“Good work, ladies. Wrap your leg real tight around the pole and give it a good, slow, sexy slide. Nice and easy. Just like lowering onto your man’s dick.”

Laughter and groaning snickers broke out. She wondered how the three lesbians in the left corner felt about the sexist remark, but from their bawdy laughter, Amy surmised they got the joke.

“Tom would have a heart attack if I tried any of this on him.”

She swung her head to look at Missy Sanderson and captured a giggle with a hand over her mouth as her friend and pole-mate slid, jerked to a stop, slid again, and jerked to yet another stop.

Poor Missy. If that’s her idea of a slow, sexy slide, no wonder Tom couldn’t work up any interest.

“Let me try,” she griped as Missy bowed and waved her on.

“Amy!”

She looked at the instructor as the former stripper turned dance teacher motioned with her body. “Remember, the pole is your friend. Don’t fight gravity. Make it work for you!”

“Make gravity work for me?” she muttered irritably under her breath. “Get back to me in forty years when my tits are bouncing off my knees.”

Grabbing the pole as instructed, she flung her weight and swung around, shifting her body until, with a mighty test of her muscles, she flipped upside down, wrapped her leg around the pole, held on for good luck, and gracefully slid to the floor.

She gave her performance a solid seven-point-five. Now the dismount? Look away everyone because scrambling back to her feet required a modified forward roll, two grunts, and an awkward front handspring.

“Bravo, Ms. Peters! Not quite sure what happened at the end,” Missy laughed with her face comically scrunched. “But the slide was damn impressive.”

Feeling goofy, Amy bent, put her hands on her knees and made a white girl’s lame excuse for a butt twerk.

“Oh, my God!” Missy shrieked melodramatically. Covering her eyes with one hand, she waved the other. “Help me. I’ve gone blind!”

A ruckus across the room got their attention. Their instructor, dubbed Pole Dance Barbie, was enthusiastically encouraging a team of baby boomers who made the whole sliding on a metal rod exercise look good.

Their group of a dozen women of all ages and sizes wrapped up this week’s dance maneuvers class by applauding everyone’s efforts.

Pole Dance Barbie cheered and beamed, “See you next week, gals. And don’t forget. A slow, sexy slide is what every man wants.”

Missy snickered and made a rude gesture.

“What every guy wants,” she murmured so only Amy could hear, “is to feel like a man. The rest is wrapping paper and ribbon.”

Skirting a gaggle of yoga mat toting ladies and groups of kids waiting to be picked up, they made their way through the dilapidated community center located a short subway ride from her Brooklyn neighborhood.

The whiff of a musty funk in the old building’s hallways gave way to an aroma cloud of coffee and what smelled like singed popcorn when they hit the main lobby. Colorful signs and handmade posters were everywhere her eyes looked. She liked the rundown hotspot. It had real Brooklyn character—not like those gleaming million dollar gyms and fancy meeting rooms popping up in the more affluent sectors of the city.

“Good God, Missy,” she squawked when her companion dropped everything on the floor to swoop down on an ancient water fountain hanging on the wall. “You’re the only person I know who doesn’t run screaming from the communal spout. Ew!”

Her friend shrugged off the comment and wiped her chin in a scathingly self-deprecating way. If anyone had less blue-collar experience in life than Melissa Sanderson, she didn’t know who that person was.

Born the only daughter to a wealthy family of powerful industrialists with ties reaching back into the nineteenth century, Amy’s mom called Missy an upside-down girl. Despite access and privilege most regular folks only dream of, Melissa Sanderson lived by modest means and had no more in the way of luxuries than anyone else they hung around.

She also had an older brother who lacked the opportunity to be anything other than what he was—an heir with a secure, if somewhat dull, future.

And Amy knew this about him because she’d been secretly sleeping with David Sanderson for the last two years.

Her touchy conscience let out a groan and asked, ‘Why secret?’

Because she worked for him.

And also because his mother was a domineering bitch with a personal ax to grind. As head of Beck Industries, Quinn Sanderson insisted on a hard and fast rule of zero tolerance for employee fraternization of any kind.

There was a shit ton more to the story than that, but she wasn’t in the mood to be picking it apart.

Missy fumbled with the buttons on her jacket and asked, “What do you have on for tonight? Are the Knicks playing?”

Seemingly random questions about the Knicks were as close to acknowledging the elephant in the room as they would ever get. And another reason why she adored her quirky friend.

Once David owned his feelings for her, and they went from messing around to a real relationship, he moved heaven and earth to create a level of secrecy surrounding their involvement rivaling anything the government could dream up. And he did it to protect her, not because he was a pussy and afraid of what his mean mommy might say.

The obvious answer to their dilemma was simple to outside eyes. Because he was the guy in the executive suite and could hardly walk away, she should take the bullet and resign from her position at Beck Industries.

David, thank goodness, would have none of it. He was the first person to cheer her on. In her nearly seven years with the company, skill, hard work and perseverance had moved her from all-around gofer to senior team leader.

Amy was confident that if she played her cards right, she’d be in line for a killer promotion. Well, once she finally finished her graduate degree in business. But until then they were living a hidden life.

There were just two people besides her and David who knew what was going on. Missy and her boyfriend, Tom.

Approaching their arrangement with a double helping of cloak and dagger, she and David operated in a world of burner phones, secret credit cards, and a small apartment ten blocks from the house her family had lived in for generations.

They never went out in public together. Ever.

