The Rake (Boston Belles #4) by L.J. Shen

Time to calm your tits, I scolded myself internally. The man had a career. Every hour of his working day was billable. Of course he couldn’t just drop everything and run to Madame Mayhem to put a baby in me.

About two hours after I sent the text message, Ross strode into my office again. He slammed an expensive-looking bottle of champagne on my desk. It had a little golden card dangling from its neck.

“Dom Perignon?” I raised a skeptic eyebrow. This specific edition went for about a grand a pop. “We don’t carry it here. Where’d you get it?”

“Ah, that’s the question of the hour. Open the damn envelope and we’ll find out.” Ross jerked his chin toward the card, which, upon a second examination, looked like a miniature envelope. Dread filled my guts. This looked a lot like romance, and I didn’t do romance. I liked it better when Devon was comparing us to monkeys.

“How do you know it’s for me?” I eyed him suspiciously.

“Bitch, please. The only drink my dates buy for me is a fountain soda. Go on. Who’s it from?”

My fingers worked quickly to unwrap the mysterious envelope. Two tickets spilled out of its mouth. I picked one up, noticing my fingers were trembling.

“Tickets to the opera?” Ross’s voice asked in wonder. “What kind of lies are you feeding these poor men on Tinder? This dude obviously doesn’t know you.”

This is taunting my ass. He knows damn well I don’t do dates.

“I said I loved Oprah, not opera. He obviously misheard.” I let a provocative yawn loose. There was no way I was telling Ross about Devon. It was soul-crushing enough to admit my infertility to my girlfriends. I was a woman of great pride.

“How come men never take me anywhere nice?” Ross pouted.

“You give away the goods too quickly,” I murmured, still staring at the ticket in my hand like it was a dead body I needed to get rid of.

“You do too. And you don’t even one-date them.”

“You can have my ticket, if you want it.”

I was not going to watch an opera today. I had work to do. We were one bartender short.

I reminded myself that Devon did this for the same reason he did everything else—to manipulate, play, and throw people off-kilter. He probably thought it was hilarious to make me feel like we were dating. I had to set the record straight.

Belle: hello, you snail-eating, gilet-wearing, regatta-attending posh bloke, you. I won’t be able to join you at the opera today, but you may stop at my apartment any time after midnight and I promise to hit those high notes. – B.

That message, too, remained unanswered.

I worked into the evening, manning the bar along with six more bartenders, clad in a ruffled lace overbust corset dress. The scent of my own sweat had become so familiar to me over the years I’d built my career, I relished it.

I served drinks, cut limes, and hurried to the storage room to fetch more cocktail umbrellas. I danced on the bar, flirted with men and women, and rang the bell several times, signaling a tip-a-thon.

The burgundy curtain had ascended over the front stage, revealing a live band in tuxes. Their jazzy tune soaked into the tall walls. The burlesque dancers prowled slowly across the stage in high heels and sage-colored sequined dresses. People hooted, clapped, and whistled. I stopped, a crate of cocktail umbrellas in my arms, sweat dripping from my forehead, and watched them with a grin.

My decision to buy Madame Mayhem wasn’t accidental or offhanded. It stemmed from my wanting to promote the idea that being a sexual creature wasn’t sinful. Sex didn’t mean dirt. It could be casual and still be beautiful. My dancers weren’t strippers. You couldn’t touch them—you couldn’t even breathe in their direction without getting kicked out of the venue—but they took control of their sexuality and did whatever they goddamn pleased.

This, in my opinion, was true strength.

When I got back behind the bar, it was almost eleven. I knew I needed to wrap things up soon if I wanted to make it back home before midnight, with sufficient time to take a shower, shave my legs, and look the part of Devon Whitehall’s sexual partner.

“Ross,” I roared over the music, gliding across the sticky floor behind the bar and aiming a soda gun into a glass, making a vodka diet coke for a gentleman in a suit. “I’m off in ten.”

Ross’s thumb rose up in the air to signal he’d heard me. His other hand plucked a fifty-dollar bill from a woman leaning against the bar, her breasts spilling out of a neon-yellow sports bra.

I was about to take an order from a bunch of women wearing bachelorette party sashes (Maid of Dishonor, Bad Influence, and Designated Drunk). When I propped forward to do so, a hand shot toward me from the dark, gripping my forearm and giving it a painful squeeze.

I spun my head in the hand’s direction and was about to yank my arm away when I noticed the person attached to said hand was staring at me with death in his eyes.

His face was so scarred that I couldn’t guess his age even if I’d wanted to. A large portion of it was tattooed. He was swathed head-to-toe in black and looked nothing like the usual clientele we had here.

He gave me Lucifer vibes … and he wasn’t letting go of me.

“I suggest you remove your hand from my arm right now, unless you’re not feeling particularly attached to it,” I hissed out through gritted teeth, my blood boiling over.