“It’s true!” she said, pressing her palm to her chest with look of mock-offense. “Why, we even have our own pianist. Please welcome the always enchanting Elton Johnson!”
She stepped backward, waving her hand with a flourish, and two men in bow ties and black pants rolled a perfectly polished, black piano onto the stage.
“Here he comes!” Cara squealed. Two more men came from the back, each biting a long-stemmed red rose in their teeth and bearing one side of a piano bench on each shoulder. Perched on top was Rob, wearing nothing but skintight black shorts and a bow tie. Even though he wasn’t as tall as Ryder, he was definitely more muscular; everything about him was big, from his broad shoulders to his thick thighs and calves.
The two boys set him down and moved to the front of the stage, where they spent a moment flexing their biceps and pecs for the girls, then tossed their roses to the giggling masses.
The spotlight focused on Rob—“Elton”—and he wiggled his fingers over the keys. When he started to play, the notes floated through the air so flawlessly it felt like the room had been missing something without them. Even though he was mostly naked, to watch Rob play—the tenderness with which he touched the keys and the look of love on his face—was absolutely magical.
“He came to Vegas to get a job playing piano,” Cara said. “That’s how we met. He was a waiter in a piano bar, but it didn’t pay. Not like this.”
Just as I was about to lose myself in the flawless, perfectly balanced tune, a bad chord spat out of the instrument, ricocheting off the walls. Rob’s face fell into a look of utter despair, too comical to be real.
Kat stepped up the stairs, holding a teacher’s pointer. “My apologies, ladies. It looks like Elton hasn’t been practicing.”
Rob turned his frown on the crowd and may have even eked out a tear. A collective “awwwww” waved through the place.
“What should I do to punish him, girls? Should I get rid of him?”
A chorus of boos came from the back.
“What about remedial lessons?” she said slowly, letting the words roll off her tongue. Someone wolf-whistled. “Yes, I think that’s just the thing. Boys?”
Within seconds, the piano was rolled backstage again, and the two boys who had carried the bench came out with what looked like a very low, rolling coat rack with scraps of fabric fastened to the top—white, some with short black rectangles. Basically, a sectioned curtain looked exactly the same as the keys on a piano.
“Now, Mr. Johnson, if you please?”
Rob stepped up to the side of it and stretched both his arms up high in the air, interlocking his fingers and cracking his knuckles above his head. His ab muscles stretched and his shorts stayed in place, giving the audience a glimpse of that muscle right under his hip. Then he turned around and bent over to touch his toes, showing everyone his perfect butt and calves. The girls ate it up, and Cara just looked at me and giggled again. Then he stepped behind the the hanging fabric keys.
“You will play exactly the notes I say. Is that clear, Mr. Johnson? Do you think you can do it?” Rob looked up at the audience, ticked up an eyebrow, and winked. Then he nodded at Kat. “All right then, pants down.” More cheers. “Very well. Please, Carl, will you play along for us?” One simple note rang out from the speakers, and Kat touched her pointer to one of the keys. Rob flicked his hips, making his abs ripple, and his dick made the curtain beneath Kat’s pointer wave out from behind.
I clapped my hand over my mouth. “I cannot believe he’s doing that with his dick,” I said, my words muffled.
“See?” Cara giggled. “I told you they were all huge.”
Kat and Rob did a couple more notes like that, and soon the giggles overtook me, too. The girls in the audience had calmed down somewhat, and now their reactions were a mixture of laughter, occasional screams, and applause. Rob was actually pretty hot—a great body and a cute face—and hilarious to boot. I had to admit, I was actually entertained by Mr. Elton Johnson. It was kind of nice that I knew this guy was taken. I found him super-attractive but didn’t have the pressure of actually wanting to do anything with him.
However, if Cara was right and Ryder was out next, I might have a little more trouble. Then it hit me. Cara’s boyfriend’s real name was Rob, and obviously Elton Johnson was a cheesy stage name.
