Page 44 of Mace

My resolve wavers slightly at the sight of him. The man exudes hotness that I had no idea existed outside of movies and books.

Can I really do this?

His gaze lifts as I walk towards him, and the look in his eyes as I approach is almost… predatory. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but he watches every step I take until I’m a bundle of nerves.

“Hey, Mace.”

“Hey, darlin’.”

Oh, that makes my stomach flutter in a way it has no right to. He’s just being nice. He doesn’t really mean the endearment, but my stupid heart doesn’t get that memo. “Have you assigned a manager yet?”

His expression is quizzical. “Why?”

“I need to talk to whoever’s in charge of… I guess… HR.”

He snorts. “Babe, does this seem like the kind of place that has a fuckin’ HR department?”

Good point.I wince. “Okay, so I need to speak with whoever is in charge of assigning jobs.”

“You can talk to me.”

Not on the main floor, I can’t. Bella’s already watching us closely. “Can we talk in private?”

He slips off the stool and gestures for me to follow him. I don’t look at Bella as I head after him. Mace takes me to what used to be Sam’s office, and I shut the door behind us as he moves to the desk and leans against the front of it.

Now that we’re alone, my doubts are raging frantically through me. If Sam was still manager here, there wouldn’t be a problem. He would have me on stage in five seconds flat. But Mace might not be so keen on a change of pace.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

He looks so handsome. His dark hair is pushed back, as if he’s been running his fingers through it repeatedly, and he’s got a five o’clock shadow spreading over his jaw. As usual, he’s wearing his leather vest that marks him as a member of the Untamed Sons, and tonight, he has a light blue shirt beneath it that stretches over his bulky frame.

My mouth opens and then closes.

“Maylie?” His eyes soften in a way I don’t expect from a man like him, and my stomach dips as my skin feels heated.

The problem is, the way he’s looking at me means all my courage flees.

For some reason, his opinion of me matters, though I doubt he will care if I want to show my breasts to strangers—after all, his club owns this place—but I’m embarrassed to even bring this up.

“Oh, never mind. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

He comes to stand in front of me, and my mouth is suddenly dry. Mace is so tall, he looms over my smaller frame, the top of my head barely reaching under his chin. I should be terrified of him, and yet that is not what I feel pulsing between my legs.

“What do you need?” he asks.

I have to do this. Whether it’s embarrassing or not, I have no choice. If I don’t pay my rent, Bernie is going to demand a price I’m not willing to pay.

So, I force myself to ask for what I need. “Before Sam was… um…fired, he offered me a position on stage. I want to take up that offer.”

Fired is a nice word for what happened, but I don’t want to piss Mace off when I’m asking for a favour. The way his expression changes tells me I might have already done that.

Way to go, Maylie.

I watch fascinated as his jaw ticks and his eyes darken. “You wanna be on stage?”

“This is a strip club, Mace, and the girls make better money than the bar staff.”

There isn’t even a beat of time before he says, “No.”

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