by Tarin Lex
“Right.” I nod once, firmly. I uncross my arms, securing her hands in mine, and start to lead her toward the stairs. “Let’s go.”
“Not out there,” she protests, pulling me back. I follow her line of sight as it arcs and then falls over one of the big, plush chairs. Some of the other girls are proffering lap dances in the vicinity. “Over there.”
“Hell no,” I grumble.
“You said.”
“I said, Hell. No.”
“Ren.” She draws out my name. She lets go of me and crosses her arms, effectively heaving her half-exposed breasts together. The bedazzled bra dizzies me. It’s hard to look down at her face without those pert globes appearing in my periphery.
I look away.
“I can’t leave,” she says, in a low voice. “They fire girls for doing that.” A beat of silence dwells. Then, “What you said earlier, it makes sense. If you don’t want me dancing for other guys…I can dance for you.”
I can’t say no to her when I look in her eyes. It’s a fault in my nature. I chance a look anyway. My heartbeat steadies. “How about we just sit together.”
“No. I can’t just sit down all night. Others could be watching…”
I only drank half a beer before I recognized her on the small stage and set it down, so I know I’m not buzzed, but I must be halfway out of my mind because at some point she took my hand again and led me to one of the cushy chairs in a dim, discreet corner. We’re standing over it now.
Khadija plops me down and adds, resolutely, “…paying customers.”
My throat stitches closed and I look away when she reaches around to unhook her sparkly bra.
Standing before me, she leans down to touch my jaw, ticking my face up toward hers. Her eyes widen, appearing doe-shaped and almost black. “Pretend to enjoy it, at least?”
She swipes off the infernal bra with one hand…
…exposing the most angelic female form that’s ever lowered into my lap.
And here we are. I still. I swallow, hard. I may be a dead man soon. Until then, I am only a man. All man. I lay down my forearms and press my fingers into the armrest of the wicked chair.
I seize her gaze, angrily. “I am not advertising you, Deej”—I frown, looking only at her face—“I’m claiming you.”
Four
Ren
She smells like sweet vanilla and citrus. Too exquisitely, her silken breasts graze down the sides of my face as she descends, settling deeper into my lap and rolling her hips, languidly, over my thighs.
Killing me.
“You can touch me, Ren.”
“No. I can’t.”
She cocks her head, pouting. “You don’t think I’m pretty.” Her bottom lip quivers and I steady it with my thumb.
I tilt her chin so she looks at me. “You’re gorgeous, Angel. It’s just…wrong.”
“What’s wrong?” she says, pressing her palms into my chest. “I’m almost nineteen. I know you, Ren.” She lowers her tone to a dulcet purr. Part of her act? Toying with me? The fact it’s working irritates me to seven hells. “It’s kind of nice that you’re not a stranger. I’m comfortable with you.” She alters the rhythm of her hips, from a slow circular swing to an up-and-down motion along the swell of my erection. Her fingers skitter upward and flirt with the collar of my shirt.
“Fine.” I choke on desire. “Do you need to do it with as much…dedication?” I grouse. I shake my head. “I’m not supposed to see you this way. All grown up and…” I indicate her form with a flick of my gaze. “…sexy.”
“Well I am grown up, and I’m good at this. Let me show you. Please?” She angles her sun-kissed face at me, her brown eyes pleading. “You’ll like it.”
Christ, she’s tenacious. I’m already hard as a steel pipe.
“I know, Deej.” I don’t mean to bark as I say it. Definitely shouldn’t take her hand off my chest and lower it down to my throbbing proof—but that’s exactly what I do. As if she couldn’t feel it before, pressed between her bare thighs. She inhales a sharp breath when I set her hand right over my cock. “See…how good you are at this?”
Acting or not, she can’t hide the increased cadence of her heartbeat. With my hand wrapped around her wrist, I can feel it thrum harder, and harder. “Wow,” she breathes.
I let go and of her own volition, she keeps her hand right where it’s at. Her other hand grasps the nape of my neck.
“You’re so hard.”
“Indeed.” Excruciatingly so.
