Reaper Unleashed (7 page)

Now she was staring at him in confusion because she’d somehow become distracted by his chest. Even covered in tight cotton, she could see the defined pecs. She knew it had been a long time since she’d had sex but she normally didn’t have a hard time keeping her hormones in check. For some reason when this man moved, her lady parts began to tingle. It was as if he exuded sexual pheromones or something that distracted her from the words he was saying.

She saw him shake his head before he again said, “I said that your clothing does have to do with your qualifications for this job.”

“How’s that?” she asked, wondering what the hell he was going to come up with to make her clothes a reason for not hiring her.

“My waitresses have to fill in for the strippers sometimes,” he said and she felt her heart almost stop. Could she do that? Could she take off her clothes in a room full of strangers as they looked at her with lust in their eyes?

She didn’t know but she’d have to convince him that she could if she had too. I mean he’d said sometimes and the likelihood that anyone would want to see her strip was slim. She wasn’t anything like the voluptuous blonde who’d left earlier after getting her past the two goons at the door.

“Then we don’t have an issue,” Sarah told him boldly.

“Really?” He looked at her with a skeptical expression.

“Yes, because if that’s the case, I wouldn’t be wearing clothes now, would I? Stripping implies a lack of clothing.”

“Indeed,” he said tilting his head. She knew she’d made him think about it and she wanted to crow in glee. “Follow me then,” he said.

She didn’t know why she was following him but if it got her the job, she wasn’t going to complain.

Reaper knew she wasn’t going to strip for anyone. She wasn’t the type and he knew it but he wanted to see how determined she was. He knew that she was going to balk at what he was going to suggest and that she would be out of his club in seconds after he told her what she’d have to do to get the job. Two could play this game of blind man’s bluff because that was what she was doing. She was bluffing.

He led her into the room he’d exited a few moments ago. He sat down at the booth and looked back at her hovering near the door.

“Come in and shut the door.” She did as he asked but still hovered by it as if ready to bolt. “What’s your name?” he asked, suddenly needing to know. He watched her lip tremble.

“Sarah,” she muttered, her voice soft in the quiet room.

“On the table, Sarah,” he commanded, expecting her to protest. She surprised him by stepping haltingly forward and then climbing on the table. She was trembling and he had a feeling that she would be running out the door any second. He just wasn’t sure if he would allow her to get away. He wanted to know how far she’d take it so he barked, “Strip.”

Sarah was on the table and she wanted to flee. She couldn’t do this, not really, but when she met his eyes and saw that he was expecting her to run, she felt steel infuse her spine. She’d always been too defiant for her own good. She was now determined to get this job. He was one man; surely she could strip for one man. He was hot and he made her tingle in all the right places. She could do this; all she had to do was close her eyes and pretend she was alone.

“I n-need some mu-music,” she stuttered out, needing something to distract herself from what she was doing. This was insane.

Reaper lifted a remote and suddenly a loud pounding beat was playing. Before she could start dancing though he hit another button and a slow sensual beat poured from the speakers. Swallowing hard, Sarah reached out holding onto the pole as she walked in a slow circle around it trying to get a feel for the music. Anything to take her mind off what she was about to do. She was about to strip for a stranger.

“Any day now, baby,” he said sounding bored. She sighed, closed her eyes and began to move to the soft beat.

Her body taking over, she felt the pounding of her heart and she pretended that she was alone. Her hands slid over her body and she began to feel stirrings of desire in her core. She moved her hand down between her breasts, sliding across her covered nipples, which were hard. Moving with the sensual beat, she slid the cardigan off her shoulders, her body now taking over. It was a dark beat that made her feel sexy and  she was suddenly turned on by the knowledge that he was watching her. Her fingers played with the buttons on her shirt, slipping one free of the top hole, then running her hands down to cup her breasts before reaching out for the pole which she used to arch her back and hips in Reaper’s direction.

Reaper was about to tell her to get out when she began to move in a slow seductive manner. He was riveted to the booth; his breath came in light pants as he watched her pull off her cardigan. His body was painfully hard and the headache that had formed behind his eyes disappeared. He watched her hands cup her breasts and he imagined it was his own hands touching those soft modest mounds of flesh.

His mouth was dry and his palms began to sweat. He had to bite back a moan when she thrust her hips towards him. It took everything inside him to continue to grip the back of the booth rather than reach for her. His grey eyes were glued to her hands as she slipped button after button free until a white lacy bra was revealed. He watched as she let the shirt fall to the ground and he was aching with the need to touch, caress, clench.

Sarah was caressing her own breasts, pulling at her nipples, and he was going out of his mind. He was leaning forward, unable to stop his hands from moving towards all that tempting flesh, when he heard the door to the private room open. He jerked to his feet, standing in front of Sarah instantly. He didn’t want anyone but him seeing her this way. No one would be seeing the vulnerable sensuality that was displayed when she danced.

