This gorgeous blonde is working my cock like a pro; better than a pro. The lights are off and the restaurant is closed, and she’s servicing me in ways that would put porn stars to shame.

I’ve never seen someone so in love with a cock. Her lips, so full and fuckable and glistening wet, slide up and down the surface while she maintains full eye contact with me the whole time, promising me with her gaze a thousand lifetimes of endless lustful love. Her body clings to mine, as if the tantalizing inches of her gorgeous curves can’t stand to be away from my flesh.

She used to be my co-worker. But now she’s my sex slave.

How the fuck did this happen?

* * *

I’m tired, hungry, emotionally fried, and due for about four hours of binge-eating ice cream and napping before falling into a deep coma-like sleep for nearly seventy hours. My legs feel like rubber bands holding up the dumbbells of my feet. I can’t even tell you how many times tonight some customer at a table has asked if I was okay—I know the circles under my eyes tell a story of sleepless nights, and the fraying beard I haven’t been able to shave doesn’t help matters.

The name of the restaurant is Bellissima’s. It’s about two hours past the end of my normal shift, but once again I’ve let the manipulative, painfully hot female members of my staff rope me into working more hours than I should or want. I’m closing for the fifth time this week.

I don’t know that I have a choice; the owner Rose is going to sell this place, and if I can’t keep it running and profitable then she’s going to turn it over to someone who isn’t me. I’ve been saving to buy up my own restaurant for years now—I’ve sacrificed everything for it. A relationship, an education, friends—it all fell to one side in my single-minded quest to own this place by buying it out from Rose.

I’ve been working since before noon, and it’s ten o’clock now. Closing time. There’s just old man Balboa at his normal window spot—I have tried so many times to get him a new seat so I can put someone young and healthy-looking there to draw in customers, to no avail—and the woman in the corner who has been waiting for over an hour for someone to serve her.

We keep a small kitchen staff, a small waiting staff. The restaurant itself is small and stylish, with narrow lanes between tables. The kind of place where people are supposed to overhear each other and join in on conversations. Chandeliers hang over most every table emitting dim light; high-backed chairs that are a pain in the ass to put up so we can sweep at night wait, patiently, for me to put them up at every table.

We’ve got an expensive menu, catered for dating young adults and adults who want to feel younger, and was built on what used to be a cafe. There’s street traffic, and when business was booming, we had a long reservation list. Not anymore.

Most of our business now comes from young men who want to ogle at our waitresses—and I don’t blame them, they’re all stunning, like a fleet of Nordic-blooded Valkyries (they fight eternally against lifting a finger to do their jobs)—but who haven’t learned yet that none of them will put out.

I don’t know, maybe they don’t mind the girls won’t sleep with them. Some people just like giving their money away to pretty things.

I approach Leena, our hostess and sometimes-waitress, and maybe the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in person. She’s idling through selfies on her phone, admiring her face from different angles. There’s a lot to admire. She’s wearing a tight tartan mini-skirt that’s far too daring for a waitress or hostess job and a pale pink blouse that looks like it might pop open from any moment due to the pressing, insistent gravity of her heavy breasts.

Her marble-white skin is stunningly clear of any blemishes; she has several thousand insta followers from posting her skin-care routine. Of course I know this because I’m one of them; I don’t use an account with my real name, but I doubt I’d be fooling her if I said I hadn’t seen her in dozens of revealing, cock-hardening bikini shots.

“What’s the story with the woman in the back?” I ask.

She doesn’t look up from her phone. “What woman?”

“That one,” I point. “Which one do you think?”

She still doesn’t look, turning on her camera now to tilt her chin erotically and suggestively. Christ, she’s a bombshell.

“She’s waiting for you to wait on her, I guess?”

“Right. I’ve been doing all the other tables. You couldn’t help?”

Leena looks at me like I’m crazy. “I’ve been hostessing, Robert.”

She gave me a look—perfect eyebrows arching—that said, What else do you think I’m going to do?

The girl wasn’t lazy; she just knew she had me in a corner and got mad tips for just standing pretty at the front no matter what she did. Honestly, if it wasn’t so fucking frustrating to work alongside, I’d respect the hustle.

For one reason or another, most of the girls here are hustling me. Nora, with legs longer than most Russian novels, turns on her smile and her bright blue eyes whenever she needs a day off.

