“Thanks,” I mumbled, my attention on the bottle in my hands.
“No costume change?” I shrugged.
“Figured it did great on stage. Wanted to see how it did out here.” I looked at her with a polite smile, but I knew it didn’t reach my eyes.
“A bachelor party just walked in,” she shared, pointing towards the VIP area.
“Kitty?” I asked, and Romy smirked.
“Where do you think?” she murmured, and my lips twitched.
“Lucky girl,” I murmured. Romy coughed away a laugh. “I’ll go see if the girls at VIP need any help.” I waved and started to strut my stuff over in that direction. The loss of that tall, dark, and handsome stranger still cut deep, but I knew better.
At the end of the day, a girl only had herself to count on.
I kept my head high as my hips swayed back and forth, the barely-there schoolgirl skirt whispering against the tops of my thighs. I was used to feeling exposed on the floor; a little over a year of working at the Velvet Leopard would do that to you.
I spotted the group easily enough. A bunch of thirty-something-year-old men acting like college freshmen as they laughed and downed expensive liquor.
“Hey, sweet cheeks. You wanna get an A in my class?” a guy asked from behind me. I turned and kept a smile on my face. It was as fake as a three-dollar bill, but the okay-looking guy didn’t seem to mind.
“Oh, would you make me work hard for it?” I asked with a bat of my eyes. His light brown eyes darkened a little as he swayed closer.
Out in the real world, in the light of day, I was sure he was cute. Maybe someone I would glance twice at the gym or grocery store? But in the dimly lit club, he was just like every other guy in here, except it was very obvious he’d had way too much to drink.
“I’m sure a girl like you could handle it.” He grinned, and his hand fell right on my ass.Fuck. So much for hoping he could possibly be a little different. No matter how many signs or times they were told they couldn’t touch dancers, assholes would always be assholes.
I stilled and bit the inside of my cheek to hold myself back from punching him straight in the jaw. I highly doubted my new boss would appreciate being pulled away from his reading time with Kitty to clean up a mess. Shit, he might fire me.
“Watch your hands, professor,” I warned politely.
“Aw! Come on. I’m sure a place like this,“ he started to say as he swayed closer, “allows a couple of exceptions. How about you and I head to the back, and you tell me how much for me to do a little more than touch this perfect ass? It’s been a while since I got my dick wet and?—“
“I don’t—“ I started to back away, but my back hit a hard body behind me.
“No. Touching. The. Girls,” a deep voice, deeper than I had ever heard in my life, threatened with a menacing tone that should have made my blood run cold.
But it didn’t.
In fact, it did the complete opposite. I was hot. Hotter than I had ever felt. I tried to look over my shoulder, but he was so tall and the club was so dark, I couldn’t see his face, but I knew. I knew exactly who was standing behind me.
It was him.
My sexy stranger.
And he might have told the guy he wasn’t allowed to touch, but that didn’t seem to include him. His hand was splayed flat and open at my hip, touching me with a hint of possession that made me want to squirm.
“I don’t know who you think you are,”—the guy was way too inebriated to have an ounce of common sense—“but you should let the pretty little lady and I talk.”
I didn’t know one thing about the man behind me, not his name or his favorite color or even the color of his eyes, but I didn’t have to look at his face to know that the moment the drunk asshole reached for my hand, the poor guy had fucked up.
In less time than I could take a full breath, the handsome man switched places with me, blocking my view or the drunk guy with his body. My eyes widened as I watched his massive back lean forward, and somehow, I knew he had reached for the drunk jerk. He leaned in close and, hoarsely but quietly, whispered something into his ear. It was too low and growly to make anything out, not even a word, especially while the music blared around us. But I knew the sexy intense stranger wasn’t inviting the drunk guy to a tea party.
When he pulled away, I didn’t get a chance to look at the drunk man to get an idea of what had happened before the sexy stranger placed his hand in mine and led me away. Through the floor and towards the back rooms.
“Umm,” I started to say but stopped from saying anything else. Everything had happened too fast.Shit! What is happening?
I didn’t know him!
