Chapter One
I wasn’t supposed to be working the night I met JC.
Jana had called me at the last minute to fill in for her. I knew it was serious before she even started talking. Jana never called in sick.
“They said I need twelve stitches. On my chin, Gwen. Jesus, I hope it doesn’t scar.”
“I’m just glad you’re okay.” I really wanted to tell her it was surprising she hadn’t gotten hurt before this—roller derby wasn’t exactly a safe sport, after all—but I managed to refrain from chiding.
“Ah, that’s so sweet.” Her Long Island/Puerto Rican accent seemed heavier over the phone. Or maybe it was the pain pills they’d given her. “I’m fine, really. I could come in when I’m done.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll take your whole shift.” What was I going to do anyway? Watching The Voice with Norma was pretty much the only thing on my agenda, and I could still catch the first half before I had to leave. It was our sisterly bonding ritual as she ended her day and I began mine. Lately, TV night with her had been less than fantastic, though, as if her mind were elsewhere. Which was weird. Where the fuck else could your mind be when Adam Levine was onscreen bantering with Blake Shelton?
But we had DVR. I could catch the rest in the morning before I went to bed.
“Thanks, babe,” Jana drawled in my ear. “I didn’t have a chance to call Matt, but I’m sure he’s cool. I’ll pick up your Thursday, that way you can still have your weekend.”
I hoped she wasn’t too doped up to remember that. I prized my “weekend”—my two days off from the Eighty-Eighth Floor where I worked. Not that I had anything exciting to do with the time off, and not that I really even needed the break. I’d work every shift if the law allowed. But I was the only manager at the club that had secured regular, sequential days off, and I valued what that meant. It meant I was good at my job. It meant I deserved the reward.
It meant there was something in this godforsaken life of mine that was actually worth something.
“You’re going in?” Norma asked as I clicked END on my cell. She didn’t look up from the papers spread across her desk tray. Norma was a workaholic, and although she tried to put it away on our nights together, it wasn’t unusual when she simply couldn’t. I didn’t resent her for it. Her job at Pierce Industries as a financial manager was earned by hard work and relentless ambition. That was my sister—ambitious to a flaw.
But her ambition got us out of the ghetto. It paid for the high-rise apartment she shared with me. It paid for my brother and his life on the other side of the country. It paid to keep us away from the past we didn’t ever want to go back to.
“Yeah,” I said, already stripping from my jeans. “Jana’s in the ER.” I paused as I debated whether or not to inform our general manager, Matt, then decided against it. He was on vacation for the week and didn’t need to be bothered with our minor changes. “She’s switching me for Thursday. So I’ll still have two days off in a row. We could watch Project Runway together this week.”
Norma lifted her eyes from her work and furrowed her brow, as if looking at a calendar hanging in midair before her. “Uh, I’m not sure Thursday will work for me. I have…something.” She disappeared into her work again without even remarking on the part where I said ER.
I shrugged as I gathered my clothes and headed to the shower. She probably had a fundraiser or another one of those fancy events she was always going to. Even my older sis of five years had a better social life than I did. So what that it was all related to her job? She still got out.
As the hot water streamed over my body, I swallowed back my impulse to envy and reminded myself that I could get out too if I wanted. I just hadn’t ever decided that was what I wanted. And if I did decide it was what I wanted, I’d have no idea at all how to go about doing it.
***
Working on a Tuesday was odd only in that I kept forgetting what day it was when I went to write it on my paperwork. The Eighty-Eighth Floor was one of the hottest clubs in Greenwich Village. Hell, it was one of the hottest clubs in New York City. We were nearly as busy on weeknights as we were on the weekends. Tonight was especially hopping because of the nearness to the holidays. Colleges were out, people were visiting friends, it was too cold for outdoor activities—though you wouldn’t have known that from the outfits most of the girls wore. Everywhere I looked there were breasts peeking over bikini tops and asses hanging below skirt hems. Perhaps I’d feel differently if I were liquoring up and shimmying on the floor, but I was covered and comfortable in my gray slacks and cowl-neck maroon tank top.
Maybe I was just too old for the club scene. Thirty was approaching. Was it normal to prefer a quiet evening on the couch to a night of dancing at this age? Norma had never been a partier, so I couldn’t compare myself to her. Our little brother, Benjamin, had lived on the West Coast since he was eighteen, so I wasn’t aware of his habits. And friends…well, I didn’t really have those.
