Praise (Salacious Players’ Club)

Charlie

The anxious and horny mood I woke up in this morning stays with me all day, and not even some detachable showerhead time could suppress the way that dream made me feel. At work, the whole thing plays over and over in my mind, making me spacey and a little irritable.

I’m stocking a box of new skates when a deep and oddly familiar voice from the other side of the counter makes me pause, and I’m actually wondering if my sleep-deprived brain just conjured the sound.

“Eleven and a half, please.”

I lean back and peer at the customer that made the request and almost scream when I recognize the tall, dark-haired man standing on the brightly-colored carpet, his hand resting on the tall lacquered counter. Trying to duck back around the wall, I silently pray he didn’t see me. What is he even doing here?

“Hello, Charlotte,” he says, and my eyes widen.

Nervously, I shove the skates onto the shelf, not even checking to see if I put them in the right place, and gather up my shredding confidence to greet him.

“Hi,” I stammer, before glancing around to see if anyone is within earshot. It’s Wednesday, and we just opened fifteen minutes ago. With the exception of some homeschooled kids and a few regulars, there won’t be any actual customers here until tonight.

“Please call me Charlie.”

“I was joking about the skates,” he adds with a hint of a smile on his face. “I won’t be skating.”

A forced, awkward laugh bubbles up from my chest as I approach the counter. There goes any hope of trying to act natural.

Seeing his face stirs up memories of my dream and how I was clawing for his dick like a sex-crazed nympho. I cover my cheeks, hoping to hide my blush.

“How did you find me?” I ask.

He holds up his phone, showing me a photo of me in a group of skaters, dancing on the floor in a colorful outfit during our Neon Nights event. “Instagram.”

“Oh.” Could this be any more mortifying?

He must be here because he realized his mistake writing that check he gave me yesterday and he’s here to collect. I’ve already cashed it and made an extra payment on my school loan, so this is about to be an awkward conversation.

“Listen…” I say carefully.

“Do you have a moment to talk?” he asks, cutting me off.

“Of course,” I stammer.

Turning around, I look for Shelley, the owner of the rink and an old friend of my mom’s, but she must be in her office or out back having a cigarette. Instead of going on break, I gesture toward one of the old plastic booths against the wall. He nods and takes a seat, and it’s hard not to laugh at the sight.

Beau’s dad is huge, bigger than I noticed yesterday. He must be six-three with wide shoulders and a broad body. Like a…muscly dad bod. If that’s even a thing.

He also looks ridiculous in the booth because he must be a bajillionaire who hasn’t stepped foot in a roller rink or sat in a booth in his entire life. I’m sure if he takes women on dates, it’s on a yacht or to Montenegro, not to a cheap roller rink to eat pizza and drink beer. That’s far more my reality, which is fine. I mean…dates to Montenegro wouldn’t be terrible, but it’s just a sliver out of my league.

“What can I do for you?” I ask as I take the seat opposite him.

He opens his mouth and then shuts it, and it dawns on me that he’s about to bring up something that could be mildly uncomfortable, and I’m already dreading that it’s going to be about what happened yesterday. Especially after looking through everything on his website.

I quickly save him the discomfort. “If this is about yesterday, it’s okay. You don’t have to say anything. It’s fine.”

“It’s not about yesterday,” he replies. “At least, not really.”

“About Beau then?”

His attention piques and it feels like our conversation takes a hard left the moment his son is brought up. “Have you spoken to him?”

My shoulders fall and I tighten my lips. “Mr. Grant, I told you. We broke up. I’m not going to talk to Beau anymore…”

It feels like a harsh line to deliver, but I think he needs to understand that Beau is out of my life for good. I can no longer be a lifeline to his son.

Something in him deflates, and his brow furrows as he leans back in his seat. Then he just comes out with it, like ripping off a Band-Aid. “Ms. Underwood, I’d like to offer you a job.”

For a split second, I get excited. A job? A real paying, adult job. Something I would actually want to put on a résumé. No more corn dogs or antibacterial shoe spray.

Then I remember what I found last night—what he thought I was there to do, and heat floods my cheeks. “Oh…”

He clears his throat. “It’s a secretary job, Ms. Underwood. A regular secretary job.”

