Chapter Ten
I think about the feel of his hand around mine all day—warm, dry, and protective. It’s the last feeling I need to be most worried about. Protective. Am I having some kind of breakdown? Am I losing touch with reality? Because Kip is a customer, the roughest kind. He’s not my white knight. It’s men like him I need saving from.
But not tonight, because he doesn’t show up. Not even when I’ve danced my third song, not when I’ve worked the floor. A different man takes me to the back rooms, and I tell myself I’m not disappointed. I made the money I needed to, even if my hands smell like cheap cologne and come. I’m safe another day. That’s all I can ask for. That’s all I can want.
So I head back onto the floor and find a rumpled suit to feel me up. He does it discreetly, copping a feel while only paying for a lap dance on the public floor. I let him because it’s easier than making a scene—and wince when he pinches instead of pets.
He grins, drunk and sideways. “Let me take you home, Honey.”
My eyes flutter closed briefly. I’m tired of saying no. “I can’t do that, but I can put on a show for you, right here.”
His hand closes around my wrist—hard. “I want more than a show, you little tease.”
I’m tired of saying no, but I’m even more tired of being ignored. “Let go of me,” I say evenly.
Of course that just makes him squeeze tighter, until I wince. I know there’ll be bruises tomorrow. I’ll have to use my foundation around my wrist. All in a day’s work.
Then someone is standing behind me. I feel their presence and a sense of relief. But it’s a disappointment when he speaks.
“You heard the lady,” he says. Not Kip.
The man looks up at Blue, clearly unaware of the threat he’s under. He winks. “I heard, but I come here so I don’t have to listen to them talk.”
Blue does something fast and painful to the man’s wrist, and then I’m free. I stand up and back away. It’s one thing to mess with one of us, but messing with Blue is a really stupid move. Blue is a ticking time bomb. I don’t want to be near him when he goes off.
“You’re done,” he tells the man. His voice is low, but everyone is watching now. They know what’s happening—and they came here for a show, after all.
The man doesn’t leave. “What the hell? I didn’t touch her. She was just a whiny bitch.”
“Then you won’t mind not seeing her. I don’t want to see your ugly face in the club again.”
For a second it looks like the man will fight Blue, which would be insane because Blue is twice as big and three times as tough. The guy is a used-up frat boy, trying to find his kicks after a long day at the office. Whereas Blue is two hundred and fifty pounds of tatted muscle. But a few drinks and a bruised ego can make a person dumb.
The guy stands up, hands curled into fists. “Who the fuck do you—”
And maybe I am having a mental breakdown, because I reach for him then. I place a hand on the arm of this stranger. “Just go,” I say softly. “It’ll only be worse if you stay.”
I’m nobody. Hasn’t he just said as much? Not big and strong and intimidating like Blue. But the man seems to hear me. His eyes focus on mine for a second, and he takes a small step back. He mutters and curses under his breath as he grabs his jacket and walks away, but at least he doesn’t start a fight.
When he is gone, Blue stares at me. He still looks pissed. If anything, he looks more pissed. “What the fuck?” he says.
My eyes widen. He’s pissed at me? “I didn’t start anything with him. I didn’t complain.”
He shakes his head. “That’s the fucking point, Honey. You never complain. But you let him touch you. I saw it.”
I didn’t let him do anything. As if it’s up to me. “If you want me to complain every time someone cops a feel, that’s going to be all night long.”
Something flickers in his eyes. Anger? Regret? Then he snorts and looks away. “You’re done too.”
What? My heart skips a beat. I need this job. Travel is the most dangerous thing we can do. Two girls on the bus would mean attention. Someone to remember us when my father sent people asking. And I knew he would. He’d never give up. “I didn’t do anything,” I whispered.
I didn’t complain. That should have been enough. It was what I’d been trained to do.
“For tonight,” Blue said gruffly. “You’re done for tonight. Can’t dance like that anyway.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about until I feel a drop trail down my cheek. Only then do I realize I’ve started crying. Which means my mascara is surely running. I must look awful. My throat tightens. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”
Blue just grunts.