That was the real problem, of course. I’d probably like clubbing just fine if I had someone to go with. Or maybe not. It was hard to know for sure.
I did like my job. It was steady and rhythmic. Managing gave me the opportunity to be no-nonsense and harsh. It was how I preferred to be. Cold. Hard. In charge.
The night was off to the usual start. All four of our floors were full, and we even had a small line at the door by eleven. The bars were all staffed well. The cash drawers all had sufficient change. Our best bouncer was working head security. It was starting out to be a predictable shift.
I knew better than to settle into the comfort of predictable. It was more important to be prepared. I should have been prepared.
But nothing could have prepared me for JC.
I’d only been on the clock for a couple of hours when I overheard the murmuring of the waitresses. They hushed the moment I came near, which wasn’t unusual. I was their boss, not their friend. Normally, I’d ignore that kind of buzz amongst the staff. Most of their gossip was about the hottest new employee or even where to score a quarter, which was not any of my concern as long as their job was done well.
This time, I heard two words that piqued me—Viper and cigar smoke. Okay, three words. A word and a phrase that automatically sent alarms sounding in my head.
I stepped closer to the women. “What’s that you were saying?”
Bethany’s eyes went wide. “I have to deliver this.” She took off toward the lounge with her tray of appetizers before I could stop her.
The other waitress was still entering her order into the register. She didn’t have an excuse to run.
I leaned against the counter next to her, grateful that the registers were off the kitchen in a quieter part of the club where I didn’t have to shout to be heard. “Alyssa, what did she mean about cigar smoke in the Viper?” It wasn’t that unusual to have patrons mouth the damn things without lighting them—helped with that oral fixation thing that so many people had—but the actual smoking of cigars was not allowed in the club. The Eighty-Eighth Floor was a smoke-free establishment, and if that rule was being ignored, then I had to address it.
Alyssa didn’t look up from the computer right away. I saw her throat move as she swallowed. Then she met my eyes, a bright smile on her lips. Too bright of a smile. “Oh, you know. Just talk. I’m sure there’s not really any smoking going on.”
I narrowed my stare. “Uh-huh.” Alyssa was one of the more reliable employees. But like I’d said—I wasn’t her friend. “Who’s got the room booked tonight, anyway?”
The Viper wasn’t really the name of the secluded area that the club offered to elite guests. It was officially called The Deck on our marketing material—the club’s official VIP Room. But on all our paperwork, Matt always wrote VIP R., and with his sloppy boy handwriting the R usually ended up closer to the P and soon the whole staff called it the Viper.
Alyssa shook her head, her ponytail swishing with the movement. “No one special. A white collar group.” She was dismissive. Then, seeming to realize that tactic wasn’t working with me, she said, “I could go check in up there. If there’s anything sketchy going on, I’ll let you know.”
Yeah, like I was falling for that. “How about we go and check on it together?”
Her face fell visibly, but she nodded an agreement and headed toward the spiraling metal stairs that led up to The Deck.
I followed. Adrenaline was already sizzling in my veins as I climbed up toward the Viper. I wasn’t scared of what I’d find—we had a good security team, and I’d seen enough in my life to set my fear threshold high. But there was something exciting about the prospect of something different. The thrill that maybe the night wouldn’t be typical or predictable. The delicious raising of goose bumps on my pale skin as something inside me wished for the unexpected.
Not that I’d do anything other than correct the off-course situation. I might have longed for variance, but I didn’t know how to live with it when I found it.
At the Viper door, Alyssa paused and waited for me to join her. “Maybe we should knock?”
Fuck that. Managers had carte blanche to the entire premises. I wasn’t going to give our errant guests a chance to hide their coke and cover their cocks. Especially since I could already smell the Cubans.
I swung the door open and stood in the threshold to survey the scene. What I saw surprised me. Or, some of it surprised me. The smoky air and half-smoked cigars I’d been expecting. And where one club violation was found, there were usually more, so the half-dressed women didn’t completely catch me off-guard either. Nor did the three men playing poker in the corner with actual money laid out on the table.
