I stroll into Lotus at 9:23 p.m. on purpose. I know exactly where all the cameras are located in the club, and I know that my creeper is probably watching them from his perch up in the club’s office. I stop to talk to Marco, the bar manager. I flirt with him from time to time, because it’s just fun. Nothing serious. Nothing that’s ever going to lead anywhere.

I can feel his eyes on me everywhere though.

Watching me.

Clocking my every move.

He’s probably sitting in his chair practically seething, because I’m late. That and the fact that I’m being so cavalier about it. Uh-oh and here comes the other one.

“I think my brother is looking for you, little hobbit,” Cutter King says with a mischievous smile.

He calls me hobbit and a million other names as if I don’t already know when I wake up everyday that I’m vertically challenged. It just baffles me why all three of these jerks I work for have to remind me of it every single day of my life.

“Why?” As if I didn’t know.

“The hell if I know, but it probably has something to do with the fact that he fired Ray today.”

Ray is the manager who we never really needed. He kind of did the work that the old manager Larry used to do. Day to day stuff. But with all three of us working out of the club now, and the boys having only a few clients, I don’t think there really is a need for Ray. Yet I have an inkling that his firing is about something else entirely.

I make my way upstairs to the club office and knock, something I usually don’t do, but I have a feeling that I better keep it purely professional right now.

“Come in,” his voice rumbles.

When I enter the office, Camden is sitting at the desk with his laptop open, but the screensaver running. He’s not actually doing any work. He’s in here stewing about something. When his head pops up and it registers that it’s me who’s entered the office, some sort of fleeting emotion passes over his face, and then his demeanor returns to normal. Hard. Unreadable.

“You’re late.”

“You fired Ray?”

“My business.”

“Can I ask why you fired him? We didn’t need him before, but now that you guys have these new Miami clients, you’re going to be stuck doing all the shit work around here and still have to deal with Miami.”

“Correction, you’re going to have to do the shit work.”

“What!?”

“You are now the acting manager of Lotus.”

“Oh, hell no, that’s not in my job description.”

“You don’t have a job description. You do whatever the hell we tell you to do.”

I suck my teeth.

“That means I’d have to be here almost every day and night of the week, Camden.”

“I know what the job entails.”

“Roman will never go for that.”

“Roman is working the Miami clients, planning a wedding, and having a baby. He doesn’t have time to deal with the shit here. Someone needs to handle it.”

“So you do it!”

“I have a lot to do for the Miami clients too, and Cutter is handling Mendez on his own. Neither of us has the time to order olives and lemons for the bar or cash out the register.”

“Why did you fire Ray then?” I challenge.

“We didn’t need him.”

I stare him square in the mouth. I locate a spot on his strong, angular jaw that I’d like to punch the hell out of, but I digress. The days of physical altercations with men are over for me.

“Why did you fire Ray, creeper?”

“Why are you calling me names, midget.”

“That’s politically incorrect, asshole, and not even accurate. I’m short, but not that short, and you are most definitely a creeper. That’s just factual.”

“I should make you get on your knees right now.”

“Shut up.”

“You’ve done it before,” he grins.

“I thought we had an agreement. Baltimore never happened. It’s been months now, and you need to let it go. Stop texting me about it, stop making references to it, and please stop talking to me like that.”

“I never agreed to forgetting shit, and talk to you like what?”

“Like I’m your personal whore!”

Camden stops talking for a moment and quietly studies me in the careful and confident way that he always does. The look that sends shivers down my spine when no one is looking.

“If you must know, I fired him because he was in my way.”

“How? In what way?”

He glares at me angrily.

“You fucked him, Jade.”

“So?”

“So I didn’t want to look at his fucking face anymore.”

I look down at the floor, but I’m smiling inside. Something about the way he spews his accusation makes me feel warm and jittery. I don’t want to feel this way, but I do. He’s jealous, and I think that I actually like it. A man lost his livelihood, because Camden was jealous, and I should be outraged. But I’m not.

Regardless of the things said in the heat of passion, I foolishly believed that after he left my hotel room all those months ago, that we had forged some sort of unspoken agreement. That we’d keep our one-night stand between us and not let it affect our working relationship or friendship. But I read Camden completely wrong. He won’t let what happened go. And if I don’t watch it, I’m going to turn into one of those girls who I hate. Girls who ruin themselves over elaborate pipe dreams fueled by meaningless fucks. We can never be more than that one night. That’s just common sense.

“I want thirty days,” he says to me.

I pop my head up. “What do you mean?”

“Work the manager job for thirty days. If you want to quit after that, you can.”

“And what about my work for Roman?”

“Is Roman the only boss you care about?” he asks with an unfamiliar edge to his voice.

“That’s not what I meant. You know he’s used to a certain level of attention.”

“I’ll talk to him.”

“So all I’ll be doing is handling the club?”

“That’s right.”

“You know this shit is more then just ordering lemons and olives. I don’t know if I’ll like it.”

“That’s the point. I don’t think you have any idea what you truly want or like.” His words are loaded with double meaning.

“I know what you’re doing,” I say. “But you forget that I know you very well, Camden King. I’ve watched it happen a million times. I know how this will end.”

He closes his laptop and stares at me with a very determined look.

“You have no inkling how this is going to end, itty bitty, because it hasn’t really begun yet.”

“You know I was drunk that night right? If I had been totally sober I would never have slept with you in Baltimore.”

“So that’s how you’re going to play this?”

“I’m not playing at anything. It’s the truth.”

“You think I don’t know when I’m drunk fucking someone?”

“Oh that’s right, I forgot who I was talking to,” I say in a snarky voice.

Camden takes me by surprise by practically tossing me on top of the desk and stands in between my spread legs.

“Now that’s the first correct thing you’ve said since you walked in here. You definitely have forgotten who the fuck you are talking to. Maybe I should remind you.”

He grabs the back of my neck and pulls me against his warm, hard body. God, I’ve missed it. His strength. His smell.

“You should stop,” I say half-heartedly.

“Why, are you drunk again?” He smirks.

“This is not going to happen again, Cam.”

“Why not?”

His hand slides around my neck and slowly down my chest. He stops at one of my breasts. Rubbing the backs of his knuckles against my nipple. Quickly making it pebble through my shirt.

“You think if you pin me down for a bit of time, that it’ll be easy for you to get inside of my head—”

He squeezes my nipple tightly in between two of his thick knuckles. I take a large exhalation in an effort to ignore how good it feels and continue talking.

“Easy for us to fuck like bunnies during this so-called thirty day arrangement of yours.”

“You said it. I didn’t,” he says in a deep, raspy voice.

He switches his hand to my other breast, but I keep going.

“You had me once, and now you think you can have me over and over.”

“Now you’re starting to get it,” he replies.

This time he wraps his entire hand around my breast. Massaging it. Gently rubbing the tip of my nipple with his thumb.

“Claim me like a possession,” I pant.

“Exactly.”

We both hear a door slam across the hall which doesn’t particularly startle him, but it does stop him from what he was doing, which then effectively snaps me out of the trance I was falling under. He’s convincing, but not that convincing. We made a mistake and had one night of good sex. All right, great sex. But I won’t be swayed.

He thinks he knows me. He thinks he can have me anytime he wants. But hasn’t he learned his lesson yet? I guess not, but I tell you what, he’s about to learn a very long but simple thirty-day lesson.

Jade Barlow is anything but easy.