by Max Monroe
And, God, he was so confident. Too confident. Like he’d had ten too many years getting everything he’d gone after and then some.
All of that conviction went straight to my head, and I found myself offering a tiny, harmless enough, admission. “It’s not. But it’s the only one you’re going to get,” I whispered, letting the words roll off my tongue unchecked. Surprisingly, I couldn’t even muster the teeniest amount of regret for their impulsive occurrence.
He laughed then, sinking all the way into the leather sofa and gesturing to the spot beside him with a nudge of his head. “Take a seat.”
My brows drew together as I protested. “You’re paying for this time, you know? You only have five minutes left.”
“I know,” he asserted. “That’s why you should sit.”
Evil and tempting, the invitation glimmered in front of me like a mirage. Still, I knew better than to let management, or worse than that, the club’s owner, see me going lax on the job. I had an appearance to maintain.
“I’d rather just dance.”
His eyes narrowed at my words, and I shivered slightly with discomfort. I would have thought with the lack of light in the room and the strobing beams of every disco color imaginable going off every thirty seconds, he wouldn’t be able to see into my eyes so clearly.
But with the intensity of his stare and the change of his expression, I knew I’d thought very wrong.
He smirked. “Now, that I know is a lie.”
I found myself grinning involuntarily at his response. It was like the smile just appeared, without thought or without the need to fake it. It was just there, presented to him on a silver platter without my brain’s consent.
“Sara?” he asked, and I raised a brow. “Is that your name?”
I nearly laughed. “Do I look like a Sara?”
“No,” he said, and I felt his responding raspy chuckle slide across my skin. “What about Melanie?”
I shook my head and my ass at the same time, and an amused smirk brightened his eyes.
“Emily?”
I lifted my hands into my long dark locks and flipped the strands over my back just as my eyes rolled with his next terrible guess. My hips followed suit into a rhythmic motion from left to right, letting the beat of the music determine their speed.
While I continued to dance, he watched.
But his gaze wasn’t focused on the curve of my breasts or the rhythmic sashay of my hips. No. Instead, it focused on my own, never once drifting away from my face to the mostly bare skin of my body.
I liked his eyes. Brown and inviting with just a hint of flecked gold around the rims. But I also kind of hated them.
I feared they held some sort of black magic power that could bring vulnerable, raw emotions to the surface. Or worse than that, the truth.
“Tell me,” he whispered, and I shook my head.
“My name isn’t on the table tonight, Mr. Persistent,” I said and offered a fake, girlish giggle to protect myself—my real self—from his determination. Trixie’s persona was a fortress. She’d been there and done that, and I’d be doing myself a huge favor if I hid the rest of me carefully behind her. “Just a lap dance.”
“C’mon.” A coaxing, sexy little smirk lifted the corner of his lips. “Just tell me your name. I promise it’ll be our little secret.”
“You seem to be forgetting the fact that you don’t need to know my name.”
“Trust me, I do,” he said as the current song drifted into a new one. “And just so you know, I’m more than prepared to buy up all of your lap dances for the night in order to get it.”
I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be some sort of playful threat, but my Trixie fortress giggled at the ridiculousness of his plan. She could spend all night robbing him of his hard-earned cash without batting an eye. “That’s a lot of money.”
“I don’t give a fuck about the money.”
“And a lot of lap dances,” I added with a smirk.
“Yeah, but I don’t want the dances. I just want your time.”
My time? What in the fuck did that even mean?
Him and the stripper, conversing and gabbing like two lost friends in the middle of a park? Somehow I didn’t think that was the kind of thing that would win me any awards with the owner of the club.
“Well, apparently not just my time. You also want my name,” I reminded him like an idiot.
Goddammit.
“That too.” He winked. I, unfortunately, swooned.
I had to give it to the man, not only was he tenacious, but he was also pretty damn charming.
“You already know my name,” he whispered. “It’s only fair now if I know yours.”
I barely had the time to open my mouth with a response before hot heaviness seared into my arm. A hand encircled the skin of my wrist and pulled me back with a hard jerk. I teetered on my heels momentarily, but I managed to right myself just in time to see the far-too-knowing customer surge to his feet to come after me.
Pauly Sabella, otherwise known as the brother to Marco Sabella, the owner of the club.
“It’s my turn, Trixie,” Pauly slurred, wrapping both thick arms around my waist and pulling my body tight against his. “You haven’t given me a dance all night, and I’m feeling left out.”
“You know the rules, Pauly,” I said through a fake smile as I attempted to break his hold. “You have to wait your turn.”
“But this fucking guy keeps taking my turn!”
This was Pauly’s MO. Once he got a few shots deep, he seemed to think his familial relation to the owner gave him permission to do whatever the hell he wanted.
And it appeared tonight was no different.
Honestly, he was mostly harmless, and one of the least dangerous men taking up residence in this club night after night, but that definitely did not make his pushy advances okay.
“Pauly, you know the rules,” I repeated. “And if you don’t let go of me, I’ll have to get security involved.” My voice stayed calm and my words came out soft, but it didn’t matter, he appeared to give zero fucks about what I had to say. Hell, my words only made him more handsy, and his grip grew tighter.
