“Christ, baby,” he whispered.
“I can’t with you,” I whispered back. “I just can’t with you. Because you’re beautiful.”
He stilled.
“You’re so beautiful, sometimes I look at you and I can’t believe my eyes.”
Closing his own eyes, he turned his head to the side, lifting my hand and pressing it to his mouth so I could feel his lips against my palm.
Really he did not get that I could take no more.
And he needed to get it.
“I need to be wanted,” I told him. “I need to be loved. I need to be won. You have another woman. I’m already second runner-up. A man like you…with a man like you, I can’t, Boone. I can’t have and not have a man like you. It would tear me apart. I can’t have and maybe win and then maybe lose a man like you. That would destroy me. So I just can’t.”
His fingers closed around mine tight and he put my hand to the base of his throat, turning back to face me, and God.
I could live forever in the green of his eyes.
But I couldn’t.
Because I wouldn’t.
If I started this with him, he wouldn’t even be mine.
But I simply couldn’t start, because I wouldn’t be able to take the end.
I was winding up to the finish, which I hoped would lead to him leaving so I could shave my head or shove needles under my fingernails or something infinitely more enjoyable than getting it through Boone’s handsome but thick head that we were not gonna happen.
So I said, “I’m good with what I’ve got. I’d rather have nothing than take a risk at losing everything.”
“All right, Kathryn.”
And there you go.
He was just giving up.
And I got it.
I wasn’t worth it.
Dad had taught me that a long time ago.
And since Dad, the hits kept coming.
So it was just going to be me.
The stripper in the shitty apartment with a rotting house she never had time to fix up.
But I was going to find the time.
I was going to make something of myself.
Just for me.
“Baby?”
I stopped feeling sorry for myself and focused on Boone.
Not five minutes before, I’d made note not to lose focus on Boone.
And there I was doing it again.
I should not have forgotten.
His mouth came down on mine.
I thought maybe it was some weird, kinda-friends, kinda-not, should-be-lovers, but-weren’t, never-gonna-happen good-bye kiss.
I realized it was not when his tongue came out and he traced the crease of my lips with the tip.
They opened.
Really, there was no way I could have kept them closed.
Just a taste.
I’d give myself just a taste.
A taste of Boone.
Even if that tasted like never.
He slid his tongue inside, and he didn’t taste like never.
He tasted rich and decadent and heady and hot and male.
And he kissed like Boone.
Man and alpha and strength and protector and Dom.
Without a fight, without even a thought, I submitted to his tongue and his mouth and his kiss and him.
I was holding on to him, yielding to the plunder, my legs trembling, my breasts swelling, my nipples tingling, my sex drenching, when he lifted his mouth from mine.
With an eyeful of nothing but green, I heard him say, “Lock up after me, sweetheart. Get some sleep. I’ll catch you later.”
And with that, he let me go, left me swaying in my living room.…
And he was gone.
Chapter Four
One of a Kind
Ryn
Considering it took forever to settle down, I had no idea how long I’d been asleep before my phone rang.
What I knew when I opened my eyes and saw my bedside alarm was that it was ten o’clock (so my guess, I’d had maybe two hours of sleep).
I looked to the lit screen of my phone and it said BRIAN.
I was not in the mood for my brother.
But listen up.
This was the thing about people who had people they loved who had an addiction to alcohol.
There were fear factors that dogged your every thought.
Mine, around Brian, included him being out of it when he had the kids and they inadvertently got into trouble, or hurt, having to look after themselves while their dad was unable to do so.
Also, him harming himself when he was alone, say falling and cracking his head and losing consciousness, and without anyone there, never waking up.
Ditto on that with asphyxiation should he be asleep on his back and vomit in his sleep.
Last, and the biggest one, him driving drunk.
It wasn’t the getting caught. That would suck for Brian and probably be a huge wakeup call (maybe).
It wasn’t even him getting into a wreck and hurting himself. I did not want that. And if it was bad, I’d detest it. But that wasn’t the worst thought in that particular scenario.
It was him hurting someone else.
Maybe having the kids with him and hurting them.
Maybe a complete stranger.
It wouldn’t matter.
He’d never be able to live with that.
And I wasn’t certain anyone around him would either.
Including me.
And if he had the kids with him and did something that stupid, especially me.
So even though I did not want to talk to my brother, not only after the shit I’d endured recently, but usually ever (these days), I took the call in case he’d been picked up for drunk driving and needed someone to post bail or something.
“Hey, Bri,” I greeted warily.
“What the fuck, Ryn?” he snapped in my ear.
Up on my forearm in my bed, I went inert.
“You’re out,” he declared.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“You know, she’s had it tough. We got pregnant too soon and we didn’t work out,” he stated.
Holy shit.
He was talking about Angelica.
He was defending Angelica.
“If she needs some me time to get her shit together, she needs it and she doesn’t need you and one of your dickhead friends nosing into her life, passing judgment,” he went on.
