by Thorne, Elle
“Sit.” Her voice had changed. It was resolute, as if she’d made a decision.
He released her, jumping off the stage quickly while his panther protested the parting. Franco took his seat.
She followed him off the stage, only she took the stairs to the side, approaching him slowly, her glorious full breasts swaying. She stopped when she was in front of him, nipples within tongue’s reach.
“You want a private performance.”
“If you’ll give me one.”
“I’m paid to give you what you want. Supposedly.” Those words, coming from those full lips that were painted in a color he’d call sex-red, made his cock throb.
She lowered herself, her face angelic in a place so corrupt. The crisscrossing scars on her torso were reminders of her past.
He raised his hands, wanted to push her away. To tell her she was so much more than this. More than a stripper. More than this place. His palms itched with the desire to push her off of his pants, to push her into another world.
That wasn’t what he did though. Something else took over, something far more primeval and base than he’d ever wanted to be.
He took her hands in his and tugged. She slipped, off balance, and landed hard on him, sliding down until she was straddling him. Her hands alit on his chest, her nails digging into the flesh beneath the fabric. Her dark eyes took measure of his face then landed on his lips and didn’t move.
“Is touching part of the performance?” He was taunting her, wanting to hurt her because, for some damned reason, it burned him to think of what she had done for other men.
* * *
Maia paused, unsure how to answer, though she knew the answer she wanted to give him—it involved a few choice words.
What woman would want to be involved in touching or being touched in a room that was meant for using women as sperm receptacles?
Why was this man different? Why did it seem so different when he asked if touching was a part of the performance?
She studied his face. Why was there anger in his gaze? He should have no personal beef with her. His eyes also held something else. Something she thought she should know, should recognize, but couldn’t peg.
He raised his large hand, tattoos peeking out from under the sleeve, and she held her breath. Just raised it and kept it there, in the air, a cobra, ready to strike, but unmoving.
She closed her eyes and tilted her head downward. She didn’t want to see the look in his eyes when he reached for her breasts. Would it be like the looks in others’ when they tweaking and pinching the girls’ nipples mercilessly, hoping to make them feel.
She flinched when she felt his hand on her cheek.
The electricity his fingertips delivered matched the shock that he hadn’t touched her breasts—or any other part. Her heart pounded with the intensity of a jackhammer. That large hand, so gentle as it cupped her cheek, then slid beneath her chin, raising her face toward his. How could hands so large be so gentle?
He continued to hold her chin, and she could feel his gaze on her face, feel his stare beckoning her to open her eyes. And yet he said not a word, made no demands.
Finally, one word to break the silence. “Dulce.”
Sweet. Her stage name.
His featherlight touch still on her chin, she opened her eyes slowly.
“Dulce.” He said it again. He said it as if it was a caress. The word rolled off his tongue with the tiniest hint of an accent, one she hadn’t picked up before and one she couldn’t place.
She frowned at the mystery this created.
He raised his other hand and rubbed the frown away from her forehead then dropped it and cupped her face, those large hands taking her completely in his grip.
Maia swallowed hard. The sound loud, even with the club’s music.
“What’s your name,” she asked him, suddenly wanting to know—needing to know.
“What’s yours?” A slow self-assured smile entered his chiseled, stoic face, curving his lips upward, diminishing his unapproachable quality for a brief second.
“You said mine,” she countered, though she knew full well that wouldn’t fly.
“Why’s a shifter in a place like this?” He cocked his head, his eyes traveling her entire body.
Self-consciousness—something that didn’t often strike her—made Maia breathe deep, pulling her stomach in.
“You tell me. You’re here and you’re a shifter.”
The amused look fled his face, chased off by a forbidding one. “I’m not stripping for strangers.”
His next words were whispered so low that only another shifter standing in the same room could have heard them. “You could kill easily with one shift. And yet…”
He didn’t finish his sentence, he didn’t have to. Shame heated her face, and she was sure it colored it as well. She knew what he was going to say: And yet she put up with shit.
“You’ve never had to do something you didn’t want to do?”
He clenched his jaw. Lowered his hands from her cheeks, tracing the contours of her jaw, neck, shoulders, then dropping lower.
She held her breath. Was he going to…?
She didn’t need to hold it for long. His hands traveled across her breasts, his fingertips brushing the rosy tips, leaving them pebbling and buzzing in their wake. He cupped the lower half of her breasts, lifted as if weighing them, and then swiveled his hands until his thumbs were on her nipples, brushing across them, over and over again.
She wanted not to feel. She wanted not to let his touch affect her. She wanted a lot of things. None of them seemed to matter to her body or her leopard, for both were reacting to the man and his panther.
Do your job, she cautioned herself. Just do the job and then do what you can to get away.
Her thought process stopped there. His hands had stilled, and his eyes were reading her expressions. She washed the emotions from her face and made a fake front of pleasure, putting on a wicked half-smile she’d practiced in the mirror repeatedly.
His legs were solid beneath her ass. His chest equally so in front of her. It wasn’t lost on her that she was sitting on his lap, topless, with only a thong.
