by Skye Warren
His expression is almost bashful, a sharp contrast to the sleek heavy metal thing he holds so expertly. “I was thinking…the Taser isn’t enough. Not in this neighborhood. Not with you working here.”
“Is that even legal?” I squeak.
His low laugh is my answer. “Do you want to put your name in a database?”
“No, but I don’t want a gun either.” I’m more likely to accidentally shoot somebody than protect myself with that. The Taser was already a big step for me. The gun is downright terrifying. It’s too much. I can’t take it.
He seems to understand that. He nods and puts it back in his jacket. “If you change your mind…”
I stare at him, both confused and captivated. What strange gifts he’s brought for me. First the Taser. Now the gun. They’re both so violent. I hate violence. But they are also protection—and I need protection.
He’s like a cat bringing me a dead mouse as a gift. Disturbing. And sweet.
“Do you want me to go?” he asks.
I should tell him yes. I should tell him to leave. “Don’t go.”
Christ, I’m in too deep. How long has it been since I was attracted to a man? I’m not sure I ever have been. I had a crush on the bodyguard, but that was girlish—despite the adult things he did to me. There had barely been time, or opportunity, to look at men before I got engaged to Byron. And now I’m so far into this man, into Kip, that I don’t know how to back away.
Kip smiles a little. “Then I’ll stay.”
I narrow my eyes, playfully suspicious. “Now that you have me here, what are you going to do with me?”
His smile gives me all kinds of suggestions. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“On what you like.”
Oh, he’s good. A little spark of pleasure lights up in me. It may just be a line he gives all the girls, but it works. It’s more seductive than his scruff or his muscles or his boots—the idea that he cares. I dance every day, trying to please men I don’t even know. And here is this one, trying to please me.
“I like to dance.”
“I’d like to see that.”
“Then why don’t you come into the club?”
“Not like that. I’d like to see you dance the way you want to.”
I’m not sure that’s even possible. If I know he’s there, I’ll be dancing for him. I’ve been trained too well—by Byron, by my father. I even perform for Clara, in a way. There is no freedom with other people. Only in being alone.
“No dancing,” I say, strangely disappointed.
“Then let’s lie down,” he says gently. Maybe he knows how hard this is for me, to get close. Maybe it’s hard for him too. “We can look at the stars and let them dance for us.”
My heart clenches with something like wistfulness.
He’s not even gone, but I already miss him. I’ve had so little kindness lately. Or ever. And here he is with a whole weapons cache full of kindness. The killing game. I remember what Blue said about him. Even Ivan warned me away.
Kip stands there looking gruff and intimidating, like he would take on the whole world for looking at him sideways. There are scars on his knuckles that say he tried. And there’s a bend in his nose that says he’s lost. But despite all that violence, he touches me with desire.
He already has my body, already bought and used up. But he wants something else.
He wants me.
* * *
My father loved my mother. I was young when she died—when he killed her—but I remember that much.
I remember how he doted on her, giving her everything she asked for and more. I remember how she would laugh and tell him not to spoil her. I would sneak out of my bed when they threw parties. Even in a crowd of people, all dressed in elaborate gowns and tuxedos, they were easy to spot. She always had a smile, and he only had eyes for her. They would dance in the middle of the room, eclipsing all the other people.
And then one day my father came to me, eyes red and swollen from crying, voice thick with grief, to tell me she had died. I think I knew then he had done it. It was the lack of revenge that told me. If anyone else had shot her, he would have destroyed the whole city to avenge her instead of holding a small closed-casket funeral in the rain. A casket I wanted to believe was empty. But was it really better to believe she had abandoned me?
Maybe that was why I slept with my bodyguard. It had been a way to be close to my mother, to be like her, years after she was gone. Of course then I didn’t understand that a twenty-one-year-old man interested in a fourteen-year-old girl was wrong. I don’t think he even cared about my body. He was a rush junkie, and I was his fix. Fucking the boss’s daughter was just another risk. The men on my father’s payroll didn’t exactly have printed resumes and pension plans.
