RHYS

"Why in the fuck are we at a bar in Henderson?" Canon physically grimaces and shakes his head in confusion as I slide my car into a parking spot in front of Hennigan's.

"My buddy owns the place. I told him I'll stop in to check it out."

"Yeah. Yeah, you did. Which is why you brought your cousin here last weekend."

Fuck. I forgot he knew about that.

"It's just a quick drink, Canon," I say, deflecting. "We'll go to Strippers Strippers Strippers as soon as we're done."

"Don't be an asshole. You know it's called Double Diamonds, not Strippers Strippers Strippers. And you also know it's my favorite of the strip clubs. Have some respect for my hobbies."

I stop, meeting Canon at the bumper of my car as I hit the remote lock for the car. He's not wrong. I have no idea what the fuck we're doing at a bar in Henderson either. Not really. Am I hoping I might see her again? I know I'll see her again. On Monday, at work. Where I will keep my kisses and my filthy thoughts to myself because she's twenty-fucking-two. And my employee.

Yeah.

Twenty-two.

I'm a pervert for even thinking about her. An asshole for using her employment file to find the information in the first place. It's just… why did she have to offer that? Whatever else you want. I want. Of course I want. I'm not a saint for fuck's sake.

I'd be a liar in addition to a deviant if I didn't admit that the relative inexperience that comes with her age is a huge turn-on. So fucking confident in my ability to be better than anything she'd have experienced thus far.

"Canon, what is that rule about age limits?"

"What rule?"

I pocket the key fob and run a hand over the back of my neck in agitation. "The thing about how young you can go? It's half your age plus five, right? God, why am I asking you?" I twist my neck and stare at the entrance to Hennigan's.

The look he gives me makes me sorry I brought it up. I should have asked my cousin—that pretentious British bastard would've had the answer.

"It's half plus seven, not five. And it's for dating, not fucking. There are no rules for fucking, except that she's eighteen. Though eighteen is really, really questionable and if you're fucking a teenager I need you to stop and evaluate your life."

"Right. Half plus seven." I nod like it doesn't matter, already regretting bringing this up with Canon.

"Tell me we're talking about a twenty-one-year-old. Tell me you don't have your balls ready to blow over a teenager."

"Jesus, relax. I don't. Never mind, we're not talking about this." I nod my head towards the pub door and start walking.

"This is why Double Diamonds is my club of choice. Vince doesn't hire unless they're twenty-one."

"What?"

"Great benefits too."

"What?" I stop so I can look at Canon. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"The strippers at Double Diamonds. Comprehensive benefits package. Health insurance, tuition reimbursement. No stage fees. Did you know most clubs charge the dancers just to work?" He spits this last part out, his tone indicating his disgust at the patriarchy of the modern strip club worker.

"How…" I hesitate, as I stare at him, speechless. "Why do you know this?"

"I golfed with Vince last week."

"Great. Glad to hear you're making new friends."

"Don't be jealous. You were busy." Canon checks his watch and glances at Hennigan's. "God. I hope your teenager isn't hanging out in a bar."

"Will you shut the fuck up? She's not a teenager. And she's not mine."

Not mine, and not at the bar.

I notice it as soon as we're through the door, as if I expected her to be in the same seat she was in last weekend, waiting for me. Possibly because I know damn well that she lives down the street after my perusal of her employment file.

I'd only wanted to confirm which department she was in, a flicker of hope that she'd simply been on four for a meeting and seeing her would not be a common occurrence. But no. She's in human resources, assigned to cubicle 4W-28, putting her on the west side of the fourth floor. Way too close to my office for comfort.

Goddammit, I walked away for a reason. I didn't fuck her in Brady's office last weekend, even though I wanted to, because I'm not in the habit of making bad decisions. So I sent her home, where she belonged. Far away from a man like me, a man interested in one thing when the soft blinking of her eyes and the wide-eyed optimism on her face told me she was interested in something different. Then she shows up in my office. Nearly two hundred thousand people employed on the Vegas Strip and she's working in my casino. Sitting eighty feet from my office.

Fuck.

I don't need the distraction and she sure as hell doesn't need me. Opening this resort is my focus. Nothing else, no one else. This is my moment. This is my time to make a lasting contribution to the family company. This venture was my brainchild. I'm the one who brought it to the board. I'm the one who lined up the investment money. I'm the one who spent the last four years eating, living, breathing with the sole goal of making the Windsor the most profitable arm of the family business.

