Page 4 of Rut Bar

Jamie lifts the hem of his tank top up to wipe the sweat from his brow, and the sight of his perfect washboard abs makes my mouth run dry. Where normal men have a four or six-pack, Jamie’s abdomen is cut into eight boxes that make my tongue want to lick the dips between them. Before I can say something stupid or get caught staring, I turn and flee back to the safety of my office.

I must be getting close to my heat if my hormones are all over the place like this. It couldn’t be coming at a worse time. Right now I can’t afford to take the time off from work.

For a moment I consider going on a heat suppressant, but I really hate the way they make me feel. Bloated and weepy and so damn hungry. And then the delayed heat’s twice as bad as it would have been if I just fucked through it for three days with some random alpha from Heat Buddy.

While I head back to my office, I pull up my heat tracker app and check my log. It’s only been nine weeks since my last one, so it’s too early. It must be the stress bringing it on sooner. Or maybe I need to get laid. How long has it been? My cobweb-covered pussy says it’s been way too damn long. Probably since my last heat, if I’m being honest.

Turning a dive bar into a wildly successful alpha strip club means I meet a lot of handsome men and good-smelling alphas. It’s painfully ironic I can’t touch a single one of them. Either they’re employees or patrons, and since Rut is my life and I spend more time here than at home, all of them are off limits. That makes it hard to date.

I’m so engrossed in my maudlin, horny thoughts that the alpha sitting at Nate’s desk catches me by surprise. I scent him before I see him, his fresh baked bread scent filling the room till it smells like a goddamn bakery. A delicious bakery full of perfectly biteable treats.

My clit throbs and I squeeze my legs together to stifle it, but that only makes it worse when that extra pressure makes me feel empty and in desperate need of filling.

Fuck, he really is a DILF.There’s a steady energy about him. He’s broad and tall, but thick around the middle. A body meant for cuddles and comfort. Gray hair streaks the brown at his temples. Faint crinkles around his eyes show he’s good natured and smiles a lot.

I have to breathe through my mouth to get past the threshold.Does the man not use a nullifier spray? Rude.You can’t go around smelling likethatin public. Like sex on a stick.

He looks up over the edge of his laptop as I hesitate in the doorway, his gaze holding mine until I snap out of it and shove my chair back up to my desk, plopping into it and staring at my computer screen.

What was I doing again?

Oh, yeah. Payroll.

I power through my mental fog and pick up where I left off, checking everyone’s time punches and adjusting them as necessary. Jamie forgets to clock out a lot, but even though he’s often late, he always stays till closing even when it’s a slower night and some of the other dancers head home early. I check my calendar to compare his scheduled days against his time punches to make sure he’s not missing any shifts.

Sometime later, a knock at the door drags me out of my spreadsheet hellscape and I spy Anthony standing there in the doorway. He studies the auditor, who spares him a glance and that awkward fake smile strangers give one another. Then the agent goes back to work.

“Thought you’d be hungry. Did you eat?” Anthony asks me.

“I’m starving. Thanks.” My stomach growls on cue.

Anthony crosses over to my desk and finds a flat enough stack of paperwork to set down the brown bag. I dig out the to-go box and pop the lid open and look at its contents. It’s a grilled chicken caesar salad, the hearty kind that’s more toppings than lettuce and it’s from my favorite Italian restaurant down the street. The chicken is steaming, the flakes of parmesan are enormous and it’s been liberally coated in enough fresh cracked black pepper that I almost have to sneeze. It’s perfect.

“You went over to Tony’s?” I ask him. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”

He leans his hip against my desk. “Someone has to take care of you since you’re too busy taking care of everyone else to do it yourself. Make sure you eat a vegetable every once in a while.”

My brow knits together. “I eat vegetables.”

“Potatoes are a starch,” he says. I open my mouth to speak, but he cuts me off. “Mushrooms don’t count either. They’re a fungus.”

I shove my plastic fork through its plastic wrapper forcefully and stab it into my salad, taking a humongous bite of lettuce and chewing aggressively. The mouthful is too big for my jaw, but I’m too stubborn to back down. It’s also delicious. Their kitchen’s gotta make their own dressing or something.

We serve food at Rut, but it’s typical bar food. Loaded fries and fried pickles, lots of things that come out of enormous bags from the freezer and go right into our automatic industrial fryer. After all, people aren’t coming to Rut for the food.

The pepper in the caesar dressing makes my mouth burn a little. “Happy?” I ask once I’ve swallowed and licked my lips clean of dressing.

“If you are, then yeah.” He smiles instead of smirking.

My stomach flutters. When he stops being an asshole long enough to say something sweet like that, it’s worse than the flirting.

He grabs the empty cups and plates, stacking everything in his hands in a way only people who’ve spent years in restaurant service seem to do. “There’s bread too.”

Ooh, bread.I look in the paper bag and pull out a piece of bread wrapped in foil and unwrap it. The smell of fresh baked bread covered in herb butter and garlic makes me salivate. I take a huge bite and chew, then sigh. “Thank you. What do I owe you?”

“Don’t worry about it.” He’s already halfway out of the room. “Seeing you pleased is all the payment I need.”

I frown at his back. “No, really. How much was it?”

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