David’s sudden fascination with the NBA was nothing more than duck and cover. Season tickets and a hard and fast rule that no one disturbed him when the Knicks played plus the occasional out-of-town game thrown in for shits and giggles gave them a well-planned second life where their love flourished while they made quiet plans for the future.

And that’s the way it would have gone until in a horrible fluke of bad luck they stumbled upon Missy and Tom at an outdoor flea market. In Connecticut of all places! Who the hell does that happen to?

From that awkward moment on, they’d never once discussed the incident. Not directly. Missy asking about the Knicks was a quiet nod without stepping over a line.

“I’m making lobster mac and cheese.” She adjusted her heavy shoulder bag when they stopped at the front door. Two little kids raced by and nearly knocked Amy over on their way out.

“Yum! Lobster! Let me guess,” Missy chuckled. “Pinterest?”

Rolling her eyes she made a face. “Guilty.”

Winding a scarf around her neck as they stepped into the gloomy, damp cold of a mid-November Saturday afternoon, she made light of her latest online addiction.

“Hey! Don’t be dissing Pinterest. As a resource that shit is platinum! I’m serious,” Amy howled when Missy laughed her off. “Wait till you see the theme for the project reveal. What we’re trying to do is such next level stuff that I felt the launch needed shaking up.”

Walking arm-in-arm along the busy sidewalk, Missy steered them away from a potential face-plant hazard and merrily teased, “What? Watery shrimp cocktails and pigs-in-a-blanket don’t float your boat anymore?”

Gritting her teeth, Amy dialed back the sneer in her voice. “Your mother will be there. Dim Sum and Champers won’t do it.”

There wasn’t much more to say after that. After setting a date to meet early next week for lunch, they went their separate ways with Missy grabbing a cab and Amy riding the subway rails.

The cold, hard seat under her butt didn’t offer a lot of comfort as the metal subway car bounced and creaked along. At each stop, a blast of cold, stagnant air accompanied the whoosh of the sliding doors opening and closing.

She was irritated and getting more put out by the second. Not because of the cloying perfume wafting off someone nearby or the obnoxiously whiney voice of the gum chewing girl arguing with her mother sitting directly across from her.

No. Her angst came from a growing aversion to the multi-layered covertness pervading her life. It was one thing to remain professionally aloof from her lover in public and another altogether to stand silently by while he paraded the crusty-bitchified Violet Brubaker on his arm under the approving gaze of his mother.

If only life could be as she saw it in her head. Like maybe Violet accidentally tripping and falling flat on her face while Amy and a carefully placed foot surreptitiously helped.

The only reason she hadn’t scratched the other woman’s eyes out was that she knew the bald truth of the so-called relationship between the fabulously eligible bachelor and his society approved arm candy.

Violet Brubaker was a shark. With an agenda. She was no more interested in David and his millions than she was in Amy’s existence. To her, their arrangement was just business. Business she was well compensated to perform.

She didn’t know what the woman’s motivations were for the unusual arrangement and didn’t care. As long as she played her part and kept her hands off David, Amy stayed quiet.

But she didn’t like it.

Shifting in her seat, she noted the upcoming stops and watched light and dark flicker past the windows.

Just because she wasn’t rich or educated at some fancy private school didn’t mean she felt like less. Shit. Half those people in their fancy mansions and penthouse apartments never had to work an actual day in their whole lives.

She was who she was, thank you very much, and had no interest in rolling over. If David needed a beard to parade around town, then so did she. And his name was Joshua. Joshua Riker.

Clutching her bag close and readying for her upcoming stop, Amy snickered softly thinking about the tall, hipster barista who occasionally escorted her to business functions.

David hated him and for a good reason. Josh made no secret of the fact that he very much wanted to visit Amy’s crotch. With his dick.

His close-to-legendary, endlessly wandering, fuck-anything-and-everything-that-moves, dick.

Considering Joshua’s man-whore status, their arrangement might seem crazy, but she had no worries where Josh was concerned. He never crossed the friendship zone line owing in no small measure to the fact that she held all the cards.

Though being a certified guy-slut was in his barista job description—according to him it brings in the ladies—Amy inadvertently discovered the swaggering coffee jockey had a thing for wearing ladies’ panties. Hey, whatever floated his boat, but she wasn’t stupid. Panties were just the tip of Josh’s iceberg, but one well played winning hand was enough for her. He was welcome to his secrets. After all, who was she to judge?

Dashing in and out of a neighborhood grocer, she all but pushed her belly button and flew the last blocks until she was at the door to the modest little apartment where she and David could relax and put their feet up.

The Knicks were playing an away game tonight, so they broke out the playbook for out-of-town events and made detail-heavy plans to spend some stolen hours together. David found a service that texted updates of the games in real time. Like live blogging only from a sports freak standpoint. He studied the updates and memorized key points to maintain the pretense.

Racing around she flipped on the TV for background noise, stowed her bag, slipped on an apron, wrapped the ends twice around her waist and knotted it securely.

She was ready to rock and roll. Pulling a sheet of paper from her pocket with the printed Pinterest recipe, Amy laid out what she needed and set about creating a homemade meal guaranteed to make her lover surrender his socks and every other item of clothing.

On tonight’s menu was lobster mac and cheese followed by some straightforward ass in the air, fuck me from behind depravity. If his appetite wasn’t satisfied after that, she had a few more kinky ideas up her sleeve worth exploring.