So he’d taken a seat, knowing he’d see Todd sooner or later, and now, here the guy was, pushing a folded bill into the stripper’s g-string, and looking so lost in lust that Jack felt a hard pang of sympathy for Liz Marsh. It was one thing for a guy to spend an occasional night out at a strip bar with his buddies, but one look told Jack this guy had it bad. Now he knew what Todd was so damn possessed by. He was like those guys addicted to Internet porn, only it was strippers that fed Todd’s hunger.
Rising to his feet, Jack reached into his pocket for a tiny camera hidden in a lighter. He made a slow, casual trip around the room, stopping at various spots to discreetly photograph his quarry as Todd gaped lustfully up at the next fille to take the stage, this one starting her dance in a clingy pink mini-skirt and matching camisole.
Half an hour later, Jack sat nursing his second vodka, enjoying the female entertainment and keeping an eye on Todd.
What the hell did Liz Marsh see in this guy? Maybe he made a lot of money. Or maybe they were childhood sweethearts or something. Hell, could be anything, he supposed, but without even taking into consideration that the guy lied to his fiancée to come to a strip club every night, Jack wasn’t impressed with him.
He also found it hard to believe Liz couldn’t keep the jerk happy in bed. Her sexy outfit had revealed enough to tell him she had a killer body, and her mannerisms had told him she wasn’t afraid to use it. What kind of pleasure did Todd get from strippers that he couldn’t get from Liz and her delectable curves, her sweet, pouty mouth?
Damn, a split second before Ty had walked into his office, Jack had been tempted to kiss her. Inappropriate as hell, especially given the reason she was there and that she was engaged to be married, for God’s sake, but she’d been leaning so close, a musky, feminine scent emanating from her. Those pretty berry lips had been telling him she needed somebody good, while her lush breasts strained against the filmy fabric buttoned over them and—merde, how much could a man be expected to resist? What he wouldn’t have given to take those soft mounds in his hands, to kiss their taut nipples, to suck them until she begged for more. Hell—clearly, his fantasy after she’d left hadn’t given him nearly as much of her as he needed, since it was growing now, expanding in his head. He wanted to spread her thighs, sink his fingertips into her warm wet cunt, feel her fucking his fingers, getting wetter and wetter for him, until she came on his hand.
He let out a heated breath, pulling himself back to reality, remembering why he was here. Work. He had a job to do for Liz Marsh, and a fiancé whose angle he needed to figure out. Taking a deep breath, he refocused his attention on the little weasel across the room.
Maybe Todd had a thing for strippers because it was forbidden. Maybe the lure of doing something “naughty” was what drew him. At the moment, Jack thoroughly understood that lure, if in a different way. Still, if you were into the forbidden, Jack supposed, there was no woman—not even Liz Marsh—who would be able to keep you happy.
Pulling his mind back to the present, Jack saw Todd speaking with one of the girls who’d just finished dancing—a blonde co-ed-looking type with small, high breasts and nice legs. Still seated in one of the plush chairs surrounding each stage area, he mooned up at her as she stood next to him, flirting for money. Jack pulled out his camera and took a shot from his seat.
He watched a folded bill exchange hands just before the co-ed lifted one knee over Todd, straddling his hips. As the next song began to pump a hot slow rhythm through the sexually-charged room, the co-ed began a sensuous dance as she hovered over Liz’s fiancé. Jack decided this was well worth grabbing on film for Liz and made another trip around the room to be sure he got enough angles to capture Todd’s face and to make it very clear what he was doing.
An hour later, Todd had paid three hot women for lap dances before disappearing with two more into a back room. Although Jack couldn’t follow, he snapped a few shots of the nearly-naked women leading Todd through the door labeled “private dances.”
Even as badly as he felt now for Liz Marsh and as much as he was not looking forward to telling her what he’d learned, he hoped like hell she’d want to let him take her mind off her troubles. Admittedly, sitting in the club watching comely strippers dance down to tiny g-strings had gotten him hot, but it was his fantasy about Liz that truly had desire burning from his chest down to his rock-hard erection.
