Soldier's Women (13 page)

She crouched down and bounced her ass a few times to the beat of the music
before turning and dropping to her knees to crawl on the stage in front of the
men, keeping her gazed focused on where she was going and her mind on
maintaining the sensual movement. She’d discovered it helped to ‘tune’ out her
audience as much as possible.

Grabbing the garter on her thighs as she passed them, the men began to insert
their money, using the opportunity for a quick feel.

Keira had only made it around half of the stage before the next song in her
set came on. She used the pole to get up and turned her ass to the other side of
the stage as she tried to seductively slide out of her leather hipster shorts.
Turning around, leaning back against the pole for support, she slipped the knot
at the neck of her halter and then the one just behind her back. She held the
cups over her breasts for a moment before she whipped it away by the strings,
twirled it a couple of times to set her breasts to jiggling in a circular
motion, and then tossed the halter toward the back of the stage. She slid down
the pole then, dropping to her knees, and then crawled in front of the men.
Coming up on her knees, she cupped her breasts in front of them, massaging them,
playfully jiggling her breasts before sliding a hand down her hip to play with
the ties on her string bottoms. When the appreciative catcalls reached a fever
pitch from her teasing, she came up on her knees, sidling closer to the edge of
the stage to offer her garter for more tips. Allowing her eyes to drift half
closed as if she was unbearably excited by them and the feel of her own body,
she continued to move with the music, skimming her hands along her torso from
breasts to hips and back again to draw the men’s gazes to her smooth skin.

Even focused as she was on undulating her body sinuously, on pretending to be
caught up in a sexual haze as she lifted and stroked her breasts, Keira noticed
the large hand that snaked out and tucked a twenty dollar bill in her garter,
stroking lightly along her thigh. A thrill went through her since she rarely saw
anything bigger than a five.

Dropping to her hands and knees directly in front of the big tipper, she
shook her breasts almost in his face, lifting them to him in offering.

The sensual, teasing smile on her lips died as she met the man’s gaze over
the top of her breasts. Recognition washed over her in a cold wave, freezing her
as still as a statue. Her mouth dropped open in shock. She didn’t hear the men
beside him whooping and hollering for more. She didn’t hear the music resonating
throughout the bar. All she could hear was the frantic beating of her heart. And
all she could see was . . . her boss, Mr. Devin Tremaine.

Chapter Two

Abruptly, she elicited a sharp gasp of surprise. Scrambling to get up on her
six inch heels, Kiera dashed to the rear of the stage, ducked behind the
curtains, and raced to the dressing room to hide, her clothes forgotten, the
rest of the customers at the stage forgotten.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” she chanted, like a mantra, dropping weakly
onto the bench at her dressing table.

“Sexx. What are you doing?” Lacy asked, her voice eloquent of shocked
disbelief. “You didn’t finish your set!”

Keira ignored the skinny blonde girl.

“You have to finish! The boss’ll be furious.”

“You have no idea,” Keira muttered, her heart still hammering in her
chest almost painfully. Tears welled behind her eyes as the shock finally wore
off enough for her to wrap her mind around what had just happened and worse, to
begin to imagine the repercussions. This was it. She was fired. All those years
at college and now she was going to be fired from her first job, and she had
only been there for six months! What was she going to say? Douglas and Tremaine
was one of the most prestigious law firms in the country. She was fucked. She
would never be able to get another job at a law firm. Fuck!

A big meaty man in a black tank top, the bouncer Mike, burst into the
dressing room. He looked around until her spotted her.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Sexx? Get your ass back out
there on stage … now! Before we have a fucking riot on our hands!”

Still upset about what had just happened, all Keira could do was stutter. “I
. . . I . . . can’t,” she managed.

“You damn well will. Get your ass out there or you’re fired,” he shot back
angrily without bothering to ask why she felt like she couldn’t go back out
there.

Probably, because he obviously didn’t give a fuck!

Dismayed as she was, it dawned on Kiera pretty forcefully that she couldn’t
afford to lose both jobs on the same night. Grudgingly, stiff with
nerves, she skated back out onto the stage, almost groaning when she realized
they’d restarted the damned set and she had an entire song to make it through.

