Chapter 7
Nixon
Fall weather made the drive to work a pleasure. I didn’t even mind the hour I had to sit in traffic at the airport. It gave me time to think about my night with Katana, after all.
It’d only been a little while since I’d left her, but I had to admit I found myself missing her a little too often. She had my number, and I kept wishing she’d call. Maybe she’d ask me to come down and play for the weekend or something. But the phone never rang.
When traffic began rolling again, I made it all the way to my office building. Champlain Services, located inside the Century Plaza Towers on Century Park East, was my home away from home. With six offices on the top floor, we had a great view of the city.
When I came into the reception area, I saw my admin assistant, Blake, busy on the phone. I gave him a wave and headed to my office. He paused in the middle of his conversation to call out to me, “Don’t forget you have the Skype meeting this morning, boss.”
“Thanks.” I had forgotten about the meeting, but I wasn’t behind schedule even with the hour lost in traffic.
Getting into my office, I turned on the computer monitor on the wall and got ready for the meeting with my partners in the nightclub endeavor. The call came in from Gannon Forester’s office, and I clicked the accept button and found his adorable little secretary looking at me from the conference room in his office. “Good morning, Mr. Slaughter. It’s nice to see you.”
“You too, Janine. Is Gannon there?” I pulled up my most comfortable chair and settled in for the meeting.
“Yes, sir. And I’ll be adding Mr. Harlow to this meeting in just one moment. Sit tight,” she said with a smile, then pushed her thick-framed glasses up her nose a bit.
After a minute, August Harlow’s face filled half the screen. “Hey, ugly,” I joked with him.
“Hey, precious,” he said with a chuckle. “How’s life treating ya? You weren’t in town yesterday. Where might you have been?”
“Oh, nowhere special. Did you miss me?” I winked at him.
“Of course, my little buttercup. Halloween was nothing without your sweet little ass there,” he kidded with me. “But seriously, you missed one hell of a good time. Gannon and I had some fun with some nurses. At least they were dressed as nurses. There were three of them and only two of us, and one nearly got left out until I decided I could take on two at a time.”
“What a hero,” I said as I clapped. “Always helping out the citizens of our fair country, August.” Retired from the Marines at only thirty, August had seen some pretty grim shit that he didn’t like to talk about.
“I do what I can. Being retired, I can only help stateside. I like to keep up the morale over here.” He laughed again, then Gannon’s face filled the other side of my screen.
Gannon’s smile was bright as always as he greeted us, “Morning, gentlemen. And I do use that term lightly.”
August took the lead, as usual. “So the time has come for us to put our bickering behind us and agree on a name for this nightclub.”
We’d argued over this one thing for far too long. Seemed it was time to shit or get off the pot. So I gave them my idea one more time. “Let the record show, I like the name Club X.”
I knew it would be Gannon who had something to say about that. “And I’ve told you before, that name is much too common.”
August pointed out one major problem to Gannon. “Yes, but Gannon, you have yet to come up with a single name. You’ve had no problem shooting down all the ones we’ve come up with, though. So I am throwing you into the middle of this debate and challenging you to come up with a name on the fly. You have one minute.”
Giving Gannon one minute to do anything was a stretch. He was a thinker, not a shoot from the hip kind of guy. “What?” He looked back and forth at August and me with a look of panic on his face. “I’m not that creative. You guys are.”
I looked at my watch then back at Gannon. “You’re wasting time, Gannon.”
August looked at his watch too. “The time is ticking away. Thirty seconds, Gannon, or we’re sticking with Club X.”
“No! Wait—give me one more minute. I’m terrible under pressure.” Gannon pinched the bridge of his nose, looking as if he had to use all of his concentration to get a name to come to his business brain.
August wasn’t messing around and wasn’t going to give him any more time. “Nope, no extra time. And we’re coming in on ten, nine …”
I sat back, pretty sure the club would get the moniker I’d come up with.
Gannon’s eyes popped open wide, and he looked as if a lightbulb had just gone off inside his head. “Swank!”
I had to smile; I liked the name immediately.
