Pandora was playing a mix based on “Pony” by Ginuwine to try to help me find some new music for the guys to dance to, and I was chopping up chocolate to make a ganache. I'd been into Candy Shop earlier before it opened, and everything had been fine, so for the first night in weeks, I let myself have the evening off.
I told myself I was baking on that one break I’d gifted myself because it was what I did. It was how I liked to spend my time. The fact that I was making a batch big enough to bring into the club, and that I’d driven across town to the fresh market instead of just going to the normal grocery store so I could get good raspberries for the filling was beside the point. As was the fact that Daz had mentioned—before either of us had gotten sidetracked when we’d last talked a few days ago—he would be back and hoped to stop in to check on things.
And that my dark chocolate raspberry cupcakes had been Daz’s favorite? Totally irrelevant.
For the record, I wasn’t doing a great job of convincing myself of any of that BS.
I was, however, doing a more than adequate job of pulverizing the chocolate. Luckily, it was getting melted down anyway. Before I was stuck working with powder, I checked the heavy cream I had on the stove. I’d just finished pouring the cream over the bowl of chocolate pieces when someone rang the doorbell. I jogged to the door, needing to make it quick. The cupcakes themselves would need to come out of the oven any minute now.
When I pulled it open, there was no one there. No, there was just a vase of flowers on the stoop. I looked around to see a delivery truck driving away. Not sure whether I found it more odd to be getting flowers at all, or that they were delivering so late, I bent down to grab the arrangement and take it inside.
It was only after I got the cupcakes from the oven and checked on the ganache that I went back to the flowers to find there was no note attached. Months of calls at the shop with no one on the other line, and now this. My stomach dropped.
Questioning the girls hadn’t yielded fruit because it wasn’t one of them with a problem.
It was me.
Hours later, after I’d gone to bed hoping to get to sleep way earlier than usual, and after waiting around for sleep to take me had gotten old and I’d resigned to pulling up a movie on Netflix, my phone rang.
The sigh of relief I released at seeing it was from Candy Shop was as much one of resigned frustration.
“Hello?”
“Got a bit of a problem here,” Roy jumped right in.
“The kind of problem that means I need to get out of bed and come down there?”
He paused, and I knew it was him considering whether he could take care of whatever it was himself. Roy was a good guy like that, but he’d called for a reason.
“I’m on my way.”
The breath he released was audible. “Thanks, Cherry Pie.”
When I rolled up to the club, I saw Roy had sent one of the bouncers, David, around back to watch for me. This was good. Even though I hadn’t made an effort like I usually would if I was going to be on the floor—whatever crisis I was walking into, it would have to be faced in yoga pants—I was still a woman and it was dark. Strip clubs might have been a way to unwind for a lot of guys who would never dream of hurting a woman, but they could also attract some unsavory people.
“Do you know what I’m walking into?” I asked after he came to my car and opened the door for me.
“Sorry, no. I’ve been on lot duty all night. Had a couple guys hanging around out here earlier I didn’t like the feel of, so we moved shit around so I could keep an eye out. Only knew you were coming in because they radioed out to me,” he responded, eyes moving around the lot instead of spending any time on me.
I never knew where Rick found the guys he got to do security, and I had no earthly idea where the Disciples had found the couple they’d hired since the buyout, but I’d trust any of our bouncers with my life. Our guys didn’t fuck around with the safety of any of us girls. I didn’t even obsessively carry mace or a Taser like I did before coming to Candy Shop. It wasn’t even just that David was on the smaller end despite being six foot and well-muscled. It was the fact that nothing got by these guys. Their heads were never out of the game.
“Going in blind then,” I muttered.
Then, David shared some news that had me pulling up short.
“Daz is in, though. Showed up about an hour ago.”
That was not what I was expecting, but I suspected it had a lot to do with why I was there. David got half a step ahead of me before coming to a halt and actually turning his attention my way.
“What’s wrong?”
Crap. I was making him jumpy. Shaking myself out of it, I resumed the brisk pace he’d set to get us to the door.
“Nothing. Sorry.”
Inside, I went right to Daz’s office. The music was muffled back there, but still loud enough to feel the vibrations of it. It felt like my body was trembling. That sensation was one of the things I’d always liked about the job. The music had a way of invigorating me even on an off night.
The door to the office was slightly ajar, so I took the gamble and walked in.