I looked toward the entrance of the VIP area until my eyes locked with one of the club bouncers, Danny. He started my way, but just before I could handle the situation, Pauly’s body was removed from mine with a violent yank.
“What the fuck!” he shouted as his body fell to the ground with a loud thud.
I turned on my heels to find Cam beside the drunk idiot, staring down at him with a stiff jaw and fists clenched tightly at his sides.
“Don’t ever fucking put your hands on her like that again,” he said through gritted teeth.
Pauly was too drunk to heed the warning.
With surprising speed, he hopped to his feet and came up swinging.
But his punches were too slow, and his brain was too blitzed.
After a few easy dodges and one hell of a right hook, Cam’s responding fist hit Pauly’s face with a harsh crack, and his body fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
“Oh shit,” I muttered as shock made me step back.
Cam the friendly patron apparently had an entirely believable badass side.
Unfortunately, inside Skins wasn’t the place to show it.
Before I could offer some sort of rational response, three big Skins’ bouncers joined the action and intervened without wasting time with questions.
Two of the big, burly men pinned the otherwise tenacious but charming guy I’d been dancing for a mere five minutes ago to the ground, while Danny checked on the drunken idiot passed out on the floor.
Knowing the club had a strict policy on fighting and reckless behavior, and it didn’t matter the reason or cause, I kept my mouth shut and stayed out of the way.
But that didn’t stop the tingling of guilt from creeping up my spine as I watched two bouncers carry Cam out of the semi-private space and toward the front of the club.
Hoboken PD woul
d be here soon, I was sure of it.
Playing hero in the wrong environment didn’t get you glory. No, for sweet Cam tonight, it wouldn’t get him anything but arrested.
The toilet flushed, and the drunk hovering over it hocked a loogie onto the perfectly good floor beside it. I slid just a little farther down the big, white, u-shaped bench and heaved a tightly closed-mouth breath.
God, what a nightmare.
A good time and all-out celebration of Quinn’s last moments of singledom had seen to my intoxication a fair amount—but I wasn’t even remotely drunk enough to fool myself into thinking I wasn’t currently touching at least three different bodily fluids in my spot in the drunk tank of the Hoboken Police Department.
The toilet—front and center on the main wall with no partitions for privacy—was the fanciest fixture in the room, for fuck’s sake.
A man named Mo drifted in and out of sleep in front of me, and another apparently known as Peter the Pisser—not joking…I heard several officers use it—did God knew what in the corner several feet away. I had my guesses based on his moniker, but in the interest of self-preservation, I chose not to think about it too deliberately.
“What’d you do, pretty boy?” Mo, waking briefly from his in-and-out slumber, asked without any indication of a slur.
I looked around quickly, but given the prospects of the room—cell…whatever—it became startlingly clear fairly swiftly that he was talking to me.
Innocence wasn’t something I could claim legally, but as I didn’t see much harm in claiming it in here, I rolled my neck and looked at Mo blankly. “I didn’t do anything.”
His laugh was dangerous and raspy as he slapped at the cold ceramic of the bench and wheezed. “Sure, sure.”
Turnabout being fair play and all, I volleyed the question back. “Okay, then. What are you in here for?”
He shrugged. “Told that cop with the crooked nose I was gonna spear him with my harpoon again.”
Jesus.
“Oh,” I murmured, pushing my back into the concrete wall behind me a little harder. I’d take a few more inches of separation from Mo the Spear Gun Enthusiast if I could get them, questionable bodily fluids be damned. Worst case, I’d burn these clothes to ashes as soon as I got released.
“Heh-heh,” he laughed, the sound of it shrill and phlegmy all at once.
Truly, I was living the fucking dream.
Fuck. All those times I’d seen other professional athletes make headlines for getting into some sort of trouble, I’d done nothing but admonish and judge them. Like, are you fucking kidding me? You’re making seven figures, and still, you’re fucking up?
Don’t get me wrong, the admonishing and judging were still completely fucking valid. It just tastes a little sourer when you’re not the one worthy of doing the judging.
Fuuuuck. I winced when my brain started to ponder the possible consequences of my right hook.
Wes fucking Lancaster, the owner of the New York Mavericks, my boss, and a hard-ass of more than average proportions, was going to rip me a new asshole when he found out about this.
The good news, I guess? I’d be a little bit better prepared for prison if these charges stuck.
Head in hands, I sank a little deeper into despair and let it all wash over me.
The sheer number of women I’d been close enough to count pubic hairs on tonight.
The woman who’d distracted me to the point of obsession.
And the very bad call I’d made to jump to her defense with a physical altercation.
It all replayed in my mind like a fucking B-rate movie.
Weirdly, though, for as wrong as I knew I’d been, I still couldn’t scrounge up any actual regret. Well, besides managing to get arrested before getting Trixie’s real name…and number.
I mean, was I really supposed to feel bad about defending a woman when some guy put his hands all over her without invitation? Was I supposed to just sit there and watch it happen?
I didn’t know.
Even here, in the harsh reality of the consequences of said actions, I didn’t know.
Maybe I never would.
