Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 62528 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 208(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62528 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 208(@300wpm)
MEET DASH: MALE STRIPPER, ANIMAL LOVER, AND…DRAGON?
JACQUELIN
Jacquelin would do anything to save her struggling animal sanctuary—including bartending at a strip club, enduring drunken bachelorette parties, and putting up with her weirdo boss, who’s obsessed with all things pink.
But nothing could prepare her for Dash: the club’s star performer with abs you could grate cheese on and an ego bigger than his, ahem, moves.
From the moment Dash struts onto the stage, Jacquelin can’t decide if she wants to throw her drink at him or pour it over her head. “Is it just me, or is it scorching hot in here?”
When the women in the audience start acting like wild animals, Jacquelin knows something strange is going on.
Is Dash’s off-the-charts charisma driving her mad, or is there more to him than meets the abs?
DAMIEN
Damien, the immortal tailor, has tackled demonic fashion emergencies, violent vampires, and unhinged deities. But convincing Dash—a male stripper and, oh yeah, the last male dragon on Earth—to embrace his scaly destiny? That’s next-level absurd.
But Damien would do anything to win back Sky, the love of his life, who is, well, dead and needs a new body—something only a deranged goddess can arrange. A goddess who wants an army of dragons for her war.
Can Damien nudge the reluctant dragon into the mating game? Or will Damien lose the ghostly love of his life forever?
DASH
I’m the world’s greatest stripper. Not a dragon. Pass the baby oil.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER ONE
“I can do this. I can do this. I can’t believe I’m doing this.” Jacquelin Flanagan parked her pickup outside the Dallas strip club, feeling the sorts of nauseous waves any woman might for her first shift at a new job. Not that there was much to bartending. If she smiled, treated customers well, and gave generous pours, the tips generally followed.
She hoped.
It’ll all work out. The money will come. It has to. Of course, that was the kind of hopeful bull crap that had led her here, to the sort of job that said to the world: I make crazy-bad life choices. Today, however, was a new low. If rock had a bottom, this was rock’s stinky diaper.
Seriously. Screw my shitty life. She sighed and gathered up her snacks, cell, and three-legged giraffe keychain, shoving them all into her enormous canvas purse.
Stay positive, Jac. It’s the only way you’ll get through this, she told herself.
It wasn’t that slinging drinks was beneath her, but it was a far and humbling cry from where she’d planned to be at age thirty-five: vet school, business degree, running a successful nonprofit for animals, and maybe even married with two smooth-skinned critters, aka kids. Those had been the dream. Not slinging drinks at a strip club.
What would her parents say if they were still alive? Nothing good.
Thank God my sisters are too busy with their lives to get in my hair. Heather and Holly—both opinionated, fiery redheads with green eyes, like Jac—were in their forties, dealing with teenagers, careers, and husbands. They had no clue that Jac had been lying for years about how bad things had gotten, and Jac would make sure they never found out. Not only would her older sisters give her hell, but they would try to help and then hold it over her head. Heather and Holly were both control freaks, though they weren’t always wrong when they gave advice.
For example: “Go to school first, Jac. Get it out of the way.” “Don’t support a man before you can support yourself.” “You’re bananas for taking over an animal sanctuary with nothing more than a broken wing and a prayer.”
It was sage advice that Jac had ignored, and now she was feeling the shame of it on every level, about to work her first shift at a place where the pants had Velcro, the sausage was free range, and the customers checked their brains at the door.
To boot, the owner, Mrs. Peepers, said they were trying “something new” by hiring Jac, a woman.
When Jac had asked why something as common as a female bartender was a novelty, Mrs. Peepers had simply leaned back in her pink chair, plopped her glittery pink cowboy boots onto her hot pink desk, and removed her long pink wig. Peepers then rumpled her flaming red hair—not at all similar to Jac’s natural red with golden highlights—and then put the wig back on. Backwards.
“Welp, sweetheart,” Peepers had said with a blatantly fake Texan accent, “let me put ’er like this: them-there customers arrive with their panties in o’ bunch—life’ll do that to gal who has too many doughnut holes because ain’t nobody poking them out. But when they leave the Pink Pit of Pleasure, well…they’re like randy sailors after spending a week with a mermaid on El Corazón Island.”
What the hell does that mean? Jac had thought.
“Great question!” Peepers had erected her pale index finger in the air, followed by wiggling her red eyebrows.
“But I…didn’t…say anything,” Jac had muttered.
“Didn’t you?”
“No. But I think you were trying to explain that the women get rowdy, or something like that,” Jac had said.
“Rowdy? Oh, no, Jac-hammer. Think: women blowing off yearsss of steam. Honestly, this club is no place for a lady.”
But they cater to women. Jac had shrugged off the strange conversation, not giving it much thought. After all, women had the right to release pent-up frustration like anyone else. So what if they did it while staring at men marinated in baby oil?
At the end of the day, this was a job, and Jac needed money. Caring for abandoned exotic animals wasn’t cheap, and the donations didn’t always come when she needed them. Take last month, for example, when Wanda the orangutang fractured her hip. Poor thing was pretty old.
Anyway, with Jac providing care for her critters seven days a week and also giving private tours during the day to help support the sanctuary, that only left her with a few hours each night to earn extra cash. So here she was, hoping the money would be as good as Mrs. Peepers claimed. If not, those poor animals would have nowhere to go.
Dressed in jeans, brown cowboy boots, and a bright pink T-shirt with the club’s flaming peach pit logo, Jac made her way to the heavy double doors of the Pink Pit of Pleasure and then followed the dimly lit hallway. Along the walls, framed posters of the male dancers gave her a taste of what she was in for tonight. Most of the men wore costumes—fireman, tiger, caveman, beaver, etc.—and they all had six-pack abs (or a large tail), but in her opinion, not one was sexy. Not even Dash, the headliner.