Except he still focused his gaze on her eyes, even while he touched her breasts and teased her nipples mercilessly, his eyes never left hers.
Back to stripper autopilot, damn it.
“What’s your pleasure?” she asked him, keeping her voice light.
A slight smirk made a short appearance, a sign he was aware she was trying to go into business-mode.
“Your name, Dulce. Your real name,” he replied in that deep, gravelly voice, stemming from his panther.
She bit her bottom lip, worrying it. “That’s not on the menu.”
“What is?”
“You know.” Maia waved her arms about, indicating their surroundings, as if that should completely answer the question as to what was on the menu.
“Let’s start with your pussy.”
Her reaction was instant.
The words, the tone, the man—holy hell.
Instant flood.
And yet a part of her wanted to rail at him for treating her like an object. Yes, even though she repeatedly reminded him she was exactly that.
He lowered his hand, fingertips traveled slowly down her stomach until he’d reached her thong. He tugged on it…gently, pulling it away from her body a little then letting it snap back. The effect made her clit buzz even though she tried her damnedest to turn that part of her body off.
Twice he pulled and twice he snapped. Then he traced the outline of her folds over the fabric, letting the material add a layer of sexiness that heightened her desire.
Maia’s heartbeat pounded heavily in her head, only drowned out by the occasional sound her leopard made. Her breath was frozen, locked away inside lungs that refused to function. Her legs felt as though they’d turned to jelly.
She wanted to run, but she didn’t. Wanted to because she feared he’d kill her or take
her to Manuel. She didn’t because every moment she stayed in this room prolonged the inevitable.
“Stop.” The tormented whisper came from her lips. “You can’t do this.”
“Can’t do what? Turn you on? Fuck you with my fingers? Lick your clit until you’re crying for mercy? Make you come on my face? Make you scream so loud Scapelli comes in here to see if I’ve killed you? Except he’ll find you writhing in delight and in the middle of the fiercest orgasm that’s ever racked your body?”
Yes, all that. “No. That’s not what happens in this room.”
That’s all she could say, and yet, she sat there on his lap, feeling like a hypocrite, sure she was leaving evidence of her desire on his pants.
“Oh, let’s see. I’m supposed to be like the other men, and you’re supposed to let me fuck your mouth. Or shove my cock deep into your pussy or ass while I treat you like a glory hole.”
Lightning fast, thanks to her shifter reflexes, she punched him in the chest.
She cringed. Then anger took over. “I hate you.”
He didn’t flinch. His eyes didn’t fill with anger, either. So very different than Manuel. “I’m not the reason you give your cunt away or suck random guys off. So why hate me?”
She bit back a sob of anger and despair at his words. “I don’t do that, you bastard.” He didn’t understand.
She’d tried to forget the things she’d seen when she lived with Manuel and, even more especially, after Manuel had leased her out to the fighting ring in a fit of anger—to teach her a lesson. She wasn’t the easy one to control, not like Katya, because he had no leverage with Maia. In Katya’s case, he had her baby boy—their son.
Katya didn’t get away, she was still there. Maia could do nothing about that. Katya couldn’t escape. Not with little Moíses under an ever-watchful set of nannies and bodyguards. Translation: thuggish friends of Manuel.
She pushed the thoughts back.
The man in black was still watching her. Waiting for… What the hell was he waiting for?
“Are you done with me?” she hissed.
Chapter Three
Was he done with her?
Franco didn’t think he’d ever be done with her.
“We haven’t even started.”
What was with this woman? Strength, wounds, and scars. She was a contradiction. Soft curves that hid an iron will.
Franco’s erection was pushing against his pants painfully. He fought the urge to adjust.
She wanted him. She wanted this. And yet she was apprehensive, scared, and, at the same time, angry. She thought she knew who he was and why he was here.
She had no idea. Zip. Zero.
And if she knew…
Would she thank him or curse him?
The moment he said they hadn’t even started, a hint of shine appeared in her eyes, right before she blinked long and hard. Those were tears she was hiding.
What’s going on in that head of yours?
“Then do what you need to do. Scapelli will come get me when the time you paid for is up.”
He didn’t have the heart to tell her he’d paid for the night. He’d put enough currency in Scapelli’s hands to secure her until LaDonna’s closed. And Franco planned to do the same every night.
Every night, until…
He didn’t have the answer to that. What he knew was he wasn’t willing to watch this woman strip for strangers anymore. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to let her come into room four with anyone else but him.
And then, sooner or later, Franco knew he’d have to make a decision—to make a move.
“Have breakfast with me.” He didn’t phrase it as a question.
Her mouth dropped open then she clamped it shut.
She shook her head. Was that confusion, or was she turning down his invitation?
He waited, his hand resting lightly on her knee.
“It’s against the rules. No relations with clients.”