Cringing inwardly, trying her best to focus on the music and move fluidly
through her number, she focused on keeping her back to Devin Tremaine—or where
he’d been sitting before, in any case. For once, the fact that the stage lights
made it almost impossible for her to clearly see the faces of her audience
didn’t particularly make her happy.

She was too unnerved by the possibility of coming face to face with her boss
again—soon to be ex-boss—to shake off the sense of awkwardness that had gripped
her, and certainly too unnerved to move very close to the edge of the stage to
collect tips.

Instead, she focused on a pole dance, sliding up and down the pole, gyrating
to the music and trying not to cringe at the bounce and sway of her breasts in
counter to every move. When the song neared the end, she pranced with more haste
than grace around the perimeter of the stage to collect whatever tips the men
could hastily stuff into her garter and then, with relief, shot off the stage
again.

Shady poked her head in the dressing room door almost before Keira’s ass had
settled on her bench again. “There’s a guy out there that wants a lap
dance.”

Keira blinked rapidly at her, trying to focus, trying to calm herself by
breathing normally. “Who is it?” she asked, a little out of breath. She didn’t
really feel up to lap dancing. All she wanted to do was crawl in a big black
hole. She wanted to hide in the dressing room the rest of the night and only go
on stage when she had to.

“I don’t know his name. He’s not a regular. He looks like he has money
though,” Shady said, leaving the room before Keira could ask her more.

Keira gaped at the closed door as a horrible thought popped into her
mind.

Shit! Could it be? Was it Mr. Tremaine? Surely it couldn’t be.

He took his clients to watch the strippers. She seriously doubted he
paid them any attention at all—let alone consorted with them. It just didn’t fit
anything she knew about him.

It did seem to fit his character that he counted on the strippers
distracting his clients.

Taking several deep, fortifying breaths, Keira tried to relax. It wasn’t him.
It couldn’t be. He didn’t do that sort of thing. She said that now, but then him
even being in the club was out of character. He should be at the club down the
street. Why was he here?

Trying to convince herself that the man asking for her couldn’t possibly be
Mr. Tremaine, she rifled through her dance bag and found another halter top to
put on, this one black, and another pair of black faux leather short-shorts to
put on. It only took her a minute to don the skimpy outfit before heading out of
the dressing room door. Making her way into the main area of the club, she
headed straight for the bar, trying not to look in the direction of the stage
where she had seen her boss. Maybe he wouldn’t notice her leaving the dressing
room? Hell, if she was doing some wishful thinking, she might as well hope he
hadn’t recognized her at all. After all, the only thing he’d seen exposed at
work had been her face.

Maybe he’d been too focused on the tits slapping his cheeks to notice the
face attached to them, she thought a little hopefully?

She approached the first man that was alone at the bar.

“Buy me a drink.” It wasn’t a request.

Thankfully, the man didn’t balk at her demand. He turned around and waved the
bartender over.

“I’ll have sex on the beach,” she told the bartender. Minutes later, he set
the drink in front of her. Keira turned it up and drank the whole thing as fast
as she could. She wasn’t a drinker, but tonight was different. Her world had
been turned upside down. Tonight, she needed it. She turned to thank the man
that had bought her drink, giving him a kiss on his shiny shaved head.

She turned to leave and ran into a brick wall. At least, it seemed like a
brick wall at first. Stunned for several seconds, she opened her eyes to find a
tailored suit. She swallowed hard past a knot of worry that had suddenly formed
in her now dry throat. As she swept the ‘wall’ with her gaze, she found a hard
chiseled chin, a fierce set of humorless lips, a straight imperious nose, and
the coldest blue eyes she’d every seen outside of the office staring back at
her, sizing her up, taking her apart even now. Suddenly, she felt very small and
insecure standing there before him. What an idiot she had been! She should have
just cowered in the dressing room all night. But she had been so certain that
she could work and ignore him. After all, it was a sizable club. But, she had
been wrong. Or, he had sought her out.

“Sexx is it?” he asked, his voice cold, without emotion.

That did it. He was purposefully digging in the open wound. “Yes, it’s Sexx,”
she said tightly, her defenses up now, knowing full well that he knew that was
how they had introduced her on stage. He was blatantly taunting her!

The prick!

