I pressed my lips to his and slid my tongue inside his mouth where he met it with his own. “Mmm. Not bad.”
“Not bad?” Aaron growled, and I smirked and patted his chest.
“We got plenty of time to practice.” I sat up and hugged my knees to my chest, wincing a bit even as I welcomed the soreness in my ass. It had been so long since I’d had Aaron inside me, but with everything that had happened tonight, it felt right. Necessary. It cemented another brick of trust between us.
“I gotta shower, then get some food in me. I’m starved.” I hopped out of bed and took a full-body stretch.
“You ain’t dancing tonight?” Aaron rested against the headboard, his arms behind his head. His gaze snapped to mine. “Wait, didn’t James wanna talk to you?”
“Yeah, that’s why I wanna eat now and head over there early.”
“You still don’t got any idea what he wants to talk about?”
I shook my head. “Shower with me?”
He grinned and rolled out of bed. “Don’t gotta ask me twice.”
“I never gotta ask you once.” I smacked his ass, and he muscled me into the bathroom.
“You complaining?” He turned on the water and pushed me into the stall.
“Do I sound like it? Shut up and kiss me already.”
James wasn’t gonnafire me. I was one of the top earners for Man Up. So why the hell was I nervous? Yet when I caught my reflection in one of the mirrors on the wall, my tight features and pale skin made me a liar. I didn’t see him at his usual place at the front, so I wandered through the club, trying to find him. Along the way, I ran into Hector and exchanged fist bumps with him.
“Hey, you seen James? I gotta meet with him.”
“Yeah. He’s in his office in the back.”
I’d been working there…how long? Yet I had no idea he had an office. “Where is it?”
“Straight down past youse guys’ dressing room on the left.”
“Thanks. Catch you later.”
Stomach fluttering with nerves, I walked into the bowels of the club and found James’s office. Funny I’d never noticed the door before, but then I never had a need to come down this way. A small brass plaque with the word “Office” in some fancy script was the only thing setting it apart from the rest of the doors in the hallway. I swallowed hard and knocked.
“Who is it?”
“Uh, me, Frankie.”
I heard footsteps, and then the sound of a lock being turned. Why the hell James needed to lock the door was beyond me, but James was a mystery to all of us, so nothing surprised me. He could be a vampire and I wouldn’t be shocked. Okay, maybethatwould be a surprise. I grinned to myself.
The door opened, and James, as calm and smooth-looking as always, swept his hand in front of him. “Come on in and have a seat.” He closed the door behind me and sat behind his dark wooden desk.
A large oil painting of a man hung on the wall behind him, and he caught me staring at it. “My father. Mine and Rhoades’s, I should say.”
“I can see a slight resemblance. More with you than with Rhoades.”
His face tightened, his eyes turning flat and blank. “I see nothing of myself in him.”
Uncomfortable with his sudden mood change, I shifted in my chair. “Uh, sorry. I know you wanted to see me, so I figured I’d come in early to find out what’s what.”
Back to his normal, serene self again, James tapped a pen on the desktop and stared at me. “Tell me what you see yourself doing in ten years.”
I blinked. “Uh. I don’t know. Making a lot of money, I hope. Not dancing at a gentlemen’s club.” Realizing James might take that as an insult, I hastened to add to my explanation. “I mean, I love it here. The guys are great, and the tips can be off the charts, but I’m getting too old to flash my ass. I want to be in business. I thought maybe me ’n Aaron would buy houses, renovate them, then sell them, but I don’t know. Aaron has this new job at the gardening center, and I know it’s what he really wants.”
A shrewd expression settled on James’s face. “Flipping real estate can be risky. First you need the capital to buy the properties, and then you need to make sure the market stays solid. Right now you don’t have the first, and we can’t be certain of the second.”
