On The Ropes (10 page)

Here, I couldn’t—wouldn’t—be scared. All I could do was let the music take me, as it had so many times before.

Soon I was so hot from dancing like a maniac in that tiny cage that taking off my dress was almost a relief. Because the dress was backless, I hadn’t worn a bra, and as soon as the material slid away, the catcalls turned up to an earsplitting level. I played up to them, gripping the bars of the cage, rocking my hips, teasingly waving my toes through the bars as men shoved money in as fast as they could. Aware all the while that Gio was out there, watching me grind against the bars and rub my nipples until they were in tight little peaks.

I hadn’t been sure if I’d be able to do this again after last week. But dancing fed something dark and depraved inside me, a beast that wouldn’t be tamed. It was easy, deceptively so, to pretend again that I wasn’t in danger. This was just fun. Maybe not innocent fun, but not harmful either.

Even in the midst of that fun, I felt Gio’s eyes on my body, mapping it like he’d mapped it with his broad, callused hands. That knowledge spurred me on, made me go further than I usually did. Tonight when I ran my hands up the insides of my thighs, I didn’t stop outside my panties. I slipped the tips of my fingers inside and pretended to touch myself.

And felt my clit pulse as my hands grew slick from more than just sweat.

Safety meant so many different things at different times. Tonight it meant going wild, and knowing he would be there to catch me no matter what. As much as I wanted to rail against his overprotectiveness, I loved it too.

In some small way, I mattered to him. Just as he mattered to me.

My first set was almost over when I heard Marco’s laughter. I blinked the sweat out of my eyes and tried to scan the swarms of people dancing underneath the cage, but it was impossible to make out faces for more than a second with the spotlights swinging everywhere. It didn’t matter. That smooth, dark chuckle was in my head now, growing louder and louder, blocking out the music to the point that I had to grip the cage bars to keep from going to my knees.

I started choking, trapped in the dark with no air. And then the spotlights swung away from my side of the club, signaling the end of my set, and I stumbled out of the door and down the steps, barely remembering to snag my dress on the way.

Somehow I managed to pull it over my head before I reached the bottom of the stairs and encountered the grasping hands that always came too close and moved too fast. Normally I playfully batted them away. Tonight they grabbed for me like seaweed out of the deep, dark ocean, threatening to pull me down beneath the surface.

Where I would drown.

I’d just reached the hallway leading to the dressing room when a strong hand wrapped around my upper arm and pulled me to a halt. “
Tesoro
, wait. Are you okay?”

My eyes closed in reaction to that nickname I so loved, but I kept moving. He tried to hold me still. Nothing could.

I took a detour and aimed for the ladies’ room instead of the dressing room, and shoved my way inside. I knew he was right behind me, but I couldn’t stop to talk. Couldn’t talk, period. My throat had swollen shut from panic.

Once I was inside a stall, I sagged against the wall and covered my face with my hands.

Breathe. Just breathe. You’re fine. You’re okay.

A knock sounded on the door and I startled, slamming my elbow into the toilet paper dispenser. I cried out and the knocking grew more frantic. “Carly, dammit, open this door. Let me in there.”

Gio. Just Gio.

A hysterical laugh tried to bubble up as I pictured him cramming himself in that tiny stall with me. How did people have sex in bathroom stalls anyway? Their partners must not be freaking bull ram-sized like Gio. No way he’d be able to fit in there with me and actually be able to…move.

“I’m okay,” I said around the mixture of tears and laughter wedged in my chest.

“You aren’t. Let me in.”

“This is the ladies’ room.”

“Do you think I care?” he growled. “You’re hurting and I need to—”

“What?” I asked softly, pressing my forehead to the flimsy metal door that separated us. “What can you do?”

He released a short, frustrated breath. “Hold you. I can fucking
hold
you.”

The tears I’d battled back sprung forth now, clouding my vision. Oh God, I wanted that so much. Not just to be held in general, but to be held by
him
. That irrepressible wish had caused me to do so many insane, desperate things. Like following him to the club. Like dancing there. I’d just wanted to be noticed, to be loved.

I’d gotten noticed all right, but not quite the way I’d intended.

“I’ll be out in a minute. I have to take care of business,” I said, praying he couldn’t hear the sob in my voice.

“You have to pee, so what? I’ll close my eyes. Turn my back.”

“Gio, please,” I said. “Give me a couple minutes on my own. Okay?”

Just then a couple of women came in and started screeching. Guess they weren’t down with having a big, tattooed, male MMA fighter in their girly space.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m going.” Gio sighed heavily and leaned on the door, curling his fingers over the top. Even they were tattooed with symbols. How had I never noticed before? “Look, I’m going right back to my table. You know where it is. Just down the hall.”

