“Hi.” I smiled up at him and was floored by the blinding-white smile I got back. Oh, this guy was good and he didn’t even have to try.
“Hello.” I noticed that the lock around his neck was very much open and signaling that he was unattached as I grabbed the blonde and wheeled her around in front of me.
“This is my friend . . .” I trailed off, realizing I hadn’t even bothered to ask the other woman her name.
I nudged her until she offered up, “Clare.”
“This is my friend Clare and she’s looking for someone special.”
His dark eyebrows shot up and that smile kicked up a notch. I thought I heard Clare whimper next to me.
“Is that so? What kind of someone special is Clare looking for?” Direct and charming, he was the perfect guy to give the little blonde what she needed for the night.
“Tell him, Clare.”
She couldn’t have been any redder if she tried. Her mouth opened and closed like a guppy and I thought she was going to blow it again when the man reached out and touched a finger to her lips.
“If you can’t tell me, can you show me?” She shot wide eyes to me and then back to him. I took a step back as she nodded slowly. “Good girl. You want to give me that key?”
Without a word, she unhooked the necklace and handed it over to the silver fox. He put the end in the lock that dangled around his own neck and clicked the lock shut. Watching this, I realized how symbolic the action was. Her key into his lock: it was so sensual and a metaphor for so much more than sex. She owned him for the night, and that had to make her feel like a million bucks.
She mouthed “thank you” over her shoulder as the man led her away and I wanted to give myself a pat on the back. I had always been solidly secure in my own sexuality and it looked like instead of projecting that out and getting others to lust after me, it was time I helped others find their inner stripper and comfort in their own wants and needs.
I mingled some more. Gave Chuck a quick hug when I passed him, did another shot at the bar, which somehow led to me having the bottle of tequila in my hand and encouraging a rather dowdy-looking woman to do body shots off the bar, and generally worked the crowd like a pro. I was totally getting into my groove, finally starting to understand what Nassir meant about giving the club life, when I found a man standing in the shadows off the dance floor while he watched a pretty boy dressed in nothing but a leather G-string gyrate to the EDM blasting through the club’s sound system.
He was shifting uneasily from foot to foot, his eyes locked on the show the other man was putting on. I put a hand on his shoulder and smiled.
“Go talk to him. What could it hurt?” Only I should have paid closer attention because the man had his lock around his neck firmly clicked closed and it wasn’t the designated color that indicated he was there for some same-sex action.
He puffed up and sputtered at me, “I’m here with my wife!”
I lifted up my hands in a gesture of surrender. “Sorry, friend. I just thought . . .”
“You thought what? Who are you? Get away from me.” The man stormed off in a huff and some of my good cheer dissipated. I wondered what he was doing here with his wife if he wasn’t in search of an opportunity to explore his obvious desire to be with another man. Sad for him and really sad for his wife. I decided I needed a little break. I could only play sexual-fantasy fairy godmother for so long.
There was a break room on one of the floors, but the person I wanted was in his office on the top floor. I hadn’t seen much of Nassir since I walked away from him after that kiss. My stuff had shown up at the house and the housekeeper that obviously hated me had made sure it all got delivered up to my borrowed room, but Nassir wasn’t around. He hadn’t even come back to the house last night, and when I asked the chilly woman in charge of his home about it, she just muttered that he often stayed in the city when he had business.
He came back to the mountain house to grab me for opening night, but we’d spent the ride mostly in silence. When I asked him what he expected me to do, he just looked at me out of those eyes that seemed to glow and told me to do whatever felt comfortable. He wanted me on the floor. He wanted me to mingle. He wanted me to make people comfortable and stick around. He wanted the club to be about more than sex, and I think I finally figured out how to do that.
Once we got to the massive building, he guided me inside, looked at me like he wanted to push me up against the wall and ravish me, and then disappeared without another word.
Well, now I had plenty to say to him. I wanted to ask him if I was doing all right, if the club was doing all right. I wanted him to tell me I was doing a good job and I really, really wanted him to kiss me again. The whole hands-to-himself thing was getting old really fast and he showed no sign of bending—let alone breaking—to give me what I wanted.
I pushed the button for the elevator that led to his office and put in the little card that would allow me access to his private space. The only people that could get up to the top floor besides Nassir were me and Chuck. Nassir was lording over his domain from relative security and I loved and hated that I was one of the few allowed inside the gates. I didn’t want his keys to the kingdom; I wanted my own set.
When the doors whooshed open I was greeted with the sight of him behind his big desk in the center of the room. On the wall behind him, a collection of monitors with video feeds from the private client rooms blasted some of the most pornographic images I had ever seen in my life, along with shots of the parking lot, the dance floor, and the bar. I blinked in shock as I watched a man get guided around a room on a leash. I couldn’t comprehend the image of a woman chained up spread eagle above the ground while two men moved sexually and aggressively in front and behind her. I couldn’t look away as another image showed what had to be no less than six people engaged in a tangle of limbs as they took part in an orgy right before my eyes.