“Oh,” I repeat, this time with less hesitation. I keep my eyes completely averted from his gaze. “So…”

“Do you have a question?” he asks after a long awkward moment.

“There won’t be any…kneeling in this job?”

A hint of a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “No kneeling. Mostly paperwork.”

I clear my throat, still keeping my eyes on the walls, the rink, the skaters…literally anywhere but at the handsome and intimidating man on the other side of this table.

He crosses his arms, furrowing his brow. “Is there something else you want to ask me, Charlotte?”

The way he says my name sends tingles up my spine. It’s the only reason I don’t correct him. No one calls me Charlotte. It’s Charlie and has always been Charlie since I was about eight years old.

It’s the only reason I finally draw my eyes toward him, letting our gazes meet. He’s so handsome, it’s almost hard to look at him, but he doesn’t shy away from the contact. In fact, he almost seems to stare at me longer than is generally accepted.

“Did you think I was a…prostitute?” I ask, hovering over the table and whispering the last word, as if anyone could hear anything while “Groove is in the Heart” blares over a strobe lit rink.

He leans forward to match my position, his watch clanging against the linoleum table. “No. I didn’t think you were a prostitute.”

We simply stare at each other for a moment, both of us hunching over the booth and our faces so close, it probably looks like we’re either sharing dirty secrets or about to kiss.

“Are you going to expand on that or make me use my imagination?” I ask when he doesn’t give me any more information.

There’s a hint of mischief in his eyes as he licks his lower lip and leans away from me. “I think I want you to use your imagination. What exactly are you imagining?” That sounded flirtatious, but I don’t call him out on it. Instead, I answer his question.

Except, I have no clue what I’m imagining, and I’m not sure how dirty I feel comfortable getting. This feels way too intimate. To counteract the sudden tension between us, I force myself to sound as casual as possible. I could tell him that I’ve already researched everything about his company, but I sort of want to make him explain it to me as if I know nothing.

“Well…do you have a lot of random women just show up in your office ready for you to bark orders at them and get on their knees for you?”

“Sometimes,” he replies confidently, as if that wasn’t the craziest thing he’s ever confessed to. Seriously, who is this guy?

My mouth goes dry.

“And you pay them…”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but that sounds a lot like prostitution.”

“Prostitution involves sex, Ms. Underwood. I don’t have sex with women for money.”

My eyes widen. He said sex—twice—and it stirs up a mixture of arousal and unease in my belly. I clench my thighs together.

“Well, then what exactly do you do with them?” I ask.

“That sounds like a personal question.” He’s toying with me again. “I told you to use your imagination, so go ahead then. If I’m not having sex with them, what do you think I hire them to do?”

I have no earthly idea. I didn’t really get that far into the website. So I gnaw on my bottom lip as I run through what I know so far.

“You can’t possibly just pay women to kneel in your office for you.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s ridiculous. What’s the point?”

“The point is I like it, and they are willing to do it.”

I’m speechless. This can’t be real. The confusion on my face morphs into a smile that pulls on my cheeks. This should really be humiliating for him, but he’s not embarrassed at all. And it really has me wondering something very wicked. “So…”

But I stop myself. I can’t finish the sentence. It’s too close to flirting, too…intimate.

Fuck it.

“So?” he echoes, impatiently waiting for me to finish.

“So, how did I do?” I desperately want to bury my face in my hands or hide under the table or even pull the fire alarm, but if he’s going to be so flippant and nonchalant about this, then so will I. Because I’m actually dying to know now. If he lives this secretive kinky life, then I want a peek behind the curtain. It’s enticing, the idea of just dipping my toe into whatever forbidden, yet exciting, life he leads.

So, instead of hiding, I force my body not to betray me, and I keep my spine straight and expression relaxed. As if I just asked him what the soup of the day is and not how well I performed as a kinky secretary slave.

After a moment of prolonged silence and a deep exhale, he says, “You did exceptional, Charlotte.”

Wait, what?

“You seemed pretty exasperated with me,” I reply. “I didn’t do anything right.”

“Well, in your defense, you didn’t even know what you were doing.”

A laugh bubbles out of my chest. “So how was that exceptional?”