Me.

Besides, I fuck. I don't take women to dinner and escort them home to Connecticut to meet my parents.

Focused.

I'm a privileged son of a bitch. No, that's not right. I'm the privileged son of an heiress. My great-grandfather started a company that's ensured financial stability for generations. Each generation since, instead of resting, has grown the company larger. Bigger, better, more successful.

My mother has been running the North American division of Sutton Corporation for two decades. She's a force to be reckoned with and, in her fifties, not ready to step aside. My cousin took over as CEO of the company two years ago.

I could have fucked off for the rest of my life and it wouldn't matter. The company would have kept moving without me. I'm not an integral part, not like my mother, or my cousin, or my uncle running the cruise lines. My twenties were a struggle finding my place in this conglomeration. A place that would matter, a chapter header instead of a footnote.

The Windsor is my chapter header, my legacy.

It's not lost on me that my lasting contribution to humanity will be the self-indulgent opening of a luxury hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, not charity or healthcare reform or the abolition of racial disparity or funding public education.

Brady's behind the bar, more observing than bartending, so when he spots us arrive he comes over and we do the obligatory backslap handshake.

"Two weekends in a row. Wow." Brady folds his arms and leans against the bar top. "You're either really impressed with my microbrew or you're back for the girl."

Thanks, Brady.

"We sure as fuck did not come out to Henderson for beer," Canon mutters as he slides onto a stool. "You do card here, right?"

I'm about to tell Canon to fuck off when Brady tilts his head across the room. So she is here. I'm flooded with a rush of adrenaline, and something else, something different. There's a sense of exhilaration at seeing her again, a wasted emotion for a man just looking to fuck. As if I'm a teenager and this might be the first time I get my hand down a girl's pants, when I'm not and it's not.

Perhaps I just need to get her out of my system. Maybe just a taste, a quick fuck. A good time for both of us and then we move on. On Monday it's back to business. I turn in my seat, scanning the bar as Brady sets a couple of drafts in front of us. I locate her, pulling darts from a targeted cork board, her dark hair spilling down her back, the lighting picking up the highlights woven throughout her hair. She's in a denim skirt, the material snug over the curve of her ass, and the sight makes my eager fingers tighten around the glass in my hand. It doesn't help matters when she lifts up on her tiptoes to grab at a dart just out of her reach, her ass rising that much higher as she reaches.

She's tiny, and it makes me feel protective towards her in some antiquated bullshit way. As if she might need me to carry her over a puddle or buy her something pretty. She needs neither. She'd be easy to lift though, her legs spread around my hips as I sank into her, my hands gripping her ass as I bounced her up and down on my cock, her hands tugging my hair as she begged me for more, more, more.

In my mind she begs. Tiny whimpers. Please, Rhys. More, Rhys.

She turns, flashing a smile at someone behind her. Her smile is wide, a strand of hair falling across her cheek and her eyes sparkling with laughter. Her face is devoid of any visible makeup, which only serves to make her look younger and less calculated in any art of seduction.

As if her objectives are so much less intentional than most women. Less rehearsed. Or maybe she simply has no clue how she affects men, but that can't be right.

My eyes land on what she's smiling at. Or whom. A man. Why the hell am I surprised? As if she's been waiting around since—yesterday—when she offered me whatever I wanted with her? Seriously, what the fuck?

I snort and turn back to my drink.

Then I turn back to Lydia.

Canon watches me and rolls his eyes. "Okay, wow."

"Fuck off." I bring the glass to my lips and sip, eyes on my good girl as she tosses a dart. She says something that makes that man laugh and I wonder if they came together. Where the hell is the pushy blonde she was with last week? I assumed, like the arrogant asshole I am, that she'd be here with her friend. Just waiting for me to arrive and repeat the 'kissing thing,' as she called it. I take another sip and scan the bar until I find the blonde. She's at a table with two guys. Which means there are five of them and it's not a date. Or it's one hell of a kinky date.

"Lydia Clark. Recent graduate of LSU. New hire at the Windsor. Twenty-two." Canon gives me a dramatic wink at that detail before continuing, "Had a dog named Scout growing up—"

I stop watching Lydia to interrupt Canon. "How do you know that?"

"You pay me for security, remember? I know everything." He gives me a knowing look, as if he's some kind of clairvoyant.

It's creepy.

"Also I just took a picture of her and ran it through the software we're using for the casino," he adds, which makes a hell of a lot more sense than him being omniscient.

