Which was exactly why I tried not to use the damn car unless I was driving to work, like at the current moment. Work being back at the Electric Tunnel, protected by a bighearted and very controlling boss.
Sighing to myself, tapping the steering wheel to the music, I was lost in thought. Somehow after four weeks of nonstop battling with Asher after arriving back in Vegas, I got my life back as I knew it. Or as close as possible considering my secrets were now exposed and out in the open.
Currently stopped at a five-way intersection, I thought about how furious I was with Asher for making the decision to unload my beat-up car in Miami, but as it unfolded, I quickly took notice that I had bigger problems. Like where Quinn and I were going to live in Las Vegas.
Of course, Asher wanted us to move in to his place right away. He had plans to turn his gorgeous bachelor pad full of leather furniture and grandiose wet bars into a family home, where I would presumably be home cooking dinner every night.
Well, that wasn’t how things went down exactly. And knowing me as well as he did, I can’t believe he ever expected otherwise.
Fight number one occurred as soon as we boarded the charter plane home. Quinn was ecstatic, running up and down the short aisle, jumping up and down with excitement over the plane and its luxurious interior, oohing and aahing over his newfound luck. Already pissed at the way Asher was spoiling my son, who had lived a decent, but definitely not extravagant life so far, I nearly clobbered the man when he declared we would be moving into his house.
“No freaking way, Ash. I’m not ready for that. Not for a long time, and definitely not until I forget about who and what I found in your bedroom,” I said into his ear with gritted teeth while our child bounced through the cabin.
“Nat, honey. That’s my kid. I want him—and you—with me,” he begged softly while kissing my temple.
“No. That is not how this is going to work. I’m moving back so you can get to know Quinn, but you just don’t get to have it all, just like that, Ash,” I said while settling in my seat. Then I closed my eyes, pretending to catch some shut-eye, eavesdropping on the conversation between father and son, and wishing I could give in to Asher’s wants. I’d told him I loved him and wanted to be there for him “as a friend or lover” before we made love, but some nagging voice inside me wouldn’t allow me to go all-in with him.
Wasn’t being with the bad boy from next door what I had always wanted? Didn’t I dream of taming the tiger who was sitting next to me, radiating heat, lust, and passion all for me? For so many years, playing house with Asher and our child was my deepest, darkest fantasy, and it was being served up to me, but I was too stubborn to grab it.
After refusing to talk for the whole flight, I called my old landlord as soon as we landed and got our old apartment back. Then I called a cab, grabbed Quinn’s hand, forced him to say good-bye to his father, and hightailed it out of there.
Now, as I parked and ran into my new waxing studio, the Smooth Lips, to get a quickie, a shiver ran through my body, thinking about my first forty-eight hours back in the city where I was born and bred.
Stuck inside for two days without a car, listening to my kid beg to see his dad while my mom babbled on about how she warned me this and that, I was going out of my mind. On the third morning, I woke up to make coffee, and while looking out my small kitchen window, discovered a shiny silver Cadillac SUV parked in my designated spot with a big red bow on the dash.
That was fight number two. I texted the stubborn man right away.
Me: Come and take it back.
Him: Never. You and Quinn need a safe ride. Trish has keys next door. When can I see you guys?
Rather than answer, I just shut my phone down for twenty-four hours.
After another day of being trapped in my apartment, refusing to even retrieve the keys to the monstrosity, I decided I needed to go back to work. Knowing full well he wouldn’t say yes to the idea, I called Asher and told him to pick his son up for dinner.
And, of course, he did.
I laughed to myself about how I set him up as I waited in the treatment room for my new waxer, one I didn’t know. Any one of those bitches would do. Becoming serious as I sat naked on the table, I allowed my very mixed and tormented emotions about going back to work take up residence in my idle brain.
Asher had taken Quinn out for burgers the night of my return. As soon as they’d pulled out of my apartment’s small parking lot, I threw on some confidence and went to the Tunnel, then got dressed to perform as if I’d never left. Just as I was about to hit the floor, my dressing room door flew open and Asher stormed in with Big Mike dutifully at his side. This quickly became fight number three, thanks to Petal ratting me out.
Peppy little bitch.
It was a biggie, but I won. Now freshly waxed, my ass as smooth as a baby’s bottom, and back in my ridiculous top-of-the-line SUV and heading to the Tunnel, I couldn’t help but mentally pat myself on the back. Asher was so aggravated that night.
Well, he would eventually learn I was my own woman, I thought as I recalled our most heated argument…
WHEN THE door to the dressing room swung open, I had gone into a full-on panic as soon as I’d seen Asher. “Where’s Quinn? You didn’t bring him here, you stupid jerk?” I had yelled while smacking his chest—hard.
“Nat, no, of course not. I’m stupid, but not that stupid. As soon as Mike called me, I dropped him with Trish. He’s all good. As soon as I get you back home, I’m going to grab him again.”
I felt weak and pained in a way I couldn’t even begin to describe that my impressionable son might have seen me in my work clothes. Falling into the chair at my vanity, I had to remind myself to breathe. Taking in large gulps of air, I turned to look at Asher, who was staring back at me, and Mike, who was already gone, apparently escaping as fast as he came in.
