Stay for Me

  Evernight Publishing ®

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2015 Carlene Love Flores

  ISBN: 978-1-77233-246-9

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Lisa Petrocelli

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  In honor of the love of my mom’s life, Cliff.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I’d like to thank and acknowledge the talented, hard-working men and women who put together the incredible shows that are Chippendales and Thunder from Down Under of Las Vegas, Nevada. I was truly inspired by their work, both behind the scenes and on stage, and by their commitment to putting smiles on people’s faces.

  A big thank you to my editor, Lisa Petrocelli, for her support and enthusiasm and hugs to everyone at Evernight who continue to be amazing people to work with.

  I hope that you, my cherished readers, enjoy this story most of all!

  STAY FOR ME

  These Three Words, 1

  Carlene Love Flores

  Copyright © 2015

  Chapter One

  “Take it all off!”

  “Yeah, baby!”

  “Ohmigod!”

  Somewhat muted, yet elated, high-pitched screams hung in the space above her head as she walked down the not-so-soundproof, private back hallway of Club Mantasy. Her best friend’s fate lie in her hands. Well, that, and a really heavy laundry basket topped with several cock socks of varying sizes.

  The cheesy name of their club made Emma cringe as she ignored the female patrons’ desperate, horny cries. Although, as assistant show manager, she gave herself a mental pat on the back. They were doing something right, no matter how many complaints she got against the new, no-tipping policy, and yeah, the name. Okay, and the cock socks, too. Geesh.

  Considering possible alternatives for the club’s name—the only thing she was willing to bend on—she passed by the towering door marked with the capital black S, stopped, and considered it for a minute. Her shoulders sank then shot up, stuck on a jerky repeat like a broken record. Hard, heavy plastic from the clothes basket dug into her side the longer she stood there, aware she was breathing too fast and shallow.

  Here at the club, that letter was supposed to stand for good S words—seductive, secret, sanctuary. Depending on the dancer, sweet even.

  But there was nothing safe, and certainly nothing sexy about the words the S conjured up for Emma.

  Sit. Stay. Stupid.

  She could have, and probably should have, been sacked for her indiscretion. But “luck be a lady,” as they said in these parts, that hadn’t happened. The trusted individuals who knew about her lapse in judgment at the hands of one very persuasive ex-S dancer had kept her confidence. For that she was grateful.

  Still, the reasons mounted for why she had no desire to enter the private room a second time.

  Liars, however, were weak, horrible people, and Emma was tired of being one.

  A soothing fit of warmth forced its way out of that dark tunnel she’d fallen into. Stray thoughts of her best friend always did that. Emma amended her “never” statement. Unless the next time it was with Sam, the quiet boy her family had taken in halfway through the eighth grade. To this day, she and Sam still scraped and ate every last possible lick of peanut butter from the jar, and he was doing well. Through thick and thin times, he was still her best friend.

  Right now, he was out on stage playing every woman’s sexual fantasy.

  All grown, all chiseled, six feet and two hundred fifteen pounds of him, combat veteran, and now male revue dancer, he didn’t disappoint.

  We’ll be twenty-four this year, she thought, amazed at all he’d accomplished and okay with what she’d done.

  But the warm and fuzzy proud moment didn’t last as she forced herself to remember the professional action that loomed above.

  New floods of screams burst through the walls to the private side as “More!” became the overwhelming chant of the man-hungry women. There would be no encore—they had to get ready for the second nightly performance—but to make up for the club’s new no-tipping policy, the guys gladly posed for flirty pictures in exchange for cash after each show.

  A select one or two ladies might be asked back here to the S room for some extra special meet ‘n’ greet time with a dancer, but it wasn’t every night and it wasn’t something they advertised. Totally up to the guy to make the invitation. For this, no patron ever paid because that would have teetered on being illegal. To date, Emma couldn’t recall any of her dancers being turned down for the complimentary meet ‘n’ greets. And to that brainchild policy of hers, there’d been zero complaints.

  Forgetting for a minute what she had to do to Sam tonight, like a fool, she crept back to that dark tunnel of indiscretion as she studied the curve of the large, scripted S. If she’d only have turned down Luka. Jerk.

  Parts of her sank just then at her dirty little work secret. Her head pounded at the multitude of emotions and reminders calling for her attention.

  If only things had worked with Sam, there would have been no Luka.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, she told herself, and watched a cocktail waitress severely late for her shift skitter by. The velvety red S on the back of Marie’s short black romper went by in a whir. Emma was pretty sure she knew why Marie was late—he had long hair and nipple rings and was a phenomenal dancer—but she had decided for the time being to keep her mouth shut. Someone had kept her secret. This was merely paying that favor forward for someone else.

