SCRUBBING Ahand over my face, I rolled over and picked up my phone to look at the time. It was early, just seven in the morning on Monday, my day off.
Lying back down, I dragged the small, lithe figure still snuggled next to me even closer. My dick rubbed against her ass as I ran my hand along her side and moved her hair out of the way so I could kiss her neck. She moaned softly, a small, yet eager sound floating from her lips. It drifted along all my senses, brightening my day, making my entire body pop awake at the promise she was making without a word.
The woman made good on it throughout the day, following through with her unspoken promises from the morning. After all, it was supposed to be my day of relaxation, and lately, the only way I relaxed was with a good fucking.
I was certain that would catch up with me eventually—like the bottle of JD cradled in my hand. I’d turned into someone I barely recognized.
Oh, wait. I did a little. I was becoming an even more despicable version of my manwhore dick of a father.
SLIGHTLY HUNGover from my pity party for one, I brushed one hand over my fresh buzz cut and yanked open the side door to the Wave with the other, allowing the bright Miami sunlight to blare inside the cool, light purple ambience of the club. It was Tuesday, and the girls were having a planning meeting backstage with Petal, now back to her birth name, Staci. She was another girl in a long line of Asher’s rescue projects.
Now I was tasked with turning Staci into a legitimate businesswoman, if that was what you called a woman with nothing more than a GED who’d started out lap dancing at Sin City’s finest adult establishment and was currently training to take over the Wave, Miami’s steamiest adults-only nightspot. It wasn’t exactly what one would label as success—until you took into account where the girl came from and where she was headed now.
If not for the Electric Tunnel, Staci might be whoring herself out to some fat, sweaty fuck with a small dick—like Lynx did, does, or whatever—so I’d say it was a big fucking whopper of a success.
And just like that, my mind was no longer focused on my business day, but tortured again with worry about the girl I couldn’t forget or let go of.Motherfucker.
“Hey, Big Mikey,” Marta called out to me with a smile, drawing me out of my fog and dragging me unwillingly back to the present.
“Hey, darling,” I said, giving her a chin lift. She’d left my bed less than twenty hours ago. I owed her a decent hello, at the very least.
The beautiful specimen in front of me was the first girl I discovered in Florida. I met her at the hotel pool when I was here scouting locations for the Wave, and decided to bring her in to dance when she solicited me to hire her as an escort.
Asher warned me not to sleep with her, but I couldn’t fucking listen to my friend, mentor, former boss, and current partner. As if he really knew shit about relationships. The dude had messed up the first decade of his own kid’s life while hitting up every easy lay in Vegas, stringing along a good woman who loved him.
But this girl Marta was incredibly hot, all curvy and exotic with dark Mediterranean tanned skin, more like rich, black Mexican coffee than café au lait, contrasting with light blue eyes and long, flowing red-highlighted hair. She was soft and caring in a way I wasn’t used to. None of the women in my life so far had treated me that way. Not my pill-popping mom, nor my bitch of an ex, Rochelle, who cheated on me with my dad. Or Lynx, the one woman who left me high and dry, holding my dick in her purse while she stomped my heart on the floor.
That’s not being entirely fair. Lynx was gentle when she forgot she was supposed to be hard.
There was no way I could resist Marta’s charms. I was so hard up, constantly worked up from seeing new and mysterious girls onstage, and she was so easygoing about the whole thing. The girl took what I gave her—a dinner here, a sleepover there, a day spent in bed once every week—and never asked for a damn thing more.
It was fun, sexy, easy, and absolutely nothing more. Zero emotions involved.After a lifetime as Mr. Relationship, I’m that guy. Mr. Cold and Removed.
Eh, I wasn’t as tough as I made myself out to be. I cared for Marta. She just wasn’t who I loved or obsessed over.
The outer club was mostly quiet as I headed toward the back. A slow R&B vibe floated through the main floor as I scanned the sparkly, scantily clad group gathered for the meeting.
“Hello, ladies. Y’all good?”
Yes, I’d adopted a little bit of a Southern twang in the last couple of years since ditching the desert.
Staci spoke for the whole gang of iridescent beauties. “All good, Mike. We have seventeen bachelor parties prebooked for this week, all of them complete with limo, booze service, and VIP treatment. I’m giving the ladies their assignments and working the dance rotations, so everything is fully covered and leaves flexibility in the schedule for walk-ins and other groups.”
“Good. You got this, honey,” I said before I slipped back to my office.
It wasn’t upstairs like Asher’s at the Tunnel, but it was just as tricked out. Private bathroom with shower, wet bar, leather couches, and a video feed of the entire the club were just a few of the features I’d had installed. I spent a lot of time there, mostly because I ran a tight fucking ship when it came to the club, and there was nothing I didn’t have eyes on.
Or at least one eye, while the other scanned the window facing the streets of South Beach.
With my feet propped on my desk, my thoughts drifted to how the hell I ended up here permanently. Not here in Miami, but pining for a woman who clearly didn’t give two shits about me.
In reality, it all started four years ago when Asher finally settled down with Natalie, and I started making monthly pilgrimages to muggy Florida. Between helping Asher’s pseudo-sister and best friend, Lila, build a new strip club in California while still running the bouncers and security at the Tunnel in Vegas, I spent wads of money and all my patience chasing after Lynx down here.
Of course, every goddamn trip ended with me on my knees, pleading with Lynx to come back to Vegas with me. I’d begged her to leave Bruno, her pimp. I’d tried to bargain with her to allow me to erase her debt. It was an endless, fruitless, vicious cycle in which I refused to give up and Lynx refused to surrender. There was some unknown grip Bruno had on her, and I needed to be closer to understand.
My gaze swept the room, taking in my office, looking around the four walls where I’d worked and sometimes slept for the better part of the last twenty-four months. It was more a home than my actual home.
Years back, when it had finally fucking dawned on me that I needed to be closer to the source to get what the hell Lynx was doing, I’d planted the seed for a Miami club in Asher’s head. The Electric Cove in Los Angeles had been open for close to two years, and it was the hottest place on the West Coast. With Lila at the helm and Asher’s Electric brand behind her, the Cove was the bomb.