“Cara,” I hissed. “What’s Ryder’s stage name?”
She turned to me, wide-eyed. “Oh my God, he never told you? That idiot.”
“Told me what?”
“Ryder is his stage name.”
Holy shit. I’d let a guy whose real name I didn’t know lick my pussy? I started to feel faint, but somehow found the strength to ask, “Ryder what?”
But at exactly that moment, the girls went crazy for the end of Rob’s act, and the whistle of a tumbleweed-rolling, ghost-town movie set lilted through the room.
Kat’s voice came oozing through the speakers, though I couldn’t see her. “Some men keep the peace, and some men break the law. Some nights, it’s hard to tell which our next dancer is, but whichever one he does, he always looks damn good doing it. Ladies, please welcome to the stage…RYDER STRONG.”
Ryder Strong. Ride-her Strong. Oh my God. Oh my GOD. How had I not put that together until now? More feelings than I could count flooded through me all at once—embarrassment being the biggest—but then two strong footsteps backstage made me snap my head up.
In a blur of smoke, red lights, and the electric-guitar chords of “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy,” Ryder came cartwheeling and double-backflipping down the stage, landing front and center and whipping two black pistols out of hidden pockets in his faux-leather chaps.
The girls went absolutely nuts as he strolled back and forth across the stage, pointing the guns at several of the girls, mock-shooting and winking at the same time. After he threw the guns into the crowd, he shimmied back and forth across the stage, grinding his hips into nothing and still looking absolutely fucking incredible. He hooked his thumbs into his belt loops and did some line-dance-style moves before falling on his belly and thrusting his hips and knees against the floor in time with the music, showing off every single one of his incredible back muscles in live action. It was like the erotic version of that stupid snake dance the guys in middle school used to do.
I ate every second of it up.
He stood up again, grabbing the sides of his vest and teasing it open. When the girls squealed, he paused and shouted, “You want it off? Why didn’t you just say so?”
And even though I’d seen him with his shirt off half a dozen times by now—had even felt that delicious-looking torso pressing up against me—I wanted it off, too. Bad. He was a master at making me want to stare at every possible inch of his skin.
When he shrugged out of his vest, the sighs and swoons that rippled through the room mixed into a soundtrack of raging, colliding hormones. It was exactly the same soundtrack going on in my head. Every golden, greased-up muscle danced in the red-lit shadows. He’s yours, Andi. All yours. Even though I knew, logically, it wasn’t true, the heat gathering between my legs—just like it had when his tongue had been flicking its way over my most sensitive areas—told me it was.
He had to be mine.
I started to drool just in time for Ryder’s chaps to come sailing off over my head. The sight of Ryder wearing nothing but a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and a faux-leather thong with a glittering black applique in the shape of a gun would have been completely, utterly comical if it hadn’t been for the size of the bulge underneath the gun.
I mean, I’d seen it through his shorts, but there was nothing like wrapping a guy’s dick in a neat little package decorated with sequins to make a girl appreciate the size of it.
And what it could potentially do.
I knew right then and there I had to get my hands back on him as soon as humanly possible.
Kat’s
voice came on over the speakers, low and sultry. “Now, ladies, we have space for one lucky Kitten on stage tonight. The first little cowgirl to show me she has the goods to pull our Mr. Strong’s very, very sensitive trigger will get to join him on stage and spend just a little second with him behind that hat.”
Mine.
My hand closed around the cash in my back pocket—five twenties—and I waved it high over my head, jumping up and screaming, “Me!” Only a split-second later did I realize how ridiculous I was. Too late now.
Cara clapped her hands together like she was a five-year-old who’d just broken the piñata at her birthday party, squealing and wiggling in her seat. Miss Kat strolled over to me and motioned to the stage-side stairs with an open hand. “You’ve got a firecracker of a girl tonight, cowboy.”
Fear knotted in my stomach, and my neck and face blazed hot. I knew they were blotchy, and I knew I looked ridiculous in my skinny jeans and basic tee, but I really didn’t care. The music kept playing, and I stood up.