“I’m asking you to breakfast. I’m not asking you for relations. Though, if it’s relations you want…”
He trailed his finger from the inside of her knee, up her inner thigh, and traced the hem of the thong. Her eyes followed his hand the way a mesmerized mouse would watch a snake. Her chest was swelling from holding her breath, pushing the glorious creamy mounds closer to his face, tempting him to lean in and take one of the glitter-scattered peaks in his mouth.
He pulled his finger away and trailed it down the inner thigh of her other leg, heading toward her knee. She released the pent-up breath with a soft whoosh, and her body lost some of the stiffness in its posture as she relaxed, pressing into his thighs and leaning closer to his abdomen.
He raised the same hand, placed a finger on her bottom lip, tracing her flesh, setting it on fire. “So, is it breakfast?”
The finger dropped to her chin, feather-soft in its touch as he trailed it lower, over her neck, to the valley between her breasts, lower, around her navel. She trapped the air in her lungs, unbreathing when he touched the elastic of the thong, then slipped his finger under the fabric.
“Or is it relations?” He dipped his middle finger into her hot slickness, enjoying the way she gasped and rose up. She was no longer relaxed, now a bundle of wound-up nerves.
Her pussy responded instantly, tightening around his finger, clutching it with velvet muscles.
As if furious at her body’s response, she glared at him. “You’re the customer.”
He loved the fire in her eyes. It reminded him of a visit he’d made to a volcano once, long ago. Staring into the heated abyss, knowing he was close to danger, that at any moment he could have his life snuffed out during an eruption. His cousins had screamed at him from below to come down, cursed at him for his foolhardy actions. Franco had laughed and turned back toward the deep crater and stared at it, defying death.
When their excursion was over and they were driving away in a rented four-wheeler, well past the danger zone, Franco had glanced behind him just in time to see the volcano’s eruption. He’d never felt so alive.
“You’re fucked-up,” his cousins had said.
This woman made him feel the same way.
So. Very. Alive.
They’re right. I’m very fucked-up.
And yet, he knew she was equally fucked-up. Both for different reasons, both in different ways.
His finger was still buried deep inside her. Her muscles were still clenched tight.
Suddenly, her anger and her hostility fueled his passion. He wanted to hurt her the way watching her strip ate at him. He clenched his jaw tight then released it. “You’re right, I am the customer. I call the shots. Ride my finger.”
* * *
Maia shot him a dirty look.
Unbelievable.
Autopilot time.
She’d known about autopilot long before she was a stripper. Manuel taught her how to push her mind far away from her body while things were being done to her that used to make tears erupt.
Slowly, to the beat of the music, she swayed on him, raising her body, then lowering it. Raising, lowering, twice, three times.
The next time, he added another finger.
She bit on her lip to fight the gasp at the wider intrusion, at the hint of pleasure, the bite of shock.
There was something about this man in black that pulled at her. Pulled at her even though she knew he was the enemy. Pulled at her even though she wondered if it would come down to one of them having to die.
Her leopard made a sound that almost sounded like pleasure in Maia’s head.
Maia pushed her back, ignoring her.
I should be happy he’s not asking me to suck his dick.
Sucking his cock would be filthier, but, at the same time, it would put her in complete control. With this act…
A tremor of delight rushed over her body.
With this, he had control. She was relegated to extracting pleasure. Would this end when she came? Would she be able to?
She
rocked her hips, driving his fingers deeper, relishing the way each motion she made had him touching a different wall deep within.
His face was impassive. He didn’t move his fingers, just let her do the work.
Surely, he can’t get me off. Surely not.
Inside, at the depths of her core, a ripple of pleasure belied her thoughts.
Another ripple.
“Why…” she panted, “are you…” another pant, “doing this to me?”
“You don’t enjoy it?” He swiveled his hand, cupped her mound, fingers still inside, and found her clit with his thumb, making firm circles.
The air rushed out of her lungs.
Oh. God.
“No.” She wanted to add the words, not at all. But she couldn’t open her mouth anymore for fear of moaning.
“Liar.” His word was a hoarse whisper of desire merged with a growl from his panther.
So, he was affected by this.
Why this pleased her, she couldn’t say, but it did. A wave of pure passion washed over her. She knew she was in trouble; she was going to climax on this man’s hand. And she didn’t even know why it mattered to him, why he was doing this, why he was here.
“Why?” She managed the word again, barely.
He raised a brow. “I want to finger this sweet pussy until you come undone all over me.”
She couldn’t control the moan that left her lips with his words.
That isn’t an answer.
But she couldn’t speak her thought. Answer or not, if she tried to talk now, if she opened her mouth, she was afraid the only thing that would come out was a scream of pleasure.
It was his black eyes, the expression in them that he allowed for one moment to come out. An expression she couldn’t peg, but one he hid immediately.
That was her undoing.
She bit on her lower lip to keep the cry back as her body convulsed, arching into the orgasm, into his fingers. In the throes of passion, and with one final arch, she released herself onto his hand, closing her eyes so he couldn’t see her vulnerability, wishing she could close emotions off from her face.
She collapsed against him, his fingers still buried inside her, her face buried in his neck, her hands tightly gripping his shoulders.