His table with
them
, his mob cronies. Oh sure, hard to forget that.

“Yes,” I said. “I know exactly where.”

“As soon as you leave here, come right to my table. Or I’ll come find you.” More screeching. “Yes, I’m leaving. Now.”

The door shut behind him a second later, and the two harpies started giggling as if they hadn’t just been pissed.

“Did you see dat ass? Bitable.”

I rolled my eyes and grabbed a sheaf of toilet paper to dab my eyes. Every female under the age of eighty seemed to find Gio desirable. Not that I could blame them.

After the bitable ass chicks had finished up and left, I left the stall and went over to the sinks to view the damage. My eyes were puffy, my face blotchy. My wig was still on—I used good pins—but barely. I hadn’t exactly been careful when I’d pulled my dress back over my head.

I washed my face and fixed my hair and makeup, then smoothed out the wrinkles in my dress. I wasn’t at the peak of my game, not by a long shot, but at least no one would throw me out of the club.

One set down, one to go.

Sucking in a deep breath, I headed out of the bathroom and down the hall to Gio’s table. I’d have to see Marco and the others again soon enough, so I might as well do it while Gio was there in case things got hairy. Whatever happened, I would handle it.

Twenty feet from Gio’s usual table, I came to a halt. Marco and his other smirking pals were gathered around the round booth, drinking expensive alcohol and laughing heartily at their stupid inside jokes, but that wasn’t what made my mouth fall open and my boots stop clicking.

Gio had a girl on his lap. A beautiful one, with long sable hair and tits that nearly spilled out of her top and knocked over his martini glass.

He wasn’t doing anything with her except, you know, sitting with her on his lap. And smiling at her while he schmoozed with the men who’d insisted he have his way with me for their amusement.

Something he’d been so outraged about just a short time ago, and seemed to have absolutely no issue with right now.

Eventually, my feet started moving toward the table again. Naturally, Marco noticed me first. He rose and smiled as he gestured for me to have a seat at his side. “Carl…otta,” he finished slowly enough to make it obvious that wasn’t my real name. “Please, join us.” He said it more like a demand than a question.

“I’m working,” I said stiffly.

“Oh yes, I know. I saw you. So lovely.” He ran his thumb along the corner of his mouth as he lowered his focus to my boots. “Nice to see you brought some sturdier footwear this evening. We can’t have our dancers missing shifts for petty reasons.”

I balled my hands into fists at my sides.
Petty fucking reasons?
I was no Mia Anderson, but I was ready to do some cold-cocking of my own.

Not that I was given a chance.

Gio reached out and snagged my hand, tugging me onto his other leg. There wasn’t quite enough room on his lap for two of us, and I wasn’t into ménages. But when I tried to shove him away, he pinched my hip, hard, and caught my gaze. “Wait,” he mouthed, and I turned my face away, unwilling to play his game.

But I still wasn’t getting off his lap, because it was safer there than anywhere near Marco.

“Look at you,
gumba
,” one of the men from the other night said. “Two for the price of one.”

“They’re priceless, Z.” Gio laughed, but even I could hear how hollow it sounded.

That didn’t mean I’d tolerate his bullshit. I’m in the bathroom five minutes and he has a girl on his lap? Really? And he expected me to pretend I care about him? Right now all I wanted was to rub his face in the dirt.

A short while later, Marco headed to the dance floor with his arms around a pair of blondes, and the guy from the other night that Gio had called Z started flirting with an all-too-willing waitress.

Perfect time to make my escape.

I climbed off Gio’s lap and beelined for the bar. I needed a drink. They weren’t the best about carding at the club, and the bartender on duty was a friend. He’d slip me a Rum Runner if I asked him nicely and flashed him a little boob.

“Hey Josh.” I wedged my way in at the end of the bar and wiggled my fingers.

“Carlotta. You vision.” He grinned at me and strolled over. “What can I get you? You in the mood for a virgin—”

“Aw, c’mon now. We both know I’m not into virgin anything.”

His grin grew. “And it shows, honey. So tell me then. What can I get you?” He leaned on the bar, his tanned forearms ripping. “Anything you want. Anything at all.”

I sensed the looming presence behind me before I took a quick glance over my shoulder and glimpsed Gio’s glower. “Rum,” I said sweetly, turning back to Josh. “Lots of it.”

He glanced at Gio then back to me, his smile slipping slightly. “You got it. One sec.”

The minute he’d turned away, Gio caged me in with his arms on either side of the bar. Where I’d had to fight to make room, people seemed to just glide away in deference to him.

