Nausea coated my throat. I lingered outside the VIP room just long enough to see the brunette waitress/stripper/lap dance girl undo Giovanni’s pants. Her hand dipped inside and she made a purring noise that reached me even a few feet away. I whirled around to grip the railing that ringed the upper level before I could glimpse his cock.

I didn’t want to see it. Not like this.

I wasn’t a virgin. I’d had a couple of lovers back when I lived with my Aunt Patty in upstate New York, after Mia had moved to the city to start her life as an adult. High school boys that hadn’t rocked my world, but had gotten the job done with various degrees of success. Since I’d been in the city, I’d fooled around with a guy or two as well. Never going past second base. Always thinking about the one man I would never have.

He’d laughed at me tonight when I’d mentioned the date that had fueled my fantasies for months. He’d pushed for it, after all. Mia certainly hadn’t. She’d done everything in her power to ensure I stayed away from him, and in the end, the strongest deterrent had been Giovanni himself.

But I wasn’t stupid. Growing up as fast as I had after the situation with my sister, I knew not to take things at face value. For two months, he had treated me with the utmost care. He’d behaved as a complete gentlemen even when I’d pushed the boundaries of flirting. I’d teased him, I’d worn my most revealing clothes and tempted him with baked goods—and my goods of the flesh. He’d flattered me with compliments and gifted me with those sexy smiles of his, but he hadn’t so much as uttered a dirty word in my general vicinity.

Tonight he’d gone all porn-soundtrack-in-training, and I wasn’t buying it. He was trying to chase me away on purpose.

This wasn’t about him not wanting me. This was about him wanting me too much, and not thinking he should for some reason. Why, was the question.

He wasn’t scared of my sister—or for that matter, her soldier-at-arms, Fox. The fact that my sister didn’t want him near me probably wouldn’t have given him more than a moment’s pause. Heck, it might’ve even increased my attractiveness in his eyes. He was known as a fighter who eagerly, gleefully broke the rules. Yet Mia and her snarls would run him off?

Not frigging likely.

There was more. So much more, and I needed to figure out what.

Stomach churning, I stared down at the main level. Two women were working the pole in tandem to the bass-heavy R&B music that was playing, and the crowd was eating it up. Money was scattered across the stage, an offering to the naked gods.

I’d never seen more horny men in one place. To be honest, I didn’t think I’d been missing much. The whole place made me uncomfortable. My skin prickled with a low-grade flush. Or maybe it wasn’t low-grade. Thank God I didn’t have a mirror to check out how bad the damage was.

I still couldn’t believe I was here.

My eyes narrowed as a cage lowered from the vaulted ceiling on the other side of the room. That offered a brief distraction from the stage. The woman within twisted and gyrated, the recipient of the money the men shoved through the bars. Those dollars touched more of her skin than the guys’ hands did.

What must it be like to drive a man into a frenzy while you stayed safely removed? All eyes on her. She wouldn’t ever doubt if she was sexy enough for an experienced, older man like Giovanni. She knew that every man in the place wanted to take her home.

My gaze snagged on the piles of green clinging to the floor of the cage. And she was getting paid. Handsomely, from the looks of things. She wouldn’t have to scrap for chump change at her minimum wage job that wouldn’t put a dent in her upcoming student loans.

The men could look, but they couldn’t touch. She was their fantasy, close but not too close. She held them riveted. It was the ultimate tease.

She was in control.

The sound of a moan in the room behind me spurred me into moving away from the rail. I stumbled down the hall, the sickness in my belly spreading upward to burn hot in my mouth. I’d forgotten it momentarily, but now it was back, the bile twice as thick. She was touching him. It was her choice. She was desired so much that no man would say no.

She was in control.

My phone rang in my purse and I dragged it out, holding it to my ear without checking the readout.

“Car?” My sister. “Where are you?”

My lips felt numb as I struggled to answer. I couldn’t tell her the truth. She would be shocked. She would demand I come home.

Home. Where was that, exactly? The place I’d stayed at with my aunt? The house where I’d grown up in Georgia, now crowded with the apparitions of my dead parents? Or was it the tiny place I shared with Mia, where we tried not to notice each other’s ghosts when we passed too close to them? We were both waging a battle for normalcy. It had been in short supply since I’d been eleven and Mia fourteen, and we’d mourned its loss ever since.

But what was normal really? Did it even exist? If it meant denying the darker, neglected parts of myself I’d never been brave enough to explore, I didn’t want anything to do with it.

“I’m at a club,” I said, couching a lie in the truth. She’d never suspect a club like this. “How is the movie?”

Movies seemed so banal and ordinary. I’d aged in the past hour. I didn’t feel more experienced, but I sure felt older. Even a little wiser.

No wonder Giovanni didn’t want to play with little girls like me. He knew where he could be satisfied by women who wouldn’t say no or wait or please pretend you love me, just a little bit. There was an honesty here, maybe more than the average person could handle.

More than I could handle.

“What club?” Mia demanded. No movie could compete with smothering me.

“Just a club. No big deal. Did you go to an early show?”

“It’s past eleven, Carly Ann. The movie’s over. When are you coming home?”

When I find one that’s mine.