I shudder, and groan. I notice she isn’t wearing a lick of makeup. Doesn’t need it. Her eyes go wide and darken as I succumb deeper and deeper to this affliction. I sweep my gaze up and down her neck, then to her face again, languishing there for a heartbeat. Damn, she’s fuckin’ cute, wearing a wide, bright smile on her smooth, round face, her lips as mauve and sweet-looking as boysenberry. Don’t fucking look at her lips. Her Greek nose turns up slightly at the tip, one of many nods to her richly mixed ethnicity. I happen to know she’s of Indian, Greek, and Irish descent.
She’s loved to please and serve others for as long as I’ve known her, whether that’s cooking a fabulous breakfast, cleaning my house—which I pay her to do on occasion, not that I’m actually living there lately—or bringing home straight A’s and making her family proud.
This is the last place anyone’d expect to see studious Khadija, and it doesn’t escape me now how multifaceted she actually is. Smart and sexy. And a dichotomy. She’s always been a good girl, obedient and chaste, far as I could ever tell. But she’s bold and uninhibited here. Unreserved. A little minx.
I find that I’m actually…proud of her?
She keeps torturing me with her soft, lingering touch, and my hands ascend up her trim waist and hourglass curves, my gaze rolls downward, past her shoulders and collarbones, to her perfect tits. I shouldn’t touch them. I shouldn’t look at all, let alone survey this closely. I have no excuse. Her supple breasts are the same golden-bronze shade as the rest of her, save for the outline of a too-small string bikini-top that paints her skin a shade paler.
That happens to also be right where I set my palms, handfulling her perky mounds. Her eyelids shutter closed when I lightly pinch her puckered, pink nipples. She angles her head back, baring her throat, still roaming a hand over my cock where a shot of desire pulses harder. In tandem her hips press into mine, bucking me as if for more than just my benefit. She hitches a breath, rolls her face toward mine again, and opens her eyes.
In ten years I’ve seen a hundred emotions play across those hazelnut spheres. Anger, sadness, joy. But I’ve never seen them blaze with the sheer smoldering desire that flickers over them now. My dick twinges, miserably against my jeans.
She has more power to make me come like this than I have to stop her.
She keeps touching, keeps dancing, oscillating her hips and thighs over mine.
I grasp her hips and press her down harder onto my lap. “You’re turning me into a savage,” I rumble, and with a fierce groan, I reach up to praise her tits once more. Toeing the line of decency even here, I lean in to kiss her there. Khadija sighs an airy, sweet-sounding moan that cracks me open.
Mine…she’s mine.
I throw my head back and drop one hand to her hip, the other settling at the hollow of her throat. She lets me. She stops tormenting me with her indolent strokes, returning both palms to my chest, steadying us but for the rhythmic, constant swirl of her hips.
Who knows how much time has passed. Song, after song, after song has played. More than a few other men have passed by, grumbling impatiently.
She squares her shoulders, arches her spine. I reach around to skate my fingers down her back. From this position her face wavers just over mine. Her long hair falls against my cheek and hers. The ends dip below my collared shirt. She dips her face, and I close my eyes.
She kisses me, one reticent peck on the lips, then pulls away, and my heart goes haywire.
I find my breath and open my eyes to g
aze at her. My eyelids droop over my eyes, feeling as overtaken as my resolve.
“How much do I owe you already?” I mutter. “For…protecting you.”
She giggles softly at that. The pleasant sound dissolves into a smile that lights up her face. “Thousands,” she whispers, teasingly.
I smile back. “It’s yours.”
#
I wasn’t kidding—if Khadija insists on dancing here tonight, she’s going to dance with me, only. And she does. All night.
It goes fast. Time contracts with her in my arms. I start to get used to her sitting here. Too damn comfortable. My chest constricts when I realize how far from her I’ll need to stay away after this.
For the most part, we’re left alone. She swipes her hair off her neck, twisting it into rope and laying it over her shoulder. Damp heat slicks her neck and inner thighs. When she isn’t torturing me to the edge of coming, we manage to talk.
“You made him up,” I allege. “Bryan.”
