bought it and the carnality of it all, the sheer sexual suggestiveness of it, seeped into my skin and turned me on.
Like holy hell it turned me on.
“You want a drink?” A woman came up to my elbow, wearing a sheer black tank top that had been torn in half, the ragged hem of it just barely covering the bottoms of her nipples. She wore neon-yellow underwear and thigh-high fishnets that had been ripped in places. She looked like the sexy survivor of an apocalypse. “Hon’?”
“A piña colada?” I wish I could say that that was the first thing I could think of, but the truth was, if my reaction to Bucket-o-Colada was any indication, I loved piña coladas.
“Sure thing.”
She walked away, stopping at tables as she went. I expected guys to grab her ass or something, yank on her. But no one did. They looked. And they leered. But it seemed pretty hands-off.
There were giant guys without necks standing in the shadows, keeping an eye on all things.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Suddenly Joan was in front of me in a red push-up bra and black ruffled panties. She was more covered up than any other woman working in the bar, but somehow the sexiest.
And she was furious.
“Hey, Joan,” I said lamely.
“I repeat, what the fuck are you doing here?”
She pulled me out of the spot I’d claimed and past a few groups of men who watched us as we went.
“Who’s your friend, Joan?” one of the guys asked. His calculating eyes followed us and his joking had a heavy dose of mean to it. “You gonna give her a lap dance?”
“Fuck off, Steve,” she said.
“Can we watch?”
She ignored him, still pulling me into the shadows past the chairs around the stage.
Once we were in a corner dark and quiet enough, Joan stopped and turned on me, her hands on her hips. Behind her there was a girl on a man’s lap. His hands grabbing her ass, grinding her into him.
My entire body went hot and then cold. Between my legs, I got so wet. I swallowed a groan, watching that man’s fingers bite into her ass, the skin turning white and pink beneath his touch.
What does that feel like? I wondered, breathless and riveted.
The stripper had her hand up, braced against the wall behind the man’s head, her dark hair thrown back. The guy reached up and grabbed a handful of it and pulled.
I could hear the woman groan from five feet away.
And here’s the thing—I’d been on the bad end of all of that. I’d been hurt—but I could see the difference here. I could feel it in my body. In the air that we were all breathing in and out.
“Hey!” Joan snapped in front of my face, tearing my attention away from the couple in the corner. “Why are you here?”
“I…I’m…” playing this weird game with a man I’ve never met, and he told me if I want to have phone sex with him again, I have to go to a strip club.
No way could I say that.
“Is this some kind of weird stalker thing?” she asked. “Because the last thing I need right now is to have a weird stalker living beside me and following me to work!”
“What? No!” I cried. “No. I’m not…I’m not stalking you.”
“Are you gay? Because I’ve seen the way you look at me.”
I shook my head, so embarrassed I was pretty sure my cheeks were glowing. That day at the swimming hole. She’d noticed. Of course she’d noticed; I was about as subtle as a sledgehammer. “No. I’m not gay—”
“Bi?”
“Bi-what?”
“Sexual, you idiot! Do you like men and women?”
“I don’t…” I hadn’t really processed that. This weird attraction I had to Joan’s body. It was beautiful as a thing. Sexy as a concept. But I didn’t want to touch her.
I wanted to touch Dylan.
I wanted Dylan to touch me.
It was strange that I’d never really thought that before. Or looked past the parameters of this thing we were doing. Yes, the phone sex was…amazing and exciting, and his voice alone was enough to make me crazy. But what I really wanted was to be the couple in the corner.
I wanted him to grab me like that, to pull me and push me. I wanted him to make me groan.
I didn’t have the slightest clue what Dylan really looked like. He could be fat and hairy and all kinds of ugly—but it didn’t matter.