Grasping her arm, he forcefully led her to a darkened corner, away from most
of the customers, while Keira struggled with the urge to make things worse by
creating a scene. She didn’t particularly want the bouncers coming down
on them, however, so she kept pace with him the best she could and tried to
pretend she wanted to go with him. He released her, to her relief, once
they reached the table that seemed to be his objective, although she’d more than
half feared he meant to drag her outside for a confrontation. Sprawling in the
chair he’d pulled out, he dragged a money clip from one front pocket of his
dress pants, peeled a twenty off of it, and laid the bill on the table without a
word. His gaze flickered over her as he shoved the money clip into his pocket
again, a frown furrowing his blonde brow, his jaw clenching so tightly a muscle
in his jaw ticked.

Keira gawked at him, dragged her gaze from his face to the twenty, and then
looked at him again. She didn’t know what to think.

It dawned on her, though, that her fairy godmother was sprinkling shit
tonight. Every wish was denied.

Obviously, the forlorn hope that it couldn’t possibly have been him
that had asked for the lap dance had been wrong. It was as if he was
demanding a dance.

What she couldn’t figure out was why. He sure as hell wasn’t wearing the
vacuous look of the men who generally paid for a lap dance. He wasn’t
intoxicated—either with booze or lust.

She had a bad feeling she was going to be swept up in a very unpleasant scene
if she turned and stalked off, especially after the stunt she’d already pulled
on stage earlier. Well, she wasn’t going to refuse his money tonight. She knew
damn good and well that he was going to fire her in the morning. She would need
that money to pay the rent, which was due in a week.

Fuck it! She’d danced for her dinner plenty by now.

She reached for the money. He grabbed her wrist before she could grasp
it.

“Dance first,” he said in a stern voice.

Irritated further, Keira straightened, glaring at him until the next song
started, tapping the toe of one shoe, biting her bottom lip to keep from giving
him a good tongue lashing. She didn’t care if she looked like a petulant child.
Right now, she wasn’t in the office. She was at a damn titty bar. She could act
any way she damned well pleased, but she wasn’t going to cuss him out before she
got that twenty from him.

It might be all she got in the way of ‘severance’ pay.

The next song started, and she pulled up a chair from beside them, turning
her back to him as she placed the back of the chair to her. She bent over,
resting her arms and her upper body weight on the chair, bouncing her ass up in
down to the rhythm of the music, shaking it from side to side, her ass cheeks
jiggling frantically with each thrust of her hips, each turn of her legs. She
had turned away from him so that she didn’t have to look at him, but the more
she danced the more she thought about his reaction. He was always so stony, even
when he had insisted on a dance. She was curious to see if it was affecting him
at all. As the next song began, she pushed the chair back where she had gotten
it and began to undress, slowly.

She used her fingertips to push her shorts lower and lower, swaying in front
of him seductively. She pushed them down until they fell to the floor.

He didn’t take his gaze away from hers.

That further irritated her, but she managed to keep the expression on her
face neutral. What the hell had he even asked for a dance for if he wasn’t going
to look? It wasn’t that she wanted so much for him to look at her with desire,
but, maybe, in a perverse way she did. Maybe she wanted to see that he felt
something besides disdain? Maybe she wanted to break down that cold exterior,
that haughty attitude he carried with him like a shield?

She pulled her halter top off quickly, her breasts bouncing up and down as
the fabric that was holding them was ripped away. She watched him carefully and
noticed that he glanced briefly at her breasts. Feeling a small sense of
triumph, she moved closer to him, placing a knee on his upper thigh, undulating
her hips toward him, caressing the skin of her inner thigh before tracing the
outline of her string thongs, watching his face the entire time. She leaned
closer still, one hand on the wall behind him for support, the other cupping one
breast as she brought it mere breaths from his face. She molded it in her hand,
pinching the nipple, licking it with her tongue. She saw him shudder slightly at
that. Not knowing whether that was a shudder of pleasure or not, she became more
emboldened still, desperately needing now to make him feel something. She moved
in closer, setting her other knee on his other thigh. Bending so that the rest
of her body was not touching him but very close, she brushed a stray lock of
blonde hair away from his ear, tracing the folds of his ear with her finger,
breathing hard in his ear as she lightly scraped her nails on the flesh behind
his ear, down his throat to his collar bone.