I put on my game face and walk as I approached the entrance where a couple of men with chests as wide as a Hummer guarded it. One had a checklist, and the other was obviously there just to kick ass if needed. I had their attention, both of their attentions, when I was still fifty feet away.
Those kinds of men—young, invincible, virile ones—could be read like a book. I didn’t need a thick manila folder to figure out their individual wants and needs. Men in their twenties were simple. They all wanted and needed the same thing: to stick their dicks in as many women as often as they could.
My job was easy when young men were the gatekeepers to something I needed, specifically to skip the line and saunter inside of those doors in this instance. So, knowing what I did of their many/often needs, my job was to let them assume they could have me. I had to provide exactly the right amount of flirt, say just the right thing to lead them to believe they had a chance in this life and their next to bang me. It was an exact science.
As I approached, I met each of their gazes, gave them a just-barely parted-mouth smile, and added a bit more sway to my step.
The rope was open for me before I’d set foot on the black and gold tile leading up to the club’s entrance.
Young men were so easy. Child’s play, really.
Once I was inside the club, I understood what all the fuss was about. It was like Disneyland for adults. The Pleasure Room had two floors. The stage was a large square in the center of the room, sectioned off into four individual stages where different dancers performed. A bar area was set up at each end of the room. The rest of the space on the first floor was dance floor, while the second floor looked to mainly be for seating.
Everyone had a smile on their face and a drink in their hand. Everyone was dancing and celebrating like it was the party to end all parties. Everyone was there for a good time. Everyone except for me—I was there to work.
I milled about the room searching for Mr. Silva. He’d be somewhere on the floor. I knew nightclub owners like him from two Errands I’d worked before. They were the kind of men who didn’t want to be locked up in an office when the party was happening a floor below them. They were the kind of men who liked to be seen and wanted to be recognized. They thrived off of it.
It was also what they expected, and the best way to get a man’s attention was to lead with the unexpected.
I finally saw him. As expected, he was in the middle of a little entourage. All of them were women, and most of them were dancers. He was laughing and touching and charming, just as I’d expected, decked out in a dark blue suit with just enough sheen that the dim light of the club made him stand out from the next guy in a suit. The wedding ring was missing from his left hand, just like every last one of my former Targets. His teeth were fake, as was his tan, but the gleam in his eyes—that predatory, I-take-what-I-want-when-I-want-it—was real. The most real thing about him.
I tipped my shoulders back a bit, arched my back ever so slightly, and started toward Mr. Silva and his female entourage. How would I stand out amongst the couple dozen beautiful women staggered around him?
I would be the only one ignoring him.
Ten more feet and I’d make eye contact for no more than a second or two. Just long enough for him to know I’d noticed him and would keep walking. All men loved the chase and wanted what they couldn’t have, but men like Mr. Silva were at the top of the food chain in that department.
I could tell he’d noticed me from the corner of his eyes, and his gaze was just shifting when someone stepped in front of me.
“Damn, now I understand why this is called The Pleasure Room,” the young man decked out in a cheap suit said, staring at me with a sideways smile as he fitted his hands to my hips. I knew the look he was giving me had done a job on plenty of women, but I had a built-in B.S. detector when it came to all things male.
I glowered up at him. “And you’re about to know it as The Punishment Room from tonight on if you don’t get your hands off of me.” The guy was big and built, just like ninety-nine percent of the meatheads wandering down Ocean Drive on South Beach, but G made sure to include self-defense training in our Eve education. I knew just where to punch, poke, and prod at a guy to bring him to his knees.
Captain Meathead obviously didn’t have a lot going on upstairs because his one-sided smile only shifted higher. He lowered his mouth to my ear. “I like when a girl talks dirty. It makes me imagine the filthy things she’ll be cursing up at me when I’m between her legs.”
All right. I wouldn’t even feel bad when I drove my knee into that dude’s nads. Maybe stumbling around for a week with ice strapped to his crotch would beat some sense into his thick-head.
Right before I could deliver knee-to-nads, a voluptuous little thing skidded up beside us. “What the hell, Chad?” she half-shrieked.
“Shea, calm down,” Chad instructed, lifting his hands.
Shea didn’t calm down. She pretty much went with the opposite. Lifting her blinged out hand, she slapped Chad across his cheek before turning my way. If the chick tried to slap me, she was going down. I didn’t do girl drama.
I gave her a warning look and prepared to grab her hand, but she did something I wasn’t expecting. She upended her glass of white wine on my chest.
“There,” she said, making sure the last drop of wine landed on my dress. “Now I’m calm.” Without another word, she flicked her hair and powered away.
“Shea!” Chad called out, flashing me an apologetic look before chasing her.
Muttering a string of curses, I worked my way back into the crowd before Mr. Silva’s gaze could drift my way again and find me a livid, wine-soaked mess. I went to every Greet prepared, but that snafu would take a little time to sort out.
I’d had a drink dumped on me before. Thankfully Shea’s was only white wine. Let’s just say that white linen spattered with bloody mary is beyond repair.
The women’s lounge and restroom was at the end of a long, dark hall and was mostly empty. Other than a girl adjusting her cleavage at the long mirror, I was alone. I dug around in my small clutch until I found a mini-spritzer bottle of club soda. Some women didn’t leave home without their lipstick; I didn’t leave home with my spritzer of club soda. To date, save for the white linen/bloody mary fiasco, I hadn’t met a stain club soda couldn’t tackle.
After spritzing, dabbing, and drying my dress under the hand dryers, I was good to go. Next time, I would kick the offending meathead boyfriend in the balls first and dodge the girlfriend and her drink later.
Before leaving the restroom, I did a once-over in the mirror. It always took me a few days to get used to my new look. Realizing the person staring back at me in the mirror wasn’t a stranger, at least not in the traditional sense, took a few double takes.
The stylist had layered my hair with champagne and platinum highlights, woven in a few hair pieces for added length and va-va-voom, and added some long layers. Once the hair team was done, I’d been passed off to the waxer, the bronzer, the facial specialist, the manicurist, the pedicurist, and finally the girl who’d layered lash after precious fake eyelash into my existing ones. I didn’t know what it was about that kind of Look at ME! style that men loved, but the ones I dealt with couldn’t get enough. I felt more like a patina of a woman than a real one.
After making a slight dress adjustment, I headed for the door. The woman’s lounge had been empty when I’d meandered into the restroom, but it wasn’t anymore. In fact, the whole three’s a crowd adage didn’t seem to apply to the woman’s lounge.
“And here I thought this was a woman’s lounge,” I said, startling two of the trio. The third couldn’t have looked less startled. The dancer on her knees in front of Mr. Silva stopped pulling at his zipper, and the other, who’d been making out with him in a way that gave new meaning to the term “sucking face,” gave the face sucking a break.