“Hey, boss. Oh, shit. I didn’t realize th-that uum…” Lock stared into the room in shock. Reaper knew that he was standing in front of Sarah shielding her nearly naked body from view. Her cardigan and shirt were on the floor allowing the other man to get a good idea what had been happening.

“Get out,” Reaper commanded, feeling deadly. For some reason the thought of Lock seeing Sarah half naked was enough to send him into a rage.

“Um, we have a problem. I can handle this--this interview if you’d like,” Lock told him watching him silently from the door. Reaper didn’t move; there was no way in hell that Lock was handling anything that involved Sarah.

“Out. I will handle whatever it is in a minute,” he growled, waiting until Lock turned and shut the door. Sarah moved behind him and he turned seeing her lifting her shirt and pulling it back on; her cheeks were bright pink and her hands were trembling again. He wanted to walk out to the floor and shoot Lock in the fucking head for interrupting Sarah’s strip tease. His body was still hard even with the modest curves of her breasts covered by the shirt she’d buttoned up.

“So, can I have the job?” Sarah asked looking even more nervous.

Reaper felt something savage in him awaken at the thought of the men who frequented this place anywhere near her sweet innocence. Fuck, that wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t going to mess up a perfectly respectable woman by allowing her to work here. It just wasn’t going to happen.

“No. You don’t belong here. You barely even have a rack. So get the fuck out of my club,” he growled, then forced himself to walk away from the sweetest thing he’d seen in a long damned time before he fucked her up beyond repair.

Sarah stood there with her clothes back on and her pride in shreds. He had just dismissed her. He hadn’t even bothered to give her a second glance after she’d just attempted to do something so out of character for her.  His only response had been you don’t even have a rack.

She wanted run after him to scream at him, to tell him that he was a fucking dick, but she didn’t. She lifted her cardigan off the floor and pushed her arms back into it. Her heart was beating loudly and her eyes filled with tears she refused to shed. She wasn’t giving up that easily, she decided, marching towards the door. She’d come here to get a freaking job to keep her son and herself fed and that was what she was going to do, damn it.

In the hall she could hear yelling from one of the rooms off to her right, which made her a little apprehensive about her plan. He thought that she couldn’t handle this job.   Fine, but she wasn’t taking no for an answer. Sarah stormed into the front of the club. She’d noticed that they didn’t have anyone delivering drinks earlier. She slid a tray off the bar as she passed by. The bartender was at the other end serving drinks and she walked to the first table of men and asked if she could get them some drinks.

They looked at her in shock for several moments before one asked for a whiskey sour, and the other two asked for beers. She nodded and walked to another table, receiving an order for a rum and coke from another man. He was a bit of a pig and squeezed her ass before saying, “Guess Reaper’s trying out the wholesome look now, huh, sugar?”

Sarah gave him a clipped nod and ignored him before walking back to the bar. She tapped on it to get the attention of the bartender. He stared at her in surprise for a moment as she relayed the orders.

“Reaper said this was okay?” he asked, looking at her in disbelief.

“Would I be standing here if he hadn’t?” Sarah asked in a snide voice, sure that he wouldn’t question her if he thought Reaper was okay with her serving drinks. She was pretty sure despite her quivering insides that he’d never think for a second she’d be bold enough to defy a man who most people around town thought would kill you for merely annoying him.

Sarah was pretty good at reading people. It was a gift that Hank, her mother’s eleventh boyfriend, had taught her. He’d been a professional poker player who they had lived with for six months when she was thirteen, before he’d gotten tired of her mother’s clingy nature and took off. That was what usually happened to her mother’s men. They’d stick around letting her live off them till they were tired of her shopping habits and her unwillingness to work for anything other than a handout.

Hank was also the reason that she could look the rough-looking bartender in the eye as she blatantly lied to him. He stared at her for a long moment as if gauging her truthfulness, then nodded and began preparing the drinks. She almost crowed in triumph when he set them on the tray she’d set on the bar. She took the drinks to the tables and then walked around checking on the rest of the men who were gathered around the stage watching the strippers.

Sarah had been working for about twenty minutes when a man grabbed her and tried to pull her into his lap. His breath reeked of overindulgence and his teeth were yellow.

“Hey, darling. You should sit here with me,” he drunkenly crowed. She struggled to get away, her hand pushing against him, when a hard male hand landed on his shoulder. Dark blue eyes and a face with a scar was all she saw as she was released and the tattooed man, Iron, was jerking the man to his feet.

“Lawrence, you know the rules. No touching unless the woman agrees. Do I have to take you outside and remind you of that fact?” he asked the man, holding him up by his shirt. Iron glanced at her with a slightly raised brow as if asking her if she wanted him to beat the man up.

Lawrence looked white as a sheet and he began to frantically shake his head back and forth. He began to stutter. “I d-didn’t mean no-nothing by it, Iron. I was just not thinking cause she’s so pretty.”