“You’re angry,” he said against the side of my neck, his breath ruffling my heavy hair. Stupid wig.

I didn’t answer, just tapped my fingernails on the bar and pretended I couldn’t feel his cock pressing into my ass.

Of course, he was hard. Why wouldn’t he be? He’d just been sitting in the middle of a flesh banquet, with two pairs of ripe melons inches from his mouth.

“
I
’m not
interested in her. She’s just part of the game.”

Those words made me irrationally mad. I whirled and jabbed a finger in his chest. “Part of what game?”

He pressed his lips together and said nothing.

“My sister is right,” I said finally, shaking my head. “Once a con artist, always a con artist.”

“Carlotta, here’s your Rum Runner. On the house,” Josh added when Gio took out his wallet.

“Thank you,” I said to my friend, taking a swig that went straight to my still woozy head.

“You’re not getting drunk. You need to have your wits about you.” Gio plucked my drink out of my hand and held it just out of reach.

“You goddamn bastard,” I said under my breath. It took everything I possessed not to create a big-ass scene, mainly because I was still feeling the aftereffects of my meltdown at the end of my set. And because he’d touched another girl, right in front of me. God, that hurt.

“You’ll thank me later.”

“Dammit, I can take care of myself.” I hadn’t done the best job the other night, but I’d come prepared tonight. I wouldn’t be caught unaware again. “Just leave me alone.”

He turned his near-black eyes on me, rooting me to the spot. “I can’t.”

M
y punishment was watching
her dance her second set.

The first had been bad enough. She’d seemed so into it, as if stripping came as easily to her as breathing. She’d effortlessly teased the crowd and they’d responded by tossing fistfuls of money in her cage. The act had become more and more explicit until she’d practically been masturbating for everyone to see—and dammit, even as I’d hated it, I’d gotten so hard for her that walking had become impossible. About the only thing I’d been capable of was walking up those steps and yanking her out of that cage to cover her with my arms.

I hadn’t done it, though I’d been sorely tempted. Then I’d watched her change from a playful temptress into a scared version of the Carly I knew, and I hadn’t been able to get to her fast enough.

All I’d wanted to do was stay by her side and make sure she was okay. But I couldn’t. Even if Marco and the others took me at face value that Carly was mine, that didn’t mean I could reject their kind of gifts. One of them had been Monique, the woman Carly had seen on my lap.

I hadn’t kissed or even barely touched her, but I knew how it looked. I didn’t want to hurt Carly, especially when she was already reeling over being in the club again. But I couldn’t let years of work go down the drain by making an issue about flirting with a beautiful woman. If I did that, the others would start paying too close attention to me. There was a set way of doing things, and the women with these men understood that faithfulness wasn’t always a two-way street.

I didn’t operate that way, but Carly had no reason to know that. I did the bare minimum I could to fit in, and that was all.

She wasn’t supposed to be hurt by who I was with, any more than I was supposed to need to breathe deep to stop myself from cracking the skulls of the assholes near her cage who started getting too grabby about fifteen minutes into her second set. She deflected them with a laugh and a wiggle of her ass, making the rage simmering in my blood turn darker and hotter.

I had to have her again.

She turned toward my side of the club and gripped the cage bars, pushing her bare breasts against them so the taut nipples poked through. The men beneath went wild, tossing money like it was confetti, and she responded by slipping a hand under her dress. She hadn’t removed it entirely this time, just rolled it to the waist, and there was no mistaking what she was mimicking. From this distance and the darkness of the club, I couldn’t make out the details, but I didn’t need to. I’d been closer last time, and I’d glimpsed her fingers disappearing under her thong. Now she was doing it again, teasing herself and the crowd both, and I couldn’t keep from fisting the hands I’d shoved under my biceps.

Standing in the dark, surrounded by strangers and enemies cloaked as friends, I throbbed for her. Every part of me burning with lust and frustration and concern and anger. This wasn’t for her, but if I tried to insist it, she’d do it just to spite me. I had to let her reach the choice on her own.

She didn’t rush from the stage after this set. Nor did she wait for me to catch up with her. She was pissed about Monique, and if we’d been in a regular relationship, I wouldn’t blame her.

What we were in had no definition. I didn’t think even Facebook’s
It’s Complicated
status began to cover it.

Hell, she’d just bared herself to every man who paid the cover charge, so how could she be mad at me for having a girl on my lap? One I’d barely talked to, and barely touched.

