Chapter 2CANDI

Chapter 2

CANDI

Tonight, the club is packed and the customers are riled up.

Since Bianca left, the club has hired some new dancers. One is on tonight and in her last two sets, she stripped down to a G-string so tiny it doesn't even cover her pussy lips. She's still on the stage and the punters are horny.

I like that word. Punter. I got it from one of my mom's British crime shows. It's better than calling the customers johns because that implies I do sex acts with them for money. I don't.

The sour smell of sweat assaults my nostrils and it's all I can do to keep the fake smile fixed on my face. A guy wearing a cheap suit, which is a step above the usual attire in here, waves me over with a roll of twenties.

The other men at his table are dressed like him and all wear similar expressions too. They think they're flirting with the wild side coming to a strip club and offering money for a lap dance.

"Twenty-five for ten minutes. No contact." I always spell it out beforehand.

He nods and peels off two twenties before laying them on the table. "Make it good and you can have both."

I don't roll my eyes. I want the forty bucks, but seriously? Make it good?

Shaking my barely clothed body within a foot of him will have him coming in his underwear. He's that guy.

Ignoring the music playing over the club's sound system, I start dancing to the soundtrack in my head.

I'm cupping my breasts and twerking my ass when suddenly harsh fingers dig into my hips.

Yanked backward, I nearly trip, but I've been dancing four nights a week in six-inch heels for three years. It takes more than pulling me off balance to make me fall.

Wanting those meaty hands off my body, I jerk forward, but the fingers dig in and I end up on polyester clad thighs. "Come here, baby. I'll give you a hundred to sit on my lap for a minute."

An unimpressive, but intrusive hardon presses against my naked backside as the guy wraps one arm around my waist and grinds up against me. My elbow flies backward but it barely connects before sliding off his chest because of the angle.

The man laughs. "You're a feisty little bitch, aren't you?"

This time, I throw my head backward but he shifts avoiding the headbutt. I miss his chin, but I hit his neck and that at least elicits a grunt from him.

Where's the bouncer?

If Gino is watching, he'll wave security away. He wants me working the backrooms and for all I know he put this guy up to this.To break me in.

But I am not letting some disgusting perv come against my ass. Even if it means getting fired.

The angle's wrong for me to hit the guy's instep with my stiletto heel too, so I lift my foot and grab my shoe. Holding it by the toe, I bring the heel against the side of his leg as hard as I can.

He yells in pain and his grip loosens. I surge forward and land on my knees. Someone kicks me in the backside and I go sprawling, losing my grip on my makeshift weapon and getting way too close and personal with the floor. They mop every night, but in between?

The risk of coming into contact with body fluids is high enough to have me scrambling to my feet. One foot is still in its shoe and I have to cant one knee to compensate.

Before I can get away, that same meaty fist grabs my arm, fingers digging in so hard I cry out in pain.

"Let her go." The tone is deadly, the timber loud enough to be heard over the music.

I can't see who spoke, but I know it's not the bouncer. Not that voice.

Latex slides between my arm and the fingers gripping it. Then there's an audible pop and the creep who tried to use me as a living sex doll screams in pain.

When his grip loosens I jerk away and this time he lets me go.

I spin to face him and my savior.

It's Angelo, the guy who skewered the hand of the guy that tried to touch me a couple of months ago.

He has this jerk's finger bent back at an impossible angle, but his eyes aren't on the now crying man. They're on me.

His black latex covered hand is gentle when he touches my bicep and the angry red marks that reveal where my captor's hand gripped me. "You alright, dolcezza ?"

I don't speak either Italian or Sicilian fluently like my bestie, Bianca, but I'm pretty sure the dangerous man just called me sweetheart.

Which doesn't mean anything. Right? Lots of people use endearments like that. Only, Angelo doesn't look like the kind of guy to throw them around. But he just did. Directed at me.

Not that I think it means sweetheart like, girlfriend material. If anything, he's using it like you would to a kid or a friend.

But we've never even met officially.

Watching him skewer a man's hand in the alley isn't like being introduced, is it?

"I'm okay." Skeeved out and shaky, and tomorrow I'll have finger shaped bruises on my arm, but I'll live.

If the creep had managed to get off while rubbing against me, I'd be crying right now though. I know I would. And that makes me furious.

