me in a tight hug. She could work in the back, or not at all, but she still waits tables between rushes so she can chat up the locals, pick up bits of important intel, and keep abreast of the more salacious gossip in town. I think part of her likes to freak strangers out with the huge, gnarly scar that bisects her face too. It makes people wonder about her, and she never corrects the rumors and lore that circulate about how she got the scar. I think she likes that too, so I never weigh in when people speculate in whispers behind their menus or on the sidewalk in town.
Even as a kid, it never embarrassed me, not even when other kids called her Scarface Scarlet. I liked to watch her swing around and fix them with her fiercest scowl, making her scar crinkle. Without uttering a word, she’d sending them scattering like rats. Then we’d laugh and high five.
If one of them got brave enough to ask, she’d always say, “It’s natural to be curious, but there’s no excuse for being rude.”
She never forgot the ones who didn’t listen, and she’d turn them right back out the door if they tried to come back later, even if it had been a year since they insulted her.
I hug her back, then sit when she insists I stay for dinner. Mom loves serving people she loves. That’s how she shows it, by taking care of us.
“Any of your friends coming?” she asks. “Heath, or the one who puts ranch on everything?”
“That was one time,” I say, laughing. “Maybe two. How do you remember that?”
But I don’t need to ask. Mom remembers everything.
Fifteen minutes later, she carries out two plates of steaming buckwheat pancakes, my favorite, and slides into the booth across from me. “Well, isn’t this a treat?” she says. “Figured I’d make myself a plate too. I never get to eat with my firstborn son.”
“I see you every weekend,” I point out.
“Yes, but that’s the whole family,” she says. “I get you all to myself tonight.”
“I did want to talk to you about something,” I say, glancing up at her as I spread the pad of half-melted butter across the top of my stack.
“Shoot, baby,” she says. “You know you can ask me anything.”
I do, but I don’t know how she’ll take this. She never forgets, and rarely forgives, and Mercy sent away her eldest son. And even though Heath is right about how I was treated in there—basically like royalty, thanks to my family’s close connection to Fish-Face Frederick upstairs—to Mom, she will always be the girl who took away her boy at just sixteen.
“I was wondering,” I say, dumping the cup of strawberries onto my flapjacks. “How do you know if you’re in love?”
Mom thinks it over while she spreads her own butter. “I’m going to be honest with you,” she says. “Now, a lot of people will say you just know, or if you have to ask, you aren’t in it. But the truth is, not everyone loves the same. If you got a big heart, it’s all filled up with love, and it’s all too easy to give it to the wrong person. I made that mistake once, before I found your daddy.”
“Oh yeah?” I ask, cutting a triangle from the edge of my stack. “How did you know that wasn’t the right one, and Dad was?”
“Because he loved me back,” she says. “In all the ways I wanted and needed to be loved. People with hearts as big as yours, I think you could love just about anyone, and she’d be lucky to have you. But the one who deserves that love is the one who can match what you give her, and then some. That’s how you know she’s worth giving that big heart to.”
I think about that all night, and I wonder, after everything we’ve done to Mercy, could she ever love any of us? And if she could, would she even choose me to love?