They never lived long enough to need one.
On the roof of the strip club, we are a thousand miles away from that world. Far away from tuxedos and ball gowns. Far from love and jealousy and revenge.
There is only a man who wants to fuck me. And touch me and make me hump his boot.
A man who will pay for the right.
Inside the walls of the club, he pays in cash. On the roof he pays with gifted weapons and an unexpected gentleness. He pays with thoughtfulness, but it’s a currency all the same. And so I let myself relax. He puts aside the gun and lays his jacket down like a blanket. Then I’m lying with my head on his arm, looking up.
“How long have you lived here?” I ask.
I don’t mean for the question to come out, but it does. We shouldn’t get personal. Fucking and sucking, but no questions. And no answers.
“Not long,” he says, looking up at the sky. “I don’t stay put very long.”
“That sounds nice,” I murmur. Never putting down roots. Never having them yanked out.
“Sometimes. Other times I wonder what it would be like to have everything I need, right at my fingertips. Food, a bed. Sex.”
“You have those things.” It’s not supposed to be suggestive. I just mean he can buy them, in a restaurant or a motel. Or a strip club.
But when he looks at me, there’s heat in his eyes. And resolve, as if he’s finally taking what’s his. The words change and tighten. They become about the taste of him and the warm jacket we lie on. They become about the sex I’ll soon give him.
His gaze sweeps over my body, stretched out. I’m wearing yoga pants and a tank top, but the way he looks at me, I’m already naked. He strips me with just his eyes, leaving me bare and vulnerable and strangely unashamed.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, his voice hoarse.
I flinch, because it’s what Byron used to tell me. Of course when he said it, it was a compliment to himself, praise for finding the perfect accessory to his life.
Kip notices. “You don’t like that word.”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” I laugh softly. “It’s complicated. I look like my mother.”
That’s what my father always told me, with the bitter light of grief in his eyes.
There must be grief in my eyes too, because Kip says, “She’s gone.”
“It was a long time ago. I thought I was over it, but for some reason I think of her a lot more now.” Maybe because Clara is paying for her sins. Maybe because I am too.
He is quiet a moment. “I think we never really get over the past. It’s always shaping us.”
Then how is it shaping you? But I am careful not to ask that question. I think with the quietude and the starlit intimacy, he might actually tell me. And then where would I be? I can’t care about a man. I can’t care about anything but my sister. All I can carve out for myself is a single night with a man I choose.
Because it isn’t really about payment when I take his hand and place it on my breast.
A breath leaves him on a sigh as his hand cups me. Broad fingers stroke my skin above the edge of my tank top. A heavy palm warms me through the fabric. I can still hear him saying I’m beautiful, but he holds
back now, thoughtful. “I see you,” he finally murmurs. “Only you.”
It’s his way of grounding me in the present, and it’s working. He does see me, because he doesn’t know anything of my past. He doesn’t know where I came from or where I’m going. I’m so tired of being my father’s daughter, my mother’s daughter, my sister’s protector. For this moment I’m just me. I’m only a warm body for him to use, and I need to be that for him.
“Do you want me to dance for you now?” I whisper even though I said I wouldn’t.
He shakes his head slowly, eyes dark and solemn. “You don’t have to dance. You don’t even have to move. Just let me make you feel good.”
I don’t remember what good is anymore, but his strong hands show me. They push up the hem of my tank top, exposing me to the cool night air. They trace circles over my skin. He pulls the fabric over my breasts, sucking in a breath when he sees the lace bra I have on.
His hand looks dark against the bright red, powerful over the sheer fabric. He strokes his thumb back and forth across the tip of my breast, hardening the nipple until it makes a point. My body responds to him without me doing anything—like he said, I don’t even have to move. My hands remain at my sides, my head resting on the folded edge of the jacket that is my pillow. My head is propped enough that I can watch him stroke my breasts while I lay passive, and it’s so easy to lie there, so easy to let him, so easy to feel pleasure arc through me without moving a muscle.