Daz wasn’t behind the desk like I’d expected. No, he was lying sprawled out on the couch at the side of the room instead.
“Daz?”
His head popped up from the arm of the couch to look at me, and he gave me a lopsided grin. Just with that, I could tell I had drunk Daz on my hands again. This was the only time since the first call he made to me—at least that I knew of. Still, I found myself thinking I should keep an eye on him, maybe figure out how to reach out to Doc if it became a pattern.
Force of habit, I guess. The burden of growing up with a cyclically alcoholic mother.
The concern was pushed back in my mind just seconds later when the grin opened to a full smile. Then, Daz started singing.
“She’s my cherry pie.”
Good lord.
From cute to making me want to smack him in one line.
Yes, even drunk he was definitely all Daz.
“Really?” I demanded.
“Come sit on my face and give me a taste, sugar.”
Was it wrong to walk away and leave his drunk ass there?
Right or wrong, I started to. We could call around to the brothers and see who wanted to come deal with him.
As soon as I turned away, Daz spoke again in a voice that sounded a lot less steeped in liquor. “Fuck. Don’t go. I’ll stop being a dick.”
Well, that was better.
I spun again, and took a few steps into the office, closing the door and muffling the music a bit more. Daz sat up on the couch. I was sure his drunk greeting wasn't entirely an act, but he didn’t seem to be so plastered he had a hard time getting upright. That was a good sign.
“Did you ride here?”
His expression turned to what I thought was outrage, but he drunkenly didn’t fully commit, so it ended up more like confusion.
“No,” he cried, indignant. “Risk my baby and all this?” His hand came up to indicate the whole of his body. “Fuck that. I took a fuckin’ cab.”
Well, at least there was that.
“I didn’t think you’d be in until tomorrow,” I said.
He ran a hand through his shaggy hair, not bothering to smooth it back down afterward. He looked good. Really good. His hair like that made me think of mussing it up myself. It’d looked a lot like that after he’d gone down on me in the private room.
That room is just down the hall, the slutty voice in the back of my head reminded me.
I wondered whether it was just me he did this to, or if all the women he got in to bed suffered from the same affliction.
“Thought I’d be busy tonight. My sister-in-law and nephew came back with me. Thought tonight would be all about setting up rooms for them.”
He hadn’t mentioned they were coming to Hoffman with him. Not that we had deep heart-to-hearts when we talked, but still.
“And now you don’t have to?”
His eyes got a bit vague, his voice almost awed. “The club took care of it for me.”
The awe made perfect sense to me. I couldn’t imagine what that kind of support must have felt like in light of all he lost. Going it alone through the worst days of your life was no way to live.
“That was good of them,” I said, taking a seat on the couch next to him. The words felt too small, like I was trivializing what they did for him, even though that wasn’t my intention at all.
“Yeah,” Daz agreed.
We both sat there for a moment. I didn’t want to speak. There was no way to know what was going through his mind, and it felt wrong to interrupt if he was working through something big.
Then, without warning, his hand came out to settle on my thigh.
“I’m glad you came.”
I did not expect that.
“Did you ask Roy to call me?”
Daz made a noncommittal noise I took as agreement.
As much as I wanted to be flattered by that, I had to be rational. “That’s dangerous, Daz. We don’t need anyone else here getting involved in whatever we’ve got going on.”
That was good. Cool and levelheaded was the way to go. Constantly getting caught up in him and the—admittedly explosive—chemistry between us was a recipe for disaster. This was just a fling. That was all Daz did, and that was all I was interested in from him. No one else, particularly not people we worked with, needed to get wrapped up in it.
“What’ve we got going on?” Daz asked, his tone dipping low in a way I felt between my legs as his hand inched up and around my thigh toward that very spot.
“Daz,” I breathed, not knowing whether it was a protest or an invitation.
“Do you want to know what I think should be going on?” he pressed, that hand still inching. I should have stopped it—stopped him. We’d already crossed the line in this building once. We didn’t need a repeat. But those phone calls with him where I’d had to take care of myself only built up a hunger, and I knew exactly how well Daz could satisfy it.
“I don’t know.”
He chuckled, and my pussy clenched.
“We should go out to your car, and you should take me back to your place.”
We shouldn’t. We really, really shouldn’t. It was a bad idea. It was absolutely not something we should do…
But, fuck. I wanted to.
“Okay.”