Maybe it was because they’d briefly worked at a place calledThe Electric Zoo. I mean, the name alone was enough to set off warning bells.
‘After the bustling, bright lights of Connecticut,’ he said wryly, ‘we wanted to go even bigger. So we took our savings, the three of us, and moved to New York. It was tough-going.’ That was an understatement. He thought briefly back to the rat-infested, flea-pit of an apartment they’d had to share. There was only one bed, so they took it in turns — one day in the bed, two days on the floor. Finn had been trying to write his novel at the time, Conor had been trying to find a way into the baseball scene, and Shay, who had dropped out of school, had zero plan whatsoever.
‘For a while, we scraped by. Finn worked in a second-hand bookstore during the week and sold ice-creams at the weekend. Conor cleaned the toilets of a local sports club, but could never get more than two shifts a week. And Shay got work in a spit-and-sawdust bar in the Bronx, washing pots in the kitchen. Then, after a few months of that, Shay got speaking to a customer at the bar, and he ended up landing a peachy job.’
Conor butted in. ‘In a BDSM bar.’
Tammy’s eyes widened, and she took another drink. Finn wondered whether they should have just bought her half a pint. Still — she didn’t have to drink the whole thing.
‘The place was called The Electric Zoo,’ Finn said.
Tammy raised her eyebrows. ‘Sounds… saucy.’ She was trying to be goofy, but even when she was mucking about, Finn found her to be almost impossibly beautiful.
‘Saucy is about right,’ Conor said. ‘But we’ll save you the details, Tam-Tam.’
‘Anyway, to cut a long story short, Haze was the proprietor of The Electric Zoo,’ Finn explained. ‘Shay did the catering for the place, and after asking really nicely, the two of us reprobates got jobs tending bar.’
‘Which is where I learned the shamrock trick.’
‘Got us out of a bit of a hole. Almost literally.’ Finn thought back to the time when the floor of their apartment had partially collapsed. Luckily, they had been on their way out by then.
‘The bar work paid well – so well that we could afford food and heat again. Outside of work hours, Finn had time to write, and I had time to pursue my baseball dream,’ Conor explained.
‘It was while we were working there that we both discovered that we were Daddy Doms. Being around Littles, interacting with other Daddies, reading a whole heap of stuff on Google. And most of all, thinking about you… it was obvious that it was who were were.’
‘It’s how we ended up here, too,’ Conor added. ‘Haze brought us to Liberty to set up The Den. But it transpired that he had an ulterior motive. He kinda brought us here to set us up with his sister, Billie.’
Finn hadn’t planned to break this piece of information to Tammy quite as simply as Conor had, but maybe it was no bad thing. She looked shocked.
‘You two… and Billie?’ Tammy whispered. She looked wary.
‘It’s a long story,’ Finn said, ‘but it clearly it didn’t work out. She’s a lovely girl, of course, but, you know us, we’ve always been more into the shy, studious type.’
‘You don’t like cheeky girls?’ Tammy gave another sly smile.
‘We’re OK with a touch of cheekiness,’ Conor said, grinning.
‘Plus, Haze wanted us to share with Shay, too,’ Finn explained. ‘Which was never going to happen. He thought that Billie neededat leastthree Daddies.’
Tammy looked shocked.
‘I was pretty wild back then,’ Bille appeared over the top of the back of Tammy’s seat, her angelic face framed by two stretched-out hands.
‘Billie, leave them alone to chat please,’ Angel ordered gruffly.
‘Ugh, yes Daddy,’ she said, huffing her way back to her seat.
‘So,’ Finn continued, ‘sharing with Shay wasn’t going to happen.’
It was then that he noticed Tammy shifting in her seat from side to side.
‘You alright, Tamster?’
‘Uh-huh,’ she replied, taking another sip.
‘You look kind of agitated.’
‘Nope. Just fine.’