His eyes came back up and her old Dom was right there, all dominance and willpower, and complete unwillingness to have his orders ignored. And then he was gone, his mouth turning down and his eyes finding the papers in front of him again. “You went back to work…seventeen months ago.” He took a long breath, and she knew what he wanted to ask.
The last time he’d seen her, she’d been getting into Keith’s car. She was supposed to go back to Keith’s mansion and continue her life as a rich man’s pretty slave. He’d thought she just wanted to be taken care of. She was sure he’d even patted himself on his Armani-clad back for being so kind as to find her a new keeper when he’d gotten bored with her.
She’d had Keith drop her at the bus station.
“It took me a few weeks to find a job, but I worked at The Steak House in Bend River for six months before moving back here. My references from there are excellent. I put the restaurant manager down as a contact. While I was there, I implemented a new POS system and managed to modernize the bar and the way bartenders communicated with servers.”
She sounded like a robot. This was her spiel, the one she gave all potential employers. Look at me. I’m so great. You want to hire me, not those other people.
It was different when the potential employer in front of her was a man who had been inside her, who had taken her every way it was possible to have taken a woman.
Why did this damn job have to pay so well? She continued to talk about her past jobs, the words so rote by now that she’d memorized them. But all the while she was drinking him in. Now that she really looked at him, she could see all the ways he’d changed. He was wearing a T-shirt. He never wore anything but designer suits before. And his leathers. His face was harder, as though he’d lived rough the last year and a half. His hair, before so perfectly cut, was almost curling over his ears. She’d always known that hair would look like black silk if he hadn’t kept it so ruthlessly under control.
She finished her spiel and a heavy silence dropped over the room. The air suddenly felt thick and coated with the burden of their past.
“Do you honestly think you can work for me?” Ryan’s question was asked without a hint of inflection, as though he couldn’t care less about the answer, merely was required to ask.
He was going to turn her down. And why shouldn’t he? The whole time they had been together she hadn’t shown him a single instant where she’d been really competent and in control. “I think you should talk to my former employers.”
“Your work history is a whole seventeen months, Jillian. I need an experienced bar manager. You’ve only managed in small towns. This is Dallas. These are very wealthy people.”
You can’t do it. Yeah, she got the message. And it had been dumb to think he would hire her. She should have walked right back out the door, but the idea of having health care in a couple of months and working shorter hours for more pay had made her a little crazy.
She’d also been attracted to the Sanctum job because she loved this lifestyle, and she’d been ready to put a toe back in. The fact that the reason she’d jumped out of the BDSM pool was sitting in front of her should tell her to stay out all together. Forever and ever. She stood up. “You won’t find a better manager than me. I would bet your waitstaff is almost entirely female and all submissive. If you hire someone who doesn’t understand the lifestyle, they won’t accept him. If you hire someone who does, he’ll likely be a Dom and he won’t really understand them.”
“So a Dom doesn’t understand a sub?”
She shrugged. “He can if he cares, otherwise, he’ll just use her and toss her aside. I can make those subs feel happy and supported. I can make the team cohesive, and I can run that bar like no one else. But you’re going to do what you want, and we both know that you’re not going to want me. Thank you for your time, Sir.”
She turned and started to walk out. Yeah, that “Sir” had been a little bitter. She’d kind of hoped she was over this. She’d stopped thinking about him every minute of the day, stopped dreaming about him every night.
Just as she got her fingers on the doorknob, she felt a hand on her arm and she was turned into Ryan’s big body. Wow. He’d been working out. A lot. His chest looked different in the T-shirt than when it had been hidden behind designer shirts and suit coats.
“Why do you want to work here? Did you find out I was here? Did you come back here for me?”
Yeah, he would think that. God, she’d been pathetic, giving him everything she had and never asking for anything. She’d been so stupid in love with him that she’d nearly given up her identity. “I had no idea you were here. Do you want to know why I’m looking for another job, Ryan? Because I’m working at a strip club right now. It’s the only job I could find when I got here, and I needed the money. The ‘gentleman’s club’ I work at is shockingly light on gentlemen.”
“What?” The question came from between clenched teeth. “Strip club?”
Wow. He still got that tic over his left eye. When he got really upset, a vein over his left eye started to spasm, and she knew she had to soothe him. Her hand moved as though she had a muscle memory of how to fix the problem. She used to run her hands over his face and kiss him from his forehead to his chin, and slowly he would calm down.
“Jillian.” He breathed her name. He was so close. So close. Her whole body responded to him, her nipples hardening and her pussy beginning to soften, ready to welcome him home.
She remembered how he’d looked at her and calmly explained that she would go with his friend. He’d uncollared her and handed her over to another man.
Tears in her eyes, she stepped back. “I need to get to work. Good-bye, Ryan. Best of luck with the rest of the interviews.”
She managed to get the door open this time.
“You’re hired.”
She didn’t turn around, couldn’t look at him again. Damn it. She should walk. This was a bad idea. She couldn’t work for him. Fuck all, she was still half in love with the man and she knew she hated him too. Walk out. Show him you don’t need him.
Except she did. All of her sister’s medical bills were piling up, forming a little tower on her bar that she might never be able to climb. Ashley wasn’t ready to move out on her own. She had to take care of her baby, and they were both counting on Jill to feed them all. Damn. Damn. Damn. “When do I start?”