Chapter Three
Saturday night was busier than Friday, which was unusual. Amani noticed it the moment he stepped into the building at seven forty-five and saw the line of people waiting to check in at Bethany's desk. A line. At Kinky Kritters. His mother would be thrilled.
Hurrying out of the elevator, he slipped behind the bar and started setting up for the rush before it hit.
Ice bins full, garnish trays stocked, the well liquors in their places.
He pulled his hair back with a band he kept on his wrist, because it was going to be a sweating kind of night and he didn't want it in his eyes, and stretched his arms over his head until his shoulders popped.
The tiny shorts rode up when he stretched.
He didn't adjust them. Let people look. That was half the point.
By nine the bar was three deep and Amani was in his element.
He moved between orders like a current between rocks, smooth and fast and never quite stopping.
Two hands, twelve bottles, no wasted motion.
Reza was at the other end, running the well, and they'd long since developed the silent choreography of bartenders who'd worked enough shifts together to read each other's rhythm.
Amani called regulars by name and newcomers by what they were drinking.
He remembered who tipped and who didn't. He noticed when a sub at a corner table flagged his drink count to the bartender, two fingers held up discreetly, and he made sure his third was mostly juice without making it obvious.
He noticed when a Dom led a partner toward the private rooms with a hand on the back of their neck that was a shade too tight, and he caught the eye of Marco, the gorilla on security, with a look that said watch that one.
They were the small things. The invisible machinery of a club that actually worked.
Most people never saw it. They saw the leather and the lighting and the beautiful people in not enough clothing.
They didn't see the bartenders tracking every dynamic in the room from behind a wall of bottles, or the bouncers who followed up on a look with a quiet check-in, or the owner making her rounds with a martini in one hand and a mental map of every scene in progress in the other.
KK worked because people like Amani made it work.
He was proud of that in a way he didn't talk about much, because talking about it would have required admitting that bartending at a kink club was more than a job to him.
It was a vocation. He was good at it the way some people were good at music or medicine, not just skilled but called.
Around ten, the wolf from the previous night came back.
Amani spotted him coming off the elevator and felt a small spark of satisfaction. He'd said come back Friday, and the wolf had come back Saturday, which meant he was either eager or impatient. Both were interesting. Both told Amani things.
The wolf came to the bar, and didn't order whiskey. He ordered a beer, something simple, something that said I'm not performing tonight, I'm just here. Amani poured it and set it down without commentary. The wolf took a seat at the rail where he could see the main floor and settled in to watch.
Good. That was exactly what Amani had told him to do.
He kept half an eye on the wolf as the night unfolded.
Watched him watch the scenes. The wolf's attention was thoughtful rather than hungry.
He tracked the negotiations, noted the check-ins, seemed to be studying the culture rather than just consuming the spectacle.
When a particularly intense flogging scene started near the center stage, the wolf watched the Dom's technique with the critical eye of someone who knew the difference between showmanship and skill.
He winced slightly when the Dom's aim drifted too high on a backswing, a tell that said he would have done it differently, and better.
Amani filed all of it away. The wolf had skill.
He had patience. He was doing exactly what Amani had asked, which showed either respect or strategy.
Amani was fine with both. Under other circumstances, in another week, he might have gone over and started a conversation.
Tested the waters. Let the wolf buy him a drink on the other side of the bar.
But not that night. They were busy. Amani was working.
And there was something pleasurable about making the wolf wait.
About knowing he was being watched and choosing not to acknowledge it.
Power didn't always come from a flogger.
Sometimes it came from a twenty-year-old in tiny shorts who knew he was the most interesting thing in the room and wasn't in a hurry to prove it.
The wolf stayed until midnight, nursed two beers, tipped well, and left without trying to talk to Amani again.
Bethany texted him from the desk: Your wolf left. You're impossible.
Amani texted back: He'll be back Friday.
Bethany: And you'll make him wait again.
Amani: That's the fun part.
Three eye-roll emojis. He grinned at his phone and pocketed it.
***
The rush eased around one. The late-night regulars settled in. The music shifted from the driving beat that fueled the early scenes to something slower and warmer, music that people swayed to while draped over each other at the bar.
Amani was cleaning glasses, his favorite mindless task, one that let his brain idle while his hands stayed busy, when one of the younger regulars, a meerkat shifter named Danny who couldn't have been more than twenty-two, slid onto a stool and put his head down on the bar.
"Rough night?" Amani asked.
Danny groaned without lifting his head. "He didn't show."
Amani didn't need to ask who. Danny had been talking about a jaguar he'd been messaging for weeks, some Dom from Reno who kept promising to drive down and meet him at the club.
The jaguar had canceled three times already.
Danny kept making excuses for him. Amani had opinions about that but was keeping them behind his teeth, because Danny hadn't asked for opinions.
He'd asked for a place to put his head down.
"Water or whiskey?" Amani asked.
"Whiskey."
"Water first." He set a glass of ice water in front of Danny and waited until the meerkat lifted his head enough to take a sip. "There you go. Drink the whole thing and then I'll pour you something strong enough to make you forget that jaguar's name."
Danny drank the water in three long gulps and set the glass down. "He said he got caught up with work."
"Mm." Amani poured him a generous whiskey. Not generous enough to get him drunk, Amani was careful about that, especially with the younger regulars, but enough to take the sting out.
"You think he's lying."
"I think," Amani said carefully, setting the glass down and meeting Danny's eyes, "that Reno is a three-and-a-half-hour drive.
And that someone who wants to see you makes the drive.
And someone who doesn't makes excuses." He held up a hand before Danny could argue.
"I'm not telling you what to do. You're a grown man and your love life is your business.
But you asked me what I think, and that's what I think. "
Danny stared at his whiskey for a long moment. Then he looked up at Amani with red-rimmed eyes and something that might have been the beginning of clarity. "You've never been strung along by someone, have you."
It wasn't really a question. Amani leaned back against the counter and considered it anyway.
"No. But that's not because I'm special.
It's because I'm stubborn and I'd rather be alone than chase someone who isn't chasing me back.
That's a choice, not a virtue. You're more open-hearted than I am, Danny.
That's not a weakness. Just make sure the people you open up to deserve it. "
Danny took a sip of his whiskey. Then another. "You're annoyingly wise for someone in booty shorts."
"Performance garment."
A real smile broke across Danny's face, the first one Amani had seen from him all night. That was the job. Not the drinks, not the flirting, not the reading of rooms and guessing of species. That. Catching people when the night got heavy and holding them up long enough to find their own feet.
He topped off Danny's water glass and moved on to the next order.
***
The club emptied slowly. By two thirty the main floor was quiet. By three the private rooms had cleared. Amani sent the last of the cleaning crew home at three forty-five and did his final walkthrough alone, the way he always did.
The way he loved the club the most. Silent.
Waiting. Every surface clean, every light dimmed, every piece of equipment in its place.
The St. Andrew's Cross standing like a sentinel in the center of the main floor.
The private room doors open at forty-five degrees.
The bar gleaming under the low emergency lighting like the deck of a ship at rest.
He took his time with the inventory. He was in no rush.
The city outside was doing what it always did at that hour, winding down from its own performance.
The last of the tourists staggered toward their hotels.
The night-shift workers started their commutes.
Inside KK it was just Amani, the quiet accented by the faint smell of leather conditioner.
He moved through the space with the unhurried grace of someone who knew he belonged there the way a house cat knows it belongs on the highest shelf.
Not because anyone put him there. Because that's where the view was best.