“What? No thanks.” I shook my head.
“He was totally giving you the eyes. You should go talk to him.”
“Why? So I can get next dibs on his dick?” I shook my head. “I’ll pass.”
“I saw a video the other day of a budgie riding a tiny bicycle.”
I glanced over at my friend quizzically. “What does that have to do with anything?”
She shrugged and took a sip of her drink. “I’m just saying, if they can teach a budgie to ride a tiny bicycle, teaching Ally Dylan how to have fun isn’t impossible either.”
I stuck my tongue out but otherwise didn’t respond to her taunt. I wasn’t interested in having this fight tonight, especially given how I really was more consumed by the accidently glances I’d been sharing with the man across the room than I wanted to admit. While the normal part of me would find it both degrading and embarrassing to throw my inhibitions to the wind to paw at some stranger in front of my friends like Karly or Brenda, another part of me found the idea strangely sexy and enticing. That was a part of me I needed to ignore.
“Come on girl, live a little!”
I wrinkled my nose. “Like I’d ever do that.” I nodded over to the far side of the room. “As I’m sure you knew when you brought me here. Why again did you bring me here?”
“Like I said, I didn’t know there would be strippers!”
I returned a flat look.
“Okay, fine! I may have suspected it. But I didn’t think I had to tell you because I thought you would also assume…”
“You thought I would assume that there would be strippers at the future Block Parent of the Year’s bachelorette party?” I snorted. “You and I think on very different wavelengths.”
“Okay, let’s go grab a drink, Grumpy.” Candace patted my back. “I’m sorry about the strippers.”
I bet.
As Candace steered me toward the kitchen, I leaned in with a whisper. “I still don’t think Brenda would have noticed if we didn’t show up.” Three women I didn’t recognize shouldered past us on their way into the den. “There’s like a million people here.”
Candace stopped and glared down at me. “How would you feel if your old college roommate and her friend didn’t show up to your bachelorette party?”
“I probably wouldn’t notice.”
Candace raised her eyebrow and huffed. “You know Brenda,” she hissed. “Her friends mean everything to her.”
“Shouldn’t her fiancé mean everything to her? I mean, isn’t that the point of getting married?”
“She’s afraid that getting married will mean losing all her friends.” Candace grabbed onto my arm. Her hold was gentle but firm. It meant business. “If we start flaking out before she’s even married, imagine how that will make her feel?”
We passed by the living room where one of the other strippers was dancing naked on the coffee table. He was a mass of hard curves that bulged with each arch or stretch of his body. Even his muscles had muscles, and he knew it. During the brief time it took us to pass the room I saw him flex his biceps no less than three times.
“You’re right.” I gestured for Candace to continue down the hall. She’d gotten distracted. “Can we just go grab this drink?”
She nodded and took my hand, pulling me along. I don’t know how many times I’d reminded her that I was an adult and I didn’t need someone to hold my hand, but she never seemed to remember. Either that or she didn’t care.
We came across the third stripper in the kitchen. A bunch of girls were doing body shots off him.
“Me next!” Candace said, waving her hand in the air.
“That’s right, girl,” he said to his current customer. “Suck it all up.”
I grimaced. Should I try and stop my friend from her questionable decision? I didn’t want to think about this man’s hygiene. I could already smell the cologne off him from across the room.
No. Candace lured me here under false pretenses, she knew what she was doing. If she wanted to get scabies by doing body shots off a male stripper who moaned anytime someone touched him, that was her business.
Candace approached the table. Someone poured the stripper’s navel full of tequila, and she pulled back her short hair and bent for it to a chorus of cheers.
“You’ve got hot lips,” said the stripper.
I rolled my eyes.
My roommate bounded over to me when she was done. “That was so much fun!” She grabbed a beer from the tub of ice and cans on the counter. “Should we go back to talk to Brenda now?”
Another body shot would have almost sounded more appealing. Then again, of the three men at this party, I preferred the one back in the den over the others. It was like I was some new age, messed up Goldilocks, and the three bears in question were male strippers. The one in the living room was too self-involved. The one in the kitchen was too weird. But the stripper in the den with the dreamy eyes? He was just right. Like a bowl of oatmeal I wouldn’t mind gobbling up.
Woah. Where the hell did that thought come from?
“I don’t think I’m ready to go back yet,” I said. “I’m going to go grab a cigarette or something.”
Candace raised an eyebrow. “You don’t smoke.”
“I know. But why should smokers be the only ones allowed to use that excuse to take a break?”
“Are you okay?” she asked. “I could come with you…?”
I shook my head. “I’m fine. I won’t be too long, you go have fun. I just want some air.”
Candace let me go without further complaint. She was probably relieved on some level. I knew how much she loved to party, and hanging out with the one person in the room who wasn’t on board with the pork-n-beans fiesta was probably a bit of a drag.
I found my way to the back door, passing the super muscular stripper on my way. He seemed to be in his element, waving his junk around like he was trying to take flight. He had the smallest testicles I’d ever seen.
