Reaching out, I grabbed the front of his shirt, twisting it and pulling him closer so that our faces were close, and he could clearly see how stupid it was to call me an asshole. His eyes went wide as he frowned.
“Watch it,” I growled. “You just might insult the wrong person someday.”
I released him, and he scrambled away with his friend. I wasn’t going to rough up some underage asshole, not after narrowly escaping charges from the last time I’d let my temper get the better of me. The memory of the stupid, hard bench in the jail was still too fresh in my mind.
The sound of motorcycles brought my attention to the road, and I felt my shoulders tense when I saw that four Las Balas members were riding by the club. They slowed down as the man in the lead turned to look at me, but they didn’t stop.
Good. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with them.
Sighing, I rubbed my hands over my head. I could feel peach fuzz coming in, so it was time to shave it down again.
I wasn’t sure why I was in such a bad mood. After getting laid twice last night, I should have been on cloud nine. But I wouldn’t be seeing Sabrina again.
“Damn it,” I muttered to myself.
“I know that look,” a voice said from my right, and I whipped my head around to see who had joined me. It was Jax, another bouncer at the club. “You’ve got woman problems.”
“No, I don’t,” I replied automatically. “I’m not seeing anyone.”
“Well, maybe that’s the problem,” he said with a smirk as he leaned up against the building with his arms crossed across his chest. “You need to get one.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“Relieving you. The boss lady wants to see you.”
I nodded curtly and went inside, finding Abby sitting at the bar, keeping an eye on the place. This club was her life; she’d built it from the ground up herself and spent a lot of time here. Most nights, she could be found right out here on the floor, her eyes constantly scanning the room, looking for trouble. It was one of the reasons that this was usually considered a safe place. She always had a couple bouncers on hand as well as her own sharp eyes. Abby cared about her girls. I took a seat on the barstool next to her.
Abby kept her hair cut short, and her arms were muscular. They were usually on display, since she wore wife-beater shirts all the time. There was a toughness about the woman that helped her out in this business, and it had surprised the hell out of me to find out that she was straight. I tried not to stereotype, but she was a masculine woman.
“What’s up, boss?”
“I’ve got trouble. Thought you should know,” she said, taking a long sip of the scotch she was nursing.
“What kind of trouble?” I asked, my mind on Las Balas.
“The morality police.” Her voice was bitter.
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s a damn petition going around to close this place down. They say that it’s a den of sex and corruption and that we need to be shut down for the good of the community.”
“Fuck that,” I said, shaking my head.
Strip clubs didn’t create an obsession with sex, they were just a byproduct of it. The only thing that would be accomplished by the closing of the club would be that our customers would lose their outlet for sexual release. They’d find it somewhere else.
“That’s my opinion too, but I don’t know how I’m going to fight this. Think the club can help?”
“I can ask, but it’s not like we’re the most loved members of the community ourselves.”
“People suck.”
I couldn’t argue with that, or offer any solution, so I slid off my barstool and made my way around the room. I made sure to go back to the private rooms, walking down the short hallway, listening for problems. I didn’t want another assault back here on my watch.
The door of one of the rooms opened when I was about to leave, and Cherry walked out with a man that looked like a middle-aged dad, except he had an erection pushing against the front of his pants. Avoiding eye contact, the man headed to the front to watch more of the show onstage, but Cherry caught sight of me and sauntered over with a wide grin on her face.
“Hey, Butch.” She pressed her nearly nude body against mine, stroking my chest through my thin black T-shirt. “Are you back here checking up on me?”
“I’m checking on everyone,” I said, mildly surprised by her behavior. Sure, I’d roughed up the asshole that hurt her, but this was coming out of nowhere. There’d never been chemistry between us before. Apparently, she wasverythankful for my actions.