“Soon,” I said vaguely, aware of voices coming from another one of the VIP rooms. Loud male Italian cursing. The sound of a glass being slammed onto a table. Those guys weren’t getting their dicks sucked—or else they weren’t pleased with the service.

Unlike Giovanni, who hadn’t made a peep when that woman had knelt between his splayed legs.

Mia’s sigh gusted over the phone, somehow audible even in the noisy club. “Are you okay?” Her voice gentled. “I don’t mean to be a nag. I know you’re an adult now, I just worry.”

“I know.” Because I understood all too well how it felt to watch the clock when Mia was out late without calling, I tried to dial back my annoyance.

My sister was my whole world. I adored her. Whatever problems we had, they were insignificant in the scheme. She couldn’t help wanting to shelter me. After what she’d been through, that was the only way she knew how to be.

At twenty-five, I’d probably appreciate her attentiveness. Now, it just felt restrictive and cloying, like a noose around my neck she could pull from miles away. I hated that feeling. I wanted more than anything for it to go away. I didn’t want to chafe at the boundaries she’d set for me. If only I could just…behave.

But I couldn’t. I’d behaved for far too long.

“I should’ve left a note to tell you I was going out,” I conceded, moving toward a corner that promised relative privacy. I could chill next to a fake plant and pretend not to remember that Giovanni was probably panting through an orgasm at this very moment. One he’d paid for, no less. “I thought I’d be back before you were. Didn’t you guys stop for a bite after the movie?”

“Mama drama,” was all she said, and I left it at that.

I knew she meant Fox’s mother, because ours was long dead. I’d been just a kid when our mother had died of an aneurysm. Sometimes I barely remembered her, though before she’d been kidnapped, Mia had fought hard to keep Mama’s memories alive for me.

So many things had changed the day my sister had been taken. My dad, before he’d passed shortly thereafter from a heart attack. Mia. Me.

I’d always been the strong one, the one who had everything together. I’d had a counselor after Mia came home again, until it had been decided I was so well-adjusted that I didn’t need one.

Yeah, not so much.

“You should watch ‘Pretty Woman’,” I told Mia before realizing what I’d said. It was my sister’s favorite movie, and one we’d watched together a million times, but right now the idea of the hooker with a heart of gold struck too close to home when girls were getting paid for blowjobs a few feet away.

Not that I would ever do that. But I might do something else. Like…dance.

“I’ve seen it so many times I can recite the lines myself. Besides, you’re not here. I usually wait to watch it with you.”

Was I imagining things or was that really a whine in her voice? She probably sensed I was in a place I didn’t belong in. One that might push me closer to an edge I hadn’t realized I’d been tiptoeing on forever.

“You sound like you need the feels. Go ahead and start it,” I said, forcing myself out of the corner I’d disappeared into. It was so much easier to hide. To do what I was told. But I was eighteen now, and it was time I made my own way.

Dancing would be a hell of a lot better than pushing salads on people all day. I’d make twice or three times the money in half the time. Then I’d quit, armed with the experience.

At least I would’ve had some.

“I’ll be home before Edward climbs onto the fire escape,” I promised Mia, hanging up before she could guilt me into heading home without finding out what it would be like.

If I hated it, I could quit. I’m sure women quit here all the damn time.

Somehow I made it down the spiral staircase, with my palm pressed flat to the wall beside me to help with my balance. Dizziness swarmed my head, blurred my vision. Laughing faces in front of me wavered and bled together, turning into one taunting mass. Maybe I really wasn’t capable of handling an atmosphere like this. I was meant to stay in my apron behind my chopping board, making food for people without ever truly finding a place to belong. Shadows like me clung to corners. I’d never been the one to dominate a news story. Never been the one that a man would risk his life to have. I was destined to hide away in the kitchen while the party raged on down the hall.

Unless I took steps to change that. Tonight. No backing down.

Taking advantage of Giovanni being occupied upstairs, I pushed my way through the crowd until I was in the hallway where we’d talked earlier. He’d manhandled me, but he still hadn’t been too rough. His intention wasn’t to hurt me, just scare me off. I’d seen the truth of that in his eyes.

But he’d failed on both levels. I was hurt, and I wasn’t going anywhere. I was going to see this through. Not because he spent time here. Or not only because of that. Something was going on with him beyond his search for no strings sex acts, and I needed to know what.

I found the office the guy at the door had directed me to and knocked. Knocked again when there was no response. Anger and humiliation and something darker and twistier had propelled me to this point. This seedy club should’ve made me flee into the night and never come back. But for some reason, I was…lured.

Just like Giovanni lured me. There was a mystery to both, more that lurked beneath the surface, and I wouldn’t find out just what if I went home to my safe, chaste little bed.

No, fuck that, I didn’t even have my own bed in my sister’s apartment. I couched it. She shared the bed with Fox when he stayed over. My sister and I couldn’t live crammed together like sardines forever. Once I had my training, I’d have to work my way up as a chef.

Here, I’d start at the top of the food chain. And I’d be in control. I’d say who got to touch and who didn’t. I’d have everyone’s eyes on me.

The girl in the shadows would finally be in the spotlight.

“Yeah, yeah, come in,” a woman called.

Rubbing my clammy hands on my thighs, I walked inside the office.