“No touching. Do it again and I will show you how to treat a woman, you feel me?” Iron asked, shoving the man back. He fell on the floor and scuttled away to sit on the far side of the room.

Sarah was glad that Iron had made him release her but she didn’t want the men here  to think she couldn’t handle this type of behavior. If she wanted Reaper to give her the job, she’d have to make him and his men realize she could take care of herself.

“I could have handled that,” she huffed, her anger lighting her eyes.

“I’m sure you could have, sweet. It’s against Reaper’s rules and he knew it. You don’t touch the girls unless you’re invited in this club. I’m not sure why Reaper wouldn’t have told you that,” he said, raising a brow at her expectantly.

Sarah thought fast; what the hell could she say that wouldn’t land her on her ass in the parking lot when they kicked her out? She was trembling so hard on the inside that she felt nauseous. “He didn’t have time,” she blurted out. Iron looked even more skeptical so she continued, “Lock came in and told him he needed him to handle something.”

“I see. Well, get back to work and if that happens again, call out to me or Bull and we will handle it.” Iron didn’t look convinced but he was letting her get back to work so maybe his face just always looked like that. Sarah went back to serving the customers with a relieved sigh. She’d already made twenty credits in tips in the last half hour; this place was going to be a gold mine. 

Reaper watch dispassionately as they dragged Iggy from the room. He was dead because he’d actually admitted that he’d given information about the club’s movements to the Headhunters. Iggy was only a prospect so he wasn’t the mole they were looking for, unfortunately. The mole was a fully patched member. They knew this because only fully patched members had access to enough of the leaked information to make sense.

Reaper would bet that whoever the mole was he wanted them to think that Iggy was the man who’d been selling information to the Headhunters, but he knew that Iggy hadn’t been around long enough. The informant had been working with the Headhunters longer than the man had been a prospect.

Reaper felt the throbbing in his temples and rubbed them with his hands. His gun was still in his right hand so he probably looked like an insane person.

“You all right, Boss?” Lock asked him.

“Yeah, I just want this bullshit done with. We need to break this damned flesh ring up. It’s starting to wear on my last nerve. You know how I get when I’m annoyed.” Lock looked a bit pale beneath his usual tanned skin. Reaper would have laughed if it wasn’t for the pounding pain in his head. Yeah, he had a reputation. When he was annoyed the body count was usually high because his fuse was short and when someone tripped it, he solved it with a gun to the temple.

“We will figure it out. We’re looking for new leads and we’re trying to see about those last three girls that were nabbed from the Weeks End a few days ago. They won’t strike there again for a while since they were almost caught by Lucky and Stoner,” Lock assured him.

Reaper didn’t really care. He wanted this traitor found and then he and the club could start taking down the damned Headhunters for good. Walking up the stairs to the main club from the cellar where they’d questioned Iggy, he walked into the hallway near his office behind Lock. Lock stopped dead in the middle of the hall before uttering a loud expletive.

“What?” Reaper asked.

Lock didn’t say anything, just moved, and what he saw shocked him to his bones. Moving around the tables near the stage, Sarah leaned over and his hands clenched into fists at his sides. Her tight ass was displayed by her boring kakis and more than one man was looking at the tempting flesh.

Reaper saw red. He didn’t know what the hell she was doing but he sure as hell knew that those sons of bitches didn’t need to have their eyes on her like she was a side of beef. He stepped forward intending to rip the eyes out of the bastards’ heads when Iron sidled up next to him.

“She’s been working the floor for over an hour now. She’s not bad and she’s been handling the boys well,” Iron told him, his eyes on Sarah.

Reaper didn’t give a fuck. Sarah and the sweetness she’d revealed in that room an hour ago had made him ache in a way no one else ever had. He didn’t do good girls. They were too much trouble and they always expected more than he had to give them. He wasn’t the type to marry or patch a woman. He didn’t want long term. He wanted a new woman in his bed when he got bored with the one he was fucking.

Normally he wasn’t even attracted to the innocently sweet types. For some reason Sarah attracted him. In a big way. In a way that might end up getting someone killed if they kept eyeing her in the manner that they were. And that was seriously fucked up because he knew the most he could offer her was a few rounds in his bed. He was a fucking biker and she needed a nice wholesome man to take care of her. That thought didn’t sit well with him either.

“Why the fuck is she still here?” he demanded, trying to get his raging libido under control.

“She said you gave her the job. Convinced Hawk, too,” Iron said, indicating the bartender.

“You, however, knew better.” Reaper knew the man well enough to know that Iron had a weird way of seeing lies no matter how good the liar was. It made Reaper really hope that Iron wasn’t the fucking mole because it was a skill that he used regularly.

“Yeah, but I can see why he was convinced. She’s good at both reading people and lying. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’s running a con, but her being a Pollyanna sort, I don’t see how that’s possible,” Iron told him.

It made Reaper want to beat him over the head. If he’d known that Reaper hadn’t allowed her to work here, why the fuck hadn’t he thrown her out on her pretty little ass?