F I’D KNOWN, I wouldn’t have let it get that far. Nowhere near it.
As it was it still went far too far.
The trouble really started when the banter at the table I was serving was getting out of hand. I backed away and made the palms forward gesture. The others at the table, I think they could have gone either way. This one, though, as he got up out of his chair with that fat grin on his face, the sound in the room changed. There was a tense kind of a hush as he got up and moved to stand behind me.
Even his dumb rich friends knew this was heading south too fast. “Dimitri,” one of them said. A thin grin and his head on one side, “Come on. Let the girl do her job.”
Dimitri was up. Trying to get behind me. Making me move to avoid him. His hips swayed. I turned and we went in a circle. The room around us getting quieter. Him shouting louder. Raising his arms like it was a dance. A game.
I lifted my elbows as his hands swiped nearer. We took the orders on little tablets. Wrote with our fingers, so I didn’t even have a pen I could jab at him with. All I could do to defend myself was to try and evade him. That and tell him ‘No.’
But that’s confrontation. That’s in the ‘last resort’ category. Pat their hands away if you must. Without actually making contact. If at all possible. Because that’s escalation. If you can’t wave or pat them away, you may have to tell them ‘No.’
That’s the point of no return. Almost always. After a ‘No,’ if you haven’t got enough force and willpower to keep a customer in his place, then you’d have to shout for help. Security will come. They’ll take care of you. Defend you if need be.
That’s not how you want the situation to go. Not ever. And it never had for me. Never came near it. Not before then. De-escalating is what you want. Keep it as light as you can. Don’t make an issue unless you really have to.
If security have to come then it’s probably all over. All the time a situation is being handled like that, the customer and their party, they’re not ordering drinks. Nobody’s having fun. It’s not a profitable time. Nobody’s ever going to tip you from the curb. Not after they’ve been thrown out.
But that wasn’t the big part.
I’ll never know for sure if I could have handled it. Because of him. He’d only just arrived. He saw what was happening. Once I saw him, it was hard for me to keep concentrated on Dimitri or whatever he was called. That was where it nearly got out of hand.
Huge and easy, he moved in like a big cat. All grace and rolling sinew. He glowed with arrogance. His eyes locked on me and it was like flashlights went off. I felt like I was on a red carpet.
The idiot behind me faded away so I wasn’t thinking about him anymore. I let my concentration go.
In the light of those eyes it was like I was hypnotized. Like the moment I’d been waiting all my life for had showed up, unannounced and with no warning.
When his eyes flashed and he started to look me up and down, I remember nodding. Yes. This was it. I came alight inside. This is not a drill.
His eyes stroked and caressed me from head to foot. Weighed and lapped at my tits. Ran all over my hips. Gazed hungrily at my thighs. I squirmed when he looked up to the too-short hem of my skirt.
Dimitri was saying something behind me and it was like he was in another room. I was busy. Busy being licked all over by the eyes of this mass of walking sex. We were grinning. Not too much, just tiny grins with our eyes. But together. We grinned in secret and in synch.
Dimitri’s fingers fluttered on my ass. Grabbing at me. I swatted him away. Didn’t think about it.
Next thing I knew, Dimitri roared and yelled. The prince was there. In front of me. Even then, all I could think of was the smell of him. The heat and the size of him. And, stupidly, how he felt like he was mine.
He said a word or two to Dimitri, who was easily as big as he was. Maybe a little heavier. My prince smiled and his eyelids waved shut as he gave one tiny shake of his head. Dimitri shouted something.
My stomach flipped and the world changed then.
In all the noise, in the bar, it faded like we were in a cocoon. Everyone and everything else blurred away behind a misty glow. That can’t have lasted more than a second. It could have been the start of a lifetime. The thoughts that ran through my mind in that instant, though, all the things I thought of. Wanted.
He punched the idiot. Right in the face. Like it was nothing, like a shrug, the prince let a schoolboy grin light his face. Then slammed his fist into Dimitri’s stupid nose. Dimitri’s feet came off the floor and his arms waved like broken windmills. He toppled backward and crashed into the table. Glasses spilled and shattered around him.
The whole bar erupted. All the bikers and truckers, all the men who had held their tempers against the noisy gaggle of entitled brats jumped to their feet. This was going to be a full-scale riot. That wasn’t the big part.
I mean, if an oaf fell in a forest and nobody heard him, well, that would have been different. But it wasn’t a forest and plenty of people were close by, all around us. And they all heard it.
Chair legs and tables scraped on the floor. heavy beer glasses and whiskey tumblers slammed on tables. The whole barroom full of bikers and truckers grunted and shouted as they all rose out of their seats. Like dozens of heads and shoulders on a single body. They were usually a great bunch and pretty well behaved. Maybe a little rowdy now and then.
Men with that much pumping testosterone see a chance of a fight, especially a big one, they get started and they can’t stop. This was going to be a brawl. That was fun as far as they were concerned.
It was like someone ran around a paddock of huge, angry, black bulls, jabbing a pocket knife in their asses and then waving a fire-red cloth in their faces.
The rumble sounded like an earthquake started by a volcano.
He wasn’t fazed. Head and shoulders above all of them, he looked around the room with the sweetest, gentlest smile.
Straight tall, standing at his full height, my prince, my rescuing hero said, “Chill.” Firm but easy. Friendly, even. Like, We’re in this together. His voice had a sound that said, Let’s keep it together. And his eyes raked slowly over everyone in the room. His easy stare under half closing lids was enough. With that trace of a smile. One by one, they all slowly sat back down.
And the room quieted. That felt like it was the big part. That quiet. the whole room was still in his command.
But the part that I remember most came after. Of course.
“Everyone here,” he said, with even a trace of shyness, “All of you. Have another drink. Bar staff? One more of what everyone here has. On my card.”
As I watched him I remember thinking that I hadn’t breathed for a long time. When I did let a breath out it was slow and long. He was looking at me. His eyes held me. Again, I felt the flash of recognition. It wasn’t like me and him, it was like there was already an ‘us.’
There, right then, something in the back of my head had snapped a light on. It was trying to show me something. But I didn’t want to see it. Not then. Not yet.
But he held his hand out to me.
The only thing I could do was to run. I turned and ran from the room. Out of the staff door. Out to the hallway. I ran down the hallway and my eyes were misting over.
By the time I reached the door the led out back I could hardly see at all. There was a sound behind me as I reached for the door handle. Something big. And hot. Close behind me. I whirled to see. He was reaching around me to the door handle.
I fell back against the door. So he couldn’t open it. From his chest I looked up into his face. So beautiful. So magnificent. So wrong.
I was grateful, of course I was. More than that I was breathless. Speechless. I was overcome by a dizzy sense of unreality. Up close, he was huge. I don’t know why it surprised me so much. I was flustered. Hot and light headed. I tingled from head to foot. Most of all, the tingle that spread out in hot streaks made me want to reach down. I was holding on to my skirt. I think I even flapped it. I couldn’t keep still.
The hot scent of him so near, I couldn’t breathe. And he was so big. I glanced down. His pants, in front of his hips, bulged like a tent. The weight inside was straining his jeans. I felt the heat of a rampant rage pulsing in there.
Didn’t I. And by then I was already breathless. Wasn’t I.