I almost run off the floor, all too conscious of the eyes on me. There are always eyes on me. Everything is a performance. I don’t even bother changing out of my sheer bra and panties. I just tug sweatpants and a tank top on and push out the door, my eyes hot with tears. But I can’t go home like this. Not yet.
The more I feel exposed, the more I need to be alone.
So I make a turn around the building and grab the fire escape. Metal creaks as I haul myself the four feet off the ground and climb the rest of the way up. I dump the duffel bag without preamble and move into a plié. Grand plié. Over and over, fast enough to trip and fall, but I don’t care. I want to fall.
“Honey,” a low voice says.
And I do trip. I’m lucky I don’t twist my ankle, but I manage to take the brunt of it on my palms. Then a strong pair of hands is helping me up, dusting the grime off my pants, inspecting my torn palms.
“Jesus,” he says. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I look up at him, face shadowed in the moonlight. He’s so beautiful.
And so cruel to make me want him.
I push away, ready to go back down the stairs, but I slide on the loose gravel that collects on the rooftop like snowdrifts. My body pitches forward, far enough over that I see the glistening street and let out a shriek. Then strong hands grasp my waist and pull me back—hard. I’m flush against a wall. Not made of brick, this wall. It’s muscle and will, steady strength and heartbreak.
“Thank you,” I say, my voice low and rough like the floor we’re on.
I’m still breathing too hard, my heart beating too fast. I was so close to falling. And the scariest part is the relief I would have felt.
“You’re always afraid, aren’t you?” he murmurs against my ear.
I can’t see his expression; I’m still facing away from him. His hands are still on my hips. But I can imagine his eyes when he says it, that mix of curiosity and reluctance. As if he’s intrigued by me but he doesn’t want to be.
I can feel him thinking instead. He’s trying to figure me out. He’s trying to burrow inside me until he sees how I work. But it will never work, because I’m not real. I’m smoke and mirrors—a magic trick. If he looks too closely, I’ll disappear.
I pull away and face him.
He’s a study in textures—the shadowed stubble on his jaw, the dark pools of his eyes. The worn leather of his jacket and the thick denim of his jeans. He is his own planet, terrain to be explored, mountains to climb and oceans to drown in. My fingers itch to touch him, though I’m not sure where I would start. I think his hair, because I want to know if he can be soft there, at least. Because the rest of him is so hard.
But I don’t touch him. “What do you want?”
He looks away and blows out a breath. “To give you something.”
“Something else?” I still have the Taser he gave me in my bag. Not that I could have used it on him. He caught me totally by surprise just now.
He reaches into his jacket and pulls something out. This time I don’t need to hold it to know what it is. I don’t extend my hand either.
Instead a strangled sound escapes me. “A gun?”
His expression is almost bashful, a sharp contrast to the sleek heavy metal thing he holds so expertly. “I was thinking…the Taser isn’t enough. Not in this neighborhood. Not with you working here.”
“Is that even legal?” I squeak.
His low laugh is my answer. “Do you want to put your name in a database?”
“No, but I don’t want a gun either.” I’m more likely to accidentally shoot somebody than protect myself with that. The Taser was already a big step for me. The gun is downright terrifying. It’s too much. I can’t take it.
He seems to understand that. He nods and puts it back in his jacket. “If you change your mind…”
I stare at him, both confused and captivated. What strange gifts he’s brought for me. First the Taser. Now the gun. They’re both so violent. I hate violence. But they are also protection—and I need protection.
He’s like a cat bringing me a dead mouse as a gift. Disturbing. And sweet.
“Do you want me to go?” he asks.
I should tell him yes. I should tell him to leave. “Don’t go.”
Christ, I’m in too deep. How long has it been since I was attracted to a man? I’m not sure I ever have been. I had a crush on the bodyguard, but that was girlish—despite the adult things he did to me. There had barely been time, or opportunity, to look at men before I got engaged to Byron. And now I’m so far into this man, into Kip, that I don’t know how to back away.
Kip smiles a little. “Then I’ll stay.”
I narrow my eyes, playfully suspicious. “Now that you have me here, what are you going to do with me?”