  She looked in the direction of the doors that led to the performance room. Emma could feel Sam’s untamed, sensual energy seeping through the club’s walls right now, touching her heart, teasing her soul. His gray-green eyes and short, sandy-blond hair still weakened her defenses, just the same as that day two years ago when he’d returned home from the Army. Apparently, the way she’d kept staring at Sam that night at the airport had made her truth obvious to him, too. Later, after a combined “Welcome home from the Army and college” party at her parents’ house, twenty-two-year-old Sam proved to twenty-two-year-old Emma just how much he’d noticed. Thank God the feeling had been mutual, she thought now.

  Emma hugged the laundry basket too tightly into her ribs and groaned.

  ****

  Unfortunately, his massive body had been too much for her that night. The painful scream caught her by surprise and killed the mood there on her trundle bed. He left feeling horrible and she embarrassed.

  They’d tried.

  It hadn’t worked.

  And that was it, their one time at giving it a shot ended with them agreeing it had been a major mistake.

  Neither of them could have predicted the mocking work situation they’d come to be in within mere weeks. Emma remembered it going something like:

  Sam, “So I just got hired to be a stripper and they need a manager. That’s in your degree field, right? You can ride with me.”

  Emma to herself, Baaaaad idea.

  Emma to Sam, “Cool. Let’s go.”

  There may have been a fist bump involved, sealing the deal.

  They’d jumped on the back of his motorcycle and driven the thirty minutes from Vegas to hole-in-the-wall Boulder City, pretending nothing had happened. All the while, she’d wondered if his insides were as jacked as hers as she h
ugged his back and they shared the heat and vibration of his ride. If so, he hadn’t shown it, instead keeping calm and collected, just like always. As they rode, there’d been a few relieved thoughts where her school loans were concerned, but mostly she silently begged that her feelings for him be whipped away into the wind and the desert’s night sky.

  ****

  Emma blew a lock of hair from her eyes, knowing her feelings hadn’t gone anywhere, and reached inside the laundry basket still gouging her hip. The pieces and parts lay there flat and crumpled, lifeless.

  She looked at the security monitor mounted above. Grainy and small, she could still make him out in the group of four. His body was the widest and most muscled of the troupe, his dance moves still the least polished.

  Look away, you silly girl.

  The satisfaction she knew would come from watching him also tormented her, as if to tease her into remembering how her body had ached and cramped after their one and only attempt at intimacy.

  Heart-wrenching sensations pinched and pulled her apart, making her want to abandon the laundry basket and hold herself together instead. She needed to stave the useless hopes off and will her insides to ignore everything his presence sparked. That blanket of warmth that magically took away headaches, chills, doubts, and left laughs and relief in its place.

  Instead, she stared on at the monitor.

  Like a bull-sized leopard on stage, Sam stood there dressed as a military officer in navy whites. He moved like a man on the prowl, taking precious, sweet time with the seduction. His large hands popped buttons left and right, then slid down his chest, rubbing along the middle of his eight-pack and ending with a clutch of his sought after, huge bulge. Emma watched his chin tilt toward his chest as he gave himself another squeeze, this time full-gripped and with illicit intentions written all over it, before turning around and delighting the crowd with his masculine backside.

  It was calculated, choreographed torture for the women within arm’s reach who watched like fiends.

  But that bittersweet torture could be nothing compared to Emma’s.

  She knew Sam Jason inside and out.

  She knew he wasn’t an expert dancer, rather, he put himself out there, real as they came. Sometimes his routines came off as awkward, sometimes unpolished, but that was his appeal. Ticket sales proved that. She’d never met someone more dedicated to hard work.

  He’s too damn good for his own good.

  Emma managed to glance away.

  You know you’re gonna look again, she chided herself.

  Ellen, the show’s head manager, walked by just then and nodded her way. In her sixties but with a youthful outlook that made her eligible for the forty-something club, Emma usually admired Ellen’s “best for business” attitude. Tonight, that air meant expecting the impossible from Sam.

  “Have you spoken with Sam yet, Emma?” Ellen asked with a raised brow and smart, sleek brown hair pulled back from her face.

  “Not yet,” she said, hoping her crinkled brows made her look serious and not at all the lecherous fraud who’d just imagined replacing her best friend’s hands with her own. “I’ll catch him during the break.”

  “I have no problem being the one to make the request. I know you two are close,” said the woman who had hired them both that same day two years ago.

  But this would come from her, not Ellen, no matter how uncomfortable it would be.

  Good lord, he got me this job and now I’m the one about to take his away. What is wrong with the world?

  Emma shifted her hip and cleared her throat.

  “It’s just business. I’ll be fine. Thank you, though,” she said and was glad Ellen dismissed herself, walking away and leaving Emma there alone.

  No, she didn’t want to be the one to give Sam the absurd choice he’d shoot down without thought. Yes, she had to take that one last glance upward.