* * * * *
Just hearing Jack Wade’s deep voice on the phone the next day had made Liz wet, even as she sat in her cubicle at the downtown ad agency where she worked, surrounded by other co-workers.
“I need to meet with you,” he’d said.
She’d attempted to still the heat flowing through her veins and tried to sound halfway professional. “At your office? I could come at lunch.”
“See you then.”
Now she stepped out of the taxi she’d hailed a few blocks away, in too much of a hurry to walk. Anxious to see what Jack had learned about Todd’s whereabouts last night, she nearly burst through the door of his office, but stopped short, remembering how sexy she knew Jack had thought her yesterday afternoon, and wanting to be that way for him again.
She was wearing a business suit, but fortunately the white blouse beneath was rather sheer, enough that she kept her black jacket buttoned all day whenever she wore this particular piece of apparel. Now, standing on Royal Street, she slipped the jacket from her shoulders and looked down to glimpse the white lace of her bra showing through, the fabric clinging nicely to her curves. Her skirt had ridden up her thighs a bit in the cab, but she didn’t tug it down. Finally, taking a glance at herself in the shop window next to Jack’s door, she pulled the clip from her chignon and let her hair fall wild and wavy about her shoulders.
Feeling adequately sexy and nearly as anxious to see Jack Wade as she was to find out about Todd, she went inside.
He sat with his feet propped on the corner of his desk eating a sandwich. As the door closed behind her, he lowered his feet to the floor, set the sandwich on a paper plate, and sat up straighter.
“Hello, Mr. Wade.”
His look bordered strangely between lustful and gentle. “Call me Jack.”
“All right, Jack.” She sat down in the chair across from him. “What have you found?”
He let out a long sigh. “I know where Todd goes every night and what he does. I took pictures for you.” He handed a stack across the desk to her. “Unfortunately, they’re not very good quality. The room was dark, but the camera I used should’ve worked anyway. I can only guess I got a bad roll of film.”
Liz thumbed through the photos. At first she wasn’t quite sure what she was seeing, but through the shadowy lighting, she soon made out bare breasts, nipples pointing, and realized she was seeing a naked girl in a man’s lap.
“I know it’s hard to tell,” Jack said, “but the guy in the picture is Todd. I followed him to Club Venus on Bourbon last night. He got lap dances from several strippers before takin’ two of ‘em to a back room for a private dance.”
Liz blinked and looked at the picture again, trying to absorb what Jack was telling her. The guy in the picture didn’t look like Todd to her. Of course, she could barely see his face, hidden in shadow—it could have been any man. But Todd wasn’t the type to patronize a strip club. If anything, he was Mr. Straight Arrow, as clean cut and straitlaced as a guy comes. The very idea that he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to had been a hard conclusion to reach, but now that she had, she’d expected to discover he was seeing some urbane executive like himself—some thin-faced, thin-lipped, glasses-wearing, briefcase-toting, hair-in-a-severe-bun, high-powered woman who’d turned Todd on by climbing the corporate ladder at a record-setting pace. Or maybe seeing someone like her—the regular her, not the lusty, sexy, see-through-blouse her that Jack Wade knew, but someone with even more of the prim and proper qualities Todd valued. In fact, she’d even convinced herself that was why he’d strayed—because she wasn’t sophisticated enough, or pr
im and mannered enough.
“Are you sure it was him? Because this isn’t Todd’s style.”
Jack appeared to be pained on her behalf. “I’m sorry, chere…but yeah, I’m sure. I followed him every step of the way from his building.”
“Did you see him come directly out of his office inside the building?”
He blinked. “Mais, I saw him come out of the building, not his exact office, but I recognized him right away from the picture you gave me.”
She drew in a deep breath. “Because a lot of men look like Todd. He’s not exactly unusual—your basic suit and tie guy. And in a building that big, a lot of men could look like him at a glance.”
Jack slowly tilted his head. “Darlin’,” he said gently, “I really am sorry. I know this must hurt, but I’m sure that’s your fiancé.”