“Me time?” I asked.
“She was pregnant by nineteen. Had two kids almost before she was legal to drink. She’d never really held down a job, outside working at Wendy’s our senior year. She’s dealing with a lot. Christ, you had some private eye friend of yours follow her and take pictures? What’s the matter with you?”
He could not be for real.
“Stop it,” I hissed.
“No, you stop it,” he bit back. “You’re out. We’ll let you see the kids again when we have some time to get over you doing something so colossally jacked to her.”
Me doing something so colossally jacked to her?
I pushed up to my ass and worked very hard at trying not to allow my head to explode.
“Right then, me being out means me not laying cash on her anymore.”
“Don’t worry about that, I got that covered.”
Right.
“And me being out means, when she fakes a headache or whatever-the-fuck game she decides to play to get her ‘me time,’ I’m not on call to look after the kids, get them to school, or anything else.”
“Again, I got that covered.”
“Oh yeah, Bri? Gonna lay off the Jack the night before so you can be certain you’re not still out-of-your-mind blotto the next morning so you can get them to school safe?”
The silence that came after that hung heavy in a way I assumed a massive thundercloud had formed over Denver stretching all the way between my pad and Brian’s place.
I’d never mentioned it.
Not once.
I should have, but outside encouraging him to Uber on the occasions he was too far gone to get behind the wheel or suggesting (strongly) he sleep on Mom’s or my couch, I hadn’t come close to broaching it.
And one could argue (and even I would argue it, after saying it, pissed as all hell), I shouldn’t have broached it when I was pissed as all hell.
But…seriously?
Me time?
He had it?
What the fuck?
Eventually, he spoke.
But when he did, I wished he didn’t.
“Fuck you, Ryn,” he said softly.
“We need to talk,” I said softly back.
“No, we absolutely do not.”
“I miss my brother,” I whispered. “You’re an amazing guy, Brian. Funny. Smart. Loyal. The best brother ever, and I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true, that’s when you’re not drinking. And I miss you.”
“I can’t even tell you how few fucks I give about that.”
I sucked in breath at the meanness of his words.
“You’re out, Ryn,” he declared. “More out than you were before.”
“If you take those kids away from me because Ang can’t grow up and face responsibility. And you’re in denial that you have a problem when you’ve already lost everything, it’s just that everyone around you is going through the motions to shield you from that fact because we love you, but the way we do that is enabling you. If you do that, you are going to shatter an already broken heart.”
“And I can’t tell you how few fucks I give about that either.”
After that, I heard the beeps to share he’d disconnected.
I lifted my knees up to my chest and dropped my forehead to them.
“Me time,” I whispered, started laughing softly, this right before the pain racked my body as I held back a sob.
It took a second, but I got the emotion under control.
I didn’t seem to be able to keep a handle on my life.
But I was hell on wheels with keeping my emotions locked down.
Once I succeeded in this endeavor, I lifted my head.
I’d had little sleep.
But it was time to find a kickboxing class.
* * *
I’d managed to avoid any more dramas between Brian’s call that morning and showing at Smithie’s that night.
So I was not all that thrilled to see Dorian standing outside the dancers’ dressing room, his eyes fixed on me.
I mean, really.
Somebody save me.
Dorian had that Michael B. Johnson thing going on.
I was no poet, but I imagined I could write entire sonnets just about his neck.
Forget it with that mouth. Those lips. Those strong, straight, white teeth.
That would be a Shakespearean soliloquy.
But his deep-set eyes. Both sharply astute and warmly gentle.
Yeesh.
I wouldn’t even get into his dimples.
I was surrounded by hotties.
And none of them were mine.
I tried for cocky casual, throwing out a “Yo,” when I got close and stopped.
“I see you’re still goin’ with that ‘it’s all good’ bullshit,” he remarked.
That’d be the sharply astute part of Dorian.
“What bullshit? Life’s free and breezy for me, Ian.”
“Yeah. That’s exactly what those blue shadows under your eyes are tellin’ me.”
I glared at him.
My glare deflected off him, pinged around the backstage hallway and bit me in the ass.
When he sensed my glare had successfully landed astray, he shared, “Smithie wants a word.”
Great.
“Are you telling tales out of school?” I asked.
“Sue me, I give a shit,” he replied. “But no. I figure if I don’t tell my uncle you got something screwin’ with your head or fuckin’ up your life, I got some modicum of chance you’ll lay that on me so I can either listen while you get it out or help you do something about it.”
Color me chastised.
But still.
“Stop being nice when I’m trying to be tough,” I retorted.
“Stop being tough when you’re among friends and you don’t gotta do that shit,” he shot back.
We went into staredown.
Unsurprisingly, I lost.
And my capitulation included me saying, “Is Smithie in his office?”
“Yeah.”
I nodded, went to round him, but he fell in step at my side.