It was the men. The way they carried themselves, the way they behaved like the respected businessmen that their expensive suits said they were rather than a house of drunken frat boys. There were a dozen or so of them—young, single. At least, I didn’t see any bands or tan marks from removed rings. The snippets of conversation that passed my ear were intelligent and intelligible, not like the hundreds of twenty-something guys I saw come through the club on a weekly basis, the ones who focused on the waitresses’ tits when they ordered and were too wasted to remember where they left their iPhones.
Then there were the women.
A room full of debauchery wouldn’t be complete without hookers and sleazy call girls. That was routine. But these women, five in total, were definitely not sleazy. Even as they draped themselves over the men—even though three of them were topless and another was dressed only in a French lace bra and panties—they gave a definite air of refinement. They exuded polish and class. Sexy, yes, but not trashy.
One of the topless women, a brunette sitting on a man’s lap, looked up at me. Her eyes lit with recognition. She smiled and mouthed a hello before returning her attention to her fingers as they combed through the man’s hair.
My brows pressed together as I tried to place her. Pure shock washed through me when I realized it wasn’t from my seedy past that I knew her, but from school. She’d been a graduate student teaching a commercial kitchen resource class that I’d taken. Now she managed a five-star restaurant uptown.
And she was here? Part of this…this…
I didn’t know what this was actually. It was a party that broke the rules, but it wasn’t unruly or sordid or out-of-hand. It was naughty and sensual and…enticing. I would lay down the law—of course, I would, how could I not?—but for a moment, I hesitated. For a moment, instead of wanting to admonish, I wanted to join.
“You’re welcome to sit.” The voice came from behind me. It spoke with insight. As though it understood my conflict. As though it knew what I really wanted.
Which was bullshit. It was just a fucking invitation. Nothing more.
I turned to deliver my what the hell is going on speech, until my eyes landed on the man who had spoken. At the sight of him, I lost the words. He sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, his back against the wall behind the door, which was why I hadn’t noticed him at first.
But now that I noticed him, I really noticed him.
It was impossible not to. Sex appeal and charisma oozed off him as if he’d dressed in both. Well-defined muscles pressed against his snug dress shirt. His dark blond hair was severe—the sides short and the top sculpted to look like a hot Italian mobster from the nineteen twenties. He wore stubble that I suspected helped keep him from looking younger than he was, an age that I put around thirty.
And his eyes…
I couldn’t see them clearly in the darkness, but I felt them. Felt the way he studied me with earnest. Felt the flicker of yearning in them. Felt the heaviness behind that, where hurt lay, or bitterness perhaps.
Like the slack of a rope that is suddenly tightened and taut, my own gaze was drawn to him. I couldn’t look away, and as he continued to peer at me—peer into me—a hum began to vibrate through my body, setting my every molecule on high alert. Even my girly parts, which had been hibernating, wakened in his presence—expanding and buzzing, tingling with awareness of him.
This was all for him, I realized. The partying, the entertainment—it was his. Everything was centered on him.
Except, in my periphery, where the others continued with their previous activities, I realized everything really wasn’t centered on him. The party might have been his, but no one was giving him any mind. It was me that was centered on him. Centered like the whole room was a ship on rocky waves and this single man was the axis. A solitary point of balance in a space of chaos. It was unusual because I was used to being the point of balance in chaos. I was stability. I was order.
Under his intense scrutiny, I was knocked off-kilter. As if one heel had broken and my foot had scrambled for purchase and he had been there to give me an arm. He both tripped me and steadied me all at once.
I don’t know when he started talking again. I saw his lips moving before I registered the sound. “Come on. Join us,” I think he said.
“What?” I had now completely zeroed in on his mouth—his teeth were perfect, straight and white. His bottom lip was plumper than the top, pale and inviting.
It curved up into a slight smile. “Pull up a seat. Alyssa will get you a drink. Maybe Luke will even give you a backrub. He’s great at working out muscles. You’re so tight I can see your knots from here.”
“I don’t…I can’t…I’m…” I was flustered. Flabbergasted. He was the mobster asking the cop to dinner. Who even did that?
Plus, he was really attractive. And while really attractive men usually had no effect on me whatsoever, this one did. And that…scared me.
So much for having a high fear threshold.
The man motioned to someone behind me. “Jennie, can you get our guest a chair?”