He’s pensive again, clearly at war with himself inside his head as he weighs his options, probably thinking that as the adultier adult here, he should really put an end to this inappropriate discussion. “I really shouldn’t say…”

“Oh, come on. You started it.” It takes some effort, but I manage to keep my casual tone and lazy approach.

And suddenly, there is no hesitation. The words just travel effortlessly across the table straight from his lips to my ears. “Ms. Underwood, you looked exquisite on your knees.”

Even if I had a voice at this moment, I wouldn’t know what to say. Instead, I’m rendered completely and utterly speechless, sitting across from him like a fish with my jaw hanging open, wondering how I went from a fight with Beau on his front lawn a couple days ago to this—his father telling me that I look good on my knees.

No, not just good. Exquisite. That word has lost all meaning to me now. Not a day will go by in my long life when I will hear those three syllables and not think of a man twenty years my senior, using that exact designation when referring to how well I kneeled for him.

It’s ludicrous. Ridiculous. Narcissistic and sexist and demeaning and sensuous and flattering and…so many more words I can’t seem to find at the moment.

And somehow the only words I manage to utter in response are, “I did?”

“Yes,” he replies, and it sounds hungry, like a lion growling before the kill.

Sitting here in my dumbfounded silence, I implore my brain to manifest a coherent thought outside…oh that felt nice. Finally, it settles on a question.

“And this kneeling job…is something your company hires girls for?”

“Yes, we do.”

“And you thought I was one of those girls.”

“Correct.”

“Is that the job you’re offering me now?”

“That would be highly inappropriate, considering your relationship with my son.”

“Past relationship,” I add because all of this sounds insane, it really does, but I’m not so sure I want him to exclude me from it all just yet. My curiosity has gotten the better of me.

“Still.”

“You’re not hiring me as one of your kneeling girls because of Beau…”

“No, Charlotte. I’m not hiring you as one of my kneeling girls because I need a secretary, and you seem like you need the money.”

“That felt like an insult,” I reply, and he laughs again.

“So you don’t need the money?”

“Very funny. You know I do. But why would you hire me to be your secretary? You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you lived with my son, now you don’t. He won’t talk to me, so let me help you instead. The job isn’t much. Help out around my office, bring me coffee and lunch. That sort of thing.” He glances around the rink. “And I’m assuming the pay will be better. With benefits.”

There’s really not much to think about, is there? He’s offering me a real job with undoubtedly better pay. And I’m not going to lie, this company intrigues me. It sounds a lot more exciting than being a secretary for a banker or realtor.

“You can take some time to think about it,” he adds.

My head tilts and my lips press into a thin line as if to say, don’t be ridiculous. If he thinks I really need to think about it, he’s crazy or just being condescending. As he moves to stand, I think of an important question that’s just a little uncomfortable to ask, but I have to.

“Wait,” I say, grabbing his arm. “Random question, but is your company Sal…vatious…club whatever—”

“Salacious Players’ Club.”

“Yeah,” I nod, swallowing down my nerves. “Is it inclusive?”

He settles back into his seat. “Inclusive?”

“Yeah, LGBTQ-friendly?”

His brow furrows and a sly smile lifts one side of his mouth. “Very. Why do you ask?”

“It’s important to me,” I reply, shutting down the conversation there. I’m sure he’s now wondering if I’m secretly a member of the community, and if so, how, but I don’t expand. He doesn’t need to know that I’m the world’s most fiercest ally because I have the world’s cutest little cub to protect.

“Then in that case,” I add as I stand up and put out my hand…which I realize now is awkward and pretty much uncalled for. That crooked smile stays on his face as he eyes my outstretched arm and follows suit, standing up and taking my hand in his. His bear claw dwarfs my little hand as he shakes it. But it’s warm, and his grip is firm enough to send butterflies down my spine.

“I assume this means you’ll take the job,” he replies.

As we stand here, shaking hands in a roller rink, I wonder who has signed up for the weirder position here. Does Emerson Grant know what he has committed to with me? Surely by now he’s picked up on the fact that I’m not some girly-girl chick, soft-spoken and appropriate, and I’m not going to behave like a regular secretary, Mad Men style.

But at the same time, I’m signing up to work at a company that deals in freaky kinks and shit. I’m pretty sure neither of us are cut out for normal.