What He Shields (What He Wants Book Seventeen) (17 page)

“Come here,” Colt said, taking me by the
shoulders.
 
He marched me over to
the door and shut it.
 
There was a
mirror hanging to the back, one of those full-length ones, and he positioned me
in front of it.

“No,” I said, turning away from my
reflection.
 
“Please, I don’t want
to.”

But he put his hands on my shoulders and
turned me back around.
 
“Look,” he
said.
 

“I’m not sexy, Colt, “ I said.
 
“It’s not anyone’s fault.
 
It’s not even a bad thing.
 
It’s just… it is what it is.”
 
I didn’t feel bad saying the words out
loud.
 
I
wasn’t
sexy.
 
It wasn’t
a matter of opinion, and I wasn’t just being hard on my self.
 
I wasn’t saying I was ugly.
 
I didn’t think I was ugly.
 
I could be cute, maybe, on a good day,
but I wasn’t sexy.

“You are so sexy,” Colt said, and I
locked eyes with him in the mirror.
 
He reached up and grabbed my hair tie, sliding it down my ponytail until
my hair was loose, brushing against my bare shoulders.
 
He slid his hands through the strands,
and I shivered.

Then he turned and grabbed a bag that
Jessa had left on the desk, opened it and pulled out a pair of sparkly black
high heels.

He dropped them on the floor and gestured
for me to put them on.

I slid my feet into the shoes, and the
high heel instantly made my legs look longer, my body slimmer. But just because
the heels made me look a little better, the outfit was still extremely
skimpy.
 
I was self-conscious, and I
instinctively began pulling at the uniform again, trying to pull the skirt down
to cover my ass.

“No,” Colt said, shaking his head.
 
He grabbed my hands again.
 
“That’s how you wear it.”
 
He was standing behind me, so close that
I could feel his chest pushed up against my back.
 
His grip on my wrists was strong and
controlling, and I remembered him catching me back at his house, in the
bathroom with the razor in my hand.
 
What had he said?

You
want to forget?
 
I can make you
forget.

I thought about what it would be like to
kiss him, to let him do whatever he wanted to me.
 
The thought made my skin tingle and I
felt myself start to get wet.

His eyes were still locked on mine in the
mirror, and then his gaze slid down my reflection, making no effort to hide the
fact that he was ogling me, that he was looking at my body, at my breasts, my
hips, my legs.
 
He pushed himself
into me harder, and I could feel the tautness of his stomach and how broad his
chest was.

“Can you handle it?” he breathed into my
ear, his breath tickling the back of my neck.

“Handle it?’ I repeated.

“Wearing this.
 
Helping me.
 
Either you’re in or you’re out.”

“I’m in,” I said, before I could change
my mind.

“Good,” he said.
 
And then he gave me that smile.
 
That cocky little
smile.
 
The smile that made
me think I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

“You can start tonight.”

“Tonight?” I asked.
 
“Oh, um, well… I mean, won’t there be like
a training period or something?”

He shrugged.
 
“Jessa can tell you what to do.
 
It’s not that hard.
 
You take orders and offer drinks.
 
Not that complicated.”
 
He looked at his watch.
 
“The club will be opening in a couple
hours.”

“Okay.
 
Should I… I mean, is it okay to change?”

“What?”

“I can’t wear this around for two hours.”

“Yes, you can,” he said.
 
“You have to.”

“Why?”

“Because I like looking at you in
it.
 
And because I’m the boss.”

And then he turned around and walked out
of the room.

***

I followed him, practically chasing him
down the hall, struggling to keep up with him in my high heels.

“Hey,” I said as we passed by the door
where I’d seen that girl crying.
 
“What was the deal with that girl?”

“What girl?” Colt asked.

“The girl who was crying in there.”

He stopped dead in his tracks and looked
at me.
 
“What are you talking
about?”

“There was this girl in there.”
 
I gestured to the room.
 
“She had a big welt on her face, and her
hair was chopped off.
 
She was
crying.”

Colt’s face darkened, his jaw
twitching.
 
And then he
laughed.
 
“Nice,” he said.
 
“You had me going there for minute.”

I frowned.
 
“What do you mean?”

“I mean you almost had me believing you.”

“It’s true,” I said.
 
“I saw her.
 
She was crying and there was a man
comforting her.
 
She looked like
she’d been beaten up.”

Colt stared at me for a long moment and
then finally he said,
 
“I don’t know
anything about that.
 
And this is my
club.
 
If something like that had
happened, I would know about it.
 
I’m not sure what you think you saw, but I’d be careful about spreading
rumors.”

“Are you saying I’m lying?”

“I’m saying it didn’t happen.”

“So you think I’m making it up.”
 
But even as I was saying the words, I
didn’t get the sense that he thought I was
lying
at
all.
 
I had the feeling he knew I
was telling the truth, and yet he didn’t want to admit it for some reason.
 
Was that what he was fighting with Mick
about?

“I think maybe you’re confused about what
you saw,” Colt said.

I started to protest, but something told me
to keep my mouth shut.
 
Part of it
was that I didn’t want to piss him off.
 