The underwear-clad woman pushed a chair closer to me, and automatically I sat, my knees pointed toward the stranger like a compass pointing north.
Then, realizing that wasn’t what I should be doing, I popped back up. Back to myself. Back to my place of authority where I was the one in control, the one with the poise.
“Thank you,” I said, firmly, steadily—at least I hoped firmly and steadily—“but no. I actually have to ask you to clean this act up.”
“Clean what up exactly?” His casual demeanor threw me. Again. Usually when a manager busted a patron, the guilty party became apologetic and full of excuses. Unless they were too drugged or drunk to care, and this man seemed to be neither.
Surprised that I was, I tried to keep it together. “There’s no smoking in the club. Or gambling. Or stripping. Tell your friends to extinguish their cigars, put away the cards and put their clothing on or they can leave. Or do all those things and leave. That would be another, even better option.”
While most of the room remained unaffected by my speech, one of the men tapped my waitress on the shoulder. “Alyssa, who is this chick?”
Irritated that Alyssa obviously knew more about this party than she’d cared to share with me downstairs, I gave her a searing look that said both don’t answer that and we’re going to have to have a talk later.
Maybe my annoyance was misplaced. Male customers commonly learned the names of their waitresses, sometimes innocently, sometimes not so innocently. Matt had a strict rule that only first names were used at the club for exactly that reason—so that no one could find themselves stalked online or their home address searched for on findsomeone.com. It was a safety precaution that I one-hundred-percent supported.
Still, the way Alyssa exchanged glances with the questioner, it seemed she knew this crowd much better than she’d let on. It dawned on me that they were regulars.
But I wasn’t a regular. Not on Tuesdays, so I was more than a little stunned when the charismatic stranger said, “This is Gwen. She’s our manager on duty tonight.”
“How did…?” I cut off, but not before I’d given myself away. There was no way he couldn’t tell how easily he derailed me.
“You’re wondering how I know all that.” He sat back in his chair, placing his ankle over his opposite knee. One of the topless women came to perch on the arm of his chair and draped a hand around his neck while he spoke, but he didn’t throw her so much as a glance as he continued speaking. “I’ll tell you how I know. It’s my business to look out for my guests, and that includes knowing the staff on duty. Alyssa here informed me earlier you were in charge tonight. She did a pretty good job describing you, too.”
My jaw tensed as I wondered exactly how Alyssa had described me—blonde? Bony? Uptight? A pain in the ass?
“Though, Alyssa, you were wrong,” JC said to the waitress behind me. “You said that she was pretty, which is totally not correct.”
My eyes widened with horror. I wasn’t pageant material maybe, but I’d never been outright told I wasn’t pretty.
JC turned his focus back to me. “No, no, no. You’re taking me wrong.” Jesus, was I really so transparent? “Pretty is a complete put-down if you ask me, because you’re actually quite gorgeous. It’s a unique sort of beauty. A hardened one. Not many people can pull off stony and stunning. But you can. It’s your eyes. They’re softer, inset like that. They contradict your expression.”
I blinked. Maybe I gaped a bit too. The straightforward way this man—this stranger—talked about me, about my looks…it should have felt crude. Violating. Not flattering. Not charming.
And it sure as hell shouldn’t make my stomach flutter with butterflies or make my pulse pick up. Or make my cheeks blush.
The woman behind him leaned forward, her breasts rubbing casually against the man’s ear. “It doesn’t hurt that she has nice tits,” she added.
This time I did gape. For one, how could she possibly know anything about my tits, which were on the bigger side, yes, but completely covered? And two, had she looked in a mirror? Because if we were talking about nice tits, there were few that could compete with hers, and I was even pretty sure they were real.
“Now, Natalie, that’s hardly appropriate.” But his eyes moved down to check out my rack as he said it.
Still, I appreciated the attempt at civility.
Then I remembered I didn’t appreciate any of this at all. “Flattery is not going to get you anywhere with me. You need to get this out of here. Now.” Thank God for the natural rasp in my voice—I used it to hide my unsteadiness.
“I don’t do flattery, Gwen.” He paused, seeming to want that to sink in before he went on. “And, I’m sorry to be the one to inform you, but I have this room booked to do absolutely whatever I want.”