My heart hammered in half-time to the rhythm of my shaking hands, which somehow went along with the music. This wasn’t like me—not at all. I’d barely been to a bar with loud music since freshman year. This wasn’t the kind of thing that Andi Herrera did.
But who said I couldn’t do it now?
No one, Andi. Not a single person to say you can’t shove these bills in Ryder’s underwear.
I flicked the bills open and ran my thumbnail down the center, making a long fold in all five of them together.
Ryder had his hat in one hand and was alternately thrusting his gun-covered dick at the audience and turning around with the hat over his ass. Every other second, he uncovered it in time with the music, and the girls cheered even louder.
“Oh, Ryder,” Kat cooed through the speakers, “your cowgirl’s here.”
Ryder flipped his hat back from his palm, caught it in the crook of his arm, and dipped his head down, standing upright with the hat back on. He took a little bow, made his fingers into guns, and shot them each at the audience before turning and ambling toward me in those big, clunky boots.
I was on stage with my ultra-hunky, mostly-naked, strip-dancing crush. In Vegas. With a hundred dollars cash in my hand.
There was only one thing I really wanted, one thing I could think clearly about: his skin under my hands.
When his eyes met mine, they flared wide, and he reached me in no time, palming his hat and holding it in front of both of our faces so the audience couldn’t see it. “Andi. What the hell are you doing here?” he whispered, his breath hot on my cheek, mixing with whatever oil was on his muscles and a little bit of sweat and the energy of the room.
“Cara brought me,” I said.
“STUFF IT!” someone shouted from the audience, followed by an eruption of cheers.
“Are you okay?” Ryder asked.
I nodded, biting my lip, and then the hat was back on his head. I held up the bills and, pulling his thong toward me with one hand, stuffed them down the front with the other.
My hand brushed against the hot, smooth skin there, and I practically swooned on the goddamn stage. I had never wanted anything as badly as I wanted him.
Uncontrollable desire was not a feeling that Andrea Herrera, straight-A student, child life specialist, and all-around perfect daughter had ever really felt, let alone acted on.
Tonight would be different.
With one good yank on the G-string, I tugged Ryder to me. His hat came off again like a reflex, covering our faces from the crowd, and his lips crashed down on mine as his other arm clamped around my waist, his fingers digging into my skin. He groaned as he tugged me even closer to him and his tongue swept my bottom lip. It was the sound that told me he’d been thinking exactly the same thing as I was.
His faux-leather-wrapped package was a rock that dug into my belly button, and suddenly, I almost didn’t care that we were surrounded by a middle-aged lady, a fat DJ, and two hundred of Vegas’s horniest women. I wanted Ryder Strong, whether that was his real name or not, and I wanted him now.
I arched up on my tiptoes, releasing his G-string with a snap and clawing my fingers into the close-cut hair at the back of his head. All of a sudden, the hat was gone, and the entire club was watching us make out and feel each other up like two horny teenagers.
I still didn’t care. I wanted him to make the unbearable tension in my center go away.
As the music started to fade, he slid both hands down to my ass, then further down to the backs of my thighs. I straddled him, and he walked me backstage as I rode that gorgeous bare ass that I’d just announced to the world was all mine. With every step, he kissed me again, gasping into each one like he was suffocating and my lips were air. I gladly let him, and to be honest, I was really impressed. This was a guy with some damn good coordination.
But as the cheers faded and Miss Kat’s voice came back on over the speakers, the spell was broken. Ryder carried me into the wings, broke the kiss, let go of my thighs so my feet touched ground again, and ran his hand back through his hair while he stared at me, panting.
“How are you here?”
Panic seized my chest. “What do you mean? I told you. Cara wanted to come see Rob, and I guess…”
“There’s a reason I didn’t tell you this was my second job, Andi.”