Alma, with an ass that I can hardly comprehend it’s so bountifully and bouncifully perfect, pretends to flirt with me when she wants extra hours for more tables and tips.

Helga, who barely speaks English, with the tightest midsection I’ve ever seen (and she’s always wearing tiny midriff-baring tops to show it off), constantly flashes her cleavage to help me “ignore” her extended bathroom breaks.

They’re all blondes, all gorgeous, and they all use me like a battery. Ready to fish out of a drawer and recharge whatever they need at any given moment while they’re here.

Of course, the worst one is Rose Ramsey, my boss, who has led me on the merry chase to owning this place for years now.

Earlier today, in her office in the back—which should be my office as she’s practically never here anyway—she gave me the low-down on the sale of the restaurant to me.

“Look, we’re very close,” she had said. “I just need to have this quarter’s numbers, coming at the end of the month. Then I should be able to sell in good conscience.”

Good conscience has nothing to do with it. She wants to be able to maximize her profit from the sale, that’s all, which she’ll be able to do if the quarter’s numbers are up from the last. Ever notice how people with money dress up all their decisions that make them more money in clothes of morality?

Rose is blond, too, and smoking hot. She inherited this place from her rich-ass family, and has shown about as much interest in it as she has a yacht on the other coast or a collection of modern art stuck in a bunker somewhere. It’s distant; it’s remote.

She’s always reminded me of a femme fatale from old black-and-white movies, maybe because I have the distinct feeling she’ll be the death of me. Her hair is always done up in that thick, voluminous style with a heavy middle-part, and she wears tight, fashionable long skirts and clingy jackets and silk blouses.

I think her outfit today is from Yves Saint Laurent; it’s the kind of well-made that’s supposed to shout You can’t fucking afford to go out with me.

“I’ve got the money lined up,” I said. “I’ve had it for a while. And you told me this last quarter, too.”

I saw her restrain herself from rolling her eyes. They’re sparkling ice blue and easy to fall inside of.

“You’re right.” She offered me a curt smile. “But the situation changed. The economy, you know…what a downturn! No one could have predicted—”

“I just want you to stop jerking me around. I’ve put the time in. This place will be in good hands. You’ll get your percentage. You don’t even want to be here. Why not sell it?”

She set her jaw. She hates it when people talk back to her, especially men. Maybe that’s why I did it.

“Sentimentality, I suppose.” Her fingers float over the opening of her jacket, her blouse. Her bust is exquisite. “You wouldn’t hold a grudge at a girl for just wanting to feel safe, would you, Robert?”

Ugh.

I let the matter drop, like I always do. A good dose of shame to start the day.

No matter how hard I wanted to, I just can’t argue with her—or any of the girls—when they turn on the charm. They’re just too fucking hot. I don’t know what I did to deserve this bizarre hell—surrounded by gorgeous women who are happy to manipulate me but seem to truly detest me—but it must have been bad.

And that brings us back to Leena—who does as little as possible to hide her derision from me, behind a façade of sweetness that is intentionally designed to appear fragile, so she knows I know she could drop it at any time.

“I’ve just been really working super hard today,” says Leena. “Are you sure you can’t help me out?”

I might be doing as little as her if all I wanted was a paycheck, but I want to own this place one day and that means I’ve got to work to keep it in business. Leena knows this—all the girls here knew this—because the “real” boss, Rose, makes sure they know.

All co-workers know a lot about each other. Even so, I feel like we all know more than most. They know all about my drama with Rose, and the thing is—and I sort of hate this—I seem to know all about the love lives of these beautiful young women.

One way or the other, they’re almost always complaining in my earshot about how none of the men in their lives measure up. It honestly seems to torment them a little, to the point where I’ve often wondered if they were trying to send me signals of romantic interest. But, whenever I’m talking to them, there’s nothing to signal the least bit of attraction. It’s this weird combination of patronizing distance and sororital affectation that I haven’t been able to wrap my head around.

I try to tell myself, it doesn’t matter—we’re all just workers trying to make a wage and get on with our lives. But I know other places pay more than us, and yet these beauties are just staying here like they’re tied to the place.

There’s something special about this restaurant, that’s all. It’s why I’m obsessed with it, isn’t it? Why Rose won’t sell. There’s something in the air, something we want to be a part of here. We all know it’s coming; knowing what it is seems secondary to feeling it and knowing it is on the way.