“You may have the room booked. But not to do whatever you want.” The room had an explicit lease agreement with definitive rules. He had to have received a copy. He was a regular—none of this could be new to him. And if he thought he could try to take advantage of my unfamiliarity, he had another thing coming.
I clung to that—the rules, the law. Clung to the knowledge that right was on my side.
“Actually, he does have the room booked to do whatever he wants,” Alyssa said meekly.
I turned to see her face crumple into an apology. Whether she was apologizing for not telling me about the situation beforehand or for taking his side, I didn’t know.
I did know there was no way she was right.
As if reading my mind, he said, “Alyssa’s right. I do.”
There’s really only one person who would have arranged something with that kind of authority, but I asked anyway, dreading the answer. “Says who?”
“Matt.” The answer came both from Alyssa and him at the same time.
Then he clarified. “Matt and I have somewhat of an informal agreement.”
What was left of my dignity fell away. If it was true—and I had a sinking feeling it was—then I was in the wrong. It was humiliating. And disappointing.
I’d heard rumors about Matt’s informal agreements, but I’d yet to see them live and in action. Probably because Matt knew I’d disapprove. Since he was my boss, my endorsement wasn’t exactly required. Unless he was worried that I’d go above his head and tell the owner, Joseph Ricker.
I wouldn’t do that. Matt was a good boss and I had no interest in taking his job. But I could at least scare him into ending such ridiculous arrangements. “Maybe I should call him.”
He seemed to understand what was on the line. He tilted his head and before he even spoke, I knew he’d be a good debater. “You don’t really want to do that, Gwen, do you?” He sat forward, both feet on the ground, his hands clasped with his index fingers extended. “I mean, here’s how I see it. Obviously Matt doesn’t want you to know about me. I’ve been booking this room now for what—seven, eight months?” He looked around the room for agreement, which several people readily gave.
Then he looked at me. “How long have you been here?”
“Five years.” I’d been hired as a manager right before my twenty-fifth birthday. It had been my first real job after I’d earned my dual degree in restaurant management and human resources, paid for, of course, by Norma. I hadn’t necessarily intended to stay at Eighty-Eighth, but I’d climbed from part-time assistant manager to second-in-command within three years. The pay was good. The job was comfortable. My boss and my peers respected me.
He pointed his index fingers now at me. “You never work Tuesdays, do you?”
“I don’t.”
“Because Matt’s kept me from you on purpose. Why do you think that is?” His question was patronizing, so I answered only with a hard stare. “No guesses? I have one. I bet you must be the tight-ass around here. The follow-the-rules girl. And the deal I have with Matt, well, the rules are vague. That probably goes against your nature. Doesn’t it, Gwen?”
I hated how he said my name, like he had all the power because he knew that bit of information about me. Hated it and loved it. I also hated how his eyes drew up my body, long and slow. Sensually touching my every curve, my every angle.
Hated and loved it. Hated that I loved it.
I sat on the chair that was still behind me, not trusting my legs to keep me steady for much longer. “What exactly is this deal you have? And who are you?”
“I,” he paused, “am JC.”
I’d never heard of him. “JC…?”
“Just JC.” He said it like it answered everything. Two short syllables to put me in my place.
“As in Jesus Christ?”
A few people laughed. But actually, if Christ really had existed—a point I was not sure on in the least—I imagined he’d be quite like the man in front of me. Magnetic, smooth, surrounded by depravity that he didn’t publicly partake in.
JC chuckled as well, his expression brash and sexy. “I’ve been called that. But usually only when my face is pressed between a woman’s thighs.”
Ew.
Also, hot.
It wasn’t strange for me to hear such lewd comments. I worked in a club. In New York City. I knew crass.
But the way JC said his inappropriate words made the muscles clench low in my belly. Lower than my belly. In forgotten regions that hadn’t been stimulated in years. Hadn’t even been thought about in years. It brought the room to a tilt again.
I didn’t like it. I didn’t understand it. Yes, I was human—a woman with sexual desires just like any other—but I’d learned long ago how to turn those feelings off. They didn’t make themselves known without my permission, and they certainly didn’t send sparks down my spine that ricocheted out to my limbs and ignited my every cell. I did not like it in the least.
So I decided not to acknowledge it. “And your deal…?”
