Page 18 of Devoured
CHAPTER 5
Iris
Towards the end of the night, the servers and club members who had paired up, made their way towards the Terrariums, the section of the building for the private rooms. The rest of us made our way towards the exit, or the Greenhouse. It wasn’t often that I went straight to the Greenhouse, but since Roland was missing, and all of my regulars had gone home, I was in the kitchen, looking through the shelves for a snack. My knees hurt, red and bruised, and my stomach growled. I had moved most of my stuff over to my new apartment, but I was in search of actual sustenance. Apparently, a cupcake at four p.m. was not a great dinner to hold you through an entire night shift.
“How long were you kneeling like that?” one of the servers asked.
“Sweetie Pie was appalled,” another said. “Kept saying how you didn’t deserve that kind of treatment. Not his Iris. Not his Goddess.”
Sweetie Pie was one of my regular submissives at the club and the CEO of a company. He was in a position where his company thrived, but he still had to endure long, stressful hours. Submitting to me in the Terrariums was a release. I was the only one who could call him Sweetie Pie to his face. To the rest of the servers, he was Mr. Green.
There was nothing in the refrigerator.
“I think he was kind of turned on by it, honestly,” another server said. “Did you see the way he was staring?”
“I mean, we were all staring. No one even paid attention to the stage all night.”
“I was supposed to be dancing, but even I was gawking from the wings the entire time!”
“So the new owner made you do that?”
“But he seemed nice.”
“Yes, yes,yes,” I groaned. The servers went silent, staring at me. Normally, I didn’t care when everyone turned to stare at me, because I was used to being the server they looked to for guidance. But this?Thiswas different. They were judging me for my decision to obey him. “I know,” I said. “It was weird that I was bottoming. I get it. But trust me, I had a good reason. Can we move on now?”
I turned to the pantry. I still had a shelf labeled there, but I poked through the other servers’ shelves. An instant box of noodles. A cereal bar. A chocolate bar on Kendall’s shelf. Which would be delicious, and sweet revenge, but it wasn’t what I needed right then.
“So a good reason, like he was paying you big bucks?”
I huffed. It was none of their business, really.
“I would kneel all night if it meant not sucking needle dicks in the Terrariums.”
There once was a time when we kept those activities private, denouncing the sex workers who actuallydidthat stuff on the streets or in hotel rooms. But a while ago, Dahlia had told us that we had to ‘work harder’ to pay our debts, so a lot of the servers stopped caring about saving face. I used to be one of those servers, pretending like I never broke the rules, when really, I used those rules to my advantage. You want me to knee you in the balls? That’s a ten percent upcharge. Insert a catheter and screw you with it? Twenty-five percent. Gloves mandatory.
But Dahlia telling us to have sex for money, plain and simple? That was the first time I had realized that the Dahlia District wasn’t doing well anymore.
“She’s going to suck his big dick the next time he’s here anyway,” Kendall muttered. “Cock-sucking bitch.”
I faced her. Kendall was bigger and stronger than me; that’s the way it had always been. But I was stronger now than in my teens. And yet, I also knew better. Messing with her, whether it was fighting her, or telling her boyfriend the truth about where she was on weeknights, wasn’t going to change our situation.
She was an asset to the club. I had to remember that.
“And you wouldn’t suck his dick?” I tilted my head. “I saw you talking to him. I’ll put in a good word for you.”
“Shut the hell up.”
I asked one of the servers if I could have her granola bar, and after she said yes, I said goodnight to the servers and went to my apartment. It was cold. Most of my stuff from years of living in the Greenhouse was piled up on the floor in the living room. One messy pile of crap. It was jarring, suffocating too, like the room was getting bigger and my stuff was shrinking, me along with it, because this was too much. All of it was too much. My chin started bobbing, a stupid, nervous habit that started when I was a kid. I stared at the granola bar in my hand, trying so hard to make the nodding stop, to lower my heart rate, to breathe.
But Price had the ability to walk in here any minute. He had disappeared earlier, but he had access to the surveillance footage room, and therefore, to all of my apartment. All it would take was one more ridiculous command, and I would lose my mind.
Nope. To hell with that.
I switched into black sweatpants and a black shirt, throwing a hoodie on top, then put on some sneakers. I didn’t know where I was going, but I had to get out of there. The cool breeze tickled my bare neck. I zipped up the hoodie, though that didn’t help much, and crossed my arms over my chest. My footsteps echoed through the parking lot, and right as I reached the car, I heard another pair of feet behind me. No, two pairs. I whipped around.
“Can I help—”
A hood slammed over my face. I balled my fist and aimed for the men—I think they were men. Two of them?—and hit one on the mouth.