“Not exactly.” Grinning, Khadija nods toward the bouncer standing formidably in one corner, all in shadow. “His name is Bryan.”
“So, you’re single.”
“For now.”
“Mm.” I angle my face to one side, narrowing my eyes at her, in curious observation. “Most girls here have spray tans,” I remark. “And makeup. And fake tits.” I smirk.
She lifts one shoulder, smiling demurely. “They tell me not to. They want me to look natural.” Right. They want her to play up her innocence and youth.
My jaw clenches, hard.
Harder when she stands up to loosen her joints and some dick tries to get funny with me. “Hey, man.” Impeccable timing for Joe Schmuck, who strides too close to where I’m sitting. He ticks his chin at me. “You wanna give someone else a turn?”
I speak the truth. “She’s mine tonight.”
He chuckles, looking somewhat drunk. I narrow my eyes to size him up. He’s not a small guy, might even be as big as Hale, but he’s tipsy, and I’m fast. When he surveys my girl with his loitering gaze, I see red.
DJ steps between my legs spread in a narrow V.
In the time it takes me to glance up at her and blink, the intruder comes closer to test his odds. My blood simmers and hot smoke rockets up to the roof of my head.
“I’d love some of that, sweetheart,” he crows, then he reaches his hand toward her and clinches her bare butt cheek. “Why don’t you gimme—”
I’m on my feet before he can utter the rest of that, shielding my girl from any more of his grimy assault. “The fuck did you say?” My fingers twitch and on instinct I flex my hand open and closed.
“Aw, man,” he beefs. “Don’t get so emotional. It’s a fuckin’ strip—”
I don’t hear him. All of my senses dim except the fire in my chest and the ache in my hand. I clench a fist.
A loud, popping crack! sounds through the air—not my strike, but his. Idiot. Bad news for him, I have the chin of a mountain.
I’m almost impressed that it stings.
Grimacing, he rubs his knuckles with his other hand.
I grin.
I should step away. Let him step away. Should.
Without any measure of ceremony, or thought, I strike back once and the big fella tumbles down, bone over bone like Jenga blocks.
Khadija gasps.
He bellows, and wipes at his blood, smearing it over the side of his mouth.
All of a sudden Bryan, the hulking man dressed in all black, appears before us like a widow spider. “All three of you”—his stare fixes to each of us, even DJ, and she gulps—“out. Now.”
Five
Khadija
I’m a tangle of nerves the whole drive home from work. Not that I can call it ‘work’ anymore—pretty sure I was just soundly fired. I don’t know what came over me to try to seduce Ren like that. What’s worse is that he liked it. He likes me. We kissed, something I have only done once before and never with a customer. Is that what he is, a customer now? I should’ve known he’d get protective. What was I thinking?
I wasn’t.
My heart pitches to my throat as I pull up to the house in my 15-year-old Ford Ranger. Ren followed me home in his bigger, nicer truck, and I’m almost terrified to face him right now. He’s thirty-one; I’m eighteen. He’s Dad’s best friend. He’s the only one who knows I lied.
His truck idles as I cut the engine and step out. What will Dad think if he sees us coming home together? Will Ren make me tell him the truth? Keeping a secret from Dad felt scandalous enough. Keeping a secret with Ren from Dad seems horribly shameless.
I walk up to the house and dig my keys out of my purse. At the front door, I look over my shoulder at Ren’s still-idling truck. What is he doing? I wave at him to come inside, trying to glimpse his face but his windows are tinted blacker than pitch. Pretty sure that’s illegal. There’s no lift-kit limit here though, so the four-by-four is raised high over big, bad-looking tires and performance wheels. It’s loud too. I can’t see the look on his face when, all of a sudden, he drives away.
Now that’s depressing. Ren hasn’t spent a night at his own house in weeks. I was getting used to him…and that’s probably the whole problem. My chest burns when I wonder if Ren is headed back to the club, or another one, instead of home. The sting of jealousy hurts. My little crush always came and went, came and went, while Ren dated various women, off and on. I was always more curious than jealous of them. Not like this. I wasn’t possessive.
