"Stable? Like for prostitutes? Suck a donkey dick, Matteo runs girls?"
"Hey Sadie!" Yavin yelled from a door down the hall, his amusement sounding over the music muted by the door to the main space.
"Willing girls, yes. He takes good care of them, offers them protection. It's not as unsavory as I'm sure it sounds." Enzo had the grace to wince, like he'd forgotten that my best friend was married to him.
"Well, at least he's a fair pimp. Yo, Yavin! Do you have a continual hard on every day while you work, or is that just me?" I asked, sidestepping Enzo to go find my very entertaining babysitter for the day. Yavin and I had a unique bond, being on the fringes of the Bellandi family in our own ways.
Enzo growled at my back. I guessed he didn't like me talking about another man's penis.
"You get used to it." Yavin shrugged, leaning back in the chair behind his desk while he typed away on his laptop as I stepped into his office. Luxurious and masculine, it looked like it belonged in a high-rise commercial building commanding the city, not tucked away in the back rooms of a strip club. He unfolded his body from the chair, stepping around to greet me with a sweet kiss on the cheek.
Reaching up to pinch his nose, I twerked it from side to side. "I hear congratulations are in order. Does she know you spend your days around naked women?"
"It's nice to see you too, Squirt," he laughed, going back to his chair.
"Don't you have work to do?" I asked Enzo, turning to raise an eyebrow at him when he glowered at the two of us.
"I want it clear that I am not a fan of this. The two of you together does not promise to end well for me." The smile that spread across Yavin's face matched mine—conspirators in the making. The coppery notes to his dark hair gleamed in the bright lighting of the office as he shook his head, and the mess of it fell around his temples in waves.
"What kind of trouble could we possibly get up to without leaving?" I asked, batting my eyelashes at him.
Enzo snorted. "I know you too well for that, Carina. Her clothes stay on, all of them, and if she so much as touches a stage or a pole, Aoife won't have any balls to threaten when I'm done with you." Enzo growled the warning at Yavin, leaning down to kiss me briefly before turning and leaving the office to go handle his pick up or whatever the hell that meant.
I didn't care, because I had a few minutes of relative freedom.
"Tell me about her," I said, dropping into a chair on the other side of the desk as Yavin sighed and covered his face with his hands. The smile on his face was undeniable as he dragged them down, exposing it slowly.
"She threatened to cut my cock off while I sleep," he laughed. "It should probably bother me that I got turned on."
"I like her," I announced, smacking my knees with open palms. "She sounds like the best kind of woman. Maiming before marriage? Fucking fabulous."
"Liam says she's in school studying graphic design. She wants to open up a business after she finishes school, but Tiernan always forbade it." His face turned giddy as he announced his stupid, stupid plan. "So I'm going to get her started. Rent her an office space and—"
"Hold on Romeo, not without talking to her, you aren't," I snapped. "A man telling her she can't have a business and a man making decisions about her business for her are two sides of the same coin. I'd cut you if you tried to do something for the gym without my consent. You want to help her? That's great, but you need to start by talking to her first. Because for one, most graphic designers don't have an office. They work from the comfort of their own home, where pants and a bra are optional. And two, from what you just said? My guess is she's never had much opportunity to prove herself. She's always been Liam's daughter, where connections got her whatever she wanted. Now she'll be your wife."
"What's wrong with that?" Yavin asked, looking blissfully ignorant about the way women worked. If Aoife was half
as starved for independence as I suspected she was, he'd have a rough go of it with the mindset he had. A soft knock came at the door, one of the girls poking her blond head in to smile at Yavin seductively.
"The new girl's going on. We thought you might want to watch," she purred.
"James is out there, right? He knows what to look for." Yavin dismissed her with a friendly, but overly polite smile that instantly made her seductive smile fade to return to business mode before she ducked out.
"Smart man. I take it you stopped sleeping with your girls?"
"What makes you think I ever slept with them?" he asked, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.
"Dude, I would sleep with them." He roared with laughter, shaking his head.
"Samara would kill me if I slept around while I'm engaged to Aoife. It may be an arranged marriage, but it's one I chose. I'll honor my vows, even if I haven't made them yet. It would be smart for the more familiar girls to have time to realize that playtime is over where I'm concerned."
"It is smart. The other smart thing is to ask her what she wants and make that happen if she asks for help. Otherwise, let her be her own person and accept that her business has nothing to do with you. She'll want to stand on her own two feet in one part of her life. It's your job to let her."
"Even if I have the resources to make her successful?"
"Even if you have the resources to make her the best graphic designer on the planet." I nodded my head in agreement. "It will mean one hundred times more to her if she does it on her own than it will if you give it to her.”
"You know I'm going to bug you constantly when I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, right?"