He runs a finger over the curves of my small breasts, traces the lines of the bra. Then he slips his hand underneath, touching me without seeing. It is a shocking warmth, his hand on my breast. These breasts I’ve bared to so many men. They are covered now—by him.
The lacy fabric stretches over his hand, pushed up with no room to give. Underneath, his hand shifts, finding my nipple between thumb and forefinger. He squeezes gently, and a soft sound escapes me, like a whimper.
“You feel so good. You feel like fucking heaven.” He rolls my nipple between his fingers. “This is what I dream about. Keeping you in bed, bringing you food and wine, touching you as much as I want.”
My eyes fall shut, imagining his fantasy. Instead of a stripper in a seedy club, I am his personal sex slave, wrapped in silks and desire. My body grows warm at the thought, wet at the core. “Kip.”
“Would you like that?” he murmurs. I think he knows exactly what he’s doing to me. “Would you lie there and let me touch you as long as I want to? Even when you fall asleep, I’d keep my hands on you. On these pretty breasts. On your pussy.”
And then, as if to illustrate his point, he removes his hand from my bra and slides it down, underneath the waistband of my pants. He doesn’t stop until he dips his fingers into the slickness pooling there.
“Fuck, you do like this.” He actually sounds shocked.
It makes me laugh—though it’s almost a giggle. I didn’t know I was even capable of making that sound, but then a lot of things are a surprise tonight. Apparently I’m the type of girl who can drink alcohol with a boy she likes, who will let him finger her while she plays the docile, innocent victim.
Of course, I’m not innocent. And I’m not really sure I like him.
“Don’t stop,” I say.
That earns me a slight smile. “I wasn’t planning to.”
He runs his fingers through the wetness there, but without purpose, without the speed I’d need to get off. He’s just feeling me, exploring me, the same way he did my breasts. My legs are already parted enough to give him access, but without planning it, my knees fall apart. It’s an invitation, and he doesn’t miss a beat, pushing deeper. But still with lazy strokes.
Not enough. A whimper escapes me.
And it sounds like acceptance. It must be acceptance, because he pushes up and slings a leg over my chest. He pulls off his shirt, and I can see his chest in full glory, broad and strong, covered in tribal tattoos and scars. He’s dangerous. He’s primal.
For tonight he’s mine.
Then he’s undoing his jeans, pulling out his cock. He presses the tip to my lips—without foreplay or finesse. His body blocks the moonlight. The only thing I can see is the shadow of him. The only thing I can smell is the musk of his precum.
He paints my lips with the salty liquid, the same way he used my wetness to dampen my nipples. But this time he isn’t the one cleaning it off. This time it’s me licking my lips, tasting him for the first time.
He tastes like danger and pleasure, like risk and reward.
“Open for me,” he groans.
I open my lips, letting him inside, almost grateful, relishing the way his whole body stiffens. I breathe him in, the salty scent of his cock, already smelling of me and him—as if we’ve had sex. He stares down at me as I swirl my tongue around the head of his cock, and I don’t look away.
There are rules, about looking him in the eye. About using a condom, even for this.
But I’m breaking them. My tongue and my lips and even the edge of my teeth work to give him pleasure, pushing faster and harder than I’ve ever done before—not because I want it to end, but because I know it will. And when this is over, I want him to remember me.
Foolish. Reckless. I don’t care. Right now I want that as much as survival—more.
He grunts and finds a rhythm, and I match my sucking to him, opening my throat to let him in deeper, using my sucks and my tongue in tandem to push him over the edge. Just like he pushed me. It’s a double-edged sword between us, but right now he’s the one being cut. He’s the one shuddering, groaning, almost humping the floor as he fucks my mouth.
