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  1-800-SEX-GODS #6: Puma

  When Ben Chambers broke his heart the day after their high school graduation, Puma Roberts’ life began a downward spiral. Seven years later, when Ben walks into Sex Gods while he’s dancing, Puma doesn’t know how to react. Especially since the man was supposedly attending his own bachelor party. Except, he claims to want Puma back because he still loves the feisty dancer.

  Ben Chambers cannot believe the man he had loved in high school was an exotic dancer. Seeing Puma shimmy and shake brought Ben out of the closet his parents had shoved him into.

  What had happened to the computer geek who had been planning to change the world with his app designs? Will Puma forgive Ben for walking away seven years ago? Is Ben and Puma’s renewed love strong enough to withstand Ben’s mother and her interference?

  Genres: Alternative (M/M, Gay), Contemporary

  Length: 20,057

  1-800-SEX-GODS #6: PUMA

  Cooper McKenzie

  

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  1-800-SEX-GODS #6: Puma

  Copyright © 2019 by Cooper McKenzie

  ISBN: 978-1-64243-660-0

  First Publication: February 2019

  Cover design by Les Byerley

  All art and logo copyright © 2019 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  If you find a Siren-BookStrand e-book or print book being sold or shared illegally, please let us know at [email protected]

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Cooper McKenzie always thought she had been born a hundred years too late, though she appreciates air conditioning, computers, and other conveniences of modern-day life. She lives in central Texas with her mixed breed companion, Honey, the Princess Fuzzybutt.

  For all titles by Cooper McKenzie, please visit

  www.bookstrand.com/cooper-mckenzie

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1-800-SEX-GODS #6: PUMA

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  1-800-SEX-GODS #6: PUMA

  COOPER MCKENZIE

  Copyright © 2019

  Chapter One

  “What the fuck are we doing here? I thought we were going to Captain Jack’s for dinner,” Ben Chambers asked as his brother, Seth, pulled into the parking lot of Sex Gods, the local gay bar and strip club.

  “Plans changed,” Joey Prentice, his business partner and best friend, answered from the back seat. “Bachelor party has been postponed until next week, if…”

  “If? If what? What’s going on?” Ben’s tone grew sharper as Seth parked.

  “If you still want to marry bitchzilla,” Seth said bluntly. “Now come on, the show will be starting in a few minutes and we don’t want to lose our reserved table.”

  “But—” Ben wanted to argue, but the two men had already left the car.

  Moving slower, he climbed from the car and engaged the locks before shutting the door and following his two best friends across the parking lot. He had secretly wanted to visit Sex Gods since it opened, but had never followed through on the urge because of his mother’s overbearing influence.

  But, as usual, Seth and Joey didn’t give a shit about what other people thought. They lived their lives out and proud and ignored anyone who did not like their ways. Which was how Ben wished he could live his life. He decided that for tonight, he would silence his mother’s voice in his head and enjoy the experience of doing the forbidden.

  “Hey, wait up.” Ben had to jog across the parking lot to catch up with the two troublemakers.

  At the doors, they stopped and turned to face him. They stood shoulder to shoulder and, for a moment, looked deadly serious. When Ben merely raised an eyebrow at their confrontational stances, Seth cleared his throat while Joey took a deep breath. Something else was going on.

  But what?

  “If you can go the rest of the evening without throwing wood or drooling, we’ll stop trying to break down your closet door and you can marry Candace without any further interference from us.”

  Ben hesitated only a moment before nodding. “You guys are crazy. Why would I drool in a gay club?”

  His two best friends laughed as they opened the front doors. They then pushed him through first before following a step behind. Ben glanced around as he led the two across the lobby toward the curtained doorway where the music and accompanying hoots and hollers were loudest. After having his hand stamped, he trailed behind his best friends through the curtain and into another world.

  The walls, tables, and booths around the room were made of various types of wood. There were three small stages spread around the room made of chrome and glass, giving the room a retro look. The bar ran the length of one wall, with a second, smaller one on the opposite side of the room. In front of them was the main stage with blood-red curtains hiding whatever lay backstage.

  After taking inventory of the club’s décor, Ben turned his attention to the main stage, where five men stepped out from behind the curtain as the crowd went wild. They were dressed as cowboys, but it was the one on the far left who captured and held Ben’s full attention.

  Puma.

  Puma Roberts.

  Was dancing in a gay strip club.

  What the fuck was Puma doing taking his clothes off in a gay strip club?

  That was as far as Ben’s thoughts got before Seth grabbed his arm. His brother pulled him down into the circular booth closest to the stage. Joey followed him onto the seat, effectively trapping him so he couldn’t get out and run for the door.

  As soon as they were settled, a Speedo-clad waiter sashayed up to the table. “Welcome to Sex Gods. My name is Lane. What can I get you gentlemen to drink tonight?”

