The phone rang behind the bar. Typically, that meant Roy would answer, but he was preoccupied restocking. I was seated a bit away, watching Becca fumble through a routine she was meant to be doing tonight.
Obviously, it was not going to happen.
Becca was a sweet girl, but she was green. She had a dance background, so it wasn’t actually the moves that were tripping her up. No, she was struggling with the reality of stripping for an audience. She’d get there, or she’d quit and find a different route. Based on my experience, there’d be progress one way or the other in about a week.
I left her to her dancing while I went to get the phone. There was no need for her to keep going. It was more than clear she wouldn’t be premiering the new moves tonight, but I let her go on. Maybe spending a little more time on the stage without the whole audience would help her adjust.
By the time I got around the bar and within arm’s reach of the phone, I was honestly surprised the person hadn’t given up.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
“Hello,” I repeated. “You’ve reached Candy Shop. How can I help you?”
I remembered what Daz had said a couple weeks back about the calls and hang ups. My rounds with the girls hadn’t turned up any leads. No one had any issues—at least none they were ready to share. Odds were it was just some random, creepy guy with nothing better to do.
Hanging up, I shook off the thought that some weird person was probably out there touching himself right then because he’d actually gotten a woman on the line. Unfortunately, this wasn’t unfamiliar territory with my job. I just tried at all times not to think about it.
I was about to head back to my table and pull Becca off the stage when the damn thing started ringing again. Taking a breath to stay composed, I picked it up.
“Hello?”
Roy walked back behind me, a box of bottled beer in his arms. I watched him for a beat while the line stayed silent.
“Look, whoever you are, you need to stop calling. If you want a show, come see it any night. If you want to get your jollies off by hearing a hot chick on the phone, call a damn sex line. They’ll say whatever you want. Harassing the dancers here is just going to land you in hot water with men you do not want to mess with. Capisce?”
Roy chuckled as he knelt to load one of the fridges beneath the bar.
“Capisce? What’s next, you gonna go to the don and have him whack someone for you?” he teased.
“You don’t know where I come from. I could be a principessa for all you know,” I shot back.
“Not thinking your mafioso family would approve of your job,” he pointed out. “And if anything, with that hair, I’d guess IRA ties before the mob.”
“You might be right,” I said. “The only time I got her to talk about it, Ma did say the guy who she figured knocked her up had a weird accent.”
I grabbed a couple of the Buds he was replenishing and handed them to him while he looked up at me like he was trying to guess whether I was fucking with him or not.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re gonna rain down a whole lot of trouble for us one day?”
I started to make my way back to my table and the sound system remote I’d left there as Becca’s song wound down. “I try to avoid trouble as best I can,” I told Roy as I walked away.
“I don’t find the word try there to be real reassuring.”
He wasn’t wrong to feel that way. I did try. I’d been trying my whole life to keep my head down and my nose clean. That didn’t mean I succeeded.
Case in point: sleeping with Daz.
And for anyone keeping score, that had to be the tenth time I’d thought about it that day. At least that was slowing down a bit. Now, he just had a tendency to creep into my thoughts when I was in bed.
He’d made an impression. I hadn’t craved sex often in my life, but Daz had stoked that desire in me. My plan had been that going to bed with him would extinguish it.
Tell God your plans, right?
It wasn’t helping that I felt like a lecherous slut whenever it came to mind now. The man was dealing with the loss of his brother. I’d never had any siblings—at least not full-blood ones, or any type I actually knew about—but I imagined losing someone you loved hurt about the same regardless of their specific relationship to you. I didn’t need to be working myself up the entire time he was gone, then resorting to jumping him when he got back.
What I needed to do was focus on my job.
So I did that, clicking off the sound before the next track cued up, then going up to the stage to have a few—hopefully encouraging—words with our newest dancer.
It was late that night—or early the next morning if we wanted to split hairs. I was sitting in my bed, the lavender comforter bunched up at the foot of the mattress while I flipped through Netflix. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. Even though it was the middle of the night, getting home from the noise and activity of the shop had a tendency to leave me wired. This was even worse at the moment when I was just there as a manager, not actually taking the stage. At least dancing was work and it helped exhaust me.
At this rate, it was going to be one of those nights where I didn’t get to sleep until after the sun came up.
I was resigned to my fate and about to cue up something I actually wanted to watch when my cell started clattering on the nightstand.
Grabbing it, I pulled up short when I saw it was Daz. What did he want at this hour?
“Hello?”
“Hey, sugar,” he greeted.
“What’s up? Why are you calling so late?”
“My brothers all left. 'Cept Doc. His ass is jus’ sleepin’.”
As soon as I heard him speak some more, I noticed the slur.
“Are you drunk?”
He laughed. “I better be. Or this bottle o’ Jack was defunktive.”
“Defective?” I clarified, biting back a laugh.
“That too.”
There was a short silence while I figured out how to handle him. Eventually, I just decided to be direct and see where it got me.
“Why did you call me, Daz?”
“Can’t sleep, not in this fuckin’ house that was his. Ran out of Jack an’ I’m still up. And the boys all left. All o’ them’s on the road home. Jus’ needed somethin’ to take my mind off shit.”