“You’re not working here anymore, Nat.”
I stood and met him, front to front, death stare to death stare, and said, “Yes, I most certainly am. This was my job for a long time, it is my profession, and I need to make money. You can’t take that away from me.”
Hands on his hips, Asher shot back, “I got plenty of money. You don’t need to work, little doll.”
“Yes, I do,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Not here, then. We’ll find you something else.”
Brushing past him, I turned when I made it to the door. “No fucking way, Asher. I’m going to work here, and you’re going to like it. If you want any chance of moving forward with me—and Quinn—you can’t take all the control away from me. This is my job, like it or not, and you told me years ago that the Tunnel was the best place for me. Want me to go back to the Leop?”
After I’d delivered that low blow, I hadn’t waited for him to follow behind me. I just walked straight out onto the floor and did what I had always done.
I’d sold myself.
I DRIFTED back to the present while making my way past familiar streets, landmarks, and intersections, and then I made my way to the back lot of the Tunnel to put my body on display for anyone who paid the right amount to see.
Touching was extra.
I wasn’t sure when my personal ideas on life became so twisted, but lately, I couldn’t make heads or tails of my emotions. I kept insisting that I wanted to be independent, forcing my sometimes insane decisions down Asher’s throat, threatening with the only thing I could—Quinn.
For some odd reason, I wouldn’t allow myself to get lost in the only man I had ever wanted to lose myself in, despite the fact that he was begging for me to dive in.
When it came to Quinn, I knew I couldn’t hold him back. He and his dad were learning all about each other, growing accustomed to each other’s ins and outs, going out to eat for every type of junk food known to man, watching movies, and playing video games. Of course, my son was drawn to his dad’s bike, dreamed of riding one himself, and talked about it nonstop.
It was everything I didn’t want.
> It was everything I had ever dreamed of.
There was no gray for me. I couldn’t mix the wants of my past with the desires of my present. One was black and the other white, and I couldn’t paint the two together.
So I remained distant, stayed a challenge for Asher, a mountain he couldn’t just climb, but had to excavate first. Slapping on hard layer after hard layer, I made it nearly impossible for the man I loved to dig his way inside. I had some dark and twisted need for him to peel back my layers, taking the time to understand what made me tick. Which lately, I had no clue myself.
Before entering work, I stood for a long time in the parking lot staring up at the huge sign, the purple lightning bolt with the words ELECTRIC TUNNEL running vertically inside it. The hot desert sun beat down on my dark hair and sweat trickled down my back, yet I just stood there and stared, hoping the flashing neon sign held the answers I so desperately needed.
It was hard to admit, but I also wanted some grand apology. For Penny. For that other ridiculous young bitch.
Although we had made decadent love that day after the shower of truth, I didn’t allow myself to forgive when it came to Asher and his indiscretions. Our threesome was water under the bridge, but the one with Penny was too fresh in my mind.
So I worked, strutted around the club, rubbing my tits and crotch up and down strange men, pocketing tips, while the father of my child, the man who claimed to love me, watched from his private cameras.
Asher walked the floor less and less when I was at the club, often ducking out to spend a few hours with Quinn before letting Trish tuck him in.
Petey was still recuperating, and for some strange reason I didn’t understand, Asher was staying away from him. With Petey out of commission, Billy was my newest detail.
Billy was a cream puff and, thankfully, smitten with someone other than me, which helped me in my directionless pursuit of nothingness.
Like at the moment. As I hit the back door of the club, ready to get down and dirty, my little pussycat of a bouncer approached with a simple, “Hey, Nat! How you doing today?” Billy walked me to my dressing room with no arguments, zero pomp and circumstance, and without bossing me around.
I loved that kid, needed him more than anyone else. He was the only soul who gave me any mental reprieve from the war constantly taking place in my head and in my life.
Stopping at my dressing room door, Mr. Goody Two-shoes Billy said, “It’s gonna be a great night!” He pushed open the door for me and took his post outside, waiting patiently for me to get my game face on.
Then, like every other shift six nights per week, we made our way out into the club when I was ready, scantily clad and sexed up. He kept one eye on me and one on Sadie. Eventually Billy always moved two eyes to Sadie, as he was doing at the moment, and I was free to loosen my rules, make extra money, all the while throwing a stick of dynamite into an already burning building.
Father, may I?
Mike
LYNX DIDN’T come back as Asher had expected her to do. She apparently didn’t mind wasting his one-way ticket back to Vegas. Initially, I’d gone out of my mind with obsessive wondering and nonstop thinking about what she was planning or doing. Afraid for her and sick for myself, the very bottom of a JD bottle lured me in for a few days, until I finally picked up the damn phone and called the woman.
Not sure how I would survive another broken relationship in six months, I located my very own set of balls and took destiny in my own hands. I will get the girl back, I chanted in my head as the phone rang.
Should have clued myself the fuck in that my confidence was misguided when I felt the need to *67 my phone number so it came up private.
After all, did Lynx and I even have a relationship? Or was I slipping into bad habits like Asher, rescuing helpless beauties?
