by Alta Hensley
Warning bells went off in my head. “What kind of place is this?” What did it matter what I looked like?
“It’s called Spiked Roses. It’s a men’s club. No women unless you work there. An exclusive one. Only the wealthiest men can be members.”
“A strip club?” I asked, wondering how I could turn her down without insulting her for choosing to be a stripper. I wasn’t interested in taking off my clothes and working a pole. At least I didn’t think I would be. The truth of the matter was, I didn’t exactly have a lot of options.
She shook her head and giggled. “No. Not a strip club. But it’s not your typical bar. Try to picture the richest fucks in the world who can get whatever they want. Whatever they want. Spiked Roses caters to them.” She ran her fingers through her thick hair and added, “The money is pretty good. The tips are awesome, and there are other ways to make even more money if you want.”
“What do you mean?” Again, the warning bells banged in my head and even moved to my heart. This beautiful woman before me looked too innocent and perfect to be involved in something shady, but I still felt there was something more sinister about this place that she wasn’t telling me.
She shrugged. “I’ll set up an interview for tonight and you can ask Mr. Saxon for yourself. I’m not sure it’s my story to tell.”
“Tonight?” I was so freakin’ tired. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to walk let alone get dolled up for an interview.
“Yeah, you better act fast while they are still hiring. Word is getting around about the money and perks.” She looked at my bed. “Take a nap and rest up. You can come in with me tonight. I start at eight, and I’m sure Mr. Saxon will be there. He’s always there. But I’ll call and tell him I’m bringing you in with me. He’s a pretty cool guy. A tight ass, and a real asshole sometimes, but fair. And he’s hired everyone I have brought in, so I think you are good. And if he’s not there, one of the other bosses will be.”
I nodded and instantly thought about how I should dress. I had nothing that was professional, or luxurious, or fitting of an exclusive club for rich men. “What should I wear?”
“Black. Wear something black and sexy. Do you have a little black dress? Mr. Saxon loves little black dresses. It’s a joke among the women that if you get in trouble and called into his office, just wear a black dress and you are off the hook.”
“I don’t have a black dress.” My cheeks heated, and I wanted to crawl back to my piece of shit trailer in Nevada. Who was I to think I could keep up with people like this woman?
She looked at my body again, her big eyes taking me in. “No worries. I have something you can wear. What size shoe do you wear?”
“Seven.”
“Well, I wear seven and a half, so you can borrow a pair of my heels too. Don’t worry about it. If you get hired, they have uniforms for the girls and provide everything you’ll need.”
“I would really appreciate it. Thank you.” For the first time since she walked into the room, I walked over and offered my hand. “I’m Anita Kyle.”
She took my hand and shook it. Her palm was silky smooth, as I had no doubt the rest of her body was. “Marlowe Masters.” Wow, even her name was sexy as hell. She turned to walk out of the room. “We’ll leave here to catch the trolley at seven. Cool?”
“Cool.”
“Nice to meet you, Anita. I think you’re going to really like New Orleans.”
God I hoped so. I really did hope so.
“Thank you. It’s pretty. I really like what I have seen so far.”
Her smile fell from her face, and her dark eyes darkened to what almost seemed black. Haunting. Marlowe seemed to morph into a ghost before my eyes. Lifeless almost. “It’s ugly too. It’s fucking ugly when it wants to be. This city can eat you alive.” She seemed to go off in thought but then seemed to snap back to the friendly woman who had walked through my door just as fast. “But yeah, hopefully you like NOLA. The city either loves you, or it beats you.”
I swallowed hard and said nothing. I didn’t want to be beaten.
Her smile returned. “See you at seven.”
Chapter Five
Kenneth
“Come in,” I said, anxious to get the interview over with. I had grown to resent the fact that I was such a control freak. I utilized the HR manager to some degree, but not nearly as much as I should have. Matthew had also helped in hiring the new staff, but the other members showed no interest at all. They could give a fuck less who poured and served the drinks. But my controlling ass was stupid enough to head this up.
The door to the office opened and a scared shitless girl tentatively walked into the room. That was a good sign and a point for her.
Fear. I liked fear.
I hated the women who walked in with overinflated egos and thought they were the shit. If I sensed even the slightest bit of ego or arrogance, I ended the interview before they could even tell me their name.
When the scared young woman didn’t enter all the way, but waited for some sort of guidance, I signaled for her to enter and sit down in the chair in front of me. She did so, appearing as if she were going to drop dead of a heart attack any minute. She was wearing a little black dress which had my eyes scanning her body immediately. Tiny, toned, and tattooed. Really tattooed. Not just a small tattoo here or there, but the entire right side of her arm was nearly completely covered in decorative ink. This level of artwork took commitment and time, and wasn’t just a drunken night or quick act of rebellion. I liked it. I liked the dedication it took.
“Have a seat,” I said, looking at my pile of papers to try to find the note where I had written her name when Marlowe had told me she had another friend interested in working for us. Giving up on finding it in the pile of papers on my desk, I asked, “Name?”
“Anita Kyle, sir.”