Liz pursed her lips. It wasn’t that she was hurt, exactly—it was simply that she didn’t believe him. Lynda had promised her he was good at his job, but what if he’d slipped? If Todd was spending every night with strippers grinding in his lap, well, that was more than enough reason to call off the wedding, but the photos were so dark and this behavior seemed so uncharacteristic…
“I’m sorry, too, but I’m afraid it’s going to take more than a set of dark pictures to make me believe this is him.”
Across from her, Jack sighed. “When I saw how the pictures came out, I was afraid you’d feel this way.”
“I don’t mean to doubt you,” she said quickly, “but…”
“Oui?”
“Given how unlike him this seems, I’m just not sure I’d believe it unless I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Mais, then,” Jack said slowly, appearing to be thinking through the situation. “I’m busy tonight, but presuming Todd ‘works late’ tomorrow night, why don’t you meet me at, say, nine o’clock, outside the Blue Moon Café, and we’ll go to Club Venus together.”
Something in Liz withered. “Me, in a strip club?”
He raised his eyebrows. “If you wanna see for yourself.”
“Well, I’ve never…” She decided to let that rest—she didn’t want him to think she was any less worldly and wild than he currently did. “I presume women do go to this particular club on occasion?”
He gave a short nod. “I’m sure there’ll be a few other women there.”
She tried to hide her nervous swallow. “All right then. I’ll see you tomorrow night.” Rising to go, she glanced down at the pictures still in her hand. “May I have these?”
“Sure. If you look at ‘em and decide you’re convinced before tomorrow night, let me know and we’ll cancel.”
“All right, but…I’m not expecting that to happen.”
With that, she turned and walked back out onto the street, nipples and crotch tingling for more reasons that she could easily identify. She should be upset, she thought, or livid, or something—at Todd. Instead, though, she was concentrating on the way Jack Wade had made her feel. All hot and crumbly inside. The flesh between her thighs heavy and aching. Something about this man made her feel so dirty—in a delicious way.
As for Todd, there was a part of her that almost wanted to find out he was cheating. She’d once thought she loved him, but now she doubted she ever had. She’d had worries and misgivings for a while now, yet her reaction to Jack Wade these last couple of days had shored up her certainty. She couldn’t truly love her fiancé and at the same time want to get naked and sweaty with Jack Wade.
But she still didn’t think the guy in those pictures was Todd. And she needed more solid evidence before she broke off the engagement. Their lives were too closely intertwined. Todd was from a good family and their parents got along famously—their fathers had even gone into business together, financing a chain of dry cleaning stores back home in Maryland. As far as both their families were concerned, Liz and Todd were as good as married already. So it would be a lot easier, a lot more cut and dried, with proof that he’d done something wrong, and the pictures Jack had taken weren’t good enough.
Liz’s heels clicked down the street toward a nearby deli—she wanted to grab a quick salad before heading back to the office. As she sat eating at a small corner table, she thought more about the pictures. When she’d eaten her last bite of lettuce, she lay down her fork, dug the photos back out of her purse, and looked through them, more carefully this time.
The man in the prints was slouched deep in a small, plush chair, head leaned back, mouth open. Even without being able to make out his face, she could see the raw lust in him. Soon, however, her focus shifted and she found herself studying the women in the pictures. One was large-breasted with big, pointy nipples which dangled teasingly above the man’s face. Her body was so lush and curvy that something seemed sinful about it, even in the still, dark photo. Another had smaller breasts, perky with hard pink nubs at their centers. She looked lithe and acrobatic, in some shots rising up on her knees, in others grinding her crotch against the man in the picture. Despite the shadowy quality of the images, this particular girl looked like a blonde and Liz had the impression of her being young—twentyish. A third stripper was ultra-slender with medium-sized boobs, pretty and pert. She might be a redhead. In the fuzzy darkness, she looked very attractive, sensual. In some of the shots, she touched her breasts or tweaked her large nipples, in others she leaned her head back, looking impassioned. In one picture, she rubbed between her legs.