As Natalie’s first few days back wore on, I told myself, “No, we certainly didn’t have anything close to real.” Nothing about Lynx and me was pure. We were both living behind a facade.
Neither of us were who we appeared to be, but I couldn’t get the woman out of my head. I wanted to save her in the worst way, make her mine, and take care of her.
Which was why I was blown the fuck away when she answered the phone and said, “Mike, I know it’s you, and you have to stop. Stop calling me and torturing me with what could be, because it can’t. This is good-bye.” And then she hung up.
I wanted to grab the bottle, but I didn’t. I decided to man up and be who I really was. Yeah, I had money and resources at my disposal, and I was throwing them away on a great big nothing. Fully convinced I didn’t have to be the country club boy in golfing whites who ate lunch before starting the back nine anymore, I made a choice to stop pretending. I could use my money and resources but still stay true to myself.
Of course, there was no way I was leaving the Tunnel. Never. No fucking way. Those four walls and the people inside them were the only version of real I’d ever known. I was working on something else for the crazy crew who brought life into my vapid existence. It was about time I got around to making bigger plans, ones with them in mind.
Like a dream, my larger vision for success came to me at night, as I was tucked deep in bed after stroking myself.
Which was another thing I stopped doing after I tossed out my generous supply of booze. I was a man and there was no way I was going to sit around and jack off to nudies on the Internet night after night. It had been a long time—practically fucking never—since I’d played around, and that was what I was doing.
Despite a revolving door of women in and out of my bedroom, gorgeous ladies of every shape and size—long, luxurious, curvy, athletic, waif-like, I sampled them all—I still pined for her supple café-au-lait curves, long braids, and big smile. But I made up my mind. I needed to be a better man for my friends and her before I convinced Lynx that her reasoning was shit.
Which explained why I was having breakfast with my dad at seven o’clock in the morning on a Friday. The two of us were seated in a deep gold banquette in the luxury diner tucked in the back corner of the casino in one of his four casino/hotel monstrosities. Yep, that was the kind of mega-money I came from, and I was on my way to make even more.
Every business journal, major newspaper, and magazine on three or four continents had covered my dad at one point or another. I didn’t want that kind of notoriety. I wanted to be a man with my own rules, and in my world, all that cock sucking wasn’t necessary. Look at Asher—he played by his own rulebook and he was king of his own empire.
So, my dad and I lowered our swords at each other because being rich was always my destiny, and he would rather I did something with it than nothing. I didn’t give a shit if he was fucking Rochelle or not; I needed his knowledge, and he needed me to move the hell on with being an adult.
So after getting sober and draining my dick in a bunch of willing women, I decided to channel my energy on business. My pops was currently giving me an earful on supply and demand while I ate an egg-white omelet and turkey sausage, slot machines clanking in the background. We were discussing the hotel biz specifically and why hotels either set up in remote locations where there was no competition, versus building something strategically bigger and better in an overpopulated, well-visited area like the Strip. Neither was a shoo-in. In no-man’s-land, how could you be sure anyone would come? And in terms of the Strip, what if you weren’t the best? What if you weren’t doing something different from anyone else?
My head was swimming with the information, and I was contemplating how my dad had four very different properties all catering to a different audience, each one definitely being the best in its category, when my phone buzzed.
Jesus Christ, now what? Who else does business this early? I was used to three and four a.m. in the adult entertainment world, but seven a.m. was a quiet time in my current industry.
When I looked at the screen and couldn’t believe who was calling, I held up one finger to my dad, signaling I had to take the call.
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br /> “Man, what’s up?” I stood up to walk out toward the entrance to the casino floor from the diner, far away and out of earshot of my old man.
“I’m fine,” Petey said. “Actually, breaking out of this place today and heading home with visiting nurses and PT. Hope they’re hot.” We hadn’t been talking as much because things were tense between us. I felt he blamed me, he insisted he didn’t, and Asher wanted no part of the dude right now.
“That’s good. Great news, Petey, and I bet you they’re all babes.” I paced, holding the phone to my ear.
“Yeah, listen. His old man has been here visiting a lot. Said he’s done taking no as an answer in talking to him. He’s gonna head to the Tunnel today. You gotta help.”
“Shit.”
“I know. Shit. It’s not gonna be pretty, but Asher won’t talk to me. I suspect you know why, so it’s up to you.”
“I got you. I’ll head over there early and deal.”
“Thanks, Mike. Would love to see you soon.”
“Yeah, I’ll swing by next week. Definitely.” I looked toward the restaurant, catching a glimpse of my dad waiting. He looked like he was aging a little. Crap, life was short. “You know what, I’ll swing by tomorrow.”
“Cool,” Petey said, and we both disconnected.
Walking back to my table, I decided to have another pot of coffee.
I would need to be alert today.
Throwing in the Towel
Natalie
IT WAS Friday, and I was reveling in a full night’s sleep after a relaxing day off when I woke to an incessant banging on my door. Quinn tiptoed into my room, and I felt him tapping my shoulder. “Mom, it’s Dad. He’s here. I know I’m not supposed to let anyone in, but can I let him in?” he whispered.
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