I looked to that side and up.
“Do I need an escort?” I asked.
“I’m in on this convo,” he answered.
Oh no.
Did Smithie and/or Dorian get the word I’d been kinda-semi-kidnapped last night?
“I’m really all right,” I told him as we made it to the door that led from the back hall to the club. “Or I will be. Just a rough patch.”
Rough, jagged, bumpy, with twists and turns and an almost-guaranteed cliff at the end.
I felt like Thelma and Louise, and I didn’t get the fun of shooting a lowdown, rotten rapist or sleeping with Brad Pitt.
“My uncle has been thinkin’ about the direction of the club and he wants to talk to you about it.”
Well, that was definitely a thing that made me go hmm.
Considering Smithie was not old, but he was also not young, and he’d been in the game a fair few years, it was generally thought from the minute Dorian showed that Smithie was grooming him to take over.
And since Dorian showed, his bouncer title mostly reflected his inability to put up with even an iota of shit from a creepy customer and his superpower of removing them from the club quietly, but with ease, and if necessary, force.
Also, since Dorian showed, lap dances were vetted by him and Smithie, and only him and Smithie. Girls no longer wandered the floor or came when beckoned.
Those dances further didn’t happen on the floor.
They happened in one of the two private rooms Smithie had where he’d previously allowed paid-for private dances, or he sometimes hired out for poker games or the like, and they always happened with a bouncer in the room, watching.
Payment was provided prior, to said bouncer, who immediately after the dance gave it to the dancer. The only money that exchanged hands between client and stripper were tips.
Now a lap dance was skeevy.
I was good at them, but they were skeevy.
And one who had never done them couldn’t know, but the difference between straddling a guy’s lap and giving him the good stuff with hundreds of onlookers getting a free show and doing it in private with a guard right there was massive.
In other words, with Dorian around, I was actually looking forward to hearing what Smithie was considering for the direction the club was going.
We snaked through the tables and around the stage to the stairs, up them, and after Dorian reached over my head to knock on the door to Smithie’s office, and we heard a “Yeah!” we went in.
I saw my boss behind his messy desk.
He was darker than Dorian, stouter, no dimples, but they had the same mouth, and height, and Smithie totally had that sharp-astuteness and warm-gentleness thing going on, though his he had down to an art.
I picked stripping because I had a decent body, I could move, I knew it’d make me loads of cash, especially if I danced at a class establishment like Smithie’s, and I had a high school education and a dream, and I needed the seed money to start it.
It was just dumb luck, some of the little of it I’d ever had, I landed in a joint like Smithie’s where our insurance was better than a government worker’s, he had a 401(k) plan and the infinite, albeit frustrated, patience to put up with a staff that consisted almost entirely of attractive people who were in their twenties.
“Hey,” I called when he looked up from his desk.
His eyes narrowed.
And there was the sharp astuteness.
> “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said quickly, coming around one of the chairs in front of his desk and sitting down.
He sat back and stared at me.
“Life’s a little rocky lately,” I came clean (kinda). “Family stuff with my brother and his ex and their kids. It’ll be okay.”
He looked to Dorian, who had taken a seat beside me. His mouth got tight at what Dorian silently conveyed. He again looked to me, then, wisely, he let it go (I knew, only for now).
“I got a proposition for you I want you to take away and chew on,” he declared.
“All right,” I said.
“I wanna move the club to a revue.”
I had no idea what that meant.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“You, Hattie, Pepper, Dominique and maybe Champagne, along with Lottie, will have the stage for your own dances. Your music. Your choreography. You can take it all off. You can keep something on. I don’t give a shit. As long as it’s sexy, entertaining, and keeps me havin’ a velvet rope outside my door.”
I found myself breathing funny.
“I’ll hire other girls who’ll do routines together in between you girls doin’ your thing,” he went on. “Burlesque style. Filler will be general stripping, though the headliners won’t be onstage during this time, so patrons have plenty of breathers in the program to buy drinks and regulars still think they’re comin’ to a titty bar. And maybe I’ll throw in a comedian to MC.”
Holy shit.
This was so cool.
“Like Lottie, tips will be collected for you,” he continued. “I’ll be uppin’ the cover charge, so I’ll also pay you more as a base salary since you’ll have to come up with your own routines and wardrobe. But to get you started on that last, I’ll give you a stipend. Only thing you gotta do for the stipend is sign a contract that says you won’t quit for six months. You don’t do that, and you want your time onstage, you gotta provide your own shit. You don’t want your time onstage, you can dance in the burlesque. You don’t want a part of any of this, and I go this way, we’re gonna have to have another chat. You can serve tables, and waitresses don’t make dancer money, but they don’t do bad. Or you can tend bar.”
With this offer on the table, I wasn’t tending bar.
“I’m interested,” I said in a voice shimmering with excitement, my mind reeling with ideas, music choices, costumes.
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