The way she said it brought back flashes of her saying the same thing as I ordered her to touch herself over the phone. My body tightened. "Come on. We'll get you something to eat."
"Oh, um..." She pointed over her shoulder back into the club. "I actually brought a sandwich. I don't have time for much else."
I frowned. "They expect you to work all night on a sandwich?"
She smiled at me. It wasn't a full-on smile, but it made something funny happen in my gut. "I don't think they care about what we eat. Or if we eat at all, to be honest. As long as I'm back on the floor when I'm supposed to be, and I make the customers happy and don't spill any drinks."
I stared at her. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, although it shouldn't surprise me. Pulling my cell phone out of my pocket, I called the owner whose name I still couldn't remember. "It's me," I told him when he answered. "I'm taking Sera to get something to eat, and she will be late getting back. And she will need a longer break from now on. An hour minimum. If she wants to come back before that, fine. But she will have an hour." Taking the phone away from my ear, I tapped the screen and ended the call. "Let's go," I told her as I put it back into my inside pocket. "We don't have much time."
"What the hell did you just do?"
I cocked my head. "You need to have enough time to eat, Sera. Hell, just getting back and forth to a restaurant anywhere near here will take nearly half your break. That's ridiculous."
She was still staring at me with her mouth hanging open, the soft lighting of the club behind her haloing her pink pigtails. "Enzo, you can't just walk in here and order the people who run this place to give me special treatment."
"Yes, I can. And I just did. Now come on. I know you have to be hungry, and you're wasting your break standing here arguing with me." I held out my hand. After a moment, she took it, and I drew a calming breath once I felt her fingers wrapped within mine.
But she wasn't done with me yet. "Enzo, you can't demand that I have special treatment just because of our... agreement."
"Yes, I can."
"No, you can't! It's bad enough you come in here and sit at that table all night watching me like some kind of stalker. I need to work. I want to work. And I don't want to be treated any differently than anyone else. I like my co-workers, for the most part-"
I glanced over at her as we reached the SUV, but she didn't go into further detail.
"-and if you keep doing shit like this, everyone will hate me. I like this job. It's the first time in my life I've ever been able to support myself. To make my own money. To be at all independent. And I can only do it because of the level of discretion here. If everyone has it in for me because they think I'm some kind of mafia princess, I'll end up getting fired, and I'll have to leave town with the little bit I've saved up, which isn't nearly enough to get me out of my father's reach."
She stopped to take a breath. By this time, she was in the passenger seat, and I was waiting for her to finish before I closed her door. "I won't allow them to fire you, Sera."
Closing her eyes, her chin fell to her chest, and she rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. "Did you not hear anything I just said? That's not the point." Lifting her head, she gave me an entreating look.
"I heard you," I told her. "I just don't want you to worry about something that isn't going to happen. Now let's go eat. I'm hungry."
After I was in the car and we were pulling out of the lot, she said, "I'm not taking more than my thirty minutes after tonight."
I glanced over at her and sighed. "Then I'll have food delivered for you while you're here."
"You don't have to do that."
"I know."
"I'm fine with a sandwich, really. I eat when I get home."
"Stop arguing with me, Sera."
I felt her eyes on me a moment longer, and then she turned to look out the windshield. "I can't go into a restaurant dressed like this."
Reaching over, I covered her hand with mine. "Stop worrying. It's fine." The place I was taking her had a private room, and her coat would cover her until we got in there.
She was quiet until I pulled up to the restaurant a few minutes later. "I hope you like Asian food," I told her. "I'm sorry, I should've asked."
"I love Asian food." She smiled at me again, bigger this time, and my heart stuttered in my chest. If we got through this meal without me tearing off those ruffled panties she wore and fucking her against the wall, it would be a goddamned miracle.
I helped her out of the car and made sure she was sufficiently covered before escorting her inside. The manager herself greeted us at the door. "Mr. Enzo!"
"Hi, Lynn. Is the back room available?"
"Of course!" Gathering some menus, she led us through the restaurant to the backroom. I ate here often, although usually I was by myself, and I asked for the back room because it made me nervous to eat in the dining room. Nearly the entire front wall was made of windows, putting anyone who dined there on full display, and the last thing I wanted was for someone who had it out for me or Luca to shoot up the place because I was stupid enough to show them I was there.
"This place is so nice," Sera told me once we were seated at the single table. It was large, meant to seat up to sixteen people, and took up most of the space. As the focal point of the room, it was also a work of art, a rich cherry wood, the center carved with scenes from Chinese folklore. We sat at the end furthest from the door, with my back to the wall and Sera seated to my right. The walls were covered with black and gold wallpaper, and gold wall sconces lit the room with soft, warm light.
In this lighting, Sera's skin appeared nearly translucent, her eyes, lips, and hair darker than they actually were, and I couldn't stop looking at her. I'd helped her take off her coat and laid it over the back of her chair, and now my eyes traveled over her face, her throat, the elegant curve of her collarbones, and down to the curves of flesh that pushed up from the neckline of her dress. She was stunning in this light. And completely seductive.
I started to reach for her when there was a knock at the door and the server came in. Pulling my hand back, I looked down at my menu. She gave us a small bow and asked if we were ready to order.
"Get whatever you'd like," I told Sera.
She smiled at the girl and ordered a chicken dish and some iced tea. I put in my own order that included a full-bodied Malbec wine and handed the server our menus. Once we were alone again, I watched Sera as she nervously clenched her hands together in her lap. She looked around the room, down the long table, anywhere but at me.
"Why are you so nervous? Are you having second thoughts?" Not that it would matter. Not to me. This beguiling woman wasn't going anywhere until I had the chance to fuck her as many times as I wanted. I'd lost control the other night. I hadn't meant to. It had taken the edge off, but I was nowhere near satiated. Like eating a few nuts when you were starving.
She didn't try to play it off or pretend that she didn't know what I was talking about. "No," she told me. "I just don't know what to do with myself when you stare at me like that."
"Like what?"
Her eyes searched mine. "Like you're going to pounce on me without warning."
The door opened, and the server came in with our drinks and a dish with two spring rolls and a dipping sauce. Other than a cursory glance and a nod of thanks, I didn't take my eyes from Sera. I couldn't. I was bedazzled, even as she sat there in that ridiculous outfit with her hair in pigtails, meant to look like a little girl. But she did not look like a girl to me. She was a woman. And I couldn't wait to be inside of her. "Did you bring a change of clothes like I told you?"
She'd been watching the server leave, but at this, she turned her face back to me. Her eyes met mine and then fell to her drink. She wrapped her hand around the glass. "Yes," she said softly, and I noticed color rise up her chest.
"Good." Because she would be taking the rest of the night off. Now that I had her alone, there was no way I could take her back to that club tonight. I
decided to change the subject. See if I could draw her out of her shell a bit. "So, what are you going to do with yourself once you are free, Sera?"
"Live my life," she told without hesitation. "The life I choose. Not one that's chosen for me."
"Is that how you see me?" I asked her. "Just another man telling you what to do?"
"Yes," she said. "And no. You did give me a choice to accept your offer or not."
"I did," I agreed. "However, you must know that even if you had said no, this would be happening between us anyway."