When she emerged from the dressing room with her short trenchcoat belted around her waist and her regular ponytail bouncing down her back, I let out a breath. As sexy as she was as Carlotta,
this
was the woman who slayed me. She’d scrubbed off her lipstick and those nude, puffy lips were more alluring than any coat of paint. That silky reddish-gold hair more beautiful than any femme fatale wig.

I didn’t say any of that. What would be the point, other than confusing this already fucked up situation with compliments she wouldn’t trust anyway?

“Are you ready to go?” I asked.

She nodded.

Guess that was all the answer I was going to get.

I’d already made my goodbyes a short while ago to Marco and the others, and since Lorenzo hadn’t shown up tonight, I viewed the evening as a bitter disappointment. That wasn’t even addressing the Carly situation. I wouldn’t be sleeping easy for a while with the images of her pressed against the bars of the cage trapped behind my eyes.

We drove home in silence. No conversation, no music to distract from the tension filling the truck. There was just the sound of her boots squeaking against each other as she fidgeted, and the unnaturally loud beat of my heart filling my head as I watched her curvy thighs separate and press together. Separate and press together, over and over again.

She wasn’t the only one shifting on her seat.

When I should’ve turned off toward her place, I kept going. It hadn’t been my plan. I didn’t
have
a plan. I’d lived with one for every moment of the last two years, using it as fuel to put one foot in front of the other.

Now, here, with her, there was no blueprint. Nothing to guide me but need.

“Where are we going?” She swallowed audibly. “My sister is expecting me.”

I glanced at the dashboard clock. “At almost three a.m.?”

“She worries.”

That was obvious to anyone with eyes. “Text her, let her know you’re okay, but you won’t be home tonight.”

“Oh, so now you want me. You saw me shake my ass and my tits and now—”

Lightning fast, I reached across the seat and caught a handful of her ponytail, tugging gently. “What’d I tell you about diminishing yourself in my presence?”

“I’m not diminishing anything. You’re trying to diminish me by running so fucking hot and cold.”

I grabbed her hand and brought it to my cock, hard and straining against my jeans. She bit her lip, but she still let out one of those sexy little gasps that I both hated and adored. “Does that feel cold to you?”

“It feels like you went to a strip club, and watched a topless dancer.” She snatched her hand back and slipped across the seat. “They have back rooms for that. I know you know that all too well, because I stood outside one last spring while you got your dick sucked.”

Yeah, I’d gotten my dick sucked, all right, for the sole purpose of killing the last bit of interest Carly had in me. I was still trying to do that.

Some twisted, masochistic part of me was also still trying to keep it alive.

“I was hard before I saw you dance. It definitely pushed things along, but it didn’t start me off.”

Arms crossed, she stared straight ahead.

“I know you don’t understand—”

“You don’t want me to understand. You want to keep me in the dark, but I guess after last week, you also want a bite of nookie cookie now and then, huh? Sorry, buddy, it’s not going to work that way. I’m not your sometimes fuckee.”

In spite of everything, my lips twitched. She was the only person capable of making me smile so easily. Those smiles usually ended up bookended by the urge to shove her against a wall and fuck her brainless and wanting to pull my hair out because she was so goddamn frustrating.

“I don’t want a bite of your nookie cookie. I want to eat the whole damn thing, and lick my fingers afterward. Then I want to clean up the crumbs with my tongue.”

“Overshare,” she muttered, and I would’ve smiled wider if I’d been focused on anything but the pulse of blood in my dick.

“I know I haven’t been fair to you.”

Still nothing.

“It’s for your own good—”

“Heads up, I don’t do well with people telling me that things are for my own good, especially when it feels like I’m sitting in a steaming pile of poo. My sister said those words to me my entire life, and you know what ended up happening? The second I got a taste of freedom, I started stripping. Because I could. Because it felt good to be wanted, even if it was just for this.” She gestured at the front of her body. “I know no one would understand how getting up there and dancing half naked is freeing for me, but it is. Or it was, until last Friday night.”

I gripped the wheel tighter. “I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t,” she said loudly when I would’ve interrupted her. “I flirted with Marco, for tips, and because I enjoyed his attention. It wasn’t my fault either. What I was to blame for was coming to work unprepared, but I rectified that tonight.” She picked up her purse and shook it. “I have pepper spray and throwing stars, and a tape recorder if anyone decides to touch me again. They can take pictures to demonstrate my supposed character until the end of time, but they won’t get their hands on my fucking tape recorder.”

Admiration wound through me. “Throwing stars?”

Her chin came up. “My sister taught me how to use them.”

“Good. That’s good. She should teach you some basic self-defense moves—” I fell silent at her hard stare. “I suppose you have that under control.”

“I do. I know some self-defense moves, Gio. I didn’t use them on you because I wanted to have sex with you.”

