I didn’t give my friend the pleasure of a grunt. He might get something else later from me for comeuppance, but it wouldn’t be that, and I promised myself he wouldn’t like it, either. “Yeah. Shit happens.”
“It does.”
My office fell into a brooding silence while the video played in my periphery. I tapped the top of my laptop screen with a manicured fingernail. Ink wrapped my wrist from my exposed forearms where I’d rolled my sleeves back. A long snake curled around the tanned skin there, spreading into an open jaw both above and below my hand. If I grabbed something—or someone—then the snake did too, its fangs piercing down.
An illusion, like so much else in my life. The endless party at club level, all pleasure and good times. The united front we presented when in reality, everything pulled a little more apart at the seams day by day.
That bitter seed was a hard one to swallow, but swallow I did.
“This is recent, yeah?”Tap, tap, tap.
“A few weeks ago.”
“And you’re telling me now?” The local shifter community contained fewer numbers than I would have liked.
A touch over five million people in the city, fewer in the center. The shifter population made up an insignificant percentage, most opting to live in rural communities where they could live their lifestyle to their own preference without risk of judgment or ousting themselves to the rest of humanity.
Fray provided city-dwellers a few hours of freedom each week in a judgment-free zone. At least, that was how I’d designed the club.
I pressed my lips together in a tight line. Killian was right. My world had no place for a woman like her, no matter how much I might like to bring her into it. Too sweet. Too gentle.
I swallowed back my arousal and resolved to wear it out on one of the rope bunnies downstairs. The shifter club opened hours ago, and I needed to make an appearance.
Prey.
I was in the mood for something trussed up and tempting.
Forcing my gaze above the level of the screen to avoid catching another glimpse of her, I shut my laptop and sent Killian a feral grin. I needed a distraction. And to stay the hell away from grieving widows.
“Let’s go play.”
Chapter Two
Willow
“You pay how much a night?” I released a shaky breath. Tiny fluff balls ripped around my ankles and bounced off. A quick head count assured all my children were present before they darted off again in five different directions. “Oh.” That would cover every debt I struggled against in a single weekend.
A weekend.
That was all it would take. One weekend, and we would be free. How much could it hurt?A lot, my brain offered as a reminder service. We needed the money and … it was one weekend. Two nights, and a handful of hours. I swallowed hard as tears sprang to my eyes.
“Are you sure, love? There are other routes we can work out. You get paid well to sit in a birdcage and dance,” the grandmotherly voice on the other end of the line reassured me. “You don’t have to do the private rooms at Fray. Although we do have some serial gropers on the dance floor.”
My shiver worked from toes to nose and left me shaking. That was what a shifter like me did in the face of adversity, even if it was a remote one. Quiver, quake, and run away. I grabbed whatever mettle resided in my mind and refused to crumble. “No. I’m sure.”
Not sure at all and a lot desperate, I gave my details from my driver’s license to the clean screening STI test that had come back in time for the phone interview.
I need to find a babysitter.
More fluffy balls rocketed around my feet and headed for the kitchen of our small, dilapidated apartment. One arm stuck out as it careened toward the doorway, diverting its path in time to avoid calamity.
I let my relief out in a long sigh.
Maybe an army of babysitters.
But after one weekend of work, I would be able to afford it.
“I’ll do it.”