Chapter Five Isla
“ I want to touch you."
The deep timbre of his voice shot straight to my core. Although it was so very, very wrong, I wanted him to touch me, too. I ached for it.
I’d never wanted a man so much that I’d just met. Or that I knew so little about. It was like I entered the club and checked all my usual inhibitions at the door.
Despite how much I wanted his touch, I found myself asking, "Are you supposed to? I mean, are the men supposed to?"
"Never," he growled. "No man is to ever touch you.”
Feeling brave, I countered, “You’re a man. What about you?”
To my surprise, Quinn appeared repentant. "I shouldn't."
"But you want to."
"With every breath within me,” he rasped.
A shudder rippled through me at his words and the intensity of his stare. No man had ever had such a reaction to me. Quinn appeared as a man dying of thirst in a desert of my making.
"You can touch me," I whispered.
Anguish replaced the desire in his expression. "I'm not worthy."
His reply took me by surprise. "If this is about your scars, they don't bother me. In fact, I kinda like them."
Quinn’s brows popped wide. "Do you, Little Dove?"
“I do. They give you character.”
“While that’s an interesting way to describe them, I wasn't talking about my appearance."
God, I was such an idiot. Embarrassment flushed my cheeks. "Oh, I'm sorry. It's just I--"
"I'm talking about the man within me. He’s not worthy."
“Why?” I whispered.
“He’s a bad man.”
I stared into Quinn’s blue eyes. Although he had a menacing exterior, the same wasn’t reflected in his eyes. There was a softness to them. But they were also ringed with pain. I knew that look. I’d seen it in my own eyes many times over the last two years.
"I don't believe you."
The softness in his eyes turned dark. “You're very naive, Little Dove."
“Maybe. But I also see more than you think. Or that you allow.”
“And what do you see?”
“A man who has erected so many walls around him to hide from the world. But I see through the tiny cracks and fissures to the goodness within."
He stared at me, unblinking and unmoving. Time crawled by. At that moment, it felt like we were the only two people in the world.
"There's goodness in you, Quinn. But don't worry. I won't tell anyone."
With a growl, he grabbed me by the back of the neck and jerked my face to his. I gasped just as his mouth slammed down on mine. Quinn thrust his tongue into my mouth, tangling with my own.
The kiss was fiery and desperate. It felt like our very life and existence depended on the breath and closeness we gained from each other. Quinn’s teeth grazed my bottom lip before biting down, causing me to moan and him to grunt with pleasure.
I’d never been kissed like this in my life. I hadn’t even dreamed it could be like this. It was the kind of kiss you watched in the movies, but you never thought you’d get to experience in real life, least of all in a strip club with your potential future boss.
He wasn’t just kissing me–he was possessing me.
My hands came to encircle Quinn’s neck, drawing him closer to me. With the scarred skin on his neck, I took care to be as gentle as I could. Something deep within me said that even if I was to scrape my nails along the flesh, he wouldn’t hurt me.
Although he could’ve snapped me in two like a twig, I couldn’t help feeling safe next to him. Everything about him was overwhelming from his imposing figure to his ability to render me breathless from just a kiss.
Feeling lightheaded, I finally jerked away. As my chest rose and fell in harsh pants, my gaze locked with Quinn’s hooded, hungry one. My finger traced his full bottom lip. When his tongue snaked out to lick it, white-hot heat flooded my core.
“Are you going to lie to both me and yourself and say that we shouldn’t have done that?” he rasped. When I shook my head slowly from side to side, he asked, “Then what is it you want to say, Little Dove?”
“No one is to kiss me but you,” I ordered.
A beautiful smile lit up his face. It seemed so out of character for him. My heartbeat thrummed wildly in my chest at the sight of it. More than anything, it was the fact I was the one receiving it.
“That’s right. No one but me.”
Reaching for his hands on either side of his hips, I brought them to my waist. With my eyes still on his, I slid them up my ribcage before bringing them to my breasts. “Touch me.”
Quinn gave a curt nod of his head before his warm hands cupped my breasts. When he squeezed them, we both moaned. As he tweaked my nipples, I continued rubbing myself against him. The more I felt of him over his pants, I knew he had to be huge. Just the thought of having him deep inside me sent hot, sticky desire streaking down my thighs.
“I want to taste you.”
“Please.”
His nostrils flared. “That word on your lips will be my undoing.”
With one hand on my waist and another at the base of my neck, he tipped me back. His lips licked and bit down the column of my throat. I shivered as he slid his tongue along my breastbone. When his mouth closed over one of my nipples, it instantly peaked under the warm suction of his mouth. My breath came in needy pants.
The pleasure grew between my legs. My thighs began to tremble from the intensity. Biting my lip, I tried to mute my cries of pleasure.
Quinn’s massive hands gripped my hips. He rolled them harder against the thrust of his own hips. The added friction of my thong rubbing against my clit was my undoing. With a cry, I threw my head back as an orgasm charged through me.
Through the fog of intense pleasure, Quinn’s voice called to me. “That’s it, Little Dove. Come for me.”
Long after the first burst of gratified emotion, my walls continued to clench. Quinn’s hips began a frenzied churn against my core. Locking eyes with him, I watched as his body tensed and then a long groan erupted from his lips.