There was a glint in JC’s eye that said he knew exactly what I was trying to hide. Or maybe I was imagining that because he didn’t bug me about it, and I had the feeling he was the type who would. Instead, he answered my question. “I get The Deck every Tuesday. I use it to entertain my friends and associates.”
“You entertain your associates,” I repeated. Ah, I knew what this was. He was the snake charmer. The man who brought the deals into his firm by schmoozing their potential clients with hot girls and liquor. “With strippers?”
“Come on, do you really think these women are strippers? They’re my associates too. Don’t judge them by their lack of clothing.” He eyed one of his guy friends who was currently being straddled by one of the topless girls. “Give it another hour and I bet the men will have undressed too.”
I looked around the room again, the idea so foreign to me. Getting paid to disrobe…I could understand that. I’d come from a life where sometimes you had to do those kinds of things to keep yourself fed.
But to break rules just because? That, I didn’t get. What would it be like to be that uninhibited? To be that unrestrained?
I shook my head. The whole thing was beyond my grasp. It also had me pissed. I felt undermined. And disrespected. When Matt had offered me Tuesdays and Wednesdays off a year ago, had that really been because I deserved it? Or was it simply his way of keeping his dealings outside of my radar?
“This is fucking bullshit,” I muttered, my anger directed more at my own stupidity than anything else.
JC raised a questioning brow.
Hell if I was going to explain myself to him. “What is it you do anyway?”
“This and that. Invest in projects sometimes. Hang out and do what I want the rest of the time.”
So not the charmer, but one of those guys. A trust fund baby that kept up his lifestyle by giving money to other people who did the work while he partied it up and collected.
I couldn’t help myself. I rolled my eyes.
“I could also help you with that stick up your ass.” JC’s tone was serious, but his expression held a glimmer of something more playful. Teasing.
I narrowed my glare. “By what, replacing it with your stick up my ass?”
“Ha ha. Funny. I mean, if you wanted to…” He paused as if giving me a chance to jump in and agree. Fat fucking chance. “But that’s not where I was going with that. I was offering something else. Not was—am. I am offering something else.”
Sure. Something else. Right. “Is that one of the things you do? One of your side jobs?”
“I don’t take money for it, if that’s what you’re implying. No. It’s not a job. I just see that you’re pretty tense. I think I could help you with that.” He was matter-of-fact where I’d been sarcastic. Genuine where I’d been caustic.
It left me speechless, and I couldn’t even begin to say why. Because he had the upper hand? Because I’d been thrown off my managerial pedestal? Because the way he looked at me was the most appreciatively I’d been looked at in who knows how long? Like he wanted to eat me up, but also like he wanted to savor me.
Like he knew that there was a very small but very persistent part of me that wanted just that.
“He helped me out,” Natalie said. “Honestly, you can’t hang out with JC without learning how to chill a bit.”
He didn’t glance up at her, his eyes still glued to me. I wondered what exactly he’d taught her. What method was used to educate her? Surely it was as shameless and vulgar as I suspected.
“Yeah, no thank you.” Not that I was a prude. I was just uninterested in the freeness of character that seemed to be present. I preferred control. I preferred restraint.
I looked around the room again. There was a couple making out on the loveseat and a threesome half-dancing, half-dry-sexing on one of the tables. The woman straddling the guy’s lap was now gyrating over his crotch as he bit his lip, lust marked heavily in his expression.
My disgust must have been apparent because JC said, “Hey, don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.” He studied me for a second. Then he stood and started toward me. “You haven’t, have you? Tried it, I mean. Haven’t had a good lap dance. Haven’t had any lap dance.”
He was taller than I’d thought he’d be, his height reaching a good six or seven inches above my standing height, putting him around six feet. And the way he pierced me with his eyes, the way he goaded me with his libidinous undertones, I felt smaller than usual.
Smaller and hornier.
The hairs on my arms stood up and my heart fluttered at his nearness and his hypnotic voice. I stumbled on my response. “I hav-v’nt.”
He nodded to Natalie. “Wanna show her?”
“Um, no thanks,” I said, standing up before Natalie could answer. Did he really think I’d let her give me a lap dance? No way. I shivered at the thought, though, not entirely sure it was in disgust.
JC shook his head. “Not for you, babydoll. You’d freak. The girls here will show you.”
