Bare Pleasures

by Lindsay Evans

  Silence hummed through the phone. When she finally spoke, he wasn’t expecting it. “Okay. Why not?” she said.

  He felt his smile flash in the dark. Warmed from that glow of gladness he was getting used to feeling just for her.

  Instead of getting Lex to pick her up, Noelle wanted to meet him at the club. When she said this, he got all up in his feelings but ultimately understood. They weren’t really dating, and there was no point tying the fate of her night to a man who couldn’t stay for three minutes and meet her sister. A man who was basically a coward. Lex was trying not to see himself as that, but the evidence wasn’t making it easy to stay in denial.

  He wanted her. And he wanted to tell her the truth. But, on the phone, he’d sensed a need in her, not for a lover or a man to toy with her feelings but for the release that a sweaty night could bring. And though he wanted her with a kind of teenage desperation, he had a promise of celibacy to keep. That, more than the things he’d said to Margot, made him determined not to touch her. Anymore.

  He parked down the street from the club to avoid paying for the unnecessary valet and walked the two blocks to the front door. This was a place Kingsley had recommended, almost too crisp-looking for his taste. But he’d wanted to bring Noelle somewhere nice. The places he liked were a bit grittier. Dirty Miami with reggae music blasting until dawn, a long walk through a dark alley, and maybe fish frying from a cart in the parking lot.

  Kingsley’s place was fancy. A long line trailed from the club’s front door, mostly filled with groups of young and pretty girls, a few couples and men dressed to impress their girl of the night.

  Lex stood near the velvet rope and waited for Noelle to get there. A glance at his watch told him he was a little early. The music from inside the club spilled out to the sidewalk, high-energy Top 40 hits with the bass amped up. At the door, the bouncers were tall and muscle-bound, more for keeping an eye on the girls flirting and tipping their cleavage as a passport into the building than for any potential trouble. Even from the outside, the club looked modern and expensive. With the latest sound system and a provocative name in an expensive and well-lit marquee just above the club’s entrance.

  The name of the club was Pound. Maybe for the pound of flesh you had to give to get in?

  He was still pondering the meaning of the sign, half wondering if Noelle was even going to show up, when the low hum of sudden conversation dragged his attention back to his surroundings. At first, he didn’t see what the difference was. The line was just as long. The velvet rope didn’t open to let anyone new pass. The traffic along the street was steady, an ordinary thing for a Saturday night in Brickell. Then he noticed the bouncers staring down the street and past the line of people waiting at their chance for the golden ticket.

  Lex damn near choked on his own breath.

  She wore white again. A clingy temptation that began at her collarbones and ended just below her knees. The sleeves of the dress fluttered around her shoulders as she moved. The neckline hung low over her breasts, the loose material draping in a U shape between her breasts and nearly reaching her belly button. Her breasts weren’t small. And the material of the dress was low enough that he could safely assume she wasn’t wearing a bra. The rest of the dress clung to her, outlining in mouthwatering detail her thick hips and thighs. His mind stuttered at the thought of seeing her from the back.

  Wow.

  Lex drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans to hide the effect just the sight of her had on him. His mind blanked on anything that would prevent him from having her, from inviting her to step out of that dress and into his bed.

  “Hey.”

  That was all he could say. Anything else and he would stutter like a schoolboy talking to his first crush. He curled his fists in his pockets, wishing he’d worn his shirt untucked. A few feet away, the bouncers were blatantly staring at Noelle, barely paying attention to the starved-looking girls in the strips of cloth barely covering their bodies.

  “Is this the place?” she asked, gesturing to Pound with a hand holding a tiny purse.

  He nodded and cleared his throat. “We can go in whenever you’re ready.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.” When she turned to head to the end of the line, he pulled her back to him. She smelled like a garden after the rain. “My brother knows the owner,” he said. “We don’t have to wait.”