His smile gives me all kinds of suggestions. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“On what you like.”
Oh, he’s good. A little spark of pleasure lights up in me. It may just be a line he gives all the girls, but it works. It’s more seductive than his scruff or his muscles or his boots—the idea that he cares. I dance every day, trying to please men I don’t even know. And here is this one, trying to please me.
“I like to dance.”
“I’d like to see that.”
“Then why don’t you come into the club?”
“Not like that. I’d like to see you dance the way you want to.”
I’m not sure that’s even possible. If I know he’s there, I’ll be dancing for him. I’ve been trained too well—by Byron, by my father. I even perform for Clara, in a way. There is no freedom with other people. Only in being alone.
“No dancing,” I say, strangely disappointed.
“Then let’s lie down,” he says gently. Maybe he knows how hard this is for me, to get close. Maybe it’s hard for him too. “We can look at the stars and let them dance for us.”
My heart clenches with something like wistfulness.
He’s not even gone, but I already miss him. I’ve had so little kindness lately. Or ever. And here he is with a whole weapons cache full of kindness. The killing game. I remember what Blue said about him. Even Ivan warned me away.
Kip stands there looking gruff and intimidating, like he would take on the whole world for looking at him sideways. There are scars on his knuckles that say he tried. And there’s a bend in his nose that says he’s lost. But despite all that violence, he touches me with desire.
He already has my body, already bought and used up. But he wants something else.
He wants me.
* * *
My father loved my mother. I was young when she died—when he killed her—but I remember that much.
I remember how he doted on her, giving her everything she asked for and more. I remember how she would laugh and tell him not to spoil her. I would sneak out of my bed when they threw parties. Even in a crowd of people, all dressed in elaborate gowns and tuxedos, they were easy to spot. She always had a smile, and he only had eyes for her. They would dance in the middle of the room, eclipsing all the other people.
And then one day my father came to me, eyes red and swollen from crying, voice thick with grief, to tell me she had died. I think I knew then he had done it. It was the lack of revenge that told me. If anyone else had shot her, he would have destroyed the whole city to avenge her instead of holding a small closed-casket funeral in the rain. A casket I wanted to believe was empty. But was it really better to believe she had abandoned me?
Maybe that was why I slept with my bodyguard. It had been a way to be close to my mother, to be like her, years after she was gone. Of course then I didn’t understand that a twenty-one-year-old man interested in a fourteen-year-old girl was wrong. I don’t think he even cared about my body. He was a rush junkie, and I was his fix. Fucking the boss’s daughter was just another risk. The men on my father’s payroll didn’t exactly have printed resumes and pension plans.
They never lived long enough to need one.
On the roof of the strip club, we are a thousand miles away from that world. Far away from tuxedos and ball gowns. Far from love and jealousy and revenge.
There is only a man who wants to fuck me. And touch me and make me hump his boot.
A man who will pay for the right.
Inside the walls of the club, he pays in cash. On the roof he pays with gifted weapons and an unexpected gentleness. He pays with thoughtfulness, but it’s a currency all the same. And so I let myself relax. He puts aside the gun and lays his jacket down like a blanket. Then I’m lying with my head on his arm, looking up.
“How long have you lived here?” I ask.
I don’t mean for the question to come out, but it does. We shouldn’t get personal. Fucking and sucking, but no questions. And no answers.
“Not long,” he says, looking up at the sky. “I don’t stay put very long.”
“That sounds nice,” I murmur. Never putting down roots. Never having them yanked out.
“Sometimes. Other times I wonder what it would be like to have everything I need, right at my fingertips. Food, a bed. Sex.”
“You have those things.” It’s not supposed to be suggestive. I just mean he can buy them, in a restaurant or a motel. Or a strip club.
But when he looks at me, there’s heat in his eyes. And resolve, as if he’s finally taking what’s his. The words change and tighten. They become about the taste of him and the warm jacket we lie on. They become about the sex I’ll soon give him.
His gaze sweeps over my body, stretched out. I’m wearing yoga pants and a tank top, but the way he looks at me, I’m already naked. He strips me with just his eyes, leaving me bare and vulnerable and strangely unashamed.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, his voice hoarse.