August nodded, and he also wore a broad smile. “Swank. I like it.”
I chuckled. “Me too. Swank it is, then.” I looked at August. “Seems we’ve had a productive meeting, August. Time to get back to our real jobs. Catch you guys later in the week. Nixon, out.” I clicked off the screen and got up to get to my real job.
There were a couple of things I needed to get to that day, and one of them looked to be lunch with my best friend, Shanna. Not business, but a necessary meeting nonetheless as it had been over a week since we’d talked.
Shanna and I had met in kindergarten at our school in the tiny South Texas town of Pettus. She and I used to walk to school together, as her family lived a few houses down from mine. Our relationship had always been like a brother-sister type thing, with no romance involved.
When I’d come out to California to go to Berkeley, she’d stayed home and gone to the community college there, the only thing she and her parents could afford. Shanna gained an associate’s degree but never got past that. Instead, she got her grandmother to teach her how to sew—and she became quite good at it. She begged me to let her stay with me in L.A., and soon after her arrival she secured herself an interview at Paramount Studios, landing a job as a costume designer.
Her stay with me was short-lived, as she was able to save enough money to move into her own apartment within a month. But she and I made a pact that we’d never brush each other off or put the other to the side. She was the only family I had out here, and vice versa, even if we weren’t exactly family. So whenever I saw a lunch or dinner with Shanna in my schedule, I made sure I didn’t miss any of them.
When lunchtime came, I met her at Providence to enjoy some seafood. She met me at the door, and I hugged her. “There he is.”
“I made it. Today has been one hell of a day.” I took her hand, leading her inside.
In no time at all they had us seated, and our appetizer of oysters on the half-shell was brought to us along with some white wine. She rocked back in her seat as she swallowed one of the oysters then looked at me. “So, you disappeared on me. I thought you and I might go trick-or-treating last night, just like we did in the old days. I’d dress up as a witch and you’d throw a sheet over your head and cut out a couple of holes for your eyes.”
“Yeah, I did do a little dressing up. I wore a mask, anyway.” I sipped my wine then ate an oyster as she looked at me with narrowed eyes.
“A mask, huh?” She kept on eyeing me. “In Portland, no doubt.”
Shanna was one of the few who knew about my dabbling in the darker side of sex. And she absolutely hated it. So I was always a little leery of admitting to her when I’d gone. “Um, maybe.” I took another sip of wine.
“And you hooked up with a random sub?” she asked, but quickly raised her palm up to stop me from answering. “No, I’m not going to make you lie about it. I know you did pick up a little tramp and screw her mercilessly while spanking her until her ass …”
“Shanna, stop,” I hissed at her as I gestured around to the other patrons of the fine dining establishment. All conversations around us had gone silent as they honed in on what she was saying.
She looked around before lowering her voice as she leaned across our small table. “But you did find a girl. You can’t lie to me, Nixon Slaughter. I’ve known you for too damn long.”
“Okay, so I did find someone, and we had some fun. But my trips to Portland are a thing of the past.” I ate another oyster as she pondered what I’d said.
“Good. But what happened to make you decide not to go there anymore?” She eyed me again, scrutinizing my every word.
“The club I belong to has been destroyed,” I told her, then shrugged. “So I have nowhere to go now to get my fix.”
“Good,” she proclaimed as she picked up her glass and held it, as if to toast me. “The sinful place is no more, and you can stop that little bit of evil you’ve been doing and get to finding the right woman for you.”
“I’m not looking,” I said as our main courses—king salmon for her and vermillion rockfish for me—came to the table on a large round tray, carried by our helpful waiter.
“You’re not getting any younger, Nixon. Twenty-nine is barking at your door,” she reminded me.
So I reminded her of the same thing. “Neither are you, Shanna. And you’re only three months younger than me.”
The waiter left us, and she smiled at me. “Maybe it’s time we both started looking for people we can settle down with. Maybe then you’d stop yearning for a submissive on occasion.”
I looked down at my delicious meal, but the image wavered in front of me as Katana’s face filled my head. I didn’t think I’d ever stop yearning for at least one sub.