“Oh fuck, Isla,” he murmured as his body jerked.
I clung to him as he rode out his orgasm. Whatever connection I felt we had before seemed to intensify in our shared pleasure. When he was finally spent, he leaned forward to place a tender kiss on my lips.
At that moment, the door burst open so hard it banged on the hinges, causing me to scream. Although I tried criss crossing my arms in front of my breasts, Quinn pulled me behind him, shielding me from view. As I peered over his shoulder, a young man stood before us, a stricken look on his face.
“Get the fuck out of here, Kellan!” Quinn commanded.
Kellan shook his head. “Callum needs us.” He then glanced between me and Quinn before shooting him a desperate look. “It’s important.”
“Jaysus,” Quinn muttered. He tossed a glance at me over his shoulder before replying, “I’ll be right there.”
Kellan quickly turned on his heels and hurried from the room. “I have to go,” Quinn gritted out.
Not knowing what to say, I mumbled, “It’s okay.”
After Quinn got off the couch, I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. At the sight of him grabbing a box of tissues, I ducked my head in mortification. I’d somehow stumbled out of passionate fantasy into the harsh light of reality.
How had I allowed myself to make my potential my boss come? Even worse, how had he made me come?
With what little I knew about lap dances, the fact Quinn had come meant I’d done my job. However, none of my knowledge mentioned anything about it happening to me. Or that he would want to do it to me.
I kept my head down through the rustling of his pants and then the crinkling sound of a ball of tissues hitting the trash. It took everything within me to keep my mouth shut and not let my nervous ramblings trickle out of me. There were so many unanswered questions.
Besides what we shared sexually, there had been a definite connection between us. I never would’ve allowed what happened between us if there hadn’t been. There was no way he could’ve kissed me the way that he did if he hadn’t felt something for me as well.
Unable to hold it in any longer, I rose off the couch and started for him. But he quickly sidestepped me and went for the door. With his hand on the doorknob, Quinn turned back to me. “I’ll tell Paula to get you on the schedule.”
And then he was gone.
In a stupor, I stood in the middle of the room, bare-chested and with my cum still coating my thighs.
I’d gotten the job.
I’d had my first male-induced orgasm.
It had been a hell of a day.
At the knock on the door, I frantically snatched my top off the floor. “Yes?”
Paula peeked her head in. After eyeing me curiously, a smile twitched at the corner of her lips. “I hear congratulations are in order.”
I bobbed my head. “Yes, Mr. Kavanaugh told me.”
“You can start tomorrow night.”
My mouth gaped open. “So soon?”
She laughed. “We don’t have a training program here, so there’s no reason not to get you in the rotation.”
“Right. Sure. I can totally be here tomorrow.”
“You can do your audition dance for the first week, and then we’ll talk about switching things up.”
I nodded. “Sounds good.”
“Great. You can get dressed now.”
“Thanks.”
As I started over to my bag, Paula said, “I think you’ll want to do that in the dressing room.”
“Oh, okay.”
She gave me a knowing smile. “We don’t have any mirrors in here, and you’ll want to fix your makeup.”
And with that, she left me to my mortification.
“Oh my God!” I cried at my reflection in the dressing room mirror.
To my horror, my lipstick was a smeared mess, not to mention my mussed hair. Paula probably thought from the looks of me that Quinn had fucked my brains out. Embarrassment filled me that she probably thought that’s why he’d given me the job.
When I made my way out into the main room of the club, I hightailed it over to the bar where I’d left Brooke. To my utter horror, a beer sat in front of her while a twenty-something looking guy chatted her up.
Or knowing Brooke, it was the other way around.
“Time to go,” I said as I walked up.
While Brooke nodded, the guy reached out for her hand. “Do you really have to go?”
At Brooke’s plastered-on smile, I realized she hadn’t truly been interested in him and was just passing time. “Yeah, I do. It was nice talking to you, and thanks for the beer.”
“Can I get your number?”
Brooke opened her mouth, but I interrupted her by saying, “Maybe in two years when she’s actually twenty-one and is using a real ID, not a fake one.”
With a snort, Brooke hopped off the stool and let me drag her off. “I can’t believe you were talking to him.”
She rolled her eyes. “Seriously? You took forever, and I was bored out of my mind. What else was I supposed to do?”
“Try not getting hit on by older men?”
“Whatever. He was harmless. So, how did it go?”
“I got the job.”
She grinned. “I knew you had it when you started walking over. You were all glowy.”
Her words caused me to stumble. “Are you okay?” Brooke asked.
“Um, yeah, totally fine.” When she shot me a look, a nervous giggle burst from my lips. “Actually, I’m not okay. I mean, I’m good, but there’s a reason why I’m good. And at the same time, a little confused.”
“Isla, what the hell are you talking about?”
“I wasn’t glowy because of getting the job. It was something else.”
“They told you they’d never seen a better pole dancer before?”
“No, that’s not it at all.”
“Then what?”
“So, one of the owners gave me my lapdance audition. At first, I was like, ‘I can’t do this’ and then he was all ‘I’ll teach you how’. And then–” My cheeks flushed at the memory while wetness pooled between my thighs.