That feeling wasn’t one I’d ever forget. The hours of lying awake, the memories haunting you. I hadn’t even been in Gran’s space like he was in his brother’s, but I could imagine how much worse that made it. If you’d asked me when we’d first met—or even just a few weeks ago—if I’d be on the phone in the middle of the night, commiserating even silently with a distraught Daz, I would have called bullshit. Yet, there I was.
If it was what he needed to get by, I’d be his distraction.
“Everything at the club is going well. No serious issues, though I’m worried about whether Becca will make it,” I started, not sure what to talk about with him besides work.
He cut in as soon as I paused. “I don’ wanna talk 'bout that.”
Fair enough. It wasn’t likely he’d remember this conversation in the morning anyway. No point in filling him in when he’d just need it all repeated as soon as he got back.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“What’re you wearing?” he slurred.
“Seriously?”
He chuckled, and I blatantly ignored the way the sound made me feel. “I’m going to picture that leather top that zips down the front,” he pushed on, sounding wistful.
“Yes, Daz, I’m laying here in the middle of the night in one of the costumes I wear onstage,” I drawled.
“Fuck, you’re in bed? That's better than leather.”
Why did that, of all things, make him sound instantly more coherent?
Okay, I knew the answer to that.
“If this is what you want, there are phone lines you can call,” I pointed out.
“No way they would sound as good. ’Specially when I can’t stop thinkin’ about what it was like to finally get a taste.”
That should not, in any universe, have brought on a flush of pleasure. It shouldn’t have. He sounded like a jackass—and a drunk one at that. But the fact was, I couldn’t stop thinking about it either.
And I’d tried.
When I didn’t respond, he went on, “You were so fuckin’ sweet. Knew you would be, but you were still sweeter than I’d expected.” He paused for a long time, and I understood why when he spoke again, his tone betraying the emotion creeping in past the drunken haze. “Now, everything’s shit. I prefer to think about your sweet.”
I wondered why it was me. Daz no doubt had plenty of women he could—and probably did—call to distract him in any number of ways. There were probably a few among them who would be happy to do a little phone performance for him without question.
Instead, he was on the phone with me, his employee—who’d already crossed the line in an indelible way when I let him take me to bed in the first place. Now, he was making himself vulnerable to me, and I worried that was risky as hell for both of us.
What was I supposed to do?
“Yes, I’m in bed,” I finally said, making my voice husky in a way that felt ridiculous. If the times I’d had to speak to customers at the club the same way was any indication, it didn’t sound it.
“No,” Daz grumbled at me in response. “Not the fuckin’ performance. I could call one of those damn lines if I wanted that shit. I don’t want Cherry Pie. I want pure sugar.”
My breathing picked up as my body responded to the words, to that rolling growl of his voice, to the memories he was bringing back up. I was acutely aware of the fact that I was wet.
“You want to give it to me, don’t you?” Daz coaxed. “You want to play with your pussy and let me hear it all.”
Shit. I did. He was leading me down a path that was probably the last place I should have followed, but I was going along anyway.
“Yes.”
He groaned, and any of my lingering inhibition was gone. “Touch yourself.”
But I already was. My fingers sent riots of pleasure up my body as they trailed through the wetness. I rubbed my clit, remembering his wicked, skilled tongue there instead—wishing it was him giving me more pleasure than I could offer myself.
I must have made a sound, though I was too caught up to notice, because Daz’s voice was blistering in my ear as he bit off, “Fuck yeah, sugar. That’s it. Finger that wet cunt.”
There wasn’t even a thought of resisting. I plunged two fingers in, filling myself like he wanted.
“Oh God,” I cried.
“Shit. Fuck. Just hearing you is hot as fuck.” His voice kept pushing me higher. I could just hear the sound of motion, repetitive and rough. I could picture his hand wrapped around his cock, and my own arm moved faster.
It took me back to that night, when he’d knelt between my legs, working his cock while he played with me, making sure I was ready to take him. I wanted that, not my own fingers that suddenly seemed way less satisfying when they’d always done the job in the past.
“You gotta come, sugar,” Daz groaned into the line. “Can’t fuckin’ hold back. Wanna hear you when I get there.”
Oh my God. Those words shook me. They felt like a touch that went so much farther than what I was doing to myself. Suddenly, I was chasing the release that was right there, just out of reach.
“So close,” I gasped.
He groaned, sounding desperate, like he was barely keeping himself from that precipice I was just shy of. I pressed harder, circled faster, lost all sense of what noise I was making. All I cared about was the goal just within reach.
And then, all at once, it wasn’t on the horizon. It was crashing over me, my whole body succumbing to the feeling. It was only when my body started to relax that I realized I’d dropped the phone and my fingers were gripping onto my pillow instead.
I scrambled to pick it up, greeted with heavy breathing when I did. Instead of being the first to say something, I laid there staring into the semi-dark room.
Of course, Daz didn’t need me to speak up.
“You’re too sexy for real life. Christ, I need you under me again.”
It wasn’t flowery—not by a longshot. Still, I was feeling the need to agree. Taking his call definitively proved one thing: one night wasn’t going to be enough.