3 Serenity
“I just don’t see why you need to be there so often.”
Giving my father a tight smile, I return my focus to the camera angle. Streaming his less-risky surgeries was a great idea, one I pulled right from social media, and although I’m helping manage a club, I still keep up this job on the side.
It gets Dad a ton of attention, not that he doesn’t already have that, and the hospital both loves and hates all the media input. If he could refrain from bringing up my personal life in the middle of a procedure though, that would be amazing.
“I’m helping Joelle,” I remind him, and Dad scoffs behind his mask. “You know she needed some time to take care of things.”
“I know that she and that shady husband of hers have no business going back to Florida,” Dad barks, glaring at me as his scrub nurse hands over another tool. They have a system going, and he always seems to request her when available. “They should leave well enough alone.”
“But there’s nothing well about it.”
“Serenity,” Dad says sternly, looking at me over his surgical glasses, “you have no business managing a sex club. You can barely tolerate men to begin with.”
“I can’t say I’m missing out on much.”
“You’re missing out on a lot. Intimacy is a good thing for people. You keep yourself locked up in a little bubble and do nothing else. All you ever do is work, work, work. When you’re not editing my surgeries, you’re at the club or hounding your sister.”
My brow twitches. Dad wants me to associate with more people, but on his terms. He would never say as much with prying ears listening, but he only wants me to be careful if I mess around outside of the picture-perfect plans he has for me. “Vienna gets in enough trouble for the both of us.”
“Yes she does,” Dad agrees, his attention solely focused on the procedure again. It’s a good thing I know how to cut out dialogue in parts or people would just come for the gossip not the surgical process. “I took her car.”
“For the frat party or for failing history?”
Dad blinks before he peers up at me. “I didn’t know she failed history.”
“She skimmed by,” I mutter. “By the skin of her teeth. She kind of made up her classes, but she doesn’t remember a thing and she isn’t planning for her future, just whatever fun she can plan into the next weekend. Graduation is coming up soon. I know her advisors wanted to talk to her before then but she isn’t letting it happen.”
Dad shakes his head, and I know I’m losing him. “That’s what the advisors are for, Serenity. You don’t need to worry about Vienna so much. She’s a big girl and the advisors know what they are doing with her.”
“She’s a teenager with big girl problems.”
He stops working for a moment, looking up to glare at me. “Serenity, take a walk. We can hit the stop button when done and you can edit later. You need to cool down.”
Dad’s just getting mad because I don’t talk up my sister in public. I let her flail, because she refuses to take any of my advice. She’s seventeen, and in a couple months she’ll be a legal adult where all her bad choices come back to bite her in the ass.
He took her car. That’s the biggest joke of a punishment I’ve ever heard of. He didn’t even bother to ground her, and I know all he’s done is take her keys. She knows where the spare is, and Dad is too distracted most days to even notice if her car is gone.
I storm out, removing my scrubs and going through the process of cleaning my hands thoroughly. I’m sure there’s a mass of emails and messages waiting back on my phone for the club, but right now I can’t be bothered to look. After I leave here, I’ve got to go home and check on Vie. Even if she isn’t there I need to make the effort before pinging her phone.
Rubbing my face as I leave, I fight off a wave of exhaustion. I want to go to the club tonight too, even if it’s technically my day off. I split weekdays with Emeric, and neither of us thinks the club is controlled enough yet on weekends so we both end up working.
The tiredness threatens to take over as I head back to Dad’s office to grab my bags. He’ll bring the tablet, he always does. How else will he get his views?
Going to the club, no matter how uncomfortable I feel, offers a distraction from everything else going on in my life. I can only worry about Jo and Vinny for so long. She legally had her name changed, and even if I sometimes mess up I know she doesn’t want us calling her Joelle anymore.
Worrying about Vienna distracts me from other things I should be doing as well, like trying to make up for the membership losses at the club. I have come up with one idea over the last week, and it came from listening in on Anita’s friends while they joked about sex clubs.
We could hold an auction, as insane as that sounds. I haven’t pitched it because I’m sure Emeric will shoot it down just because it’s my idea
Glaring around the room, I pick up my things and don’t bother looking at my phone. Whatever is on there won’t put me in a better mood.
~~~
Emeric is onstage when I arrive. Typically I just go upstairs and miss his classes, but today one of the guards had questions about the theater and pulled me aside before requesting I follow him to the wings of the stage to talk about the cameras. I tried to focus on his questions, but up to this point I’ve adamantly avoided even looking at the monitors when Emeric is performing.
Not performing, teaching. Despite the requests from staff and members alike, he doesn’t do shows. I thought that was in his job description before coming here, but he’s pretty damn set on not performing outside of teaching.
