The F King: A Bad Boy Romance(2)

I turned back to the bartender and caught his eye. “Can I get these brought to our table?”

“What’s the table number?”

“Huh?”

“What’s the table number?”

“Oh… I’m not sure… uh…” I turned away again for a second. “It’s that booth over there, third from the right?”

“OK. Fifteen. Seventy-two bucks, thanks.”

I handed over my card and slipped a note in the tip jar. After retrieving my card, I was just about to take the long way around to table fifteen when I had an idea. I turned back to the bar, leaning on it and accidentally-on-purpose folding my arms under my breasts to push them together, trying to get the bartender’s attention again.

He was just about to serve somebody else when gravity momentarily dragged his eyes down before he wrestled them up again.

“Something else?” he asked.

“Hey, are there any jobs going here?”

He stepped back, tore a sheet off a pad sitting on top of a display fridge, and handed it to me. “You’ll have to fill out an application and attach your résumé, but there’s a long waiting list.”

“OK, thanks.”

I gave myself a mental pat on the back. If I could get a job here, that would give me a great excuse to be here, whether I could find a group of cover-friends or not.

Taking the long way back to our table let me glance into a few more places I hadn’t checked yet, but I didn’t spot Ryan. I arrived at the booth at the same time as the fruity drinks, and the cheer that went up was almost as loud as the music.

We raised our glasses and clinked them together before taking our first taste. Millie gulped hers like it was water.

“Hooo-boy,” I breathed, surprised at how strong it was.

Sally let out a textbook-Texas “Yeehaw!” and yelled “Dance, bitches!”

Hands were grabbed and I was led to the dancefloor in a chaotic jumble of short skirts and low cut tops. Not that I was dressed any differently, of course. I was here to catch somebody’s eye, after all.

One round of drinks blurred into others as the six of us danced the night away and I did my best to balance my party-girl persona with keeping focused on my responsibilities. The music and the drinks were intoxicating in more ways than one. It felt good to loosen up for once, even if it was all a lie.

Frustratingly often, guys would try to dance against me and I had to move around the group, using the other girls as willing human shields. Good time or not, I had a job to do.

Despite the stated “chicks-before-dicks” intentions of the night, after a few hours Millie and Janice had each latched on to some college guys. I was beginning to silently scold myself for just how far I had allowed myself to jump the gun earlier, thinking about the stepping stone this was for my career before I’d even been in the same room as Ryan. It wasn’t going to be that easy.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the face I’d studied until I saw it in my dreams. I wasn’t the only one who noticed him, either.

As he skirted the dancefloor, girls did double-takes, then tried to look nonchalant as their dance styles went from hip-hop to stripper. Men came out of the woodwork to shake his hand, as if paying some kind of tribute. He glided through the club with some friends in his own little bubble, and drew my eye even more than he should have.

Tall, dark and classically handsome, in my objective and purely professional opinion, he filled his suit in all the right ways and moved with an air of ultimate self-assurance. A hostess cleared away a “Reserved” sign from a table in a booth and Ryan’s group settled in.

My heart was pounding so hard that it was that hectic rhythm rather than the music that snapped me out of my reverie and made me aware that I had basically stopped dancing. I hastily found my groove again and tried to dial back the speed on my whirling mind.

All the training, all the waiting, it was all going to be put to the test tonight after all. Ryan Crewe was here… and I had to get his attention.





Ryan





It wasn’t easy to keep a straight face the first time I heard a rumor about myself, told to me in excited whispers. They called me The F King, a mad scientist type making this “good shit” for the Mafia, or one of the street gangs, they didn’t know which.

Apparently, the criminal underworld hired him to kill people with untraceable poisons, and nobody dared fuck with him. I smiled and nodded, and told them it was all true, I had a source of F, a guy who knew a guy and so on, and he told me the exact same things.

Then I sold them some F, took their money, and partied my brains out. I wasn’t quite as paranoid about keeping a low profile now as I was in my college days. Back then, I officially studied Engineering, but really used a friend’s ID to get access to the Chemistry labs and materials.