Geez. I really am in trouble.
The house is quiet. Dad stayed up when I first started, er, “seeing Bryan,” but as Hope gets closer to her due date and they both prepare to lose a lot of sleep, Dad’s been going to bed early, with Hope. Good thing. I can’t face him right this moment. I’m sure I look guilty as sin right now.
I usually shower before I leave the club, but seeing as I was forced out, I didn’t get a chance. The warm water soothes me to my bones and steadies my heart enough to remember the night in still frames that aren’t cut through by the edge of anxiety. Like Ren’s perfect touches. His smoldered gaze when he looked at me. The way his arms and hands and neck fell over mine so easily it was as if my body were cast from his. And those lips, that kiss…
I’m all grown up now. Guess I don’t need to tell him that.
There’s a lingering swell of desire still pulsating between my thighs but I don’t have enough time, or enough Ren, to massage the ache tonight. If it isn’t his touch, I just don’t want it. The parental units wake up early, and hungry, and I need sleep. When I finish getting ready for bed and plug my phone into its charger, a text message notification lights the screen.
Ren: Sweet dreams Angel.
First, I text him back: You too Ren. :) Then I fall into bed with a big smile and a gaggle of bees swarming my tummy.
They will be sweet, Ren, if I dream of you.
#
The next day I call the club to confirm that yes, I am indeed fired. It was good money, but I still struggle to feel sad about it. Feels more like a day off than the harsher truth: I am unemployed. Yikes.
I always spent my days off reading, but last night’s events sparked something new. So many thoughts and emotions firing through my synapses, making my body feel coiled tight unless I somehow spring it loose. And I do find a way. I dust off my high school laptop and release all the angst through the tips of my fingers. Type. Type. Type. Words become sentences become paragraphs become…chapter one. Hmf. Didn’t even realize I was writing a book. Now I can’t stop until it’s done.
This book-writing madness lasts for days. I survive on words and coffee and very little sleep, stopping only for restroom breaks and to cook for the family. Of course I still cook for the family. I love to do it. And the characters’ voices talk louder in my head when I’m standing over a kitchen stove.
Losing my mind.
Hope should have the baby soon. Dad should ask about Bryan again—hadn’t he said he wanted to meet him? Ren should come
by to visit or sleep over or acknowledge the deep-seated heat he left unrestrained and low in my belly. At the very least, he should text.
None of that happens.
Nothing happens except the story.
On day five, the three of us sit down for breakfast. Dad asks what I’ve been up to and I tell him the truth—I’m writing a novella, a romance. He nods, interested. I tell him I’m not ready to talk about it yet. I’m really not. Dad and Hope trade long looks lit by private, inside jokes. He tells her he’s taking time off work till the baby arrives, and good thing, because although she’s happy and glowing now, my stepmom looks about to pop.
Then Dad asks about Bryan, and I lie. “We broke up.”
“Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” I could at least pretend to care. Instead I’m shoveling food in my mouth, trying to picture the next scene in lucid detail so when I sit down to hammer it out, the words come fast.
“Well,” Dad says. “If you want to talk.”
“I don’t.” Ew—rude. Dad recoils and I set down my fork. “I mean, we can, not about Bryan. I just have other stuff on my mind.”
Dad and Hope accept that at face value. It isn’t a total lie.
When he asks me, “Have you heard from Ren?” I’m certain my cheeks turn red as poppies. Why would he ask me that?
I swallow. “No,” I manage. “Is everything…okay?” The thought that Ren might not be okay is a million times more damaging to my lungs and throat than the thought of Dad finding out what happened.
“Just, strange…how he hasn’t come by. I checked with Steele—he saw Ren for some new ink yesterday, didn’t have much to say.”
“You know Steele,” Hope chimes in.
“Ren,” Dad clarifies. “Steele said Ren was really quiet, and serious.”
“Hm,” Hope makes a sound of interest. I try to convince myself he isn’t mooning over me. I can’t indulge in such a thought.
“Man,” Dad says, shaking his head. “He’s my best friend, I worry about him. You know it’s been almost a year.”