A lock of my hair falls into my face, jerked by the rough motion of his body and mine. He reaches down…and carefully smooths the lock from my forehead. Even though I’m lying on a leather jacket, arms pinned by my sides, getting fucked, being used—the touch is almost tender.
“Christ,” he gasps, and then warm come fills my mouth.
I swallow it quickly, only to find more spurting from the tip. He has so much come, as if he hasn’t climaxed in forever, like he’s been saving it all for me. I swallow again and again, until only the faint salty flavor of him remains, and he pulls away.
He runs his thumb down my cheek, then lower, wiping away a drop of his come from the corner of my lips. “Thank you,” he says.
I let him tuck the blanket around me, warming me up. Only then do I realize I’m cold. Freezing. I’m still shivering, until he slips under with me, wrapping his strong arms around me. “Shh,” he soothes.
“I didn’t say anything,” I say.
I feel his smile. “I heard you anyway, Honey. I always do. You don’t even have to say anything. You just have to feel, and I can hear it like a goddamn church bell.”
“And you’re a religious man?” I ask, smiling sleepily.
“No, never. But you make me want to be. I want to worship you.”
His cock is already half-erect against my leg. He follows through on his promise, worshipping me with his lips and tongue and fingers until I writhe on that roof, until I open my mouth and choke out incoherent words, pleading, crying, needing, while the heavy moon looks on with satisfaction.
His cock spreads me wide, filling me until I can only rock my hips up, riding the edge.
He grunts on every thrust, a primal sound that spurs me on. His breath is hot against my skin. His hips spreading my legs wide. I’m completely invaded by him, taken over, wanting more.
“Please, please, please,” I beg, shameless, free of the shackles I wear below this roof, onstage.
But it’s too much. I’m too loud. Especially when he moves to hit a different spot inside me. I moan, and his hand comes up to cover my mouth. That is what pushes me over—the rough feel of his palm on my lips, being quieted by him, controlled. I come in a burst of color and sound, sensation rolling over me, making me clench around his cock as it pulses with come.
Chapter Eleven
It’s close to dawn when I climb down the fire escape, carefu
l not to rattle the metal too much. I’ll have to hurry to make it back to Clara in time. That’s the excuse I have for leaving without waking him up. Okay, I’m not just leaving. I’m sneaking away. But Kip is asleep. I must have drifted off at some point too.
It will be easier for both of us if I’m gone when he wakes up. We aren’t going to run away together. This isn’t a fairy tale. I won’t make the same mistakes my mother did. I know better than to trust a man.
I know better than to love one.
Candy is leaning against the brick wall. She takes the cigarette from her lips and blows smoke in my direction. She looks me up and down, clearly unimpressed by what she sees. “Didn’t we tell you not to get involved with the customers?”
Of course they did—and the worst part is, they’re right. There’s no way this ends well for me. “I’m not involved,” I lie.
She laughs, low and bitter. “Doesn’t get more involved than fucking outside the club. Let me guess, he didn’t have to pay you for that one. That was just for fun.”
I flinch because I hadn’t even thought to ask for payment. What we did suddenly feels cheap. And that’s what it is…cheap. “Stop,” I whisper.
“Is that what you told him?” Her voice is taunting, her eyes whip-sharp. I’ve never seen her like this. I can only think I’ve earned her wrath for ignoring her advice. For keeping my secrets.
“We just talked.”
A roll of her pretty eyes. “I heard you up there.”
My face burns with embarrassment. I climaxed up there, not nearly quiet enough. I enjoyed myself up there, and maybe that’s the most embarrassing of all. I finally figured out how amazing sex could be, and it was on the roof of a strip club.
I hear the metal clang, and then Kip is working his way down. He’s got his shirt back on and his jeans and his boots, and damn does he look good in them.
Then I glance at Candy and realize she caught me checking him out. I blush, even though I think it’s bullshit. The men can ogle us all night long, but I’m not supposed to appreciate a fine masculine body?
He nods at Candy, his voice rough from sleep. “Morning.”