"Girl, give us the deets! He got a big dick? He look like he got a big dick," Coco barks behind Cherry.

"Biggest one I've ever seen," I say, pouring each girl a shot, hoping they stop asking me questions. There wasn’t much more to say on the subject and I was too damn busy with trying to do my job to sit around and make stories out of nothing more than a ménage à moi with an audience of one.

Candy’s not coming in tonight and none of these girls know why, so I’m tending bar tonight to cover her shift. They should count themselves lucky they don’t have the slightest idea what’s really going on here. I wonder how terrified they’d be if they knew someone was gunned down a few feet from where they stood less than two days ago.

I guess it would be wrong to tell them.

Maybe I’ll let it slip later. One of them is bound to ask why Franco isn’t around to wet his dick in one of them. He seemed to always be good for a few hundred dollars when the girls needed quick cash.

“Ladies,” Tony’s voice rings out. “Get your asses moving, come on, get dressed. I don’t pay you to drink. I pay you to dance.”

They giggle and bounce away. It makes me sick to watch them listen to crap like that and do whatever Tony says. But I keep my mouth shut and take a long deep breath and wipe the bar top clean. Tony likes when it shines.

“How you doing, Felony?” Tony says, cocking his head in that stupid way he does.

“I’m good, Tone. How are you doing?”

“You have any issues abut the other night?”

I blink up at him and smile. “I wasn’t here the other night, Tone. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, not breaking eye contact.

“You remind me of someone. I can’t put my finger on it.”

“I hope it’s a pretty bad-ass dancer.”

“I like you, kid. Come to the next card game. I’d love to see how talented of a dancer you are—up close.”

That wasn’t so much an invitation as a demand.

Oh, punch me in the twat until my great grandmother feels it. I’d rather die a thousand times over than have this man lay one single finger on me.

“Will Corrado be there?” I ask sweetly.

His eyes drop down my neck and linger on the low scoop of my collar and the cleavage that lay just behind it. He purses his lips in thought and shrugs. “He doesn’t always show up, my Corrado. He’s got a lotta work he does for me.”

He stands there a little while longer as I try my best to hold my smile. Inside every part of my body trembles with disgust that turns quickly into hate.

When Tony finally walks away, I realize the club is filling up and I’ve been handing out drinks and ringing them up on autopilot.

Within another hour, the place is jam-packed and an entire drunk bachelor party is on the other side of the bar shoving twenties at me to dance for them.

My eyes shoot up to Tony’s VIP section up on the balcony that looks out over the crowd. He’s standing there with his arms folded across his chest, just nodding to me. He wants me to dance at the bar for them. My face flushes hot with humiliation.

Tony thinks this will break me.

He thinks he has control over all of us. That all he has to do is say jump and we ask how high.

God, I wish I didn’t have to do any of this.

The group of guys in front of me is harmless, but Michael, one of the bouncers is next to me instantly whispering in my ear, “You having any trouble over here? Tony says to dance for them. If you’re willing.”

I squeeze his arm and smile as I hand out beer after beer to the men. “I’m fine. Hey, can you call Corrado out, so I could dance?”

“Why would I—”

“Michael, we’re short-staffed and someone needs to run the bar while I shove my ass in these gentlemen’s faces.”

“You sure you’re okay with this?” he asks pulling out his phone.

“Sure,” I smile up at him. “Tony wants me to dance, and that’s my job so…”

The bachelor party shouts my name, chanting it over and over until I climb up onto the bar. Thank God I had the good sense to wipe that shit dry.

From the corner of my eye I see Corrado move through the crowd and pull up a stool at the end of the bar. I lied to Michael. I don’t need anyone to run the bar while I dance. There are three girls back here with me. What I need is a focal point to dance to—because the rage that is burning inside me is so great I’m afraid I’ll do something I’ll regret.

I’ve done a lot of things I’m not so proud of in my life, but regrets—I have none.

I smile to myself when the music changes and the first few punching beats of “Tonight I’m Loving You” by Enrique Iglesias comes on. I breathe in deep and feel the music pulse and thump through me. And my body moves—like ribbons in a breeze.

There’s no pole to lean on here, but there’s men and stools and a bar top, that when I crawl across, my ass is in all their faces. I feel the music in my bones and the eyes of my audience heavy like a weight—like hundreds of hands caressing me, hundreds of mouths brushing against me, hundreds of tongues sliding over me.

I close my eyes when I slip off the bar in front of Corrado. I can hear his heavy breathing. I could feel it fan hot over my skin. I think about his hands and how they moved up and down his shaft as he watched me when we were in the lounge.

Slowly I reach down and lift the hem of my shirt up and over my head. Underneath is just a small demi-cup bra made purely of lace.

“Jesus, Felony,” I hear him swear.

The others, the ones from the bachelor party are singing the words to the song. I lean my back against the bar and arch forward, sliding my hand down the front of my pants.

I won’t do it for real, not in front of everyone, but the tips of my fingers brush over my soaked panties and my body tenses when they slip past my clit. It throbs an ache so deliciously bittersweet I could probably make myself orgasm by just thinking about it.

When I open my eyes, all I see is Corrado.

My finger slips down lower.

“Song’s over,” he growls and he pulls my hand out of the top of my pants and drags me through the shouting crowd and into one of the back rooms.

He locks the door behind us and spins around on me, grabbing my wrist and bringing my trembling hand up to his face.

My fingers are soaked.

We both stare at the glistening tips until his eyes lift to mine. He pulls my hand toward his mouth and wraps his lips around them, then sucks softly. My knees go weak from the warmth of his mouth, from the expression on his face, from the moan that’s humming from deep in the back of his throat.

He slides my fingers out of his mouth. “Slide your bottoms off.”

I do as he asks. I’m so wet and I want him to see—I want him to see what he does to me. I pull them down slow, keeping my eyes locked on his wild ones.

“Do you see how wet you get me?” I whisper.

“Was it me you were just dancing for?” he asks, trailing his hands down my sides and lowering his body in front of mine. He knows the answer. He knows it as he kneels in front of me, eye-level to exactly where I need to be touched.

“God, yes.”

His hands shift back, each reaching and cupping each side of my ass. The firm squeeze makes me moan and arch forward, his face no more than an inch away from my inner thighs.

He looks up to me and bites at the bottom of his lip.

I’m dizzy with arousal. If he doesn’t touch me I think I might explode from the thought of him touching me. “Corrado,” I beg.

Then his mouth is on me, sucking my clit hard. The feeling is so intense I lose my balance and my back thuds into the door. But he doesn’t let up, he’s sucking and sucking, flicking his tongue in insanely fast movements and, instantly, pleasure builds hard and fast where he’s devouring me.

“Fuck, oh God, oh God. I’m gonna cum. Fuck, Corey.” I’m fisting his hair so I have something to hold onto as I teeter on the edge of complete annihilation. The feeling builds and builds and I start trembling. “Oh fuck,” I cry as my orgasm explodes and shatters against his lips. As soon as I cum, his lips work less frantically, licking in long soft strokes. I guess he knows how sensitive a girl could get right after a kneel at the altar.

I’m so weak my back slides down the door until my ass hits the floor.