“What else would I be referring to?”
“I’m not sure this is the best place for me to explain.”
“Well, it’s the only place you’re gonna get me.”
Abram eyed me before taking a deep breath and gazing forward. “I singlehandedly turned your life upside down, Isla. I took you into my home for that reason. Not so you’d feel obligated to give me whatever I wanted from you as repayment. As hot as it is to picture you as my sex slave, the reality would be too fucked up for even a piece of shit like me to stomach.”
I stared. It made a little more sense now that I heard it from his lips. I wet mine as I replied quietly. “I didn’t feel obligated, Abram. Women are interested in sex too.”
“That much I know. But the other issue is that I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the night I found you. And I’m sure you realize, considering the events that took place that I have a couple things to take care of right now. I need to be focused and I can’t stay that way when every few minutes, I think about your body and how tight you felt around my fingers when I made you come, so for that reason,” he lowered his voice, “I don’t think I want to know how good I would feel inside you. I’ve thought about you enough as it is.”
I had chewed my thumbnail down to nothing by the end of his explanation.
“Now that I’ve answered your question, I’d like you to answer mine.”
Cheeks still red, I obliged. “I’ve been making about a hundred-twenty a shift. I can break almost three in the winter. Rent’s thirteen hundred dollars,” I tried to rattle off the numbers without wincing but my finances were such a nightmare. My studio was part of a two-year lease I’d begun while still teaching, when living alone was good for work and over a grand a month didn’t hurt. But now it broke the bank right in half. I spent fifty percent of my monthly tips on rent and another quarter on bills and a me
ager grocery list. I’d only begun riding my dumb bike because MetroCards had gotten too pricey. And still, I was in debt.
“That’s bleak,” Abram remarked.
“I’m aware, thanks.”
“Well, aside from apologizing for last night I’m here to offer you a job that’ll make you no less than six hundred a night. Housing would be at the Monarch. Pay what you want.”
I stared. I could feel my coworkers doing the same. “What are you talking about, Abram?”
“Killing two birds with one stone. I figure this gig would help with your financial situation as well as Nate’s paranoia.”
“I don’t understand how it would fix the latter,” I said, but Abram had no chance to reply because suddenly, Laurel bounced over, hair fluffed up and shirt pulled down.
“I’m so sorry but did you say you worked at the Monarch?” she breathed at Abram. He looked at her.
“Yes. I own the place.”
Laurel’s mouth opened so wide I was sure she planned on eating him. “Um – what? That’s crazy! Wait, then I totally know who you are. I’ve read about you. Oh my God, I’ve read about you! You’re like, famous, what are you even doing here?”
Abram nodded at me. “Well, she snuck out of my apartment this morning and now I’m trying to get her back. Any suggestions?” he smirked.
Laurel’s smile faded fast but she managed to muster up another one, though it was strained and looked half-crazy since she’d yet to blink in the past fifteen seconds. “Uh… no. Sorry,” was all she said before turning to me with a dozen different questions on the tip of her tongue, none of which ever came out. I was too amused not to say it.
“I’ve been inside the Monarch, by the way. It’s nice.”
Laurel glared. In an instant, she was red-faced and sputtering. “Well – yeah, ‘cause you’re… like, a prostitute,” she hissed in a stammer. Her mouth opened to spew more but she had nothing left in her arsenal so I just nodded and laughed.
That wound up my last afternoon at Alma’s. Laurel told Reece that a “whore” shouldn’t be working at his diner and he only comforted her, so I told them to just mail my last check to my apartment. Abram corrected me, instead giving Reece the address to the Monarch.
I started my first shift at the hotel the same night.
chapter ten
The famed club at the Monarch was named XIII. It topped every list of city hotspots and was notorious for turning down celebrities. Its door was comically hard to get into, protected by another Monarch club-slash-lounge of lesser status, that the public had to permeate before they could even think about getting into XIII.
I wasn’t working for XIII.
I was working for a club about a thousand times more exclusive.
It was nameless, at the top of the Monarch but apparently very much underground. Abram gave a brief explanation on the way to the hotel. “Think of it as an off-the-books casino,” he grinned at my absolute confusion. “We have everything they have – poker, betting, fights that people travel to come watch. We just play by fewer rules because we have no one to report to. And that’s a draw for a lot of guests.”