Looking at something so blatant, dirty, and sexual between strangers began to turn Liz on against her will. Her crotch hummed and her panties felt damp. The women were so lovely, so sexy, so bold and hot. She wondered if Jack Wade had enjoyed watching them writhe on top of the guy in the photos, enjoyed watching them touch themselves. She wondered if he’d gotten hard, if he’d gone home wishing he had a woman—or maybe he’d gotten a woman. For all she knew, he’d had a private dance himself.
A vision of the difficult-to-see redhead straddling Jack Wade’s lap rose to her mind. Had the woman perhaps thrashed about on him, making him hard? Had he gazed up at her, watching her work, letting himself get lost in lust? The image was wildly arousing, even as she felt a mild pang of jealousy—irrationally, she wanted him to lust only for her.
God, what if he was married or something? It was the first time the thought had even occurred to her. He’d been flirting with her, undressing her with his eyes, but married men misbehaved all the time. And she hadn’t noticed him wearing a ring—but some men just didn’t.
Please don’t be married, she thought. Please be available.
And…for God’s sake, what about Todd? Why wasn’t she even thinking about Todd? He might actually be the guy in the pictures, yet she’d gotten more caught up in looking at all those round, pretty breasts, smooth stomachs, and curving hips, and wondering if they’d excited Jack Wade the same way they were exciting her right now.
And to think, tomorrow night she was actually going to Club Venus with him. She was going to watch all this with him, live. One part of her was petrified—what if she was repulsed by what she saw there, what if she wanted to run screaming into the street away from the lewdness? But another part of her—the part she was just discovering over these past couple of days—was anticipating it.
Shoving the photos back in her purse, Liz emptied her lunch tray and went into the bathroom to freshen up before catching a cab back to work. Standing before the mirror, she fastened her hair back from her face and touched up her make-up. Then she noticed that through the sheerness of the blouse and the lace of this particular bra, she could actually see the dark shadow of her nipples.
Normally, she’d have been mortified to think she’d been walking around the streets that way. But instead, an undeniable and naughty warmth stole over her as she found herself hoping Jack had seen them, too.
Chapter 2
That day after work, Liz met Lynda, back in the Quarter. Lynda ran an antique shop on St. Peter, but she lived out in the Garden District, just next door to the historic home Liz and
Todd had purchased when they’d moved there together six months earlier. Todd had accepted a relocation to his investment advisory firm’s New Orleans office without even asking Liz. Looking back on it now, that seemed to have been the beginning of their problems.
Even so, she’d gone along with him, quitting her advertising job and finding a new one upon her arrival, packing up and leaving everything she knew in Maryland, where she and Todd had both been born and raised. If only she’d been smart enough to question the move more, maybe protest, not always be so easy to get along with.
But she’d never really been taught to stand up for herself—her parents had been strict disciplinarians and Liz and her two younger sisters, Diana and Carrie, had been expected to obey their parents’ rules, to always do what was expected of them. Diana had been a rebel, but Liz and Carrie had both allowed themselves be poured into the mold their parents had created for them. And somehow, without quite planning it, Liz had let that carry over into her adult life.
But she had a feeling that finally, at thirty, that was about to change. Todd was cheating on her…or something, and whatever it was, it would provide the ammunition she needed when she told her parents she wasn’t going to tie the knot with him. It wasn’t that she couldn’t simply decide not to marry him on her own, but she wanted to make this easy on herself, wanted to hear as little argument from her family as possible, so she could simply get on with the business of living once this was over.
Before moving, she and Todd had shared a happy, respectful—even if lukewarm—relationship, so pulling up her roots when he asked hadn’t seemed like a large sacrifice. Only now that he seemed to be changing did Liz realize that perhaps she should have made her decisions more carefully. Having so much time alone in the evenings to contemplate his whereabouts and examine the core of their relationship had finally opened her eyes, made her want to be a more independent woman. And getting to the bottom of Todd’s evenings away from home was going to be a big start.
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