I flinch, because it’s what Byron used to tell me. Of course when he said it, it was a compliment to himself, praise for finding the perfect accessory to his life.
Kip notices. “You don’t like that word.”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” I laugh softly. “It’s complicated. I look like my mother.”
That’s what my father always told me, with the bitter light of grief in his eyes.
There must be grief in my eyes too, because Kip says, “She’s gone.”
“It was a long time ago. I thought I was over it, but for some reason I think of her a lot more now.” Maybe because Clara is paying for her sins. Maybe because I am too.
He is quiet a moment. “I think we never really get over the past. It’s always shaping us.”
Then how is it shaping you? But I am careful not to ask that question. I think with the quietude and the starlit intimacy, he might actually tell me. And then where would I be? I can’t care about a man. I can’t care about anything but my sister. All I can carve out for myself is a single night with a man I choose.
Because it isn’t really about payment when I take his hand and place it on my breast.
A breath leaves him on a sigh as his hand cups me. Broad fingers stroke my skin above the edge of my tank top. A heavy palm warms me through the fabric. I can still hear him saying I’m beautiful, but he holds back now, thoughtful. “I see you,” he finally murmurs. “Only you.”
It’s his way of grounding me in the present, and it’s working. He does see me, because he doesn’t know anything of my past. He doesn’t know where I came from or where I’m going. I’m so tired of being my father’s daughter, my mother’s daughter, my sister’s protector. For this moment I’m just me. I’m only a warm body for him to use, and I need to be that for him.
“Do you want me to dance for you now?” I whisper even though I said I wouldn’t.
He shakes his head slowly, eyes dark and solemn. “You don’t have to dance. You don’t even have to move. Just let me make you feel good.”
I don’t remember what good is anymore, but his strong hands show me. They push up the hem of my tank top, exposing me to the cool night air. They trace circles over my skin. He pulls the fabric over my breasts, sucking in a breath when he sees the lace bra I have on.
His hand looks dark against the bright red, powerful over the sheer fabric. He strokes his thumb back and forth across the tip of my breast, hardening the nipple until it makes a point. My body responds to him without me doing anything—like he said, I don’t even have to move. My hands remain at my sides, my head resting on the folded edge of the jacket that is my pillow. My head is propped enough that I can watch him stroke my breasts while I lay passive, and it’s so easy to lie there, so easy to let him, so easy to feel pleasure arc through me without moving a muscle.
He runs a finger over the curves of my small breasts, traces the lines of the bra. Then he slips his hand underneath, touching me without seeing. It is a shocking warmth, his hand on my breast. These breasts I’ve bared to so many men. They are covered now—by him.
The lacy fabric stretches over his hand, pushed up with no room to give. Underneath, his hand shifts, finding my nipple between thumb and forefinger. He squeezes gently, and a soft sound escapes me, like a whimper.
“You feel so good. You feel like fucking heaven.” He rolls my nipple between his fingers. “This is what I dream about. Keeping you in bed, bringing you food and wine, touching you as much as I want.”
My eyes fall shut, imagining his fantasy. Instead of a stripper in a seedy club, I am his personal sex slave, wrapped in silks and desire. My body grows warm at the thought, wet at the core. “Kip.”
“Would you like that?” he murmurs. I think he knows exactly what he’s doing to me. “Would you lie there and let me touch you as long as I want to? Even when you fall asleep, I’d keep my hands on you. On these pretty breasts. On your pussy.”
And then, as if to illustrate his point, he removes his hand from my bra and slides it down, underneath the waistband of my pants. He doesn’t stop until he dips his fingers into the slickness pooling there.
“Fuck, you do like this.” He actually sounds shocked.
It makes me laugh—though it’s almost a giggle. I didn’t know I was even capable of making that sound, but then a lot of things are a surprise tonight. Apparently I’m the type of girl who can drink alcohol with a boy she likes, who will let him finger her while she plays the docile, innocent victim.
Of course, I’m not innocent. And I’m not really sure I like him.
“Don’t stop,” I say.