  They made their way past the bouncers and the burgundy velvet rope with no trouble at all. Unless you called every man at the door ogling her body trouble. Noelle seemed completely unaware as she walked ahead of Lex and into the club that vibrated with music, a techno version of a song Lex had heard once or twice on the radio. He deliberately kept his gaze above her waist while they walked. He didn’t want to trip and fall. At nearly midnight, the club was far from full, definitely not the hot commodity the long line outside made it seem. Strobe lights flashed. The music pounded into his chest and his gut, a heavy pulse. But he didn’t know if it was the music or the want for Noelle that made him throb.

  He leaned close to her ear, trying to be heard above the sound of the music. “You want a drink?”

  She shrugged and stepped equally close to him to reply. “Sure. Just a club soda, though, since I’m driving.”

  Although Kingsley had a VIP section reserved for them, Lex grabbed their drinks from the bar before guiding her to the glassed-off leather chairs. At the VIP section high above the dance floor and with a view of most of the club, he gestured for her to sit in the curved, red leather bench. But she shook her head, took her club soda and stood by the railing instead.

  Her back was to him. And the heavy, heart-shaped curve of her ass in the dress made him adjust himself in his jeans. Her hair, piled on top of her head in a lush cloud and sparkling with some sort of glitter, made her look even more like a goddess among women. Lex sipped his drink, a Hennessey on the rocks, and took a moment to control his breathing before joining her at the railing. He kept at least two inches between them. He didn’t know what he would do if they touched.

  “This is an interesting place,” she said.

  Noelle braced her arms on the railing as she looked down into the club. The dance floor was practically empty except for a group of sorority girls, early drunks, dancing up on each other and taking selfies. Their laughter rang out above the music.

  “Yeah.” Interesting was one word for it. His brother was a man who ran in a few different circles. He would be as comfortable here as at the old-school Jamaican bar where their parents spent the occasional Saturday night. The crowd was young and hot, the music nothing special. But the club itself was modern and hard, chrome and steel everywhere, mirrored surfaces reflecting smiles and gyrating bodies. In another mood, Lex could’ve had fun there.

  Next to him, Noelle nodded her head along to the music and sipped her club soda.

  “Do you want to dance?” This wasn’t the type of music he liked, but he was flexible. Tonight wasn’t just about him, after all.

  “Not yet. This music isn’t really moving me. But I’m enjoying watching the people.” Her eyes dipped over him before going back to the dance floor.

  She watched the dancers for a while longer, long enough for two more songs to come and go, long enough to finish her club soda, and then she turned to face him.

  “So this is your spot?”

  Lex yanked his gaze up from her cleavage, but the look in her eyes made him know she definitely saw him looking. “Never been here before. My brother says women love this place. I think it’s the mirrors.” He sipped his drink to hide his smile.

  Noelle wasn’t amused. “You say you like dancing. This place isn’t for that. Where do you like to go?”

  He hesitated. “It’s nowhere like this.”

  “But they have music we can dance to, right?”

  Lex thought
about the constant pounding bass, the DJ who hardly ever played a bad song, the inexpensive Jamaican beer and everything else about the club that had kept him there until sunrise more than a few times. “Absolutely,” he said.

  “We should go there.”

  He looked around Kingsley’s fancy club, impressed with it for what it was, a showplace. Someplace to see and be seen, to listen to music and people watch. Yeah, it wasn’t the type of place for him, but it was nice to see it wasn’t the type of place for Noelle either.

  “All right. Let’s go. Get in the car with me or follow.”

  She bent to put her empty glass on the table, the front of her dress gaping to show the full rise of her breasts. “I’ll follow. That seems easiest. Just go slow and don’t lose me at the lights.”

  Lex drained his own drink and slid the empty glass next to hers. “It’s not too far.”

  The club was barely fifteen minutes away, a winding ride through two Miami neighborhoods that brought them into a place that straddled the rich and middle class, the club a leftover from pre-gentrification days that managed to stay in business despite the rising taxes. It also helped that the guy owned the building. No landlord to kick him out in favor of charging hipsters three times the rent.