  She looked again just in time to see Sam lined up alongside the others as four sets of white, creased pants dropped to their ankles and then down came the star-spangled booty pants to make them appear nude. Four sets of perfect, toned male buns were revealed. Jay and Donovan’s were white with tan lines and Gabe and Sam’s as tanned and natural as the day they’d been born. She could have sworn the monitor rattled from the nearby pandemonium before the stage went completely dark. Taking a stray, worn tank top in her hand, she grabbed the vision she truly wanted but could never again admit to out loud.

  One uniform. One Sam Jason. One Emma Chester.

  The three of them alone in his apartment that overlooked the lights of Boulder City. One more try. Just one more to see if they could make it work.

  If she thought about it any longer, she’d out herself there in the hall.

  If we were meant to be more than friends, we’d have made a perfect fit the first time.

  A bit of delinquent jealousy ripped through her just then as the shouts quieted down to a lull, signaling the ladies would now be lining up to get their keepsake photos, posing in whatever manner they liked. More naughty than nice, most chose to sit on the guys’ laps. Emma tossed a shirt up to cover the monitor so her spying session would be ended, but her aim sucked and it fell back down into her basket.

  The time had come to fall back into the real world and ask him to either fully commit to S and quit his day job doing construction, or be put on probation here at the club. The dark circles under his eyes had to go, according to Ellen. All they did to Emma was endear him to her even more.

  The good? The monitor looming above wouldn’t be a distraction with him gone.

  The bad? Chances were, even if she found the nerve to suggest trying again, no way would he want to go for it with the girl who not only embarrassed him two years ago but was about to put in a repeat performance by placing him on probation. There was no way he’d quit his day job. It was the closest thing he could get to working with kids right now, even if it was just in construction on the high school.

  She needed to rub the skin-crawling feeling away but wouldn’t make a bigger fool of herself in this hallway. Another S word came to mind.

  Sorrow.

  If he said no, which he would, he could be leaving. Her partner in crime would be gone.

  Emma backed up, nearly stepping out of her worn ballet flats. Her toes clenched, keeping them on.

  She closed her eyes and like a dummy went back to another night a few months ago while the club noises and energy fell away. A pair of admittedly great legs wrapped around his waist while he supported a woman on his lap in the single, armless chair located inside the S room, and Emma stood there like an idiot in the doorway.

  “Damn,” she said and shook her head.

  Why couldn’t she stop thinking of everything she and Sam deserved to have been to each other?

  But she knew.

  Sam Jason didn’t cling to things, and he wouldn’t take lightly to being given this ultimatum Ellen had issued. This could very well be his last night at S. Their last night working together. A fierce yet hollow rumble gave her the aches. If he left, she knew in her heart they’d never work through that night. She’d never get to tell him how special it had been to her, regardless of what had happened. She’d never be able to have that closure, would never know. Emma did not want to live with an eternity of “What if?” when it came to Sam.

  The next cringe made her temples pound.

  “Don’t let him bring a patron here tonight,” she muttered. “Not now of all the times.”

  She started to knock, curious if the foreboding room was as empty as the ominous black door implied, but that would have meant spilling the laundry.

  Emma hiked the basket up higher onto her hip, ignoring the gouge marks already left, and turned away from the S, passing it by. She made her way to her office one door down, aka the Emergency Room.

  A pair of booty pants, as she liked to call them, landed smack dab in the middle of her clothes basket just as she was about to balance and open the door.

  Gabe. That
subtle sadness in his expression mixed with the sleepy smile did it, just a little, even to her.

  “Hey, little mama,” he called her, “let me get that.”

  The lean, smooth hand with a snake and apple tattoo slid into view, and the door to her office opened. Gabe smiled that soft, mysterious, sex-God smile of his. She had no idea how he stayed so humble. It would have been rude to stand there like a broken twig, even though her stomach was starting to branch into knots at the thought of confronting Sam. The power of Gabe’s shy smile prevailed.

  One sweeping glance his way showed her Gabe was sweaty and mostly naked which meant he’d just come off stage. There was power in that, too, but she’d learned to ignore it.

  Her eyes saw the sweet Latin hunk and all his tanned, alluring flesh, but he wasn’t Sam.

  “You need help,” he stated quietly, holding onto his barely there costume, just barely.

  Boy, did she.

  “Thanks, hon.”

  He expertly held both the door and the remnants of his black, stretchy, hot shorts and let her pass through. She was careful not to knock into the plywood desk some of the guys had put together for her and moved toward the stackable washer and dryer unit, vowing to someday outfit this place with proper and professional furniture. Although she really did love the desk they’d made her. Maybe just a real chair to go with it. One with roller balls. She set down the laundry and watched as Gabe’s lean and muscled back bled into that pair of perfect male buns. He came over and kissed her cheek, completely masculine, yet unaware of his stud-status.

  “You okay?” he asked. His voice was the gentlest spoken of the troupe, and it calmed her every time.

  “Absolutely,” she lied. “Hey, did you need some help there…with that?” Emma pointed at the man-undies which he was prompted to hold out. She snatched her tin of safety pins from the desk.