If I’d been capable of blushing, that would’ve done it. Why, I didn’t know, but damn if I didn’t feel the back of my neck grow warm.

“Not like that,” I said quietly. “Never like that.”

“Some part of me gets off on exhibitionism,” she said after a moment. “At first I told myself that was just another kind. But it wasn’t, was it? That’s why it keeps kicking back on me, why I keep having flashbacks.” She shuddered. “Why I can’t sleep, because Marco and his men are watching me from the corners like twisted boogeymen.”

“No. That had nothing to do with sex, or pleasure, or enjoyment. It had everything to do with power and control.” As soon as the words were out, I exhaled. “I don’t mean—”

“We both got off. There was something there, in the midst of what they’d started.” It was her turn to blow out a breath. “Maybe it was easy to get what happened tangled up, to make it into more.”

“It’s been more since you first looked at me, and I looked at you.”

“Don’t,” she whispered, covering her face with her hands. “You aren’t going to tell me what you’re doing with them, or why you’d stay in their company after what they made us do. Whatever your reason is, it’s bigger than all of that. Way bigger than any stupid flickers of attraction—”

“Is that what you’d call this?” I clenched my jaw. “A flicker of attraction?”

“I’d call it a mistake.”

She was right, so what could I say? Arguing with her wouldn’t be fair to her…or to me, because I was no longer capable of being the kind of man she needed. Clean-cut, stand up. The kind who wouldn’t pull another woman onto his lap in the time it took to wash her hands. Extenuating circumstances didn’t change the reality of who I was.

Whom I’d become.

“I understand why you need to strip.” I cleared my throat at her snort. “Okay, no, I don’t. But you said you have reasons, that it used to be enjoyable to you.”

“The money’s enjoyable. It’s nice not needing to lean on my sister. The dancing…well, I’d probably enjoy it just as much with my clothes on. Hindsight being twenty/twenty and all.”

“I meant what I said earlier about sticking with you while you’re at the club. So if you’re going to be there, I’m going to be with you. I’d like to say it’s a democracy and you have a choice. On everything else, you do. On this one thing, you don’t. You can’t.” When she started to speak, I reached out for her hand and set it on my thigh. “I need to make sure you’re safe,
tesoro
. Not because you can’t do it on your own, but because I want to help.”

“So. Not. Fair.”

I smiled and rubbed my thumb over her knuckles. She had such delicate hands, pale, soft. But such strength existed under their fragile appearance. I’d seen her wield a knife. Felt her grip my cock.

“I can’t offer you more than this,” I said, pulling to the curb about a block from my building. I could’ve parked closer, but I wanted—needed—the walk. “I can be your friend, and I can be your protector, and behind closed doors, I can be your lover. But I can’t be your boyfriend.”

“Why?”

Such a simple question. So impossible to answer. “I was in love once. It didn’t end well. I won’t do it again.”

“I never have,” she said softly. “Been in love. I’ve been in serious like, and serious lust. And to be honest, I don’t have room in my life right now for a big time love. I have school, and work, and my family. But I can always make room for a friend, and a lover. Protector…well, as long as you’re cool with getting some of that back too, then I guess that works.”

“What does that mean?” I was almost afraid to ask. With Carly, it could mean anything.

“It means shut up and kiss me, before I spontaneously combust.”

I turned off the truck, pocketed the keys. Shifting toward her, I lifted her hand still cupped in mine to my mouth. One by one, I kissed each of her fingertips. They were cool, small, with hints of callouses from her work in the kitchen. Gentle and tough, both.

When I finished with one hand, I reached for the other and gave it the same treatment. I looked up and her eyes were shining, the streetlights reflected in their depths.

“Not what you meant?” I asked softly.

“No, not what I meant,” she echoed, equally soft. “But it was even better.”

We got out of the truck and met on the sidewalk. It felt weird to hold out my hand for hers, as if I was doing something wrong. As if Emilia could see me. That she would know I had feelings for this girl, even though we’d just agreed all we would be to each other was this, in the dark. But it didn’t feel casual, or insignificant, as her fingers curled around mine and she leaned her head on my shoulder on the walk to my building.

“This…whatever we’re doing,” she circled her finger in the air between us, “it’s just us, right? No one else, until it’s done.”

Until it’s done.
Sounded so simple, final and clean.

Nothing had been simple or clean in my life for a very long time.

“No,” I agreed. “No one else.” I waited a beat, searched for the right words. Or at least ones that weren’t wrong. “You might see me with other women now and then, and that can’t be avoided. But I give you my word, you’ll be the only one I touch behind closed doors.”