That earns me a slight smile. “I wasn’t planning to.”
He runs his fingers through the wetness there, but without purpose, without the speed I’d need to get off. He’s just feeling me, exploring me, the same way he did my breasts. My legs are already parted enough to give him access, but without planning it, my knees fall apart. It’s an invitation, and he doesn’t miss a beat, pushing deeper. But still with lazy strokes.
Not enough. A whimper escapes me.
And it sounds like acceptance. It must be acceptance, because he pushes up and slings a leg over my chest. He pulls off his shirt, and I can see his chest in full glory, broad and strong, covered in tribal tattoos and scars. He’s dangerous. He’s primal.
For tonight he’s mine.
Then he’s undoing his jeans, pulling out his cock. He presses the tip to my lips—without foreplay or finesse. His body blocks the moonlight. The only thing I can see is the shadow of him. The only thing I can smell is the musk of his precum.
He paints my lips with the salty liquid, the same way he used my wetness to dampen my nipples. But this time he isn’t the one cleaning it off. This time it’s me licking my lips, tasting him for the first time.
He tastes like danger and pleasure, like risk and reward.
“Open for me,” he groans.
I open my lips, letting him inside, almost grateful, relishing the way his whole body stiffens. I breathe him in, the salty scent of his cock, already smelling of me and him—as if we’ve had sex. He stares down at me as I swirl my tongue around the head of his cock, and I don’t look away.
There are rules, about looking him in the eye. About using a condom, even for this.
But I’m breaking them. My tongue and my lips and even the edge of my teeth work to give him pleasure, pushing faster and harder than I’ve ever done before—not because I want it to end, but because I know it will. And when this is over, I want him to remember me.
Foolish. Reckless. I don’t care. Right now I want that as much as survival—more.
He grunts and finds a rhythm, and I match my sucking to him, opening my throat to let him in deeper, using my sucks and my tongue in tandem to push him over the edge. Just like he pushed me. It’s a double-edged sword between us, but right now he’s the one being cut. He’s the one shuddering, groaning, almost humping the floor as he fucks my mouth.
A lock of my hair falls into my face, jerked by the rough motion of his body and mine. He reaches down…and carefully smooths the lock from my forehead. Even though I’m lying on a leather jacket, arms pinned by my sides, getting fucked, being used—the touch is almost tender.
“Christ,” he gasps, and then warm come fills my mouth.
I swallow it quickly, only to find more spurting from the tip. He has so much come, as if he hasn’t climaxed in forever, like he’s been saving it all for me. I swallow again and again, until only the faint salty flavor of him remains, and he pulls away.
He runs his thumb down my cheek, then lower, wiping away a drop of his come from the corner of my lips. “Thank you,” he says.
I let him tuck the blanket around me, warming me up. Only then do I realize I’m cold. Freezing. I’m still shivering, until he slips under with me, wrapping his strong arms around me. “Shh,” he soothes.
“I didn’t say anything,” I say.
I feel his smile. “I heard you anyway, Honey. I always do. You don’t even have to say anything. You just have to feel, and I can hear it like a goddamn church bell.”
“And you’re a religious man?” I ask, smiling sleepily.
“No, never. But you make me want to be. I want to worship you.”
His cock is already half-erect against my leg. He follows through on his promise, worshipping me with his lips and tongue and fingers until I writhe on that roof, until I open my mouth and choke out incoherent words, pleading, crying, needing, while the heavy moon looks on with satisfaction.
His cock spreads me wide, filling me until I can only rock my hips up, riding the edge.
He grunts on every thrust, a primal sound that spurs me on. His breath is hot against my skin. His hips spreading my legs wide. I’m completely invaded by him, taken over, wanting more.
“Please, please, please,” I beg, shameless, free of the shackles I wear below this roof, onstage.
But it’s too much. I’m too loud. Especially when he moves to hit a different spot inside me. I moan, and his hand comes up to cover my mouth. That is what pushes me over—the rough feel of his palm on my lips, being quieted by him, controlled. I come in a burst of color and sound, sensation rolling over me, making me clench around his cock as it pulses with come.