Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Sissy

I don’t understandwhy I’m suddenly on fire from head to toe.

Thisis Craig?

When I pictured the kind of man who would expect a female to remove her dress in order to get a job, I imagined him a lot more…smarmy. Slick.

Thisman has integrity in every bulging line of his big body.

No, big doesn’t even begin to do him justice. He’s a mountain.

A beautiful, magnificent mountain.

As I follow him down the hallway to the final door, I must squeeze my keys hard enough to hurt the palms of my hand. Otherwise, I fear I’ll reach for him. Run my fingertips along his mammoth shoulders, sink them into his black hair. I have the strangest urge to climb onto his back and be carried. My goodness, that would be the most secure place in the world. On the back of this giant, my legs around his waist.

That last part creates a pulsing sensation between my thighs.

I bite down hard on my bottom lip and consider excusing myself to the bathroom, so I can rub myself through my panties. I know from experience that rubbing only makes the ache worse, but the impulse has never been this bad. Not in all my eighteen, almost nineteen, years.

His scent drifts back toward me in the air conditioning.

Incense. Musk.

My private area is becoming wet.

Why am I reacting to him this way? How will I keep my composure for this interview?

We reach the final door at the end of the hall and he opens it, grunting for me to precede him. Walking past his thick body without touching it is sheer torture. My mouth salivates. My heart bounces wildly in my chest. Is it my imagination or does he inhale raggedly as I pass, too?

Focus. You need this job.

Shaking myself, I continue into the office. The room consists of a couch, a desk and a chair. I take a spot on the couch because it looks the most comfortable. After a short hesitation, he drags the chair over in front of the couch and sits facing me, swallowing up the piece of furniture like Goliath sitting on a doll chair.

There are no lights on, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“You don’t have any paperwork, Craig,” I whisper, trying not to breathe hard.

He’s so close.

So huge and intimidating with those intense green eyes.

He could flatten me on this couch and I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

“My name is Locke.” He looks at me hard, as if willing that name into permanence in my memory. “Craig is busy. And I don’t need paperwork. I know everything I need to know about you,” he says, his tone of voice like metal on stone. “I know you shouldn’t be here.”

“Already?” Panic bites into my gut. “We haven’t even started the interview.”

“I don’t need to interview you to know you’re too soft for Vegas.”

“I’m not,” I breathe, visualizing the last of my cash swirling down the drain. Seeing myself back at the farm, crawling back and asking for forgiveness from a man who has never shown me an ounce of compassion. Come on. Be convincing. “Just because my name is Sissy doesn’t mean I am one. I’ve worked hard my whole life, sir. Just last winter, I helped birth a foal in the middle of a blizzard. I’m pretty sure I can carry a tray and serve drinks.”

“I’m not worried about you serving drinks,” he responds sharply. “I’m worried about the men you’ll be serving them to. How they’ll react to you.”

Confusion mars my brow. “What do you mean?”

Very fleetingly, his attention drops to my breasts, then away, his chest puffing up and down faster. He removes a handkerchief from his pocket and dabs it against his upper lip. “Men have polluted thoughts on a regular basis. Throw in gambling, alcohol, sex and the understanding that nothing they do here will follow them home? It’s a whole other story. You…” He can’t seem to look at me. “They will lose their minds over you.”

What is he talking about? “I’m still lost.”

“Yeah, honey. That’s the problem. You look lost.” He rakes the handkerchief down over his open mouth, his gaze tracing my knees this time. Then upward to my thighs, stopping on the place in between. “And someone with bad intentions is going to find you really fucking fast.”

My flesh tightens beneath his regard. Intensely. If I lifted my dress, I swear he’d be able to see it squeeze right through my white cotton panties. Why…why am I so tempted to prove that theory? To show him what’s beneath my clothing? I just might get the chance if I can’t convince him to hire me. “Do the other waitresses have to worry about being found by men with bad intentions?”

“Not the way you will,” he says, closing his eyes.

“Spell it out for me,” I whisper, goading him for a reason I can’t explain.

“God help me.” His nostrils flare. “You look like a virgin tied up on an auction block. Scared and confused. But very clearly built for…”

“What?”

“I’m not saying it out loud,” he growls.

“Then you’ll always leave me wondering.”

“A couple of days in Vegas and you won’t wonder anymore.” He leans forward in the chair, the wood creaking long and low beneath his bulk. “You’d be wise to get back on the bus to whatever little town you came from and run home to mommy and daddy.”

“Never.” I’m very annoyed at him and yet…I want to crawl into his lap and pout and incite him further. My urges seem to conflict with the situation. Shouldn’t I want to slap him, instead of crawling closer and getting right in his face? Because that’s where I am. Leaned forward, matching his pose, until our faces are very close together. “Tell me what I’m built for.”

“No,” he booms.

Though his raised voice makes my insides tremble a little, I stand my ground. Somehow I know he wouldn’t lay a finger on me out of anger. But how do I know that? “Then I’ll just go get a job at a different casino and find out.”

That’s a bluff. None of the other casinos answered my résumé submission—which I spent all day yesterday sending out from a Staples off the Strip. I don’t lie often, but again, there is something inside of me that naturally pushes this man’s buttons for enjoyment. Like I’m supposed to. Like it’s the right thing for us.