Panic became rage, mixed with a little bit of embarrassment. The mixed signals coming off this guy were freaking unbelievable. He didn’t want me here. Was there something wrong with what I’d done? Was it my lack of ridiculous makeup and heels? Did he really want me to be just like all those other girls—just there for a good time?
My voice lowered to a whispered hiss. “Oh, really? I just thought it was because you were too busy giving me the best night of my life and then dumping me back home like a piece of trash.”
Ryder’s face fell. “Andi. Andi, that is not how I wanted it to be at all. It’s me who feels like a piece of trash—you know, being a stripper and all—and I didn’t want you to think I was before you got to know me a little better.”
“Well, you didn’t succeed,” I scoffed, trying to hold back tears. “And also, you’re having trouble making that argument convincing when you’re standing there with a goddamn glittering Band-Aid over your dick.”
He coughed and looked around, then reached behind him to a pile of stuff on a props table, coming back with his jeans and a rumpled t-shirt. After he’d knocked into the table a couple times trying to get into his jeans and messed up his hair in an adorably sexy way while putting on his shirt, I had to tell myself to focus just to keep my head in the conversation.
He stared at the ground and shuffled into some flip-flops. “Guess a girl like you doesn’t belong with a guy like me after all. Congratulations. You were right.”
Tears pricked at my eyes. “Guess I was.”
Chapter 15
I stormed out to the parking lot without a single goddamn plan for what to do next. I dug my phone out of my back pocket and hoped I had the cab company’s name saved in there, or I’d be shivering here for a good few minutes trying to find it on my phone’s shitty Internet. I scrolled through the numbers with the phone’s battery icon flashing at me. “Shit,” I whispered, now holding back tears.
“Andi!” Ryder called.
I didn’t look back at him, but before I knew it, he was by my side. We breathed in impossible sync, our lungs fighting against the rapidly chilling night air. The words tumbled from my lips before I could stop them.
“I could have handled knowing you were a stripper. I don’t really care. But I have a huge problem with you not telling me your real name when we were about to…you know…”
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? When you called me Ryder, that was the first time I realized I hadn’t told you. And I really like you, you know? I wanted everything between us to be real. Ryder’s not real.�
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It sure as hell had felt real when he’d kissed me, but I decided to leave that for later. I wanted to know one thing desperately. “Yeah, that was a nice piece of news. Do you want to take this opportunity to tell me your real name?”
He looked down and blew out a breath. “It’s Bryan. Bryan Strong. My friends have always called me Ry, and when I came here looking for work, Kat liked me but didn’t like my name. She came up with Ryder on my first day, and I’ve been the cowboy who takes twenties for a kiss on the cheek ever since.”
“A kiss on the cheek?”
His eyes caught mine, and he flicked an eyebrow up. “Well, yeah. I don’t typically kiss the girls. I mean, I never kiss the girls. There’s a no-touching policy, so we only do what we want to do.”
“But you kissed me,” I said, stepping back toward him, itching to shove my hands into that robe. “You picked me up.”
He laughed and looked at the ground. “Well, I wanted you. I mean, I wanted to kiss you. I wanted you closer, I guess.”
I stepped even closer, and carefully smoothed my hand around his waist. “I wanted it, too. I’m not the kind of girl who gives two hours’ worth of tips to a stripper. Often. Or ever. Or has ever seen a stripper actually.”
He bent his head down to mine, his lips a whisper away. “But you wanted to tonight?”
“You never kiss the girls?” I asked.
“Never,” he breathed.
“Do you let them touch you? Lick you? Bite you?”
His eyes fluttered closed, and I drew in a deep breath, waiting for his response. “Never, never, never.” His lips brushed against mine, and I almost lost it.
“Do they ever get to see you go…you know…all the way? Completely naked?”
He moved his head so that our cheeks were flush, and his hot breath tickled my ear. “Not. Ever.”
That was it. I couldn’t wait any more. My hands flew up to the sides of his head, palms cupping his ears, my nails scratching his scalp.
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