Jenny, Kate, and Cheyenne giggled and followed after her. Rachel and I looked at each other, shared a moment of mortification, then sucked up our inhibitions and followed after our more gregarious friends. The place was jam-packed with women of all ages. They were hooting, hollering, and shouting at the greased-up studs on the stage. The men dancing were gyrating and hip thrusting in a suggestive way that made me a little uncomfortable.
Wondering if Kellan would be okay with me being here since we hadn’t talked about me going to a strip club, I grabbed Anna’s arm. “Do you think Kellan . . . and the boys . . . will be okay with this?” I indicated some shirtless male servers posing for pictures with some very friendly female patrons.
Anna quirked a smile. “I think they’ll be fine with it.”
I wasn’t quite sure, and I felt a little guilty about being here. I didn’t plan on doing anything with any of these beefy, well-cut guys, but Kellan didn’t know I was here, and it felt dishonest that he didn’t know. I pulled out my phone to call him, and Anna snatched it away from me. “He won’t mind, Kiera, and I told him where we were going. He was cool with it.” She indicated the stage. “He’s the one that found a place with male dancers tonight.”
Surprise washed through me, but only for a moment. Of course he’d arranged this. Kellan wanted me to have a good time with my friends, and by the looks of the tittering women around us, being here was a very good time. Kellan also loved embarrassing me, and when a man wearing pants so tight they left nothing to the imagination asked me if I wanted a drink, I was very embarrassed.
Laughing, I finally accepted that being here was okay and relaxed with my friends. Anna sat us at a table near the front of the stage, and a couple of drinks into it I was hollering along with the rest of the girls in the audience. The dances were amusing, and yes, sexy as hell. My favorite part about it was the costumes. We’d had a fireman, policeman, and a construction worker so far. It was beyond ridiculous, and I couldn’t stop laughing. Then a man dressed like a cowboy stepped out onto the stage.
He was wearing a bandanna around his mouth like he was a bandit and a black cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes. One of his hands was holding the tip of his hat, the other rested by his side. He was wearing a vest with nothing on underneath it, and his muscles had a light sheen to them, like he was slathered in oil. Like any good cowboy, he was wearing chaps . . . over a pair of dark spandex briefs. He was hot, and a hush went over the crowd. Just the way he stood there while he waited for the music to start was seductive, and I had a feeling he’d be good at riling up the crowd.
A heavy beat filled the air. I recognized the song as one of Rhianna’s provocative hits. When the beat started, the cowboy lifted his eyes and stared at the crowd. I sputtered on the drink coming up my penis straw. “Oh my fucking God!” I screeched that, and Jenny, Kate, Cheyenne, and Rachel all twisted to stare at me like I was insane. Anna was holding her sides, laughing.
I couldn’t even answer my friends’ questioning looks, because I recognized the pair of seductive dark blue eyes sweeping the crowd. As his hips started swaying and the crowd started yelling, those familiar bedroom eyes locked right onto me. I couldn’t see his mouth, but I knew he was smiling at me. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die, but I couldn’t stop watching him. What the hell was Kellan doing here, in a strip club, dancing?
As he really started getting into his act, I stopped caring. Kellan was a natural seducer and was intoxicating to watch as he moved across the stage—a stage he owned just as much as when he was singing. Sliding and shaking, he worked his way back and forth across the front. When he stopped at our table, he slowly and seductively removed his vest. My heart was going a million miles an hour. When he tossed the fabric at me, I almost didn’t have the reflexes to catch it. With his perfect chest on display, the crowd went nuts. With his tattoo of my name across his heart on display, my friends turned back to me, wide-eyed; they knew about Kellan’s tattoo. Astonished, Jenny asked, “Is that . . . ?”
Fearing being overheard, she didn’t say his name out loud. She didn’t have to either. We all knew who she was referencing. As I weakly nodded that, yes, it was Kellan up there shaking his booty, they all started laughing. Anna let out an earsplitting whistle. Yes, my husband was stripping.