His gaze is locked on my mouth and he swallows over and over again. Audibly. That thick Adam’s apple sliding up and down in his muscular throat. His hands are in fists on his knees, knuckles white. “God forgive me for saying this.” His voice is uneven. “You have a girl next door face and…the kind of body men drag into dark corners, plagued by the need to fuck. You will have them in a frenzy. You will have them ignoring their consciences for the chance to get their cocks wet between the two sweetest legs I’ve ever seen. And here I am, ready to kill the next man who even looks. Do you understand? I will be in a constant state of rage. You cannot work the floor. For my sanity. For the safety of the population.”

I hear a rasping sound in the room and slowly realize it’s my shallow breathing. As he gave the crude, enlightening speech, my nipples have stiffened and the instinct to slither onto his lap and goad him into…into something has grown so strong, I can barely resist it. “You don’t feel this way about the other waitresses?”

His brief laugh holds no humor. “They are invisible to me. You will be the only thing I see.” His chest rattles up and down. “I can’t have that.”

“Why not?”

“I’m alone. I will remain alone. I do my job, go to church and go home. You are not going to prance in here in your tight thrift shop dress and tempt me toward a dark path.”

“You make me sound evil,” I whisper.

“You are the furthest thing from evil, but you will inspire it. In others.” He exhales unsteadily, his attention dropping to my breasts. “In me.”

Push him.

I don’t know where the voice in the back of my head is coming from. It has never been there before, almost like it is specific to this man. If another man spoke to me like this, I would be running for the exit, yet with the giant, I stand up and gravitate closer. Closer. Until I’m in the V of his thighs, my fingers playing with the top button of my dress.

Faye told me there’s a chance I’ll need to take off my dress for Craig to get the waitressing job. That advice doesn’t fit the man in front of me. Locke. But it’s the excuse I need to unhook that top button and watch his chest heave, a choked moan seemingly coming from deep inside of him. “Don’t go any further,” he bites off, winded.

Push. Just a little more.“How will I inspire evil in you?”

“You already have. I’m old enough to be your father. The corrupt actions I would take with you once my willpower breaks…they are wrong. And immoral.” He closes his eyes as if in prayer. “Dear lord above, I can’t sustain this kind of temptation.”

“Are you talking about sex?” I whisper.

His eyes open, harder than before. Ruthless. “The fact that you have to ask proves you aren’t ready to be here.”

Those words are like an arrow piercing me right in the throat.

How many times did my father tell me I wouldn’t make it two days in the real world? All my life, I’ve been made to feel useless. Even while doing everything to make the household run, the farm productive. I worked my fingers to the bone and still, I was worth nothing. Never recognized or thanked or treated like an equal. I’m not going to let this man make me feel that way. And why does it hurt so much coming from him when we’ve only just met?

I know what will affect him the most.

Pouting my lips and twisting side to side, subtly, I pop open another button, exposing the swells of my cleavage, all the way down to the front clasp of my bra. His shaky breath coasts over the pale globes, his tongue emerging to wet his lips. He looks entranced and my core tugs roughly in response. I’m going to end up in his lap.

And I do.

Just not how I’m expecting.

Without warning, I’m suddenly facedown over the man’s knees and he’s jerking up the back of my dress to my hips, revealing my backside. He makes an animalistic sound, something extremely large and hard prodding me in the side—and he yanks my panties down. All the way to my knees. There’s no time to gasp or struggle or be anything but stunned before his hand comes down hard and spanks me.

I expect pain and outrage and fear.

But all I hear is a choir singing in my head. It’s the one from church, back in our small Nebraska town. Voices lift and swell and harmonize and finally, finally, I get the religious experience I’ve been lacking all this time. The one my parents claimed to have every Sunday. This man’s hand is delivering righteousness to me in sharp slaps of my buttocks while he pants and grunts above me, that hard object growing more prominent against my ribcage.

“Misbehaving little brat,” he says through his teeth, spanking me, breathing new life into my lungs. Baptizing me. Exhilarating me head to toe. “Came in here and pulled the Daddy right out of me, didn’t you? Sent straight from the devil to test me. Weren’t you?”

Those biting words burst my bubble of euphoria.

Evil. This man who draws me so deeply thinks I’ve been sent from hell.

I’m magnetized by him. I belonged to him at first sight and he…

Told me I don’t belong here. Now he is calling me a brat.

With tears in my eyes, I struggle off his lap to my feet, fastening my dress with shaking fingers, sobs rocketing up from my belly and bursting out of my mouth. In a split second, he’s standing in front of me, trying to tilt my face up, his voice ragged. “Sissy. My God, My God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He finally succeeds in tipping up my chin and his expression goes from stricken to miserable. “What have I done?”

I don’t know the answer to that and I can’t stay here another minute stewing in the pain of rejection. The pain of being so wrong about my connection with him. Furthermore, I’m still confusingly excited from being spanked. Why? I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening to me, so I run. I pick up my cheap purse and sprint out the door and down the hallway, throwing myself into the closing elevator while he bellows my name behind me.