Not that I’ve seen many.
The warm air eased over me like a soothing balm as soon as I stepped outside. I leaned against the side of the house and stared out at the yard. The lawn was lush and green, something not commonly seen in California’s current drought. Especially not this close to LA. But it made sense. Brenda was the kind of person who would insist on having a perfect lawn and a crowded, colorful garden. Not that she would tend to it personally.
I’d never thought of Brenda as the kind of woman who would so wantonly throw herself at a stranger like she had today. I mean, I once saw her wear a pantsuit, so I thought we were on the same level when it came to sex.
I was beginning to wonder what I was missing out on that everybody else just seemed to understand. What about it was consuming enough to send a person into a frenzy like that? Was it just me? I hadn’t had a ton of sex before, but I liked to think I was experienced enough to know a thing or two about it.
Yet I couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about. I mean, it was okay and all, but there were more important things to do with your time.
I sighed, closing my eyes and wondering what it would be like to not be such a square. More like Candace. It wasn’t that I wanted to be boring or not have any fun, I just found it hard to let loose sometimes. I’d grown up having to be responsible for myself a lot, and it was a hard habit to break. In the back of my mind, there were always little doubts and fears that I couldn’t ever let go of, reminding me to act responsibly and do the right thing because no one was going to do it for me. I would love to quash that little voice, even if just for a little while.
I headed back inside, determined to try and rejoin the party and have a little fun. But as soon as I did, the music and laughter and shrieks of delight made me realize I wasn’t quite ready after all. Or maybe this really wasn’t the best environment to start letting go of my inhibitions.
So instead, I looked for a place to hide out for a while. Maybe a bathroom with a lock. The one on the main level was likely to get too much
traffic, but I knew there was one upstairs that was bound to be quieter.
As soon as I locked myself in and the sounds of the party faded, I felt myself relax a bit. The bathroom was large and had a huge tub that I stared at wistfully, wishing I could just run a hot bubble bath and disappear beneath the suds.
And then maybe that one stripper I’d found to be just right would join me, and…
Shocked again at my own thoughts and half convinced that the party had somehow driven me to madness, I prayed that Candace would want to leave soon.
3
Matthias
Where oh where did you go, pussycat?
Nearly half an hour had passed since my dance for the bride, and I still hadn’t clamped eyes on the little brunette girl again. I saw her friend in passing, but she was alone—but that gave me hope that my target hadn’t yet left the party.
Why did she bother me so much? One look of disgust amongst a sea of lustful stares was nothing. I should have been able to slip back into my evening without further delay, picking out one of the girls for a quick fuck before heading out the door.
But I couldn’t get her expression out of my head—neither that first look of judgement, nor the later look of disguised desire. I needed to investigate further, my mind wouldn’t leave it alone until I did.
Donny sidled into the room holding a bottle of tequila. He had the kind of grin on his face that told me he was about to do something stupid. Knowing this crowd, they were going to love it.
“Who wants to play a game?” he asked.
In an instant he had all the eyes in the room glued to him, which allowed me the perfect opportunity to slip away. My only objective was to find the scornful brunette and meet her ice with a little of my fire.
Most of the women at the party had been attracted to the den by the hubbub generated by Donny’s game. That made it easier to browse through the remaining faces, but I still couldn’t find the one I wanted.
Upstairs. She was probably upstairs. That would be exactly where I would go if I had somehow wound up at a party that I wanted to hide away from. I smiled and climbed the stairs, unwrapping the towel around my waist.
She might not have known it, but reacting the way she did had started a game between us. And I liked to play dirty.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I glanced down the hallway. At the end, a light shone under one of the closed doors.
Bingo.
I approached and knocked, hanging my towel over my erect cock. Inside, someone cursed.
“Coming,” a female voice called.
The door swung open, and there she was. Thick, black lashes. Blue eyes like shattered crystal. And plump, blood-red lips.
“Oh.” She blinked. I could tell she was focusing all her energy on not looking down, which seemed to have momentarily sapped her of the power of speech.
I peered around her. “You’re hiding in the bathroom?”
She pursed her lips and furrowed her brow. “I’m not hiding. Maybe I’m going to the bathroom.”
“And yet you opened the door quickly. And you’re still wearing pants.”
“At least one of us is,” she snapped back.
So she noticed after all. Good.
“Okay, well if you’re not going to the bathroom, and you’re not hiding, what are you doing up here all alone?” I asked.
Her pale face, dusted with freckles, tinged pink. “I just needed some space. What are you? The party police?”
I smirked. “I could be if you like. I’ve played that role before.”
The girl rolled her eyes, but she didn’t shut the door on me. I took that as a sign that she wanted me, even if she wasn’t yet aware of it herself. Or maybe she was aware, but didn’t want to want me.
Either way, I was interested enough to press on.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She narrowed her eyes. “Ally.”
“Nice to meet you, Ally,” I replied. “I’m Matthias.”
“Fabulous. Now that we’ve been properly introduced, perhaps I could go back to my alone time?”
