Marietta flashes me a smile as she opens the glass door and heads inside.
A woman in black leggings and a tight black tank top claps her hands. I can’t hear what she’s saying. The rooms are soundproof other than the thump of the bass of the music.
The instructor leads the six women through a series of stretches. There’s a variety of body styles in the class. Marietta is the tallest and leanest, although the instructor is more muscular.
They all wear sweats, other than the leader, and eventually spray their hands and move to their poles. This is easy enough. The six women grasp their poles with one hand and wrap a legaround it. Then, they extend their free arms and make a slow circle.
It doesn’t look too hard. They go through various turns, sometimes moving sideways or walking around the pole.
The instructor nods, moving around them, adjusting positions.
After ten minutes of that, the women return to the corner. The lights go down, and colors spill across the space.
I glance around. What’s this?
The women peel off their sweats. Their outfits vary from sports bras and tight shorts to one in a red leather bodysuit with a zillion cutouts. A couple of them strap into outrageous shoes with eight-inch platform heels.
Marietta’s outfit falls somewhere in the middle. Her black top is a dozen thin straps running from her neck to a thick band across her chest. Her bottoms are boy shorts, only really small in the back, leaving half the round cheeks of her ass visible. She’s barefoot, her toes tipped in a pearly pink polish.
I shift on the bench.
Each woman returns to her pole, and their varied experience levels become clear. Most of them continue to circle, working on foot patterns. The one in red climbs her pole, inching her way up in shiny boots with killer heels.
Marietta looks like an athlete, starting off with the moves she showed me in the club, grasping the pole with both hands and lifting her legs in a wide V up in the air. No wonder her belly is so flat.
She spins out, circling the pole in a whirl, then brings one leg in to wrap around the pole.
When she lets go with both hands, I stand up, expecting her to fall. But she spins faster. Then she grips the pole again, and both legs fly out and up and down and around like a helicopter. How does she do that?
The colored lights caress her as she turns round and round the pole. She slowly descends, her toes landing on the floor, her back arched.
I can’t look away. Even without the music, I sense the tempo of the beat, the length of the phrases that dictate the moves she makes.
She climbs the pole slowly, arched and extended like a cat. Her long, dark ponytail trails toward the ground. The muscles on her thighs and calves and arms become defined in the changing light as she strains in new positions. It’s sexy and brutal, and I can’t stop watching.
If the other women keep dancing, I don’t know it. I only have eyes for Marietta. She’s graceful and strong and fearless. I learn every curve of her body. The hollow of her collarbones. The dimples low on her back.
The breadth of her biceps. The perfect roundness of her ass.
I clench my hands to avoid reaching out. I want to touch every part of her.
I want her to dance like this for me and only me.
I’m getting a pole at the club.
I have to see this again. Just her. Just me.
I will never want her to stop.
CHAPTER 13
MARIETTA
Knowing Merrick is watching me is hot.
So hot.
Every time I glance his way, his eyes are fixed on my body.