But part of it was something else, something I’d learned over the years.
 
If someone was acting like they didn’t
want to talk about something, there was a reason.
 
And if you pushed them to talk about it,
you became the enemy.
 
The person
began to blame you for whatever horrible thing they were avoiding, just because
you wouldn’t shut up abut it.

So I stayed quiet as I followed Colt
through a door and into a huge open room.
 
The walls were painted a dark red, and the perimeter was lined with
mirrors and vanities.
 
The carpet
was a black and white zebra print, and two huge wardrobes stood at the far end.

“This is the dressing room,” he
said.
 
“It’s where you’ll get
ready.”

I nodded, and kept following him as he
moved into another hallway that led out into the main part of the club, the
part I’d been in earlier when I came in for my audition.

Jessa was behind the bar, drying glasses,
and she looked up when she saw us.

“Oh, good,” she said, giving Colt a huge
smile.
 
“You’re here.”
 
She didn’t even acknowledge my presence.

“I’m here,” Colt said.
 
He motioned for me to sit down at the
bar and so I did.
 
There was a
picture hanging on the wall in a black wooden frame, of a man and a woman.
 
They were sitting at the bar in Loose
Cannons, but the bar looked shiny and new, not like it looked now, with the
wood scratched up and the paint fading.

“Who’s that?” I asked Colt.

His jaw twitched.
 
“My dad.”
 
His voice was low, gravelly, almost threatening.

“And that’s your mom?” I asked.
  

He ignored me, instead walking behind the
bar and over to where Jessa had pulled out an iPad, with what looked like an
excel spreadsheet open on the screen.
 
When he got to her, she wrapped her arms around his waist and slid her
body against his.
 
“I missed you,”
she said, kissing him on his neck.

My cheeks went warm and I averted my
gaze.

So that was why Jessa hated me so
much.
 
She was Colt’s
girlfriend.
 
Well, she didn’t have
to worry about me being any kind of threat.
 
I wasn’t interested in Colt, and even if
I was, there was no way I was any competition.
 
Jessa was beautiful – long blonde
hair, icy blue eyes,
her
body tan and taut under the
leather vest she was wearing.
 
I
wondered why she didn’t have to wear the outfit I was wearing.
 
But maybe Colt wanted to keep her more
covered up since she was his girlfriend, didn’t like the thought of all those
skeezy
guys staring at her.

I felt an irrational flash of annoyance
and something else (jealousy?) move through my body.
 
But it was silly to be jealous.
 
Of what?
 
The fact that Colt had
a girlfriend?
 
I’d just met
him.

And just because he’d seemed to like
looking at me in my tight little outfit didn’t mean anything.
 
What man didn’t like looking at a girl in
a tight outfit?

What
about back in his bathroom?
 
When he
said he would help you forget?
 
Had he just been messing with me, like
when he almost kissed me back in the office?
 
I swallowed my disappointment and
grabbed a bottle of water that was sitting on the bar and took a sip.

I watched as Colt and Jessa leaned over
the iPad.
 
Her hand was on his back,
and he wasn’t doing anything to encourage it, but he wasn’t pushing her away,
either.
 
It bothered me that I
wanted to know what the deal was with them, and so when Colt said something I
couldn’t hear and Jessa tipped her head back and laughed, I averted my eyes.

I looked out across the club, imagining
what it was going to be like when it was filled with men (and women?), all of
them drinking and watching naked women dancing on stage.
 
Would the men be nice?
 
Would they look at me in my skimpy
outfit even though there were naked strippers for them to look it?

Well,
Olivia
, I thought,
trying to calm my racing heart,
you’re
about to find out.

***

Once Colt and Jessa were done going over
the orders, he left her in charge of me, instructing her to teach me what to
do.

“You’re leaving?” I asked, trying to keep
the panic out of my voice.

Which obviously didn’t work, since Jessa
immediately picked up on it.
 
“
Aww
, Colt,” she said.
 
“How cute.
 
She has a crush
on you.”

“You’ll be fine,” Colt said to me.
 
“I’ll come find you later, see how it’s
going.”
 
I waited for him to say
something else, something comforting, to tell me where he’d be or what it
exactly it was he expected of me.
 
We hadn’t even talked about what he wanted from me, why he wanted me to
waitress for him.
  
Obviously
there was more to it.
 
But he didn’t
do any of those things.
 
Instead, he
turned and walked away, leaving me alone with Jessa.

My only consolation was that he hadn’t
said goodbye to her, either.

“You look like shit,” Jessa said, shaking
her head.
 

“Thanks,” I said, rolling my eyes.
 
“It’s nice to meet you, too.”
 

“You need make up,” she said, ignoring my
sarcasm.
 
“And lots of it.”
 

She moved out from behind the bar and
walked toward the back hallway, disappearing out of sight.
 
I sat there for a second, not really
sure what to do, and then finally, I got up and followed her.

“Anyway,” she said, when I found her in
the dressing room, like we were in the middle of a conversation and she hadn’t
just left me sitting out there like an asshole.
  
“This is the dressing room.”