Good, I liked that she called me “sir” and showed respect. Very few women called me sir. It was archaic, maybe, but still something I demanded from my staff. It was hard to get the women who interviewed to realize that working at Spiked Roses would mean a lot of biting tongues and saying “yes, sir” to the members, so to see that this Anita Kyle was doing it from the very beginning, pleased me.
“Marlowe told me you just moved to New Orleans and are looking for work.”
“Yes, sir. I just moved here today.”
“From where?”
“Muckaluk, Nevada.”
“Where is that?”
“Nowhere. It’s in the middle of nowhere.”
The girl intrigued me. She wasn’t rambling like most women did who were nervous or trying to impress. She wasn’t going off on weird tangents nor trying to impress me with her wit and charm—or lack of.
“So why do you want to work at Spiked Roses?”
She sat there in silence for an awkward amount of time. So much so, that I almost asked the question again in case she somehow didn’t hear me.
“I’m not sure how you want me to answer that,” she said, looking me straight in the eye.
“With the truth. I prefer honesty over all else.”
She licked her lips nervously but never broke eye contact. “I’m not sure that I do want the job. But it sort of landed in my lap, and I don’t really have any other options at the moment.” She took a deep breath, and I struggled not to smile. The girl had balls. “I don’t even really understand what this place is or what I will be doing to be honest.”
“Fair enough,” I began, still looking into her big brown eyes. “I’m sure Marlowe told you that we are a members-only men’s club. A place for men to gather, drink, conduct business, have a good meal, a good cigar, and good scenery.”
One eyebrow rose on her delicate face. “Marlowe said it wasn’t a strip club.”
“It’s not. Far from it. Our women are in uniform. We have two kinds. One uniform is a red lace dress accentuated with diamonds. The other uniform is a black leather leotard with a collar and a chain that can be hooked to the tables or the chairs.”
/> Her mouth opened, and her eyes grew even bigger than they had been. She was naïve. The thought of a collar and chain threw her for a loop. I could see this, but she didn’t want me to know. She was trying to hide that fact.
“But our staff are fully clothed and remain that way unless The Tasting Room is having a certain theme that dictates something different.”
“The Tasting Room?”
“Marlowe didn’t tell you about The Tasting Room?” I found this fact surprising. The Tasting Room parties had quite the reputation in New Orleans, and many women tried to get a job at Spiked Roses just for a chance to work one of the parties. The money was huge, and at times, life-altering huge. So the fact that Anita didn’t know what I was talking about threw me for my own loop.
She shook her head. “She said the details of this place were your story to tell.”
“So you came here to be a waitress? Just a waitress? Without knowing anything about the club?” Again, I found this unbelievable.
The girls who walked through my door knew damn well what The Tasting Room was all about and what it had in store. Every single one of them was willing to start off being a waitress, but only for a chance to work one of the parties eventually. Those women came in wanting the job badly. So badly, that if I really wanted to, I could have had a blowjob in exchange for hiring papers any time I wanted. But Anita seemed different. She wanted the job, maybe even needed the job, but it was just because it was a job, period. I had the feeling she would have taken any waitress job at this point—Spiked Roses or not.
“Or a cigar girl.”
“Cigar sommelier,” I corrected. “In The Humidor Room.”
Her blank stare told me she had no idea what I was talking about.
“What’s your favorite drink, Miss Kyle?” I had no idea why I was asking the question, but I liked how closed she was and asking her these questions would throw her off. And the sick bastard that I was wanted to break that cold exterior.
“Jack and Coke.”
“A whiskey girl? Have you ever had good whiskey? Something besides Jack?”
Again, she was silent.
“Anita?”
“Well, the truth is”—she gave a soft smile—“that until you just told me Jack was whiskey, I had no idea. I thought it was just Jack. That it was its own alcohol. I didn’t realize it was whiskey. So no, I have never had good whiskey, because I didn’t even know I had whiskey at all before just now.” Her cheeks pinkened, but she still held her eyes to mine.
I chuckled. I couldn’t help it. Not one single interview I had done—and I had done a shitload—entertained me as much as this woman did. I couldn’t read her at all. She was a closed book, and I wanted to crack the spine and read the pages. I thought for sure she would have said champagne or white wine. Even the Jack and Coke didn’t surprise me, but the fact that she actually admitted to having no idea that Jack was whiskey amused me.
“So let me tell you a little about Spiked Roses. A few friends of mine and I opened it about a year ago. We were tired of what the other membership clubs had to offer, and all their blueblood and ancient rules. We wanted something different. Customer service is our number one focus. We don’t believe in the word no. You will be dealing with extremely powerful men who will have very high expectations, and it will be your job to meet them. It’s not an easy job, and the men can be real assholes if you’re lucky, and monsters if you aren’t. Will you be able to check your ego, judgment, morals, and even pride at the door?”
“Deceptive coated smiles,” she said, which gave me pause.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Yes. You are asking for deceptive coated smiles. I can deliver that.”
Damn. I don’t know why I liked that answer so much, but I fucking did.