  While Joey flirted hot and heavy with the waiter, Ben could not take his eyes off the man dancing. He fought the urge to go up onstage and drag Puma behind the curtains behind the line of dancers. He didn’t want the rest of the rowdy Friday night crowd to see the smoking-hot body that had only gotten better since Ben had seen the man last. Shifting in his seat, he licked his lips and swallowed, praying the men on either side of him were so busy watching the show they wouldn’t notice that Ben was having a reaction to seeing his high school lover performing.

  And he was definitely reacting.

  Not to the show itself, but to the green-eyed man with the strawberry-blond curls that were longer, but no less entrancing than they had been seven years before. Curls that glinted gold and deep red under the bright stage lights. Ben fisted his hands as he remembered the feel of running his fingers through that hair. It had been like playing with silk.

  “And there he goes.” Seth leaned forward and grinned at Joey. “You owe me fifty bucks.”

  “Bill me,” Joey responded with a smirk of his own as he looked Ben up and down. “Damn, boy, you fill out the front of those jeans nice.”

  Gritti
ng his teeth, Ben refused to acknowledge either man’s comments. Instead he continued watching the performance until Puma ran offstage, picking up his jeans, shirt, and cowboy hat as he went.

  Once the man was out of sight, Ben took a breath to try and calm himself. But there was no calm to be had. Puma was here and for some God-only-knew reason was taking his clothes off for money.

  What happened to the computer geek who was going to create learning games that would change the world?

  He was so lost in thought, he jumped when the waiter set a bottle of beer in front of him. “Thanks,” he muttered as he picked up the bottle and drank down half of it without taking a breath.

  “I’ll bring another,” Lane said with a toothy smile.

  Joey stood and pulled Lane to a stop and talked to him for several minutes. The waiter nodded with a wink and a smile before heading to the bar while Joey returned to the table.

  “What was that all about?” Ben asked, half-afraid of what the man was planning.

  Seth shrugged with a shit-eating grin. “Nothing.”

  Ben knew better and wondered if he should shove the man out of his way so he could escape. Problem was, Seth had convinced him to leave his phone behind, and he didn’t have another way to get a ride home without begging the staff for help.

  And asking strangers for help had always rubbed Ben the wrong way. Instead of making a break for it, he drank down the rest of his beer while trying to mentally prepare himself for whatever Joey had just set into motion.

  * * * *

  “Hey, Puma, get changed. You’ve been requested for a table dance,” Sully Muldoon said after hanging up the phone.

  Sully was the Muldoon brother in charge of the dancers and backstage action, though he was hardly the hard-ass needed to keep a half-dozen dancers in line. Especially when the club was full as it was now.

  “Me?” Puma said as he finished hanging up his costume for the first number. “Why me? Don’t they know I’m the new kid?”

  Sully shrugged but stepped into Puma’s almost closet-like area just inside the dressing room. He grabbed a pair of skimpy black shorts from the rack and handed them to the redhead. “Wear this. It’ll get you more tips. Just remember…”

  “Don’t touch the guests in bad places, and no hands under my costume,” Puma finished in unison with Sully before he giggled as he held up the skimpy bikini. “Not that there’s much to my costume.”

  Puma quickly stripped off the shorts he had worn under his cowboy costume onstage and pulled on the glorified G-string. It took a moment and Sully’s help to get it in place so that nothing showed, but finally he was ready to go out and dance.

  He hurried behind the curtains, then on the far side of the stage slipped past the curtain. All eyes were on Dylan, who was flying in the silks, so he rushed down the stairs to the main floor. Lane was standing there waiting for him.

  “This first table,” Lane said before nodding at the three men sitting at one of the party booths that edged one side of the room.

  Puma nodded, then allowed the man to help him up onto the narrow walkway that had been recently added around the exterior of the room. It allowed the dancers to circle the room to the various platforms or tables they danced on during the evening without blocking the view of the main stage.

  With the stage performance going strong, the lights around the room were dim enough that Puma had a hard time making out the faces of the three men he was to dance for. Having only started a month earlier, he was still not too comfortable dancing for other men. Closing his eyes, he began to sway as he listened to the music and allowed it to take him away.

  Once upon a time, a lifetime ago, he had been told he had a body and spirit made for dancing. Too bad the man who had told him that had shredded his heart before walking away, leaving Puma reeling and vulnerable. He’d spent the last two years in jail because he had trusted the wrong people. But that was him, Puma Roberts, geeky loser. The man no one wanted, unless they could use and dispose of him.

  Taking a deep breath, Puma pushed down the negative thoughts and shifted his brain into neutral as the music changed to a mournful Celtic piece. He swayed and wiggled and moved as he could around the five-foot-wide table, never looking down at the men watching him. Instead he kept his head up, staring out over the rest of the crowd, few of which glanced away from the stage where Dylan continued to defy gravity using only his arms, legs, and long lengths of red silk.