Normally I’d correct him for calling me babydoll. And I’d definitely walk out before the insane scene went farther. But I was glued for some reason, my feet planted to their spot as JC pulled the chair I’d abandoned out in front of me. He didn’t have to ask anyone to sit there—the girl wearing the French lingerie silently sank into the seat. She braced her arms behind her and spread her legs. Wide.
Natalie took three sultry steps and stopped between the seated woman’s knees. She turned to face out and began her dance. Her movements were subtle at first, a slow tilt of her hip to one side, a sensuous slide of her pelvis to the other. Soon she rested her hands on the other’s legs and bent her own knees as she twisted down—her ass practically sitting in the lap behind her—then twisted back up.
There was a palpable tension that spread throughout the room, but JC’s guests remained in line. I’d expected whoops and cheers to erupt, but none did. The only sounds besides the faint thump of the club music on the other side of the wall were the soft brush of Natalie’s thighs as they slid back and forth against each other, the swish of her ponytail, and the ragged breaths of both the girls in front of me.
My own breathing had become jagged and I had to concentrate to keep it quiet. It wasn’t easy. Natalie’s dance was hypnotic. Her body moved to a definitive beat that no one but her could hear, yet it could be felt. It was seductive. It was foreplay. Watching made my thighs quiver. Made my nipples pebble. Made my panties wet.
A shiver ran down my spine as I let desire spread throughout me. It wasn’t just the sexual aspect that had me so turned on. Nor was it the artistic beauty of her movements. It was something else, something I couldn’t name, something I didn’t quite recognize.
“It’s extremely sensual, isn’t it?”
I startled, not realizing JC was so close behind me. Or maybe I did know and that was the real cause of my body’s simmering arousal. But I didn’t know how to answer his question.
It was sensual.
And that pissed me off because I wanted it to be porn and not whatever odd thing it was in actuality. I definitely didn’t want it to be this thing that flooded me so entirely.
So I didn’t answer.
JC seemed to take my silence as an invitation to say more. “You know what makes it so hot? Besides the beautiful naked women and the fluidity of Natalie’s movements, it’s hot because of what it is. A transfer of power.”
He must have leaned closer toward me because now I could feel his breath skate across my shoulder as he spoke. “When you get a lap dance, you can’t touch. You want to—God, you want to—but you have to let the pleasure tease you and take over while you remain helpless. It seems at first that it may be easy, doesn’t it? That it’s just about keeping control. Something I’m sure you excel at. But it’s really exactly the opposite. It’s about giving up the control. The control belongs to Natalie. Lena has given her the power. She’s promised to abide by her rules—rules she might not like or agree with. And in return, Natalie gives her the pleasure she’s looking for.”
He bent in farther, his breath tickling my ear and stirring my blood as he said, “Tell me you don’t want to be her.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t. I don’t even like regular dancing.”
“Not Natalie, Gwen. That’s not who you want to be. You want to be Lena. You want to be that free.”
My breath caught as unexpected tears pricked my eyes.
I wanted to turn and slap JC. He was cocky and arrogant to think he knew anything about me. He didn’t. He was guessing, trying to get in my pants most likely, and with his guesses he’d struck a nerve. Struck it hard enough that, if I were the free person that he clearly stated I wasn’t, I would have slapped him. Hard.
But I wasn’t upset because he was guessing or even because of why he was guessing. I was upset because his guesses were right. I did want to be free. I was a tight-ass. I was boxed in. I existed on routine and missed a whole helluva lot of pleasure.
What he didn’t know—he couldn’t know—was that I’d chosen to be that way for a reason. It didn’t matter what I wanted, this was how I knew how to survive. Fuck him for trying to insinuate that I’d made the wrong decision. He wasn’t me. He didn’t know.
I didn’t slap him. And I didn’t say anything. I simply spun around and left the Viper, pulling the door shut behind me. But beyond that slight outburst, I refused to let JC get to me. I refused to think about the choices I’d made and the character I’d taken upon myself. I refused to let myself wonder if there really was any other way I could be.
The rest of my shift went by without me returning to the room upstairs. I convinced myself I could forget about the whole experience. That meant I wouldn’t tell Matt I knew about his informal deal.
And I sure as hell wasn’t working another shift on Tuesday as long as I could help it.