And, of course, I assume it’s going to arrive when I’m finally in charge of it like I should be. Rose, if it weren’t for me, would be running this place into the fucking ground.

The only time Leena gets off her figurative behind—which is literally unreal in the absolute magnificence of its sultry tight structure in the tight skirts she wears—and does a little waitress work is for tables of guys. They would shower her in tips. She looks at me now, tossing her hair back to one side and running her hands through its lustrous, dark surface.

God, she’s hot.

“You can take care of whoever it is, right?” She looks in the woman’s direction. “You said it was a girl? You know I don’t do girl tables. Please?”

She gave me her best little-girl eyes. I’m old enough to be her dad and of course I fall for it. I’ve seen her talk with boyfriends she’s dumped, losers who try to buy back her time, and the bitchiness readings when she’s around them are positively nuclear. She might be pretending to be nice to me, but at least she’s not actively being awful.

I sigh. “Fine. Would you help Balboa out, then?”

“He tipped me when he came in.”

“He orders the same thing every night and says it’s the first time he’s ever had it. From the way he dresses and tips, I’d bet he’s sitting on a mountain of disposable income. I guarantee you, Leena, you can be milking him for way more.”

Something wicked and deeply hot lit up in her bright eyes, a money-hungry lasciviousness that I’m dying to be able to feed, if only I had the money ready. She’s young enough to not realize how happy any well-off man would be to just facilitate her greed. Like everything else, greed looks stunning on her.

“Great!” She twirls and starts strutting toward her prey. “You’re all right, Robert. I don’t care what Rose says about you.”

I’d like to get home before midnight, so I don’t stop and ruminate on what that means, though of course it sets alarm bells ringing.

On my way to the woman in the back—who still is just quiet, waiting under a dark hood of some kind—Brie pulls me aside.

“I’m shutting it down.”

She means the kitchen, of course.

Brie is a terribly pretty young blonde (I know, another one) who would be even prettier—though she would draw-and-quarter me for saying it—if she smiled more. I don’t say that kind of thing because I happen to like my guts in my body and staying in one piece, and also because, fuck it, I don’t smile much at work either.

But her facial features are so outrageously sexy—plump lips, cosmically perfect nose, elegant cheek bones—that it’s usually all I can think when I see her for at least several seconds. It would be nuts to me that she isn’t married to some wealthy, hung dude, except I know she’s a confirmed lesbian.

And you know what? That’s still nuts; don’t lesbians marry on the second date? She dates a new girl a week, practically, but never seems happy with them.

Tonight, she’s wearing a tight white blouse and a pair of athletic yoga tights that really show the curvature of her ass. It’s not our standard uniform, but I stopped trying to enforce that when all the girls just complained to Rose that I was being sexist. Bizarrely, they all only dress even sexier than the requisite black pants or skirt and long-sleeved button-up top.

“Come on.” I point to the woman waiting in the back. “Let me at least see what she wants to order.”

Brie looks back. “I don’t see anybody.”

“Don’t be like that. Come on. We’ve got a customer, we should just do our job. She’s been waiting for an hour.”

“And she’s still here? She should take a hint.”

“We should take an order,” I hiss, “that’s how we get paid.”

Brie crosses her arms. There is a stark familiarity between us even though we’re not friends; the best way I can describe it is kind of how you can immediately talk to a cousin you haven’t seen for ten years like you were just picking up a conversation you set down ten minutes ago.

It’s a good thing she’s not especially busty, or I’d probably made a fool of myself several times over by making passes at her, even though I know she’s not into guys. I’m a sucker for big breasts.

The only reason I haven’t ever asked Leena out is because I don’t think I’ve ever seen her not with a boyfriend of some kind.

Well, that, and that she would laugh in my face, somewhere in and out of asking me how much money was in my bank account.

The truth is, I have an awful lot saved up—but it’s for this restaurant, and nothing else.

“Tell her we can do salads and sandwiches and soups,” Brie says finally. “Everything else is out. All right? And I’m going to start cleaning. I’ve got to get home, Robert.”

“Fine. Sure. Just stick around long enough so that I can get her food.”

She nods and her lips hint at a smile. “You’re all right, Robert. Even with all that stuff Rose says about you.”

Goddammit.