  The place, whose name no one remembered, was the same as always. The parking lot overflowed at one in the morning. Someone pulled out just as he pulled in, but he left the spot for Noelle and exited to circle the surrounding residential neighborhood for a place where he wouldn’t get towed.

  The night was warm and dark, street lamps lighting the path winding past houses too rich for his blood. Lex strolled through the silenced neighborhood, hands in his pockets while the palm trees rustled from the wind’s passing.

  This time, Noelle was the one waiting for him at the entrance to the club. At the wide archway that led into the building, she stood in her seductive white, one hip hitched as she took in her surroundings. The low, one-story building. Potholed parking lot. The man in an apron selling fried catfish and fries on the other side of the club entrance. Very different from the scene at Pound.

  Lex walked past girls in tight and bright dresses, as well as sky-high heels, who shakily navigated their way through the parking lot and toward the door of the club that had no lines, no waiting, just a pair of security guards, one wanding down each person who wanted to get in, while the other checked IDs.

  The hard, driving rhythm of reggae music poured out of the club and put a bounce in nearly everyone’s step. Being there was easy and reminded Lex of some college days in Jamaica, nights when he’d escape from the confines of his school and the watchful eyes of his family to find a kind of freedom in a dance hall, an anonymity he could get no place else. Not even in Margot’s club.

  “This looks more like it.” Noelle threw a smile at him over her shoulder as she pulled her ID from her cleavage and turned it over to the security guard. She’d purposely left her purse in the car. The guard gave her license a brief look but damn near memorized everything about her body and face.

  Lex watched him with annoyance but kept any sign of it from his face. The opening beats of a classic Sly and Robbie song pulled them into the heart of the club and Noelle walked in ahead of him, snapping her fingers and twitching her hips to the rhythm. Although he knew what to expect, Lex gave the place a quick glance, trying to imagine it through her unfamiliar eyes.

  The low ceiling was either intimate or stifling, depending on how you looked at it. The multicolored string lights hanging from the ceiling and around doorways, even the bathrooms’, looked like the sad remains of Christmas that the last family on the block never took down. Darkness hid most sins of the place—its chipped bar, painted concrete floor, the DJ who looked old enough to have grandkids but still knew what it took to get people onto the floor.

  But Noelle didn’t seem to mind or see any of that. Just walking in, she seemed to loosen up, the tense height of her shoulders relaxing, her body becoming more fluid. Sexier. And if he hadn’t noticed the slow unwinding of her tension, Lex wouldn’t have realized she’d been carrying around a weight on her shoulders.

  Under the guise of offering to buy her a drink at the relatively quiet bar, Lex wanted to ask what was wrong. But before he could lean in to suggest the bar, she pulled him toward the crowded dance floor. “Come dance with me.”

  He went. A flicker of surprise crossed her face as he followed her without protest.

  “You’re actually going to dance with me?”

  “Yeah. Were you just asking to be polite?”

  “No, no.” But the look on her face said otherwise. Then she rolled her eyes. “None of that matters. I haven’t heard this song outside my house in a long time. Come.”

  Once they were on the packed dance floor, making room for themselves among the sensually moving bodies that smelled of sweat and hair lotions and every kind of cologne and perfume, Noelle slipped into the rhythm of the song like she didn’t care whether or not Lex joined her. She slowly rocked her body to the beat, her arms rising in the air, eyes falling shut.

  The DJ slipped into “Heads High” from Mr. Vegas and Noelle smiled like she’d heard the voice of an old friend.

  Lex was hard from the first bass beat. The sinuous movement of her body was hypnotic. Sexual. And he had to stop watching her, had to start moving too, otherwise he would embarrass himself all over the front of his jeans. The bass settled in his chest, in his hips, moving him to the thudding rhythm of the song.

  * * *

  Although it had been weeks since he’d made time to go dancing, he fell into it as naturally as he breathed. Before he started working for Margot, Lex had already loved to dance. Merengue, bachata, dancehall, even a little modern dance. But it was only once he started taking his clothes off for money that he actually fell in love with the sheer physicality of movement. With the way his body could seduce without him touching someone else.