The only thing I could do now was beg for mercy from the judge and Mr. Lancaster and set out to counterweight my actions with some form of positivity.
Help out teammates.
Donate to charity.
Find out more about the raven-haired beauty.
Wait. No. That last one sounds like a really bad idea, Cam.
The clink of a key in the lock of the cage door holding us in here called my attention and pulled my eyes up from their spot on the dirty floor.
A cop with an obviously bent nose was escorting a new person in through the door and undoing his cuffs, and Mo coughed to get my attention.
“That’s the cop I threatened,” he said with a laugh and a smile.
Like threatening a cop was the most normal thing in the world to do. He might as well have been telling me the score of the Yankees game or that we were due for a heat wave next week.
I couldn’t see my own face since any form of mirror or reflection was lacking, but I could only guess how disturbed I looked as I attempted to give him a smile back.
Once I left the drunk tank, if I never saw Mo the Spear Gun Enthusiast again, it would be too soon.
Our new roommate was the cleanest of the bunch besides me, but his nose was bloody, and his two front teeth were missing.
What in the hell does the guy who was on the other end of that fight look like?
“Find a spot, Munez,” the cop ordered as he stepped back out of the cell and shut the door behind him. “Every single one of you is in here for the night, so I suggest you get fucking cozy.”
The night? Shit.
I knew nothing about how the whole thing would shake out against me, but—not to sound like an asshole—I’d really been hoping this would be one of those occasions when having money would come in handy.
I knew Sean had a fucking wad of cash in his pocket, stocked up in the event that he needed to pay for forty more lap dances, and the rest of those fuckers had to have at least a few grand hanging out in their safes. Plenty enough for my bail money.
Normally, I was one of the choirboys. One of the good soldiers who kept his mouth shut and followed the rules until someone told me otherwise.
Unless I didn’t like the rules.
A few seasons ago, I’d had a pretty bad hamstring injury that had sidelined me for far too long. Winnie Winslow, the team physician and Wes Lancaster’s wife, had to fight me tooth and nail to get me to stay on the bench for as long as she deemed necessary to heal, and I could feel the same kind of rugged determination flowing through my veins at the prospect of spending the entire night in here with Peter the Pisser and Mo.
“Uh, excuse me?” I called to Mo’s spear gun target of choice. “You said we’re in here all night?”
The officer smirked a little and nodded. “Yep.”
“Well, uh, what about if we make bail?”
His tiny lip curl turned into a full-on curve as he inflated with the enjoyment of having me under his thumb.
“Minimum time in the tank is ten hours, superstar,” he taunted, and I cringed at the idea that he knew who I was.
I guessed that was one of the consequences of being one of those idiot professional athletes who couldn’t help themselves stay out of trouble.
Still, I was also getting a little clearer picture of why Mo wanted to harpoon this guy so badly.
Glancing to his nameplate to commit his identity to memory, I bit my tongue a little harder and gave him a respectful answer. “Gotcha. Thanks, Officer Deluca.”
“It’s Deluva,” he corrected swiftly and with an edge I couldn’t miss.
I was a patriot.
A supporter of our boys in blue and all that went with them.
Despite that, I knew without a doubt that Deluva was a Douche with a capital fucking D. A man on a power trip who’d happily fuck over any one of us in any way
he could, deserved or not.
“Right,” I agreed swiftly. He eyed me for another moment but ultimately retreated from the cell, a gleam in his eye that he had the freedom to do so and I didn’t.
When I got back to my spot on the bench, everything looked a little different.
Especially Mo the Spear Gun Enthusiast.
“You know what?” I said directly to him as his crazy eyes met mine. “I think I’d like to hear a little more about your story, Mo.”
He smiled, and this time, I really did too.
As it turned out, we apparently had the whole night ahead of us to get to know one another.
“Wow, Simone,” my colleague, Detective Jimmy Torres, quipped as I came through the back door to the patrol room. “Rumor going around that you got rid of all of your actual street clothes and replaced them with everything streetwalker.” His smile was self-satisfied as he brought his funny little ditty full circle. “I guess the rumor was wrong.”
Along with calling me by my last name only, busting balls was a common occurrence in the bullpen of the Hoboken Police Department, and nothing I wasn’t used to. As one of the only female detectives, I took the brunt of what several pigheaded men thought was a good time, and now that I’d been working undercover as a stripper for the past few months, I was a target for even more of it.
Jimmy Torres, in particular, liked to get his rocks off by proving how manly he was in front of the other men. Funny how it pretty much worked the opposite way in front of women.
He had more failed relationships than I’d had dollar bills in my G-string last night.
But I never bothered to try to change that leopard’s spots. I never stooped to his level and tossed back shitty, teasing remarks. No, I much preferred watching him fail epically at one relationship after another.
“Creative, Jimmy,” I chuckled lightly, knowing he’d miss the bloody mess of obvious sarcasm.
Just as suspected, any hostility flew right over his head and vanished into thin air as I stepped inside my office and shut the door.
I hadn’t even made it to my desk when the door opened and shut again behind me.
“You okay?” Steve’s familiar voice filled my ears, and I turned to find him leaning on the doorframe of my office door.