Page 4 of Ride Hard
Sloane
As predicted,things got weird the nextnight.
My shift got off to a good start when I scored a ten-dollar tip—that I shoved down my bra so I would get to keep it—but when the place filled up, it raised my anxietylevels.
It had always been a possibility certain people might find me, but I knew how to handle myself. Eighteen years growing up in a house full of men whose full-time jobs were illegal hardened you the fuck up pretty quick. Let’s just say, I knew how to make a shiv and use it if I hadto.
Still, my gaze darted around the club, looking for threats where there were none. It was another bluff courtesy of dear old dad. His specialty was bribing and manipulating, so why was this time anydifferent?
Seven years, I thought to myself.That’s what’sdifferent.
The night wore on, and in the darkest and dingiest corner of Teasers, I spotted a familiarface.
Chaser.
“Who’s that you’re staring at?” Yvette asked, then gasped as she realized who it was. “Wasn’t he here lastnight?”
“Yeah,” I replied, glaring across the club. I could forgive her for forgetting about his appearance since her little girl was a handful and then some. One afternoon and a cup of strawberry milk down my top later, I was glad to get out of there. Kids and I didn’tmix.
“He’s a real hottie.” She licked her lips.She actually licked her lips like she wanted to eat him allup.
“I’d forget about him if I wereyou.”
“He’s not even looking at the girls,” she went on. “If he’s not here to get his rocks off, then…” She glanced atme.
Sure enough, he was nursing a bottle of beer, his gaze sweeping the room, but it wasn’t focused on the snatch waving around on stage. He was sizing up the patrons—the ‘gentlemen’—who were congregating around it. Every once in a while, he would glance toward the entrance, then over to the bar where Yvette and I were staring athim.
“Oh, shit,” Yvette said, turning around. “Do you think he sawus?”
“Yeah,” I drawled, giving Chaser the biggest stink eye I could muster. “He saw us allright.”
“He was yourex?”
“I kinda lied about that,” I repliedsheepishly.
“What do youmean?”
“He works for my father. I want nothing to do with him, or whatever it is hewants.”
“Oh…” Yvette widened her eyes. “He touchedyou?”
“No!” I dumped the money from my last customer into the cash register and slammed it closed. “We just don’t get along… In a manner ofspeaking.”
“That guy is hot…” She’d resumed perving on him. “But he doesn’t look like the loving kind of guy, if you know what Imean.”
“He’s a hiredthug.”
“Maybe he’d be good for a night pumping the springs, but I’d toss him back straightafter.”
“Yvette!”
“You’re so tense, Slo,” she said, grasping my shoulders and massaging. “You’re one big knot. The quickest way to work it out is with no strings attachedcock.”
“I’m not fucking thatguy!”
“You can fuck me, sweetheart,” a man drawled from across the bar. “As long as you suck my cock a littlefirst.”
“If you don’t pull back, you’ll be sucking Bobby’s cock,” I declared, pointing toward the bouncer at the door. He was the big, bald tank, who just loved tossing out slimy perverts and kicking the shit out of them in the alley aroundback.
