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I cried out, not caring if the whole club heard me – as if they didn’t already know what we were doing in here. The spasms of pleasure coursed through my whole body, consuming me, filling me to the very brim. I couldn’t contain myself, couldn’t control the way it made me feel – like every inch of me was exploding with pleasure, every nerve-ending alight with a want I had never felt before.
"That’s it, baby, come on my cock," he murmured, as he pushed inside of me one last time – and I felt him finish, the warmth of his seed as he came inside of me. I couldn’t even think about what kind of a risk this was. In that moment, nothing seemed to matter but the feeling of his body next to mine...
Though I was about to discover, in no uncertain terms, just how much of a mistake I had made. And my twenty-first year was going to be one I would never forget – for none of the reasons I had expected.
Chapter One – Jo
"So, I have dinner in the fridge and her pyjamas laid out on her bed," I told Nala, the babysitter, as I pulled on my jacket. "I think that’s everything..."
"Hey, Jo, it’s okay," Nala assured me, reaching out to give my arm a squeeze. "You get to work. I’ve got this covered."
"Thanks," I replied, and I glanced over at my daughter, who was on the floor, kicking her legs in the air as she scribbled in one of her many notebooks. I hurried over to her, dropped a kiss on the top of her head, and ruffled her curly brown hair.
"I’ll see you soon, sweetheart, okay?" I promised her, and she turned to flash me a toothy smile.
"See you soon, Mom!”
My heart panged in my chest when I thought about leaving her for the night. I hated this, I really did. It never felt right, walking away from her like this, even though I knew I was leaving her in good hands with Nala.
I’d had to call up Nala at the last minute when my other babysitter had pulled out; I had thought about calling the Flood, telling them I wouldn’t be able to make it tonight, but I figured it wouldn’t have been a good move. I had only started working there a couple of months ago and the last thing I wanted was to give them a reason to second-guess hiring a single mom. I knew I had been lucky to land such a well-paid position, and I was hoping I would be able to string enough together to move Kyra and me into a bigger place soon enough.
But, for the time being, I felt as though I was barely breaking even, what with paying for the babysitter and rushing out to my shifts every other night. And I was missing so much time with Kyra, too – she spent her days at school now, and I was at home, sleeping off the late nights behind the bar, barely pulling myself together to pick her up, and then getting a couple of hours with her before I had to run off again. It wasn’t exactly what I had expected, but hey, sometimes, things just didn’t go the way you thought they would.
It would ease up soon enough. At least, I had to keep telling myself that. I would get a handle on this new system and I would be able to dedicate as much time as I could to my daughter. She wouldn’t even notice I was gone. In the meantime, at least I had some really good babysitters to keep things ticking over, and I could do everything in my power to earn for the two of us.
I thanked Nala again and rushed for the door, knowing I was already pushing it and running a little late for my shift. I just hoped they wouldn’t notice. Normally, they weren’t too strict there about me turning up bang on time – there was so much going on at the Flood, there wasn’t room for them to think about when I was slinging drinks behind the bar, as long as I was doing it roughly when I said I would.
And, yes, I knew the Flood wasn’t exactly the best place for a single mom to work. I knew the reputation the Antonov brothers, who owned it, had, and I knew the clientele who came and went were probably involved in some seriously dark shit. But I just couldn’t let it get to me. It was because of their reputation that they paid as well as they did, and I wasn’t going to go questioning it when I was bringing in way more cash than I had at any of the other bartending jobs I had worked before this.
Bartending had been a lifesaver for me, right back from when I became pregnant – the tips were usually good, and people felt sorry for me when they saw that I was just a few weeks out from giving birth and still pouring drinks and making cocktails at this sleazy little club just down the street from my apartment at the time. I had managed to turn that into a decent income, enough to move myself out of the tiny studio I was living in and somewhere with an actual room for Kyra, and, in the process, got myself a decent reputation as someone who knew how to make a mean cocktail, and handle the tougher patrons.
I didn’t take any shit, especially since I had gotten pregnant; every choice I’d made, it had been a choice I made not just for myself, but for my daughter, too. And it turned out that I was way more willing to stand up for her than I was for myself. I wasn’t going to let anyone talk down to her, or treat her like she was less than because of how she had come into the world.
Even though that’s exactly how my own family had treated her. The moment my mother had found out I was pregnant, she had started freaking out, turned on me and basically called me a whore – when I admitted that I didn’t even know the name of the guy who’d knocked me up, I thought she was going to faint on the spot. I knew she hadn’t raised me like that, to be the kind of girl who hooked up with random men in nightclubs, but I had expected her to at least put her weight behind me in looking after this child.
But no – I wasn’t so lucky. My parents turned their backs on me and Kyra, making it clear that they didn’t want anything at all to do with either of us. As far as they were concerned, we were a stain on the family name, and I wouldn’t beg for their help. I was too proud for that. And I wanted to show Kyra that she never had to grovel and prostrate herself in front of people who didn’t actually respect her – she could always stand up on her own two feet, and make something of herself on her own terms. No way did she need them to foot the bill for her.
I hopped on the subway across New Ruska, keeping my head down and avoiding the gazes of a few guys shooting looks in my direction. I knew they didn’t mean anything by it – they were just going out for a night on the town, probably had a few drinks in them already, and thought that I was hitting the clubs too. If they’d known that I had a little girl at home, they would never have looked at me like that. I knew how guys felt about women with children, and trust me, it was far from anything good. Especially at my age. In my mid-twenties, I wasn’t going to meet a guy who was looking to settle down with a little one who was nearly six already; they either wanted to start a family on their own terms, from scratch, or they wanted to live the party lifestyle for a few years longer.
The party lifestyle I’d never really experienced. Well, apart from the night I had conceived Kyra, of course. Hell, if that hadn’t been enough to put me off for good, I don’t know what would have been – I had had that one wild night, that one crazy experience and it had ended with me hunched over my toilet and staring at a positive pregnancy test.
I should have tried to find the guy, I knew that, but what the hell was I going to say to him? Hey, sorry, by the way, turns out you got me pregnant, if that’s something you give a damn about? He clearly wasn’t looking for anything serious with me, and there was no way that he wanted to hear from me again. He would have given me his number or at least his name if he’d intended that – no, he was looking for a one-night thing, a hook-up to blow off some steam, and he’d likely be stunned to find out that it had led to the birth of our daughter.
Our daughter. Hell, it was strange to think of it like that. Even though I knew it was true. I had raised her myself since day one, had taken care of her in all the ways that mattered, and it was weird to even consider that someone else had been a part of bringing her into the world, even though I knew it was true. She wasn’t a daughter I shared with anyone else, she was mine and mine alone. My little girl, the two of us against the world.
I stepped off the subway, pushing through the crowds of people towards the Flood, and slipping in the back door. I had made it just under the wire, thank God, and I headed to the staffroom to dump my stuff and check that my hair hadn’t managed to turn into a total mess or something on the way.
"Oh, hey, Jo," Freddie greeted me, as he ducked into the staffroom. "Thank God you’re on tonight, it’s crazy out there."
"Really?" I grimaced. I had been hoping for a quiet night but looked as though I wasn’t going to get so lucky.
"Yeah, we need as many hands on deck behind the bar as we can manage," he replied. "Tips should be good, though."
"They better be," I muttered, and he laughed.
"Agreed," he replied. "Let’s send a prayer up to the bartender gods that they’re going to be solid tonight, huh?"
"I will," I replied, planting my hands together in mock-prayer, and then following him out to the main floor of the Flood.
