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I look down at my notepad, thankful for the opportunity to break the ice of speaking to him in such a neutral environment after his dick was between my thighs and his knife was at my throat.
You’re still serving him, still at his beck and call.
Serving him as a waitress at a steak house is ten times less demeaning than being his maid. At least he can’t fire me here.
After a few beats of silence, I look up. His jaw tics as he studies me with dark, calculating eyes. My lips part as I inhale a few slow, steady breaths.
“They’ll close the bar too if you don’t hurry.”
“How much have you made in tips tonight?” he asks.
I stare at him, my brow furrowed in confusion. “What?”
He nods his head toward my apron. “How much in tips?”
I sigh, too tired to try and work out in my head why he would bother asking or to be stubborn and refuse to answer. “Around two ten, not including those guys.” I nod toward my other table.
The girl who trained me said Saturdays are the busiest, so I shouldn’t expect to break the two-hundred mark on any other night.
Holden’s eyes don’t leave mine. His tan face is raw and perfect, and I can’t help but wonder if he’s been thinking about what happened this morning as obsessively as I have.
I’m incapable of stopping myself from replaying the scene in my head over and over again. I didn’t expect to have to see him again until Monday morning. I thought I would have time to work on my indifferent, bored expression.
“What if I doubled it? Five hundred dollars a night.”
My mouth drops open, forming an O. Holden’s eyes flicker down to take it in before returning to lock on to my gaze.
“You … you want to pay me five hundred dollars a night to … what?”
My fingers tighten around the pen in my hand. If he’s saying what I think he’s saying, I might actually stab him in the eye with this pen.
Surely not.
He leans forward, biceps bulging out of his T-shirt. “I want to pay you to sleep with me.”
I react without thinking, shoving my hand toward his face with a swift, jerky motion. He dodges the blow effortlessly. I barely miss his right eye, my pen flinging toward the ground behind him.
A barely perceptible smirk touches his lips. “Did you just try to stab me in the eye with that pen?”
I inhale, gritting my teeth and spinning around to stomp away from him. His hand grips my wrist tightly, jerking me back and pinning me in place.
His mouth is right next to my ear as he speaks softly but firmly. “Now, you wouldn’t want me going off and asking your new manager what that was, would you?”
I gasp, trying to jerk my arm away from him. He holds it firmly, not hurting me, but not giving me any room to wiggle free.
“I’m not saying you have to sleep with me. I’m saying I will pay you to sleep next to me four nights out of the week. Five hundred dollars a night, two thousand dollars a week. Just to sleep in my room, like you did last night.”
My thundering heart rate begins to slow down. His warm breath on my cheek moves away as he releases my arm. I step back, rubbing the spot on my wrist where he held me—the same one he had this morning while his other hand pressed the knife to my throat.
He’s not safe. He spent years in prison with criminals and murderers after killing someone himself.
Cain deserved it, but what does killing do to a person?
“Hey, miss! Can we get a refill over here?” the red-bearded man yells at me from across the restaurant.
Holden’s offer is bizarre. Still … I think about the back exit that I’ll have to walk through every night on the way to my car. I think about my car, only starting when it feels like it. I think about my apartment and how I woke up to shouting and sirens blaring a few nights ago due to some kind of dispute, a drug deal gone wrong or who knows what?
I think about how I haven’t felt safe in a very, very long time.