"Yeah, but how do you know about her dog? That wasn't on her employment file."

"No, it's on an Instagram post from last week," he says, looking at his phone. "Hashtag TBT," he reads aloud. "It's a Throwback Thursday post with a picture of a ten-year-old Lydia and her dog. See?" He turns his phone in my direction and I snatch it out of his hand with more aggravation than is necessary, but he's goading me for his own amusement. There she is. Tweenaged Lydia with a dog. She's in a Girl Trooper uniform. Jesus Christ. I toss Canon's phone onto the bar top in disgust.

"You know, when you're forty she'll be twenty-eight."

"Yeah, I get it, I'm old. She's young." I wonder if they really are on a fivesome date? Maybe that's what the kids are into now.

"No, asshole. I'm saying that when you're forty half your age plus seven is twenty-seven. When you're forty Lydia will be twenty-eight."

"So if I can avoid touching her for six years I won't be a pervert? Thanks, that's helpful."

"I'm saying it all evens up in the next few years so why delay the gratification now?"

"I'm no morality expert, but I don't think that's right."

Across the bar the guy Lydia's playing darts with stands behind her and places one hand on her hip and another over the hand holding the dart. Her dart-throwing skills are fine so it's a lame-ass move on his part.

I wonder if she'll kiss him. I wonder if she'll offer him more.

I wonder why in the fuck I care.

I wonder if I'm having some kind of goddamn midlife crisis. It defies all reasonable logic. Why do I need to touch this particular girl? What does it matter? There are no fewer than ten women at Double Diamonds who would go home with me tonight—women who have gone home with me in the past. Women I pay money to so I can kick them out five minutes after I come.

Women who don't look at me as if they might expect better out of me.

Fuck.

"We should go," I murmur, but I'm still watching Lydia.

"Yup," Canon agrees, but he makes no move to get up. He doesn't even take his eyes off the game playing on one of the bar TV's.

She must feel me beside her before she sees me because she turns a moment before I take her hand in mine. Her eyes widen in surprise, her lashes fluttering against her cheeks as she quickly blinks. Her lips part, come together again as a smile breaks out. She flushes, the color high on her cheeks, and there's that look again. Expectation. God help me, she looks at me with hope.

What am I doing?

She has to tilt her head back to look at me because I'm standing on top of her, with her soft hand enveloped in my own larger, rougher one. I squeeze and her breathing increases, her eyes sparkling, a look of raw anticipation on her face.

"Rhys?" she asks, and hearing my name on her lips makes my pulse kick up and my cock harden.

I don't respond, instead giving her hand a tug and moving us towards Brady's office. The moment we clear the doorway I'm on her, a tangle of lips and tongue and a fistful of hair.

Until Brady's chair scrapes across the floor. Lydia breaks away from me with a squeak.

"Again with my office. I'll see myself out," Brady mutters as he passes us, the door clicking shut behind him.

I laugh and Lydia blushes.

"Who's the guy?"

"Who?" She blinks at me in utter confusion and I'm gratified that she can't remember a man she was talking to two minutes ago.

"Darts," I remind her and she looks down at her hand where she's still clutching the darts for her turn. She opens her palm and stares at them, then back to me.

"Josh?" she answers, but she says it like a question, like she's possibly already forgotten his name. Good girl. "Just a guy from my apartment complex. We met him at the pool today."

She's gotten some sun today, I note, a sprinkling of freckles covering her nose and cheeks, and I'm annoyed at the idea of stupid Josh seeing her wet and covered in a scrap of fabric.

"We have a pool at the hotel," I tell her.

"Yeah, and I have a pool at my apartment complex," she replies with a small laugh, as if we're simply comparing amenities, her eyes searching my face for some clue as to what I'm on about.

I don't know, so I kiss her instead. I take the darts from her and toss them in the direction of Brady's desk.

I kiss her again and she leans in closer, placing her hands on my chest. Her touch is light, shy? But her lips are eager. Her lips are pliant and soft and sweet. Her kisses feel like a preview to what sex would feel like with her. Hungry. Intimate. Exploratory.

I walk us backwards towards the couch, saying a silent prayer of thanks to Brady for having the foresight to have a couch in his office. She lands on my chest, her body soft and light on top of mine, but it's her eyes that interest me. They widen, as if she's surprised at where she's found herself, which she should not be after propositioning me just yesterday. But perhaps that's not normal behavior for her. Perhaps there's something about me specifically that makes her do things outside of her norm.