  And although it was the worst idea he’d ever had, he wanted to seduce Noelle.

  She was off-limits. He wasn’t having sex right now. Margot would kill him.

  But none of that mattered. He fell into the beat of the music and it caught him, snaked through his body, rocked his hips with unsubtle intention. He danced close to Noelle but did not touch her. He felt eyes on him, roaming his body as sweat poured down his face and stuck his already thin T-shirt to his back and chest. He felt hot enough to burn down the entire club.

  One dance later, maybe two, Noelle opened her eyes, licked them up and down his body, a smile curving her wet, red lips. Sweat glowed against her face and throat under the multicolored lights.

  “Where’d you learn to dance like this?” she asked, breathless and sinuous against him.

  Lex knew he answered with words but didn’t listen to himself speak, only groaned into the trail of heat her eyes left over him. Her nipples were hard points against the front of her dress and he licked his lips, imagining them tight and straining under his tongue.

  The music sped up, segueing into Rupee’s “Tempted to Touch.”

  “Come here,” she said with a sly smile and the curl of one finger.

  Noelle became a different person when the music moved through her. It wasn’t the athleticism or showmanship of the dance studio, but her whole body moved in a way that made his mouth dry. He was still hard, but he ignored it just like he ignored the sweat dripping down his body. Lex licked his lips and moved closer to her. Dancing. Determined not to just push his hips into hers and grind on her like most of the men in the club were doing with their dance partners. He wound his back, his hips, easily recalling the moves that had women throwing bills all over his nearly naked body on the stage in Jamaica.

  “You’re good at this.” Noelle smiled and tossed her head back. Her hairline was damp and above her mouth. Lex wanted to lick her dry and then wet again.

 
The music grew even faster, reggaeton and then soca and they were dancing together, hips bucking and winding, backs moving lower, chests moving teasingly close then backing up. Noelle licked her lips, dragged her palms down her sweat-slick neck and into the bare valley between her breasts.

  Other men watched her. Inched closer to the mesmerizing motion of her bottom. Lex gave a skinny brother who wandered too close a warning glance. Noelle didn’t dance pretty or cute. She threw her entire body into the dance when it got good to her, her chest heaving and sweat coating her face, her throat. The music bucked her exquisite body all over the dance floor.

  Kat DeLuna’s voice panted over the frantic bounce of the music.

  Lex was so ready for Noelle he could burst. She slid up to him, jerking her hips, and he snagged her even closer, moving with her, keeping rhythm with her, meeting the challenge of those uptilted eyes, her dark red mouth.

  Someone moved suddenly behind Noelle, a woman who was dancing with the skinny guy, and pushed Noelle into Lex. He hissed as the cradle of her hips pushed into his erection.

  Noelle’s eyes abruptly met his. But she didn’t move away even when the woman behind her gave back the space on the dance floor. Instead, she hooked her arms around the back of his neck and his entire body groaned with relief when she stayed exactly where she was, her hips, guided by the music, making tight circles against him. She was hot through their layers of clothes. His jeans, her dress. Their underwear. Arousal spiked through him. If she moved away from him now, he would die. He would honestly explode right then and there. He drew the breath into his mouth with a hiss. She had to know what she was doing to him. Grinding on his hardness. Pressing the heat of her lush body against him.

  Lex tried to ground himself with a steadying hand on the small of her back. But he only felt the movement of her waist, the muscles making her move so sinfully well against him. He had to stop this, he had to—

  Her hand under his shirt halted every single rational thought. He still danced, but all of him waited for what she would do next. Everything in him hinged on the press of her palm against his stomach. But she didn’t stop. With her eyes locked on his, Noelle shoved up his shirt and slid her hand in the sweat over his abs to his pecs. Her nail pressed into his nipple and he felt the thick muscle of his pecs jump under her palm. He bucked against her, growling low in his throat. He leaned his mouth close to her ear.