off.
So why are you so tense?
Good question. He was wound as tight as a ball of rubber bands, his jaw flexing, his hands clenching. His heart wasn’t maintaining its usual pace, it was rushed, as if adrenaline had flooded his body.
When they introduced her, something did flood his body. Heated awareness. Maybe adrenaline, too.
She didn’t spot him when she started, and from here Nick had a perfect view of every move she made. She was using the pole tonight, taking advantage of it to showcase her strength and flexibility. Not to mention inviting every man in the audience to imagine being the one she was writhing against, the one cupped between her incredibly long legs.
He tensed, then thrust away the flash of jealousy. It was none of his business what Rose did—in her professional life or in her personal one.
She’d begun removing her petals now, they fluttered onto the stage, one even wafting so close it was only about a foot away from Nick’s corner position. Something made him step closer, to reach for it. Whether to give it back to her, or to save it as a souvenir, he couldn’t say. Fingering it lightly, he stuck it in his pocket and kept watching.
When this close, he had a very good view of the Crimson Rose...a view of a trim waist made for his hands. Of supple legs he could almost feel wrapped around his hips. Of slender fingers that had tangled easily in his hair. A delicate throat for nibbling. Lush round breasts for cupping. And when she removed the petals covering those breasts, his mouth flooded at the image of sucking on those dark, pebbled nipples.
Every bit of her was familiar...to his eyes, and to the rest of his body. He knew what it would be like to taste her, to touch her, to hear her soft little moans of pleasure.
To hear her...
Her voice. That voice. That body.
“Oh, my God,” he whispered, certain he’d lost his mind but unable to chase the thought away. Because as he watched the performer disappear behind the curtain after her dance, he saw a face behind that mask. A face he saw in his dreams every night.
Izzie’s face.
“It can’t be,” he mumbled, staggering back into the shadow. He hit the wall in the corner and slid down it, bending over so his hands landed on his knees. Sucking in a few deep breaths, he kept his head down, thinking over everything he knew about Izzie Natale. And about the Crimson Rose.
She’d taken dance lessons throughout her childhood, he remembered that. She’d gone to New York to become a performer. On the stage. She hadn’t exactly said she’d been an actress.
My God, had she been a stripper at some high-end Manhattan club? And when she’d been forced to return to Chicago after her father’s stroke, had she taken up the same profession here—wearing a mask so she wouldn’t possibly be recognized?
Their bodies were so alike—how could he not have seen it before? Then again, he had never seen Izzie naked before, until two nights ago, so he couldn’t possibly have known that her legs were as long and supple as a dancer’s. That her hips were full enough to make a man hard just at the thought of getting his hands on them. That her breasts were big, high and inviting.
She’d hidden a lot behind the apron. So much that he hadn’t registered that Izzie and Rose were the same height, had the same builds. Or that their hair was close in color—the length of Rose’s obviously caused by some kind of hairpiece or wig.
Now it registered. But it still seemed impossible. Absolutely unbelievable that cute little Izzie, Gloria’s baby sister...the girl who’d crushed the cookies for God’s sake...was the woman driving men all over Chicago insane with lust.
Including him. Especially him.
At that moment, he knew it was true. He’d been reacting to Rose and to Izzie the very same way from the moment he’d seen each of them. With pure, undiluted want based on absolutely nothing but instinct and chemistry.
They were the same. His body had known that immediately. His brain had finally caught up.
Somehow, he managed to stay on the sidelines and finish doing his job throughout the long night until the club closed at 2:00 a.m. He stayed upstairs, sending one of the other guys down every so often to do a sweep outside the dressing rooms. He didn’t trust himself to go down there and confront her yet.
If he