Rebecca felt her shoulders drop in relief. Geo hadn’t mocked pole dancing. She’d actually kind of complimented it.
“We’ll start with the basics,” May insisted. “I’m not experienced enough to lead a class of paying customers, so I figured I’d pitch the idea to you guys to see if I could get some practice hours in. And besides, Geo, are you really complaining about your core strength? I’ve seen you beat Cedric in a wrestling match.”
“Are you serious?” Elena laughed, clapping her hands together. “Tell me you’re serious. I always think of Cedric as the incredible hulk or something. Did you really beat him in a wrestling match?”
Geo nodded, looking equal parts smug and embarrassed. “It was back when I first joined Rook Securities. I had a chip on my shoulder about being the only woman on the team. I felt like I had something to prove. Little did I know that I was the only one giving me a hard time.”
“You really beat Cedric though?” Naomi asked. “You pinned him?”
Geo shrugged.
“See?” May cut in. “You’re a bad ass. You can definitely shimmy your way around a pole.”
“This is going to be so fun,” Naomi half chirped-half squealed. “I’ve been feeling a little less than sexy since the baby. I need my mojo back.”
“Are you kidding me?” Rebecca said, without thinking. “You’re so freaking sexy, Naomi. I try to give you a five-foot berth just for my own self esteem.”
The women looked at her, a little surprised at Rebecca’s unexpected vehemence, but then they all burst out laughing.
“Oooh!” Naomi said, doing a gimme gimme signal with her hands. “More compliments, please.”
That made Rebecca laugh as well, and she felt a little looser as May had all the women lining up next to a pole. She could just stay quiet and pretend this was her first time. She could pull this off.
May brought them through the basics. Grip, a simple leg-wrap, how to slide without tearing your skin off. Twenty minutes went past like that and Rebecca found herself laughing and joking along with the rest of the women. Elena was following along, seeming like she was having a good time, Geo was treating it like a workout, and Naomi was making big, sexy eyes at herself in the mirror.
Rebecca checked herself out in the mirror as well and realized that her bruises were completely gone now. She tested her ribs with her hand, a tiny bit sore, but nothing to write home about. Her hair was still trimmed up and in this light, with one hand on the pole, she could actually see what Naomi had meant all those days ago, about the cut looking cute and trendy and badass. Her ass-length hair had always been a tremendous asset on the pole, it made everything look twice as sexy. But this haircut wasn’t so bad either. With one hand on the pole and her new haircut reflecting the overhead lights, Rebecca got the strange feeling that two versions of her life were mixing. The old and the new were creating something in the middle.
About twenty-five minutes into the lesson, Rebecca realized that she’d accidentally let herself get a little too high on the pole. She slid down, executing a simple twist, using the inside of one elbow and her ankle to slide down. Nothing special. But when she looked up, she saw all the other women staring at her.
She froze.
“Whoa,” Elena said.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” Naomi asked.
Rebecca stared around at the other women, her eyes wide. She tried as hard as her racing mind could go to think of some excuse. But none came. With a certain amount of reserved horror, she heard the truth tumble from her mouth. “Um. The old-fashioned way?”
“Meaning…” Geo prompted, her head cocked to one side.
“Meaning…” Rebecca’s heart raced a mile a minute, but she realized she couldn’t stop the truth from bubbling up. She wanted to tell these women the truth. Lying right now would be awkward and weird and she’d only succeed in putting a wall up between her and some people that she actually really liked. “…I was a stripper. For about eight years.”
***
Atlas was running late. Cliff Dodd had been a real pill today and Atlas had ended up having to stay half an hour later with him en route back to the bunker. If they’d left when he’d wanted to, this would not have been a problem. But, as it hadn’t been a security issue, Atlas really hadn’t had any reason to push Cliff. And part of why Rook Securities was the very best was that they worked to keep their clients happy. At all costs.
So. Yeah. He was half an hour late for meeting the girls at May’s studio. Which he was bummed about. Because One, he loved working out; two, he loved dancing, and three, he really wanted to see Bex sweaty.
His crush had only intensified since the book club. He hadn’t been ready for the swelling of affection that had threatened to overcome him when he’d seen her tentatively making friends with his friends. She was just so dang cute. All shy and flustered and sweet.
Bex had this way about her that he’d never encountered in anyone else before. She had this tough thing going. Like she was capable of taking care of herself at all costs, and like she had in the past. But she also had this innocent sweetness, like the world was still capable of surprising her.
It just killed him. It made him want to protect her and delight her. He’d been daydreaming about taking her on a vacation somewhere. Somewhere tropical and colorful. Filled with dreamy fish to see through snorkel gear and gaudy, heady smelling flowers on the vine. He wanted her to fall asleep on the beach, under a thin veil of stars, the ocean kissing her toes.
Of course, those kinds of sexy vacations were not things that roommates did together. Bex would probably think he was a psycho if he brought it up.
So, for now, at least, he had to settle for a dance class with her. And because of his finicky client, he had to settle for half a dance class with her.