“Good. Spiked Roses is different than other bars in the French Quarter. You have to be a member and a male, and membership isn’t something you can obtain easily. Yes, the outside façade has the typical New Orleans banners of green, purple, and yellow, but once you come in, the colors are red and black. When my partners and I found this place, we knew it was perfect. It was known for ages by the locals as an abattoir which is another way of saying a slaughter house because of its gory history. Gruesome murders that occurred in 1892 by one of the worst serial killers in New Orleans history occurred right where you are sitting.”
Her eyes opened wider, and I could tell this little tidbit of information intrigued her, so I continued. I had always found the dark history of Spiked Roses fascinating as well. I always made the telling of the history as part of the interview, because I wanted each staff person to know it in case members asked or at the very least to give our ladies something to engage in interesting conversation with if the need arose.
“The serial killer murdered twenty-two women—or at least that is how many bodies were eventually found. He would stab spikes in their hearts and cover their bodies in roses before burying them in black bags beneath the floorboards of this building. It was said that the killer would use the roses to help conceal the smell when the bodies began to rot.” I paused so the information could soak in before continuing. “We considered calling the club The Abattoir, but finally believed that not enough clients would truly understand what that even means. So Spiked Roses was born from the tales of the gruesome deaths and their burials.”
“I love it,” she said quietly. “What an amazing piece of history.”
This was the most she had shown me of her personality since she’d walked through the door. There was more life in her eyes, as we spoke about death.
Interesting.
She enjoyed the story. Whether it was the dark nature of it or the historical element, I wasn’t sure. Regardless of why, I finally saw a spark in what had been pretty hollow eyes.
“So let’s talk about the tattoos,” I said.
She glanced down at her exposed arm and then back at me.
“How many more do you have?”
“They go down most of my right side. Down my ribcage and all the way to the top of my thigh.”
I looked at her arms. “I see flowers. Is that what the rest of the tattoos are?”
She nodded.
“Generally at Spiked Roses, we like our women to be a little more… delicate. Delicate flowers I suppose you could say.”
Without even the slightest hesitation, she countered, “I’m a delicate flower who happens to like the fucking thorns.” She gave a seductive smile that actually had my cock twitch in response.
Who the hell was this woman? She was very cool and collected, and yet so very naïve. Parts of her were hard, and I could easily see parts of her were soft. She was a jagged edge that I wanted to touch, even if it meant making me bleed.
I knew our members would find her as intriguing as I did.
“All right. Consider yourself hired. I’m going to place you in The Humidor Room.” I looked at her and gave her a wink. “The cigar room. It’s a room where we store the finest cigars in the world for our clients. You will oversee the keeps which are climate-controlled cedar lockers. Each keep has the member’s name on it in gold lettering. The temperature is always maintained at sixty-eight degrees and the humidity at sixty-eight percent.” I paused and studied her expression. She was thinking. I could see it. Memorizing what I was saying. “Don’t worry, you will be trained on all this. But it is extremely important that you do not wear any type of perfume at all. It can pollute the air and contaminate the cigars. I’m a huge stickler on this one as are other Spiked Roses members.”
“I understand. I don’t wear perfume anyway, so that won’t be an issue.”
“The cigar sommeliers do not make as much as the waitresses do because of the tips. But if you prove your worth, you will be moved to waitressing. And then, of course, there is The Tasting Room.”
“What is The Tasting Room?”
“Behind the double red doors of the room is where Spiked Roses holds sex parties of sorts—though no sex actually happens in the
room. It’s just the room where the meet and greet and negotiations occur. Each party is a different theme with different events happening. Signing of contracts are done in The Tasting Room that can be very beneficial for the members, and very lucrative for the staff. It is not a requirement for working at Spiked Roses to enter The Tasting Room, nor is it a given that you will be chosen to attend a tasting. Tennessee makes the decision on who gets to attend.”
“Tennessee?”
“Tennessee Charles will be your direct supervisor. He’s the house mum,” I said with a smile, trying not to chuckle at my dig at his role. Tennessee hated when I called him that, but I couldn’t help myself sometimes. “It’s his job to oversee all the women, the schedules, the costume fittings and alterations, and the invite list for The Tasting Room. I’ll be introducing you to him after we are through here. He’ll be giving you your schedule and training you. I’m assuming you can start right away?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. I won’t let you down.”
I nodded. “You’ll do fine here if you follow the rules and keep your nose clean. Tennessee will go over all the small details, but the rules are simple. No drugs of any kind. If you are high, you are unemployed. If I see track marks on your arms, you will be looking for a new job.”
“I don’t do drugs,” she interjected.
“You are also not to sleep with any of the members unless a contract is in place. I don’t believe in love, so don’t give me some sob story that it’s meant to be and you couldn’t help it and all that nonsense.”
“So the contracts you mentioned in The Tasting Room are to have sex?”
Anita didn’t seem appalled or offended, but generally curious.
“They can be. Not always. Again, it depends on the theme of the night. Sometimes no sex at all is involved. Often times it is simply a contract to engage in one fetish or another.” I paused and tried to read her face, her eyes, anything. I couldn’t tell what the woman was thinking. “But like I said, working The Tasting Room is optional, and not always a guarantee. But when or if it happens, Tennessee goes over all the details of the contract and what is expected clearly. So, you don’t need to concern yourself with all that until then. For now, worry about cigars.”
