Roxie was getting knocked around.
Roxie was under some controlling asshole’s thumb.
I’d asked her about it once, a long, long time ago. She laughed it off and asked me if I believed everything I heard in a bar.
I should have known she was lying.
For over a year, she was getting beaten right under my nose. Just the knowledge, the thought, of that made me so angry it actually scared me. It was the kind of rage that could lead to murder.
I still didn’t know how bad it was. I never felt like I could ask. I felt like it was crossing a line that had been drawn in the sand.
It had taken everything inside me tonight to keep from pulling her against me and kissing every last drop of blood off her lip. I’d imagined way more times than I could count what it would be like to reach up under her clothes, across the silky smooth-looking skin on the back of her thigh, and feel her tremble beneath my touch. Next time she trembled in my arms, it wouldn’t be because she was scared.
One day it was going to happen.
One day soon.
The opening of my second club was the perfect excuse to get her off the stage. If I had to listen to one more catcall or see one more leer in her direction from the drunks in this bar, I was going to do something I’d regret.
The thought of anyone looking at her, of putting his hands on her, made me crazy.
This is exactly why I didn’t date my dancers.
But I wasn’t dating Roxie.
Apparently, that didn’t matter.
After tonight, she’d be done with that stage. She’d be clothed and sitting in this office and doing a damn good job of managing this club. I’d meant what I said; she was more than a pretty face. She would run this place almost as good as I did.
And more importantly, she would be safe here. I already saw to that with the restraining order. If her ex even stepped into this parking lot, I’d see his ass in jail. Months ago, he came in here looking for a fight with Roxie. Well, he got one.
Just not with her.
With me.
I made sure that fucker threw the first punch. Then I pounded him in the ground and slapped a restraining order on him so he couldn’t come near this property.
I sat at my desk and propped my feet up on the wooden top. After all the time I spent fighting how I felt about her, trying to come up with a way to keep her safe and off that stage, I was finally getting somewhere.
Roxie might not know it yet, but she would very soon.
I was done giving her space.
7
Roxie
Sexual tension coated my skin. It wound up around my legs like tall grass in the summer. It coated the inside of my mouth, making my tongue restless and needy.
It was a strange feeling. One that was next to impossible to brush off.
Maybe it was odd to be so shaken by the feeling. I was, after all, in the middle of a strip club. And I was walking around barely dressed while drunken men stared their fill. But even here in the Mad Hatter, a bar that made its profit off sex, sexual tension never felt like this.
This was different.
Tonight, the charge in the air wasn’t from men looking for cheap thrills. It wasn’t from the women gyrating on the stage up front. It wasn’t from the scantily clad ladies carrying trays through the crowd. All of those things were external. All of those things happened on a nightly basis. I barely registered them anymore.
So what was it I was registering?
What was it that made me feel like my skin was humming from the inside out? What made me wrap my thighs extra tight around the pole during my last dance and press my core into the hard metal just a little bit more forcefully?
After I set down the last of the beers from my tray, I gave the men a lazy smile and then turned away, giving them a nice view of my behind. It was good for tips.
My strutting faltered, and I gripped the round tray just a little bit tighter when I noted who was watching me. Adam was leaning against the bar, his stance casual, as if he were just checking out the crowd, watching the girls to make sure they were doing what they were supposed to be doing.
But his eyes… His eyes told another story.
From this far away, the chocolate color looked more midnight. His stare was intense, and it wasn’t directed at the crowd. It was trained on me. He stared at me as if I were his prey, as if he were lying in wait for the perfect time to strike.
Little ripples of awareness shot up my back as I forced myself to walk through the crowd, trying to pretend I didn’t notice the way his eyes were eating me up. I tried to pretend the sexual tension I’d been feeling hadn’t just doubled.
I couldn’t say I’d never felt intensely attracted to Adam, because I totally was. From the minute I first laid eyes on him coming out of his office and striding his powerful body across the floor to meet me, I wanted him.
Of course, I never did a thing about it, but that was something that seemed to grow more and more difficult every day. Especially when he showed me his tender side (like earlier in his office) and when he stared at me this way.
Something between us felt different tonight, like the tightly honed control Adam always seemed to have around me was unraveling.
Instead of taking my next order around to the end of the bar like I usually did, I slid up next to Adam and called out the order to Cam. After I set the tray on the bar top behind me, I turned, resting both elbows on the counter and leaning against the wood.
“You done dancing?” he said, turning so only one of his elbows was on the bar top and he was facing me.
I shook my head. “One more.” One last dance. When I drove to work tonight, I never imagined this would be the final night I’d strip in the Mad Hatter.
He grunted, which wasn’t really an answer, but it still left me wondering once more why it seemed he didn’t want me to dance anymore.
“You know, if my dancing sucks, you could just tell me,” I said, point blank.
He shifted closer and his entire front almost brushed against my body as he leaned down to talk quietly in my ear. “What makes you think I don’t like your dancing?” It was a simple sentence, a question. But the way he spoke low, so it only reached my ear, the way he sort of leaned in to my body and his warmth and scent wrapped around me… I realized.
I realized the humming just beneath my skin, the restless way I danced earlier, the tension that seemed to coil just beneath my ribcage… it was him.
The sexual tension that flooded me tonight was from Adam.
Holding my body still even though I desperately wanted to lean closer, I tipped my head back and stared up at him. The rich shade of his eyes speared me, and my breath faltered. “Because,” I said, wetting my lips with my tongue, “you seem in an awful big hurry to get me off that stage.”