Unexpected Fate (7 page)

“Let’s get this over with.”

She gives me a bright smile and pushes herself out of the car. I give myself another pep talk and try to convince myself that this isn’t going to be a mistake. She’s right about one thing: I could always use some more gym time. Tiny or not, I won’t stay firm with all the sweets I eat.

“Is this even something I’ll be able to do, Lyn? I mean, we all can’t be tall warrior princesses like you and your amazon sister.” I laugh, but I’m dead serious. I’m five foot two on a good day. The twins tower over me. Always have. They have upper-body strength that could rival a grown man, and mine is more like that of a small child. “I’ll never be able to get off the ground,” I mutter to myself as we walk through the door to the studio.

The first thing I notice is that it’s really cool in the room. Like, instant nip boner. I bring my arms up to cross around my body and pray that no one sees my headlights beaming. Lyn confidently marches ahead of me and waves to Lila, Maddi, and Stella. I give them a wave of my own and quickly cover myself up. How am I the only one freezing my ass off here?

“You girls ready to learn some moves?” Lyn asks the group with a huge smile.

“I’m just here for the workout. Mom says this is an amazing way to keep your body toned in a fun way,” Maddi says with a smile. “Of course she would think that since she used to strip herself.” She laughs when all three of us look at her in shock.

“Emmy? Aunt Emmy? Sweet little Emmy who has a husband so protective and possessive of her that he makes my dad look like a choirboy? That Emmy?” I ask, causing her to laugh even harder.

“Yup. Hard to believe, right? She doesn’t talk much about it, but they have never kept secrets from us. They told us a few years ago when we were getting a lecture about what life choices can do to people. Or better yet, how some choices can lead to bad shit and even worse shit. Whatever. I forget the whole point of it, and when you think about it, it’s what brought Mom and Dad back together, so it’s kind of romantic.” She waves her hands and turns to walk into the room I’m assuming class will be in.

“Did you just call stripping . . . romantic?” Lila giggles after Maddi.

“Oh shut it, Doc. It really is. I’ll tell you the whole story later, but basically, some stuff went down and Mom got all weird and ran away. Dad found her at a strip club of all places, and when she went to, you know, strip, he jumped on the stage and carried her out of the place over his shoulder. See? It’s romantic.”

“Uh, Maddi . . . if you think that’s romantic, I would hate to see what happens when you have someone send you roses.” Lyn snickers.

“Roses are boring. And overrated,” Maddi snaps back.

God, I love my weird friends.

Twenty minutes later, I hate my weird friends.

We, of course, were the first to arrive. The room—a long, white rectangle—has ten poles going down a line and all facing the huge, daunting, floor-to-ceiling mirror. After the five of us filed in and were introduced to the instructors, Sarah and Felicia, they asked us to sit tight for a second while they waited for the other ladies who had signed up for the class. Who, of course, were late.

And now, here we are. After stretching every possible muscle in our bodies, the music still low, Sarah and Felicia got to work on some basic instructions. Instructions my short-as-hell ass was just struggling with.

“You want me to do what?” I ask Sarah again.

“Sweetheart, get it out of your head that you can’t do this. It isn’t about upper-body strength so much as it is about core strength. You’re using your arms to pull, but you are pushing off with your feet, all the while using your core to hold. Don’t focus so much on the mechanical stuff. Let your body do the work, and shortly, your mind will follow.”

“How is my body supposed to climb this thing again?” I ask, watching Lyn, Lila, and Stella slowly worm their way halfway up their poles. Maddi—the little slut—is already practically hanging from the ceiling. Of course she would be a natural.

“Watch,” Sarah says and grabs the pole with one hand. Then she reaches up and grabs the pole right above her other hand. She continues to alternate hands until she’s standing on her toes. Then she mimics the movements with her feet. And just like that, the monkey-slash-instructor is in the air. She elegantly lands back on her feet and, with a wave, says, “Now you try.”

It takes me a few times, but the next thing I know, I’m halfway up. “Woohoo!” I yell and stupidly remove my hands from the pole. My eyes widen about two seconds before I’m ass to the ground and once again cursing the pole.

“Next time, don’t get so ballsy,” Maddi laughs from the other side of the room, still twirling and swirling like she was made to be attached to a metal pole.

Okay, once I am out of my head, it really isn’t so bad. It only takes me a few more times before I feel confident to try something new.

“Well done, ladies! Now it’s time for the good stuff.”

Oh, hell.

Another ten minutes and I’m having more fun than I ever thought was possible. I’m covered in sweat, but the moves we’ve learned against the pole—and some off the pole—have my body humming with confidence. Okay, Lyn was right. Not that I’ll admit that to her.

I laugh when I see Lyn twist her body and almost fall off the heels on her feet. After about thirty minutes, we are told to shed the gym shoes for the heels we were asked to bring. Looking straight ahead to the mirror, I have to say that I look hot as hell.

My body looks tall with my five-inch heels, my legs long, tan, and toned. My gym shorts are looking more like sexy boy shorts at this point since they’ve all but ridden into my vagina. I’m normally not proud of my less-than-spectacular tits, but my small boobs are pushed up with my sports bra, and with the way I’m breathing, those barely-a-B cuppers are heaving like a busty pro. (Okay, so a B cup might be pushing it.) My cheeks are bright with all the exertion I’ve been putting out, my light-green eyes bright and shining with excitement, and my hair, which was in a long, perfectly stylized ponytail, is now looking more like a messy but sexy up do.