“And what?” Brooke prompted.
As we stepped into the sunshine, I leaned into her ear and whispered, “He made me come.”
Brooke’s eyes popped comically wide. “He what?”
Glancing around us, I replied, “You heard me.”
She slowly shook her head back and forth. “I’m just trying to understand how that happened with your boss of all men.”
“Trust me. I’m just as clueless as you are.”
“Was he hot?”
“Incredibly.”
“Really? That’s awesome. I mean, it was good to have a hottie to get you through your first time. It’s not like all the dicks you have to ride will be attached to hot men.”
Wrinkling my nose, I replied, “Thanks a lot.”
“So what did he look like?”
“You might’ve seen him. He had to rush out at the end because of some emergency, so he might’ve come by the bar on the way out.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh my God, I totally saw that commotion with all these men running around. First, there was drama with some woman screaming at this man, and then she ran out and he was hot on her heels. Then a few minutes passed and two other men were running past us.”
“I bet one of them was Quinn.”
“The guy with the strawberry blonde hair? Oh my God, Isla, he’s so hot!”
I shook my head. “No, he had dark hair and was impossibly tall and built.”
Brooke gasped as her hand flew to her mouth. “The scary as hell guy with the scars?”
“He’s not scary,” I huffed indignantly.
“Are you insane? Even Wesley was like, holy shit that was one of the owners who is quote, ‘scary as hell’.”
With a roll of my eyes, I countered, “He wasn’t scary to me.”
Brooke continued staring incredulously at me. “Is this the moment where you admit your deep dark secret of having crushes on serial killers?”
“Quinn is not a serial killer.”
“He looks the part.”
I scowled at her. “Maybe to you he does, but to me, he’s hot.”
“Regardless of his looks, the man has serious talent to make you come.”
“I would agree.”
“So how did he do it?”
“It’s hard to describe. It was the most erotic thing I’ve ever experienced.”
“Obviously since you’ve never come before.”
Nudging her playfully, I replied, “Shut up.” As we started for the car, I couldn’t help the dreamy sigh that escaped my lips. “It was everything–-his voice, his hands–”
“Wait, I thought they weren’t supposed to be able to touch you?”
“They’re not. Only him.”
“So what, he fingerbanged you?”
I shook my head. “No, it wasn’t like that. He didn’t even have his hands on my breasts or my…you know.”
Brooke rolled her eyes. “You’re going to be a stripper, Isla. You need to say the word.”
Jerking my shoulders back, I replied, “Fine. My pussy .”
With a grin, Brooke raised her hand to high five me. “Good job.”
Once I did, I said, “See, I’m not a total prude.”
“Apparently not if you were able to get off without him touching you. Like did he look you in your eyes and compel you to do it?”
Giggling, I replied, “No. It was like the most intense dry-humping I’ve ever had. I don’t know. Something about the friction coupled with the power of him just sent me over the edge.”
“That’s hot,” Brooke remarked.
“It was.”
“What happens now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Duh, do you go back for seconds?”
“He’s my boss.”
“Is there something in your contract that says you can’t date him, least of all fuck him?”
“There was nothing in the NDA that I signed.”
“Then you have free reign for more orgasms.”
I drew my bottom lip between my teeth. Did I want more with Quinn? My body definitely wanted more physically with him. I couldn’t imagine he would object if I broached the subject. But I couldn’t see that happening. Despite Victor and our one-night-stand, I wasn’t a girl who did sex without feelings.
And for the life of me I couldn’t imagine dating Quinn. How could I possibly tell people where and how we met? It didn’t seem like a good start if I had to lie about the very basic aspect of our relationship.
With a resigned sigh, I replied, “I don’t know. The moral side of me thinks it’s maybe not a good idea to be screwing my boss.”
Unlocking the car doors, Brooke countered, “Since you’re going to be a stripper, I think it’s okay not to listen to your moral side.”
“You bitch!” I teasingly shrieked.
She held her hands up. “Sorry. Just calling it like it is.”
“It’s more complicated than just screwing my boss.”
“Why?”
After staring down at the ground, I replied, “Because I felt something when I kissed him.”
“You felt his giant dick beneath you.”
I snapped my gaze up to scowl at her. “I’m being serious.”
Brooke’s amusement faded. “You mean, you felt a real connection?”
I nodded. “Nothing seedy like a hookup.” I swallowed hard. “Like a relationship.”
“Did he say anything?”
“That’s the worst part. After we got interrupted, he said he had to go and then reached for a box of tissues.”
Brooke wrinkled her nose. “Ew. Really?”
“Unfortunately.”
“That’s grim.”
“I thought as much.” With a shrug, I replied, “Maybe he regretted getting carried away in the moment and didn’t know what to say or do.”
With a roll of her eyes, Brooke replied, “I doubt he was putting that much thought into it after just getting his rocks off.”
A laugh bubbled from my lips. “Stop it.”
Brooke grinned. “Come on. Forget about the scary boss man. Let’s go pick up Henry, and grab a celebratory lunch to honor your new journey in stripperhood!”
“Sounds good.”