Atlas, having helped install the flooring in May’s studio, knew the code on the back door. So, he parked his car back there and quickly changed into gym clothes in the back dressing room. He was just walking through the observation room, about to join them all, when he froze. The observation room, used mostly by parents when their toddlers were learning to plié for the first time, was a room with a row of chairs on one side of the windows looking in to May’s studio. The one catch was that from inside the studio, the windows looked like mirrors.
The first time that Atlas had realized that, he’d told May he thought it was pervy. But she’d insisted that otherwise, her students got distracted when they saw their parents in the observation room. This way, the parents could observe and the students could concentrate.
He was grateful for it now, deeply grateful, as his blood froze in his veins. Because there was Bex, in an oversized shirt and tight leggings, wiggling around on a stripper pole.
He sank into a chair, leaning forward on his knees and unable to tear his eyes away from her.
She moved with a surety and confidence that he hadn’t seen her exhibit elsewhere. Her body was comfortable and practiced in a way that the other women’s weren’t. They were obviously just learning how to do this, but Bex was smooth and confident in every little move she made, her body sinuous and rolling.
Sweat broke out on Atlas’s brow.
The other women stood beside their poles, but Bex was still up on hers. She was a few feet higher than the rest of them had gone. With a twist of her hip, Bex braced herself gracefully against the pole and slid around and down, her feet landing softly.
The other women looked shocked.
“Whoa,” Atlas murmured to himself.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” Naomi asked.
Bex looked a little stricken. She played with the hem of her shirt and shifted her weight on her feet. “Um. The old-fashioned way?”
She posed it as a question, almost as if she hoped that the other women would interpret that in any way they wanted and just leave her alone.
“Meaning…” Geo prompted and Atlas blew her a silent kiss through the glass. That’s how appreciative he was of his friend f
or pushing Bex to answer.
He needed to know what the hell Bex was alluding to. He could guess at this point, but still. He needed to hear it from her lips. He needed to hear it with her voice. He needed to know this bit of her past.
“Meaning… I was a stripper. For about eight years.”
Atlas felt a endorphins flood through him. It upset him a bit to think of Bex as an eighteen-year-old stripper. He’d been in a strip club a few times, for various events, and they’d never struck him as particularly happy places. Most were probably fine, perfectly safe for their dancers. But what if she’d been in a seedy one? There was no telling what kind of men she might have come into contact with. Some of the dudes that Atlas had seen at these places had seemed genuinely gross.
But more than that upset feeling, Atlas was flooded with an intense relief and joy at knowing anything about Bex’s past. So, she’d been a stripper. She could have just told the room that she’d been a nurse, a snowboarder, an international spy for all he cared. The content of the information didn’t matter, it was simply the fact that she’d revealed it. It was simply the fact that now he knew something about her.
Atlas wanted to hold onto the new information with both hands. In fact, his fingers clamped hard over his knees like he was holding her words close.
“No shit?” Geo asked.
“Yeah.” Bex looked down, her toes drawing circles on the ground. Atlas wanted to reach through the glass and tip her chin up, tell her that she had nothing to be ashamed of. “Until about six months ago.”
“Oh, honey, you must think we’re totally ridiculous.” May looked chagrined in a way that she rarely looked.
“No!” Bex insisted, clutched at the pole beside her in an absent, friendly way that definitely revealed how much time she’d spent around one. “Well, maybe a little.”
Bex softened her criticism with a smile that made all the women laugh.
“It’s just ironic, I guess, to think about someone pole dancing for pleasure. Because it was a matter of survival for me for so long.”
The women nodded, different degrees of empathy for her on each face.
“But I don’t look down on it!” Bex assured them. “Not at all. It’s great exercise for sure.”
There was a moment of silence and Atlas could basically see Bex withdrawing. Her shoulders rounding and her chin dropping down. She obviously felt a disconnect with these women and Atlas couldn’t stand to see it. He was up and out of his chair, marching toward the door to the studio, when Naomi’s voice stopped him.
“Um. At the risk of sounding like a jerk…” Naomi tugged at her hair, her cheeks pink. “Um. Is there any chance that you’d show us what you can do?”
Atlas froze in place. There was a tingling in his fingers and toes as he watched Bex’s face.
She looked surprised and cautious. “You want me to… strip for you?”
Atlas gulped.
“No! No.” Naomi held her hands up and looked around at her friends for help. “Stripping is not necessary. But… maybe you could dance for us? I’m just curious. And it obviously takes a lot of skill and strength and I’ve never seen it in person…”
“You obviously don’t have to,” Geo added, but she looked pretty curious as well.
Bex seemed to search each woman’s face. And from what Atlas could tell, not one of them looked judgmental. They all just looked intrigued, curious.
“Are you sure? I mean, I’m not sure how people do it in these classes, but the only way I know how do it is pretty sexy.” Bex went a little pink and shook her head. “That sounds braggy. But, yeah, that’s the whole point in a strip club, you know?”
“You’re not exactly performing for a bunch of nerds, Bex,” May said. “We’ve all seen our share of sexy in our lives.”
Bex looked around, a bemused and mystified expression on her face. “You really want me to, huh?”