“All right, ladies. Class is almost over, so now it’s time for the fun part. Each of you, grab a chair off the far wall. I want you to use that chair and pretend that it’s whoever you need it to be. Work it like you mean it. Roll your hips, pop that ass, and make it mean something. Pole dancing isn’t just a dance of seduction. It’s an art form in how to get a man to crave you like you’re the air he needs to breathe. Like, if he can’t have his hands on you right that second, he is going to die. Make that chair crave you, ladies.”

When she turns and changes the music, I look over and read the name off the iPad screen—Marian Hill’s “Got It.” The music starts off with the perfect beat to warm my body with. Her sultry and seductive voice feeds my newfound confidence. It isn’t long before I’m lost in the sounds pulsing through the room. I move with ease and ignore the burn in my muscles when I bend over and grab my ankles with my hands, shaking my ass in the air . . . right where the object of my desire’s face would be if he were sitting there.

With that image fresh in my brain, I end the dance giving it all I have. My hips are rolling and undulating in a feverish nature, so when I catch my refection in the mirror, even I have to admit that it’s hot. Standing up, I run my hands from my neck, over the sides of my tits, and down to my inner thighs.

The music owns me.

It isn’t until the song ends and the girls around me start to clap that I remember where I am and stand up quickly.

“Well done, Dani! I knew you had a little slut in you yet!” Maddi whoops from the corner where she is standing with Stella and Lila, who are giggling.

“Very good, Dani. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought you weren’t even seeing that chair, right?” Lyn knowingly jokes and throws her arm over my sweaty shoulder.

I don’t say anything. Not even when Maddi keeps cracking jokes. Stella laughs a few times, but her focus is quickly lost when we walk out of the room and she sees that the gym filled up with hot guys since we went into the class almost two hours ago.

“Oh my God,” Lila laughs.

“Uh oh,” Maddi giggles.

“This is going to be so freaking good,” Lyn chuckles just seconds before my elbow is grabbed and I’m spun around before looking at a very angry Cohen Cage.

“Shit,” I mutter.

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN AN easy workout. Chance, my roommate and ex-Marine brother, said that I needed to get my shit in gear and get off the couch since I would be shipping off in two weeks.

The plus side of being in a unit that was as dark as it gets is that we aren’t reporting to a base every day and dealing with shit day in and day out. We report, but it isn’t to a base in the middle of the public eye. No, our shit is buried deep. We have once-a-month training missions that can last up to two weeks. Those keep our skills sharp and our bodies ready.

We were lucky this time. Normally when we’re needed overseas, things have gotten worse than they can control. Then we come in and clean house.

This time, we’re being sent in with notice, which always means we’re going to be gone for a long period of time with no set end date. We could be over there for a few months or over a year. Mom is her normal freaking-out-but-staying-strong-and-supportive self. Dad, I know, is worried, but he won’t speak a word of it. He’s been there. The Special Forces unit I’m in is almost a carbon copy of the one he served on almost thirty years ago. He is more aware of the reality that I might not come home than anyone else is. But he also knows that this is very much a part of me and wouldn’t dream of being anything less than supportive.

Chance served with me during our last deployment, but when we were ambushed and, in turn, he was injured, he was discharged honorably and has been heading up the personal security end of Corps Security ever since. We’ve been roommates on the home front ever since boot camp, and I wouldn’t have it differently. He’s just as much of a brother to me as Cam and Colt. He’s been so busy in the two years since moving to town, often out of town for long periods, that he has rarely gone out with all of the crew.

“Yo, Cohen. Isn’t that Maddox’s daughter?” Pause. “Uh . . . and your sisters? And Axel’s kid?”

My head was already turning when he mentioned one of Maddox’s girls, then a little quicker when he mentioned the twins, but the second he mentioned Dani, my head snapped so rapidly that it’s a shock I didn’t break my own neck.

“What in the hell?” I ask, not expecting an answer.

“Damn, you didn’t tell me the girls were looking like that these days,” he grumbles and lets out a deep, “Umphh,” when I elbow him in the gut.

“Shut the fuck up,” I snap. “Is that the fucking pole dance room they just went in?”

“One in the same, brother,” he laughs on a sharp exhale. “Did you have to give me all your strength, fucker?”

“Don’t be such a baby. I hardly touched you.”

“Hardly touched me. Well, Superman, you don’t know your own strength.”

I spend the next hour and then some fuming, imagining what is going on behind those doors. The more I think about it, the more I fume. I take it out on every piece of equipment I hit. I push my body to the edge just to get some of the anger out before the girls get out.

To make matters worse, what I thought would be a good idea to get my curiosity out of the way backfired in a big way. Ten minutes ago, I thought it was brilliant to just peek. Just a little peek to make sure there wasn’t anything crazy going on. But that peek will forever be branded in my memory as one of the hottest things I’ve ever witnessed.

Dani coming unhinged and all but fucking the air between her and one black, metal chair.

I’ve been fighting a raging boner ever since one of the facility’s staff members came and shut the door, giving me a warning about dis-enrollment if I am caught again.

Ever since then, her body and the way it looked, moved . . . Fuck me. I’ve been picturing every way I would take her when I finally hear Chance’s voice break through my fantasy.

“Don’t look now, Iron Man, but the girls have emerged, and now, they’re all hot, flushed, and sweaty,” he whispers down at me from where he’s spotting my lifting.