I find I like that idea.

The look of surprise lasts only a second, replaced with a slow smile that spreads across her entire face. If I thought she was pretty before, it's nothing compared to this moment. Her tongue peeks out to wet her lips and then she ducks her head, a tiny giggle escaping before she looks up again. She peeks at me from underneath her lashes and there's a spark of excitement in her eyes now, her hands sliding up my chest, her fingers splaying outwards in exploration, the tips massaging like a very happy kitten.

And then she flexes her hips.

God help me, she flexes her hips. A tiny rolling motion pushing her pelvis against my thigh, seeking friction, seeking more. I slide my hand over her hip to palm her ass and she does it again. Harder this time, more deliberate, yet I don't think she's aware she's doing it at all. Her hands are busy feeling my chest through the fabric of my shirt and her eyes are busy examining the places she follows with a kiss. My neck. My right eyebrow. My left earlobe. She pauses there, pulling my flesh between her teeth with a gentle tug before following it with a swipe of her tongue.

Another flex of her hips.

I place my hand over hers and slide it lower until I clear the hem of my shirt and slide it under, placing her hand on my bare stomach. Her eyes move to mine, again with that brief look of surprise followed by a widening of her eyes and her trademark enthusiastic smile.

She raises herself off of my chest enough to shove my shirt halfway up my chest, and in the same movement she spreads her legs. Spreads them so that she's straddled my right thigh. The movement causes her skirt to bunch up around her hips so the only thing separating her from my leg is her panties.

Cotton. I can feel that much under my hand. I trail my fingertip along the seam around her thigh and the edge of her panties and she shivers, then smiles, biting her lip mid-smile. It makes the skin on her nose scrunch up, the freckles from her afternoon in the sun an adorable bunch.

Another flex of her hips.

I can feel the heat of her pussy through my pants and it's fucking unreal. It's unreal because my pants are still on. What the actual fuck is happening right now? Are we… dry-humping? Is this grown woman—too young for me, yes, but grown all the same—rubbing one out on my leg?

Her lips part on a gasp, her hair a pile of tumbling strands surrounding her face. Some of it is stuck to her lips so I reach up and pull it free, tucking it behind her ear. My fingers linger, tracing the shell of her ear, down the side of her neck, across her clavicle. She smiles and grinds herself against my leg, both palms resting on my bare chest for balance.

I don't think I've dry-humped since I got my driver's license, so it's been… a while.

And yet I'm hard. Painfully hard watching her rock back and forth on my leg. Shocked my dick is still in my pants, but hard.

I drop my hands to her thighs, bare with her skirt bunched around her waist. Her skin is soft and smooth under my palms and touching her like this feels better than it should. Better than anything I've felt in a really long time.

Her eyes dart down to where my hands are stroking her skin. She must like what she sees because she licks her lips and when her eyes find mine again they're eager. Expectant and wide-eyed and the most lovely shade of green, the kind of green usually associated with a forest or an Irish festival. The shade of green reserved for men who give a fuck about noting such a detail. They're flirtatious and inquisitive and so sweetly interested in what she's looking at. Which is me.

I want to tell her not to bother. That she wouldn't like what she found if she spent more time with me. That I'm not worthy of whatever idealistic fantasy of me she's painting in her head. I want to tell her this.

I do.

I should.

I will.

But I also want to see if she can make herself come simply from rocking back and forth on my leg, or if she needs a little help.

I want to slip my hand into her cotton panties and see how wet she is. I want to know how hard her clit is. How eager and slick. I want to know if she enjoys teasing little circles made by the tip of a finger or the firm press of a thumb at just the right moment.

And God help me, I don't want her to stop looking at me like that.

She smiles and that perfect pink tongue darts out for another swipe of her lower lip. Then she bends her elbows enough to kiss me. I let her. I keep my hands on her thighs while she rocks against me again and as she presses gentle kisses against my lips. When she snakes a hand out from underneath my shirt to run her hand along the hard length of me, I let her.

I let her, when what I want to do is take control. What I want is to unzip my pants, fist myself, slide her panties to the side and slip inside of her hot, wet, tight cunt. But if I take the lead I can't watch her use me to get herself off. And that shit is hot as fuck. Hotter than is reasonable for someone my age. Or her age for that matter. Yet she's doing it for me right now with this PG-rated makeout session, so if she wants to play after-school special, I'm game. Besides, I'm far too curious to see where this goes.