Because it's taking every bit of my self-control to hold back the angry and scared tears right now. I hate that I'm this scared.

I'm not a powerless teenager living with a predator anymore. I'm a grown assed woman who supports my family.

But the man now cradling his hand against his chest while he sobs took away my sense of power in a matter of seconds.

I reach down and grab my other shoe before walloping his other leg. Hard. "No contact means no touching, asshole."

"We all got that now," the guy who offered forty for a no contact lap dance says.

I notice the money's no longer on the table. Did he offer it to lure me into a vulnerable position for his friend?

"You should have gotten that when I said it five minutes ago," I snap, in no mood to play nice.

Angelo's handsome face twists in a scowl, which he turns on the guy who is doing enough crying for both of us. "You hurt her."

"I didn't mean to," the perv blubbers.

Yeah, right. "Not true. You took what I didn't want to give and would have taken more if you could get away with it."

"You're a stripper for Christ's sake. That's what you're here for." This little bit of wisdom is from one of the other office drones sitting at the table.

I spin to face him, to admonish him for saying the one curse word my mom would wash my mouth out for, as much as for being a total asshole. Only, his face drains of color before I can even get my mouth open to blast him.

Looking back over my shoulder, I see that it's now my accoster's whole hand hanging at an odd angle from the wrist. He's dangling limply from Angelo's hold, passed out from the pain.

"She's a dancer," Angelo says with pure menace. "Apologize for your mistake."

"Fuck you. You can't get away with this." The guy who just claimed being a dancer makes me fair game for whatever the punters here want is brave with a table between him and Angelo. "Let Ronnie go!"

My laughter shocks everyone at the table.

I shake my head at them. "You all really are stupid, aren't you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" my original lap dance customer asks.

"It means that if you don't want to end up missing a hand, like your friend here," Angelo answers before I can. "After you apologize to her, you'll get your asses out of this fucking club, and you will never come back."

If I were them, I'd be pissing myself with fear, so I'm not at all surprised every single one of the group stands up and mumbles an apology to me before sidling around the opposite side of the table from Angelo and their friend.

The creep wakes up with a woozy moan while his buddies are trying to get away from him and Angelo. "Need the hospital," he slurs.

One of his braver, or more ridiculously foolish, friends steps toward them. "I'll take you."

"Pick him up in the alley behind the club in fifteen minutes." Angelo's words crack like a whip. "I'm not done with him."

"No, please, I'm sorry!" Ronnie implores Angelo from his knees.

"Apologize to her, not me."

The man who called me a bitch begs me with his eyes. "I'm sorry, okay? Call off your guard dog. Please!"

I shake my head. I have no power over Angelo. And even if I did? I wouldn't tell him to leave the guy alone. Why should I?

No one told my attacker to let me go. Not one of his friends said, "Hey, that's not cool."

No, they all laughed and watched us like we were putting on a show for them. That show lasted less than a minute before Angelo stepped in, but it was long enough for one of them to show some decency.

None of them did.

"Go to hell," I say.

Angelo's mouth quirks in an almost smile, his pale gray eyes reflecting approval of my words.

Then he looks away from me and he's pure retribution again. "You will never bother Candi again."

"We're never coming back here, don't worry." The guy who offered to take my attacker, who has become Angelo's victim, to the hospital says this like it's a hardship for the club that they aren't ever coming back.

And not an order they don't dare refuse.

"If you see her anywhere in New York, you will avoid her like she's got the plague and breathing the same air as her will cause your death." Angelo pauses. "Because it will."

For the second time ever, I soak my G-string as a shudder of arousal works its way up from my bare feet to the top of my head, leaving pleasure firing along all my neuroreceptors in its wake.

Angelo's jaw goes taut, like he knows what's happening to me. "Get dressed and go home."

My heart twinges at the rejection couched in consideration.

I shake my head. "I still have two hours of my shift."

"I'll square it with Ugo." Angelo mentions the GM, not Gino, his assistant.

I swallow and nod, too turned on by this show of protectiveness to speak.

Then without another look in my direction, Angelo yanks the man who attacked me to his feet and drags him toward the back of the club. The guy's friends go the opposite way, toward the front exit.

I wouldn't lay odds they'll be picking him up in the alley like Angelo told them to.