Chapter 3
THREE
JADE
“That was a hot song.” Kitty winked as she wrapped herself up in a sheer robe with fur lined at the end of the sleeves and hem that danced just above the ground. The robe left nothing to the imagination when it came to the deep red micro bikini she wore beneath it.
“Thanks,” I said as I moved to my locker.
“I’m going to hit the floor. Need me to send a drink?” Kitty offered. I swallowed.
“No, I’m good,” I answered, not sure how I was speaking after seeing him.
The most staggeringly beautiful man I’d ever laid eyes on in my entire twenty-four years on earth. From the very moment our gazes touched across the club, I’d felt like I had been hit by lightning.
Hard and sharp.
Everything inside of me irrevocably changed somehow.
I felt lighter. Seen. Almost like I glowed from the inside out.
From one look? I was being ridiculous. The man at the bar had been beautiful.
The definition of masculinity. His features sharp and undeniable, with a stern expression on his face.
Older by how much, I hadn’t been able to tell.
But one look, and it’d felt like daddy wanted to set me on his lap and count down the spankings I’d earned by dancing on the stage in front of strange men.
Daddy?
Spankings?
I shook my head and stared at myself. My face was flushed from more than the dancing and spinning I’d done on stage. My thoughts drifted to the stranger who had been watching me, and my body was covered in goose bumps.
The club had been too dark and the lights set on me as I danced too bright to make out the exact color of his eyes, but somehow, I knew whatever they were was my new favorite color.
I’d never had such a visceral reaction to a man.
He had taken my breath away. Literally. In that brief moment, probably not longer than five or ten seconds, it’d felt like everyone around us had disappeared. Like we were the only ones who existed.
If it hadn’t been for the song getting louder in volume, I wouldn’t have been able to tear my eyes off him. And for the first time since I’d started working here, I was dying to get out on the floor to go look for him to see if maybe he’d want a dance.
What is wrong with me? I wondered, staring at my reflection.
Go home, a small voice inside my head whispered.
Run. Whatever sliver of self-preservation I had left inside of me after my life had been derailed from my life plan wasn’t loud enough for me to listen.
I cooled down and retouched my makeup before I fixed my schoolgirl outfit again and made sure the pigtails were still in place.
Usually, I changed out of my dance costume to something smaller.
A teeny tiny bikini or a different costume.
Just to keep things fresh and different, since men were visual creatures.
But I was too focused, too excited to find Daddy out on the floor.
Daddy? The thought stopped me in my tracks. I’d been reading too many of Kitty’s romance books she liked to recommend.
I’d never been into older men.
And that handsome man who had stared at me like I was his, like he knew everything about me and was dying to find out more, was most definitely older. Not as old as the gray-haired man who had offered me a drink before I’d danced but definitely older than me.
Take a chance. Go look for him, something inside of me insisted.
“Heading to the floor?” Maryanne asked, snapping me out of my thoughts. I turned and smiled, glad that she had decided to borrow my nurse costume.
“It looks great on you,” I said. She smiled shyly.
“Thank you. I’ll have it laundered for you and return it by—“
“Keep it. There is no way I would look half as good as you do in it.”
“Really?” she asked with real surprise in her voice.
It never seized to surprise me just how much we as women didn’t see just how beautiful we were, from the inside out.
There wasn’t a woman I worked with who wasn’t absolutely gorgeous, no matter their style.
From the girl next door to the goth princess, each one was stunning.
And I’d witnessed each one, including bitchy Gretchen and mean girl Stef, have a moment of self-doubt.
“Totally.”
“Thank you.” She stood a little straighter.
“You got this,” I encouraged, and she nodded. “See you on the floor.”
I stepped out of the dressing room, the small purse hanging off my shoulder, as excitement vibrated within me. I’d never been more hyperaware of just how every nerve ending of my body seemed to be glimmering.
I felt awake.
Alive.
And ready to find the hot stranger. But as I reached the bar, the smile I had on my face started to fade away. He was gone.
“Drink?” Romy asked. I nodded, my throat restricted with a loss I didn’t understand. I’d never even talked to the man. I didn’t know his name. Nothing. But the loss felt monumental.