She was met with a chorus of yeses from every woman. On the other side of the glass, Atlas made a complicated groan. Did he want to watch Bex dance? Yeah. Did he think that Bex would want him to watch? Probs no.
Still looking like she wasn’t exactly sure how the hell she’d gotten here, Bex walked over to the sound system in one corner. “Can I look through your iPod?” she asked May.
“Sure. Yeah. Is music important when you’re pole dancing?”
“Well,” Bex weighed her head from one side to the other. “You want to listen to something that you can lose yourself in. You don’t wanna be uncomfortable. If you’re feeling super shy or embarrassed then you’re not gonna move as well. And that can be dangerous. I’ve seen girls fall or lose their grip because they were nervous.”
She clicked around for a few minutes until she found an album that Atlas actually really liked. It was kind of electronic R&B and he often ran or worked out to it. He realized that he listened to it for the same reasons that Bex did. That he lost himself in the music. He lost track of the limitations of his body and instead let whatever was going to happen happen.
He was standing, his hands in his pockets and his eyes fixed on her. He watched her head bounce up and down as she caught the beat of the song. She was just on the other side of the two-way mirror. If she had lifted her hand and Atlas had as well, they could have gone palm to palm against the glass.
His heart banged against his ribs standing this close to her, even if there was a pane of glass between them. Even if she didn’t know. He was realizing just how much space they gave one another at home. And that was fine. That was totally fine. But being close was good too. God damn, it was good.
He raked a hand over the back of his head, over his beard. It was a slippery slope though. Obviously. Because even now, he wanted more. His mind flashed back to lifting her onto the counter. To sleeping on the same couch as her. To the sole of her foot pressing against his.
He sat down and leaned his elbows onto his knees. One hand gripped his hair. He needed to leave.
Bex laughed and his head came up to see why. She’d turned to look at the expressions on the faces of all the women staring at her.
“You should see the looks on all your faces,” Bex said, laughing again. She put her hands on her hips. “I know it’s your first time. I swear I’ll be gentle.”
The women all cracked, laughing and smiling.
“Dance! Dance! Dance!” Naomi started chanting, jumping and clapping at the same time.
Bex walked over to the pole and swung around it, testing. Atlas’s breath caught in his chest. She was so graceful. So— He nearly swallowed his tongue when she walked in a sultry circle around the pole, one hand high up. She grabbed it unexpectedly and swung, somehow ending up with her back to the pole, in a tangled twist that had her arching against her t-shirt. As she slid down, the shirt caught against the pole and Atlas got his first real look at the twin points of her hipbones.
He’d always had a thing for hipbones. But these? Jesus criminy. He was unready. He was unworthy. He was unwinding.
He needed to leave. He knew now that he needed to leave. He couldn’t stay here and watch this and still be sane at the end. Something deep and old and primal rose up within him. He refused to be yet another man who took something from Bex without asking.
He rose up just as she jumped off the pole.
“I can’t do this with a shirt on. I know you said no stripping, but I’m gonna break my neck if my shirt gets in the way again.”
Atlas turned his back as she yanked the shirt over her head, her back to him, but not before he caught sight of some ink along her back.
He gripped the arms of the chair that he leaned over, refusing to turn around again. The image was burning in his head.
Hipbones and tattoos. The two things that just wrecked him on a woman. And Bex was working with sexy versions of both.
The tattoo, from what he’d seen had been a crescent moon. It was big, eight or ten inches tall and completely inked black. It wasn’t some girly or decorative outline. No. This thing was clear and
there and unapologetic.
He shouldn’t have seen it. He shouldn’t be here. Not without her permission.
The women in the studio cheered at something Bex had just done, but Atlas didn’t turn. He took a long, rattling breath and walked out of the studio.
CHAPTER TEN
“Atlas!” Bex hollered as she came clomping in through the door. She was sweaty and happy and filled with good news. “Are you home?”
“In here,” he called from the living room.
She skidded into the room and hopped over the back of the couch, as dexterous and full of energy as she used to be as a child.
He was sitting in an armchair, an open book in his hands. His hair was damp from the shower.
“You’ll never guess what happened,” she chirped, bouncing lightly where she sat on the couch. She didn’t wait for a response. “I went to May’s studio with the book club girls and we all danced. I think they’re my friends now, by the way. But the really amazing thing that happened was that May offered me a job.”
“No kidding! Doing what?”
Rebecca covered her face with her palms and relived the moment at the end of the class. She’d had absolutely no idea what to make of these rich, fancy ladies asking her to dance for them. She certainly didn’t want to be their little pity performer, something to entertain them. But that hadn’t been it at all. In fact, they’d all been impressed by her moves, asking for tips and guidance for the rest of the hour and a half. They’d been filled with praise for her and not one of them had asked a voyeuristic question. They’d treated her like a friend. Like a peer.
And then, the icing on the cake…
“Yeah! As a dance instructor. She wants to add in… a new kind of dance classes and she doesn’t have as much experience as I do. So she asked if I’d teach them. It’s five days a week, an hour and a half each and she’s gonna pay me…” Rebecca leaned forward on her knuckles, making intense eye contact with Atlas, so that he’d know just how miraculous this really was. “One hundred dollars an hour.”
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