The guard left about ten minutes ago, but I’m still loitering in the wings. I haven’t watched him since the Valentine’s Day performance, and even doing that was a mistake. It got me a little… bothered. He gave a fantastic introduction to our entrance as managers of the club, and promptly took over as the face of the management team. I’ve just fallen further into the background since.
“We know it”s a bit of a shift without our dedicated co-owners here but we can still kick off the day of love right,” he said, his voice booming and commanding over the microphone. “That”s why we”ve got a special show for all of you tonight.”
People cheered as his hips moved to the beat, a group of other trained professionals acting as back up dancers. Those green eyes of his sparkle with pride and charm, dazzling the front few rows of viewers as the music picks up.
One of the stage hands brushed past me and didn’t even say a word. I was on stage less than ten minutes ago just like he is now, except I stumbled over my words and all he could offer was a pained smile. Public speaking never bothered me before.
But speaking in a club, where people kneel on the floor and openly play and fuck while waiting for a strip show? It got to me. I could see bodies moving, and in my head I was certain that they were laughing as I was sweating beneath the spotlight.
It didn’t really go that way, and Emeric took away the microphone before I could make too much of a fool out of myself.
He exudes a confidence I don’t feel, both in the club and on that stage. His hips swing with practiced ease as he grinds against the pole, his washboard abs flexing as he moves. It’s unholy how good that man looks in the spotlight. He’s still a little bit tanned from whatever beach he used to sun on, and his dark hair is already getting sweaty from the heat of the stage. It’s a little long, hanging to his chin, with just enough to brush behind an ear or mess up when he’s aggravated, making it constantly look like he just rolled out of bed, post-sex.
Not that I would know.
His green eyes catch mine when he turns, and I swear he’s challenging me with that gaze. I’m tucked into one of the wings on the stage observing; it’s the first official night that we’re managing a performance, and a lot of members showed up to see Emeric again.
His body is smooth, like he has a skincare routine that’s better than mine. As he tears off the pull away pants, my eyes trail down a bead of sweat that I can see glistening off his treasure trail -
Nope. Stop right there.
For dignity’s sake, I haven’t watched him since. But today his body is doing all that mesmerizing movement again, and for the love of God, I can’t seem to look away.
“Are you into that?”
I gasp, spinning around so fast I almost twist my ankle in my heels. Chad is standing there, his brown hair looking like he just popped out of the shower and a t-shirt stretched across his bulky chest. He grins at me, sliding his hands into his pockets as he waits for an answer.
It takes a beat to remember the question. “Uh, what?”
“That,” he says again, pointing to the stage. Emeric is far away on the other side speaking to a couple, and I think only the girl is practicing. “Pole dancers?”
I shrug. “I like the beauty of the art. They work hard.”
He scoffs. “Not a thing of beauty so much as gyrating hips, don’t you think, babe?”
I blink, because that’s the opposite of my train of thought. But Chad reaches out, and like he did the other night, he brushes back a strand of hair behind my ear.
My traitorous heart melts at the action. It’s affectionate, and briefly makes me forget about his last comment.
I turn back when the music kicks on just in time to see Emeric returning to the front of the stage and his own pole. He notices us in the wings and gives me a look. I think it might be annoyance, but that can’t be right. It’s not like I’m bothering him over here.
Heat presses against my back, before Chad’s voice whispers in my ear. “I bet you’d look hot out there, grinding against the pole. If it’s too much to handle, I’ve got one you can practice on right here.”
He grinds against my ass, his obvious erection digging into me, and I immediately take a step forward and spin on him. That was completely unexpected, and technically I’m the one in charge here. I’m the manager. My word is law. He can’t just tempt or harass me. But from the look on his face, he believes he can.
“I think you should back up,” I tell him hastily, my cheeks burning. The last thing I have in mind is letting one of the members grope me for fun.
“What, babe, scared?” he teases, brushing back my hair behind my other ear. I stiffen at the touch, a million horrible things flickering through my mind, before he steps back to wink. “Don’t worry. I’m not a pusher. But you’ll find you’ll want to be pushed. Come find me when you’re tired of just watching.”
He turns and leaves, and for the first time I wonder what the hell he was doing back here. The members aren’t permitted backstage unless they are preparing to go onstage for a class, and I didn’t see anyone up there who might be his partner after such a short amount of time.
I smooth down my hair and turn back to the stage. I catch Emeric instructing, but when I look at his face, his eyes are on me. I almost think he’s looking at a student, but no one is in between us. Those pensive green eyes are staring right at me.
And I’m afraid to look back at them. He’ll unravel all my dirty secrets with a single stare, and that’s not something that I can deal with.