Not finding him where I’d last seen him cut through me. Deep. I inhaled, trying to calm down and steady myself as I stood right where he’d been. A note of something lingered in the air. Something familiar but too faint to make out clung in the space.
“You did great,” Romy complimented, handing me a cold bottle of water.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, my attention on the bottle in my hands.
“No costume change?” I shrugged.
“Figured it did great on stage. Wanted to see how it did out here.” I looked at her with a polite smile, but I knew it didn’t reach my eyes.
“A bachelor party just walked in,” she shared, pointing towards the VIP area.
“Kitty?” I asked, and Romy smirked.
“Where do you think?” she murmured, and my lips twitched.
“Lucky girl,” I murmured. Romy coughed away a laugh. “I’ll go see if the girls at VIP need any help.” I waved and started to strut my stuff over in that direction. The loss of that tall, dark, and handsome stranger still cut deep, but I knew better.
At the end of the day, a girl only had herself to count on.
I kept my head high as my hips swayed back and forth, the barely-there schoolgirl skirt whispering against the tops of my thighs. I was used to feeling exposed on the floor; a little over a year of working at the Velvet Leopard would do that to you.
I spotted the group easily enough. A bunch of thirty-something-year-old men acting like college freshmen as they laughed and downed expensive liquor.
“Hey, sweet cheeks. You wanna get an A in my class?” a guy asked from behind me. I turned and kept a smile on my face. It was as fake as a three-dollar bill, but the okay-looking guy didn’t seem to mind.
“Oh, would you make me work hard for it?” I asked with a bat of my eyes. His light brown eyes darkened a little as he swayed closer.
Out in the real world, in the light of day, I was sure he was cute. Maybe someone I would glance twice at the gym or grocery store? But in the dimly lit club, he was just like every other guy in here, except it was very obvious he’d had way too much to drink.
“I’m sure a girl like you could handle it.” He grinned, and his hand fell right on my ass. Fuck. So much for hoping he could possibly be a little different. No matter how many signs or times they were told they couldn’t touch dancers, assholes would always be assholes.
I stilled and bit the inside of my cheek to hold myself back from punching him straight in the jaw. I highly doubted my new boss would appreciate being pulled away from his reading time with Kitty to clean up a mess. Shit, he might fire me.
“Watch your hands, professor,” I warned politely.
“Aw! Come on. I’m sure a place like this,“ he started to say as he swayed closer, “allows a couple of exceptions. How about you and I head to the back, and you tell me how much for me to do a little more than touch this perfect ass? It’s been a while since I got my dick wet and—“
“I don’t—“ I started to back away, but my back hit a hard body behind me.
“No. Touching. The. Girls,” a deep voice, deeper than I had ever heard in my life, threatened with a menacing tone that should have made my blood run cold.
But it didn’t.
In fact, it did the complete opposite. I was hot. Hotter than I had ever felt. I tried to look over my shoulder, but he was so tall and the club was so dark, I couldn’t see his face, but I knew. I knew exactly who was standing behind me.
It was him.
My sexy stranger.
And he might have told the guy he wasn’t allowed to touch, but that didn’t seem to include him. His hand was splayed flat and open at my hip, touching me with a hint of possession that made me want to squirm.
“I don’t know who you think you are,”—the guy was way too inebriated to have an ounce of common sense—“but you should let the pretty little lady and I talk.”
I didn’t know one thing about the man behind me, not his name or his favorite color or even the color of his eyes, but I didn’t have to look at his face to know that the moment the drunk asshole reached for my hand, the poor guy had fucked up.
In less time than I could take a full breath, the handsome man switched places with me, blocking my view or the drunk guy with his body.
My eyes widened as I watched his massive back lean forward, and somehow, I knew he had reached for the drunk jerk.
He leaned in close and, hoarsely but quietly, whispered something into his ear.
It was too low and growly to make anything out, not even a word, especially while the music blared around us.
But I knew the sexy intense stranger wasn’t inviting the drunk guy to a tea party.
When he pulled away, I didn’t get a chance to look at the drunk man to get an idea of what had happened before the sexy stranger placed his hand in mine and led me away. Through the floor and towards the back rooms.
“Umm,” I started to say but stopped from saying anything else. Everything had happened too fast. Shit! What is happening?
I didn’t know him!
I didn’t know where he wanted to go!
I knew better than this!