  Someday Puma hoped he would be able to master the silks and fly like the featured dancer. For now, he was just happy to have a job and a place to live, even if he was living on his bosses’ mom’s property where his second job was as a security person while she was off traveling the world.

  Hopefully by the time she returned, whenever that might be, he would have enough money saved up to put down on a small house or apartment. A place to call his own that he wouldn’t have to share with anyone.

  As the second song ended and he prepared to take his bow before disappearing backstage again, someone said, “Puma.”

  He opened his eyes, blinked, and looked down into the face of the one man he had never wanted to see again. “Ben?”

  At that moment, the lights came up and he could clearly see that Ben was, indeed, sitting not two feet in front of him. From this angle, Puma couldn’t see much, but what he did see made his heart hurt. This man had walked away from him, claiming that their two years together had been a mistake and that he refused to be gay any longer.

  Instead of saying anything further, Puma jumped off the table and ran through the center of the room to the bar. He ignored the hands that reached out, patting his ass, belly, and cock as he flew past. Once at the bar, he did not stop. He slipped around behind the bar and then through the door that led to the kitchen. Once there, he stopped long enough to catch his breath and wipe away the tears that were rolling down his cheeks.

  “Puma? You okay?” Paulo asked from where he stood at the stove, flipping burgers and watching other foods cook.

  Puma took a deep breath after wiping his cheeks again. “I’m fine. Sorry to have startled you.”

  “No problem. Just not used to the divas coming in the kitchen,” Paulo said with a chuckle. “Better get backstage before Sully comes looking for you.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Puma said as he headed down the hall that led to the offices and the backstage area.

  In the quiet of the hallway, he stopped again and took several deep breaths, working hard to push the emotion of seeing Ben after all these years down and locking it away. The last thing he needed was Sully playing mother hen because his ex-boyfriend had asked for a table dance.

  Thank the powers that be the man hadn’t asked for a lap dance.

  Looking down at his cock, which was sticking straight out from his body, he flicked the head several times, wincing with each pain, but hoping to get the damn thing to soften before he had to strip in front of his co-workers and get ready for his next number.

  Long before he was ready, Sully appeared in front of him. “What the hell happened? What are you doing out here? Oh, never mind, we’ll talk later. You’re up again in a few minutes so you need to change.”

  Chapter Two

  Ben spent the rest of the evening drinking. The next time Lane stopped by, he ordered a triple whiskey to go with his next beer.

  Shock was mild compared to what he was feeling. Not only had Puma not wanted to speak with him, the man looked horrified that Ben had seen him dance. But Ben couldn’t stop thinking about the man he had shared all his firsts with—first kiss, first blow job given and received, and first fuck, also given and received.

  What had brought Puma so low that he had to take his clothes off for money?

  And was he doing more than just dancing in a thong for his living?

  While the alcohol went to his brain, it tore down the walls of guilt, self-inflicted pain, and denial of who he really was that Ben had built since that night when he had broken Puma’s heart.

 
Now he had to figure out how to see Puma away from this place and get the man to talk to him. He needed to help the man get his life back on track. Because sure as the ocean rolled to the shore, Puma Roberts could not believe that this was a good life path to follow.

  Over the next hours until closing time, Ben watched as Puma came out several times to dance and strip away the various costumes he wore. After the last group dance, the man moved to one of the smaller dance stages, where he swayed and shimmied and wiggled in ways that kept Ben squirming in his seat as his cock remained hard as a hickory ax handle. Finally, last call was announced and Ben watched all the dancers leave the stages and disappear behind the velvet curtain across the main stage.

  “Come on, Ben, it’s time to go,” Joey said as he slipped from the booth and stood.

  Ben slid across the bench as he said, “I need to see Puma first,”

  He pushed to his feet, and all at once the floor became a rocking ship and he had to grab a chair to keep from falling on his face.

  “No, you don’t,” Joey said, but Ben refused to be stopped.

  Jerking his arms from his brother’s grasp, he hurried toward the stage. Not sure how he did it, he stumbled up the steps and across the stage without faceplanting once. Finding a split in the curtain proved more difficult, so Ben dropped to his knees, lifted the curtain, and crawled under it. He ignored the catcalls, whistles, and calls to stop as he continued under the curtain and across the backstage floor.

  “Hello? May I help you?” a deep voice asked from over his head.

  Ben pushed to his feet, having to take several steps to maintain his balance without something stable to hold onto or lean against. “I need to see Puma Roberts,” he said with what he hoped was a friendly smile.

  The man he faced was as nearly tall as he was, though not quite as broad. He also appeared stone-cold sober. If he said no, Ben wasn’t sure what he was going to do because he really did not want to have to fight the guy. Though he might be big and fierce looking, Ben was really just a teddy bear in a grizzly suit. He was a CPA, for heaven’s sake. He battled numbers and balance sheets, not other people.