I feigned looking behind me, only to stop and catch her in the act of checking out my magically floating towel. The embarrassment that coated her face was priceless.
I pushed past her in the bathroom. She gave me a wide berth, but didn’t leave.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
I shrugged. “Maybe I also want a little alone time. It can’t all be dancing naked to an adoring crowd.” I debated flipping the towel off just to see how she would react.
Not yet.
“Us strippers need time to recharge our batteries, too.”
She snorted. “Yeah, I saw that Brenda was about to suck the energy right out of you.”
“Jealous?”
“Concerned,” she shot back. “Her and her fiancé registered at Bloomingdales.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Do you know how expensive a set of towels is from Bloomingdales?”
I raised an eyebrow.
Ally let out a frustrated sigh. “Based on what I saw down there, I may have just wasted a bunch of money on a wedding gift for a doomed marriage.”
I glanced down at the towel over my package. Staying hard enough to keep it floating while I was around a sexy group of women was always easy, but it was even easier around this fiery little minx. I liked her spunk and couldn’t resist continuing to tease her.
“This towel right here is from Bloomingdales,” I noted.
Ally used that as an opportunity to take a good, long look. “I doubt you’d buy a towel from Bloomingdales just so you could hang it off your junk.”
I grinned. She’d walked right into my trap.
“I can show you the label…” I reached down as if to lift it off.
“Okay! I believe you!” she blurted. “Leave the towel where it is.”
I laughed. “You are almost too easy to tease.” I winked. “You should work on that.”
“I don’t think I need to take life advice from a stripper, thanks.”
“Ah. And what is it that you do that’s so mighty and important?” I leaned against the vanity, crossing my arms. “Two seconds ago you were complaining about the price of towels.”
She paused for a moment, as if deciding how to answer. Then she stuck out her chin defiantly. For a girl half my size, she could look tough when she wanted to. Even with the freckles.
“Not everyone is focused on money. That’s the problem these days. So many people with a lot of money that ignore those without it. Some people can’t ever get ahead or change their lives because of where they were born or the disadvantages of a system stacked against them. So that’s where I come in. My goal is to try and help people like that.”
That wasn’t at all what I was expecting, and left me impressed.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d talked to a woman who surprised me like that. My last real relationship had been with a woman who was manipulative, greedy and completely deceptive. That was over a year ago, before I left home and came to America. But so far I hadn’t met a lot of women here that were much better. Not that I was looking for a relationship. In a way, it was helpful that women seemed to know that a stripper’s salary wasn’t going to pay their bills. That left their only expectation of me that I fuck them into oblivion.
That was a service I was always more than happy to provide.
But Ally didn’t seem to be after money or my cock. How refreshing.
“Good for you,” I said.
She gave me a flat look.
“I mean it,” I insisted. “I’m impressed. It also makes so much more sense to me now why you’re such a prude.”
Ally’s glare was so sharp I felt her words almost slice at my exposed skin. “I am not a prude.”
“Now you’re a prude and a liar.” I clicked my tongue. “You’re only a bonnet and a grudge away from starting a witch hunt. That’s concerning.”
; “If you’re that worried, why don’t you go back downstairs and rejoin the party. I’m sure you’re sorely missed. Especially by Karly.”
I grinned. “Because I’d much rather be up here with you.”
Ally was turning out to be so much more than I expected. She was strong. She was fierce. And although she was clearly a prude on the outside, I suspected there was also a seductress on the inside just waiting to be let out.
And I wanted to be the one to set her free.
“The only reason you’re still hanging around up here is because you think that I’m going to go ga-ga for your dick like every other girl at this party.” She raised an eyebrow. “You like the challenge.”
“I like a lot things,” I shot back. Ally surprised me once again, this time in how easily she’d read my mind. “I mean, it’s true that I would never turn down a good challenge, but right now I’m more interested in figuring you out.”
“Figuring me out?”
“It’s obvious to anyone that looks at you how uncomfortable you are at being at a party with strippers, yet you continue to deny that you’re a prude. I just wonder why?”
“Being uncomfortable because my friend is down there debauching herself before she makes the biggest commitment of her life doesn’t make me a prude,” Ally defended.
I let out a bark of laughter. “More lies, chérie. You care about the wandering bride about as much as you care about this party.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Is that so, Ally? You haven’t said a word to the bride the whole time you’ve been here. You’ve spent the past half hour hiding in a bathroom. And you care more about the money you wasted on a set of dumb towels than you do about the fact that your friend down there is about to waste her life.”
“Waste her life?” she mocked. “What a shocker. Who would have thought that the male stripper at my friend’s bachelorette party would frown on the institution of marriage?”
“You’re putting words in my mouth.” I smiled, hoping to throw her off. “And you’re deflecting.”
“I don’t owe you an explanation for my actions, nor do I need to prove to you that I’m not a prude,” she argued. She clenched her little fists at her sides, ready to do battle. Her intensity was intoxicating.
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