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“I think you should listen to the lady before I have to teach you some manners,” he growls to the asshole holding me.
“Move along, this doesn’t concern you.”
“Do you want me to move along, sweets?” my prospective hero asks.
“No. I’d love it if you showed this asshat some manners.”
His lips tilt up in a slight smirk, and my cheeks heat with a blush at how my body reacts to him. Lordy, he barely smiled at me, and already my body is responding. I get hit on all night long, and I’ve never had such a strong reaction to someone. Maybe I have a damsel in distress complex…
My hero levels the asshole with a look that would send the biggest, baddest UFC fighter running scared. His arms slacken around me, and my hero pulls me up and pushes me behind his big body. Even in my heels, he towers over me, making me feel small and safe. Which is a ridiculous thought. How can I feel safe with a total stranger? I’ve read one too many romance books. I could easily see him as one of the Daddy Doms in my favorite books. Now, my body is really in overdrive.
“I think it’s time you leave,” he says menacingly.
The asshole swallows and nods before getting up in such a hurry his chair hits the floor. His friends aren’t far behind as they flee from the potential fight that even if all four of them jumped into it at the same time, they would surely lose. My hero has muscles for days and an air of danger that reads, ‘Don’t fuck with me.’ It sends a shiver down my spine in the best way.
“You okay?” All hints of his anger are gone, replaced with gentle concern.
“I’m fine. Thanks for helping.”
“No one should touch a woman who doesn’t want it.”
“Unfortunately, it’s a hazard of the job,” I shrug.
Anger flashes in his eyes. The look is so intense I have to break eye contact. I take him in for the first time since he came to my rescue. He’s freakin’ hot as hell. Strong jaw covered in a neatly trimmed beard, his nose has a slight bump that tells me it’s been broken at least once, and intense blue eyes that see way more than I’m comfortable with. He’s tall, and his muscles have muscles. Don’t get me started on the tattoos. His tight black t-shirt doesn’t cover the ink on his arms, and I catch a glimpse at a tattoo that peeks over the neck of the shirt. I desperately want to make him take it off so I can see what he’s hiding under there.
Jesus, I’ve never, ever thought about stripping a man down. Mike teases that I’m innocent and he’s not wrong. I’m a virgin who has never even been properly kissed. I don’t consider the uncomfortable kiss with Arthur the slobberer at math camp in eighth grade a proper kiss. It was the first and last time I played Spin the Bottle. A bunch of math nerds do not make for a titillating game. At least not for me. I would never have guessed my type of man would be tall, dark, and dangerous. I bet kisses with this man wouldn’t disappoint me.
Definite book boyfriend material. I want to throw myself at him and beg him to kiss me. Then I’ll call him Daddy and let him spank me, just like in one of my books.
I shake myself out of my daydreams because there is no way a guy like him would ever be interested in a girl like me. I might clean up pretty and play the part of slutty elf well, but this isn’t me. I’m a leggings and oversized sweaters kind of girl. I’m the one who gets a small thrill when my finances are perfectly balanced. I create complex code for computer security software for fun. Analytics make me happy. Numbers excite me. Hell, I do taxes for fun. Who does that?
“Shouldn’t be…” the man growls, pulling my attention back to the moment.
“It is what it is. Thanks again for the save. I should get back to work.”
He nods in agreement, but there seems to be a hesitance to it. Could he be as attracted to me as I am to him? How ridiculous of me to think such a thing.
“Tell Mike at the bar your drinks are on me tonight.”
I don’t wait for him to respond before I escape from his magnetic pull. I pick up empty glasses and take orders, trying to forget all about him. It’s impossible because I can practically feel his eyes on me as I work. My imagination runs away from me with ideas that he’s watching to ensure I’m safe and that no one else gets out of hand.
I’ve avoided his table even though three other men are sitting with him. It’s dumb because I’m missing out on tips. Aaron would be furious if he knew I wasn’t giving his customers the best of the best service available. I just can’t make myself go over there. Not with how my body is reacting to his mere presence. I don’t trust that I won’t make a fool out of myself and throw myself at him.
Hours later, security is seeing the last of the customers out. Finally, the club is closed. If only that meant it was time to leave. Unfortunately, the other waitresses and I have to collect all the empty glasses and wipe down the tables. Thank goodness someone else does the dishes, and despite Aaron being cheap, he has a cleaning crew that comes in and does the floors and bathrooms. I wouldn’t have made it three years at this job if I had to tackle the bathrooms every night. So gross. Thankfully, employees have a private bathroom. I’d rather wear an adult diaper than use one of the public bathrooms.
It takes an hour to finish our closing tasks. I pull on my coat even though I know it will barely stave off the cold. This winter has been brutal, and my coat is definitely not appropriate for the temperatures. It’ll have to do. I’m not in a position to splurge on anything better right now. Lush pays the bills but doesn’t leave me much in the way of spending money. Most weeks, it barely covers groceries. There have been weeks where I live off of ramen noodles and peanut butter and crackers. I don’t mind because paying my bills is more important than what I eat for dinner.
My parents weren’t the best at paying bills. We moved around a lot when I was a kid. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the papers taped to our front door were eviction notices. I can’t even remember how many times our electricity got turned off. Food was even lower on the list of priorities. There were days when the only meal I ate was the free school lunch I got because my parents couldn’t hold down jobs.
Drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes came before anything else, even before me. That’s probably why I wasn’t surprised when I came home from school one day to yet another bright orange notice that we’d been evicted. I wasn’t even shocked when my parents never came back for me. I sat outside our door all night, and no one came. I went to school the following day in the same clothes.
It took a week for anyone to notice something was wrong. Probably because I’d worn the same clothes for seven days and didn’t smell the freshest. Sleeping on the doorstep of the house we no longer lived at didn’t help matters. All it took was a trip to the school counselor and a phone call to child services for me to be whisked away to a group home.
I was one of the lucky ones. I ended up in a nice foster home. I kept my head down and focused on school. I followed the rules and didn’t make a nuisance of myself. I saw a lot during my months at the group home and learned what not to do if I wanted to stay in a foster home. On the flip side, I also learned what to do if I got into a bad home and needed to get the hell out of there.
It’s really a miracle that I turned out the way I did. Don’t get me wrong, I have my issues. One of those is my obsessive need to have every penny in my bank account accounted for and my bills paid long before their due dates. My foster parents did their best by me. Gerald and Maude were an older couple who never had kids of their own. They took me in and gave me a good life.
Gerald was a retired accountant who did freelance work to keep his mind sharp, as he liked to say. It didn’t take long for him to realize that I was a whiz with numbers. With his encouragement, I took every advanced math class available. Joined the math club and went to math camp. I won a fancy computer at one of the many competitions I participated in and discovered my love for computers. Before long, I was writing code for my own programs and taking computer science classes.
