Cherry Room Hotwife (Black Boss #2)

Chapter 1 - Welcome to the Cherry Room

I sat in my VIP lounge with one arm along the back of the red half-circle sofa. The round mirror table in front of me caught the dim light in the room and reflected it back to the ceiling.

Downstairs, money was exchanged into champagne and lap dances. I saw two women raise their phones toward the second-floor glass. I saw them clearly. The outside tint gave them only shapes.

Viccy wedged herself against my left side.

She had that soft little face she used when she wanted a man to do the work for her.

Big eyes. Gloss on her mouth. Uniform taken in at the waist and cut higher at the thigh.

She kept pulling one shoulder strap up, then letting it slip again.

Her nipples pressed hard through the thin fabric.

“You know, boss,” she said almost whispering, “Spice told me not to come up here. Said you were doing serious man business.” She looked at the table, then at me. “I told her I can sit quiet. I’m helpful when I want to be.”

Spice laughed from my right. She did not waste time pretending she had tripped into my space. Dark skin. Red nails. Dress pulled down until the top of her breasts sat out heavy above the fabric. Her bracelets clicked every time she moved her wrist.

“Girl, you don’t sit quiet,” Spice said. “You poke around until somebody gives you attention.” She brushed one red nail over my sleeve and left it there. “I told her, don’t come up here without me, you slim-ass bitch. If we bothering Mr. Getachew, we doing it as a team.”

Viccy pouted at her, then at me. “See? She’s mean to me.”

“She’s not wrong,” I said.

Viccy blinked, wounded for about half a second. Then she tucked her chin and smiled at the table. Spice’s mouth pulled to one side. She watched Viccy take the hit and enjoyed my silence around it.

The bass from the floor below knocked through the sofa frame.

The glass kept the voices down, not the weight of the music.

On the floor, my door girl leaned close to a man in a navy jacket and pointed him back toward the main bar.

He tried to look past her to the stairs. She did not move. Good girl.

Viccy set her palm on my thigh.

Light at first. Fingertips above my knee. Then her hand flattened and slid an inch higher toward the crease in my pants. She kept her eyes on my face. Waiting to see if I would give her more room.

I kept my leg still. My hand stayed open on the back of the sofa. I let her feel the pause.

“You never let anybody do anything for you,” Viccy said. “You sit up here watching everybody else spend money, and you won’t even let me fix your drink.”

“I can fix my own drink.”

“I can make it better.”

Spice leaned in. “He don’t need you playing bartender.” Her nail dragged once along the seam of my cuff. “He needs instructions followed.”

Viccy gasped. Fake as hell. “Spice.”

“What?” Spice looked straight at me. “Am I wrong?”

I lowered my chin and looked at Viccy’s hand. Then I looked at her face.

“Careful,” I said.

Her fingers stopped. The pressure came off my thigh first. Then the whole hand withdrew and folded into her lap. She held the pout, but she knew better than to try me twice.

Spice left her nail on my sleeve for another beat. She tapped once against the fabric. With my face neutral I looked at the nail, then at her.

She lifted her hand and rested it on her own knee. “I hear you.”

That was better.

Viccy shifted her crossed legs. Spice caught her reflection in the mirror table and adjusted the front of her dress with two fingers.

Lily hated when I let the bottle girls sit in the second-floor glass. She had told me enough times.

“They don’t go up there to work,” she’d told me last week. “They just want to be close to you and look available.”

“They are available,” I had said. “To the customers.”

Lily bit her bottom lip hard enough to leave a pale mark. “Don’t play with me, Haile.”

She knew what I was doing. She also knew how women in my orbit behaved. All of them dressed for trouble because trouble sold more bottles.

Spice crossed one leg over the other. Her heel brushed the table stem.

“After close,” she said, “we could ride with you.”

Viccy recovered fast. “Just to make sure you get home safe.”

Spice laughed under her breath. “Exactly.”

Yesterday, at the dealership, the woman handing me the keys to my black Cullinan had tried her own move. She wore a gray suit and nails too long for paperwork. Twice she missed the signature tab because she was watching my hands.

“My shift ends at six,” she said. Her voice dropped. “If you want the full walk-through at your house, I can bring the car myself.”

I signed the last page. “Leave the keys with valet.”

Her smile vanished. Just for a little while. Then her selling face came back and she slid the folder closed.

That was their problem. I had Lily at home, and Lily was not just pretty trouble in a tight dress.

Lily Rose was a decade younger than me. Blonde with a sharp mouth. I met her on the opening day of my first club, before the Cherry Room, before men started dropping my name for access.

She came in fresh from finance school with her hair pinned up and a folder against her chest. I thought she wanted a job at the front desk.

She wanted the books.

“You’re paying for twelve cases of vodka and receiving nine,” she told me in my unfinished office.

Sawdust still sat near the baseboards. The desk wobbled when she put her folder down.

“Your liquor rep is robbing you. Your bartender is comping his friends under fake names. Your safe count is short twenty-seven hundred from last weekend.”

I remember closing my hand around my pen. Not from anger. From the way she walked in and cut me off without asking permission.

“You been here twenty minutes,” I said.

“Long enough.” She opened the folder and turned it toward me. Receipts. Counts. Names circled in blue ink. “Give me ninety days with full access. If I’m wrong, fire me in front of everybody. If I’m right, you let me handle the finances for you.”

I believed her. I hired her before she left the room.

By the second Friday, she had the liquor rep apologizing into his phone. By the end of the month, the bartender was gone and the safe count matched. She did not raise her voice. She did not flirt her way around a problem. She put her finger on the page and made men explain themselves.

Within a year, she was in my bed and in my accounts. I trusted her with both.

The empire came after that. One room became another. The door got harder. The girls got younger. Men around me bought better jackets. She stayed at the center of my world with her short skirts and clean numbers. That bite to her bottom lip whenever something pissed her off still got me.

When she wanted me, she came into my office after midnight and shut the door with her heel. Then she stood there until I looked up.

“You working all night,” she would say, “or do you remember you have a wife?”

That was Lily. She did not beg.

Viccy’s knee brushed mine again. Softer now. Accidental for anybody stupid.

Spice watched my face and rolled one bracelet around her wrist.

I looked down at Viccy’s hand folded in her lap and thought of Lily’s fingers. I had said no at the dealership. I said no every night in one way or another. Not because I lacked appetite. I had plenty. I just knew where my yes belonged.

A scrape came from the lounge door.

Viccy straightened first. Her shoulder came off mine. Spice turned her head and pulled her dress higher by half an inch. Staff knocked soft.

This was not staff.