“I was just returning your card, Mr. Kane.” Ray handed over the black Amex. How many charges had he tacked onto it? Strip club taxes, the girls called it. “By any chance, are you related to Senator Kane from Texas?”
Brody nodded curtly and gripped Emma’s hip tighter. Fury radiated off him in waves.
“Emma’s leaving now.”
“We don’t allow our employees to form personal relationships with the clients.”
Emma tried to move away but the motion just tightened his hand on her waist, and she realized she’d been testing his resolve. The safety she felt in his caveman arms was as shocking as the intimacy.
Brody glared at Ray, eyes filled with disdain. “Mr.…?”
“Grigson.”
“I’ll buy her time for the rest of the night, Grigson. Just add it to my tab.” He patted her ass. Weirdly, that felt more invasive than the cock he’d buried deep inside her five minutes ago. “Go get your clothes and meet me out front, honey.”
Honey? Oh, you’re pushing it, Kane.
Pissed beyond belief, she wanted to scream her head off at both of them as they compared dicks and decided where she would be spending the rest of her night. After her wild-child years and her move to Chicago to clean up another Daisy mess, she’d vowed never to let any man determine her fate. Emma Strickland was the captain of her own ship, but lately she felt lucky if she was allowed to swab the decks.
She looked at Ray, hating that his approval was necessary. He gave a brief nod of permission. Dazed, she wobbled to the restroom to clean up, the stark reality of what had just happened clobbering her hard.
She’d had hot-as-Hades sex with her boss.
In a strip club. (While she was working as a stripper.)
They hadn’t used a condom.
f*ck
. They hadn’t used a condom.
She wasn’t on the Pill. Oral contraceptives were a luxury when you owed thousands of dollars and your sex life was on life support. The battery-operated kind. She couldn’t even afford batteries. But she was sure it was the wrong time in her cycle to conceive. Ninety-five percent sure.
In the dull mirror, she assessed her appearance and concluded: unrecognizable. But a voice in a cobwebbed part of her brain chimed in with, We’re back. That Emma, the girl she’d gone to great lengths to unshackle herself from, was the ghost on her shoulder, dangling the handcuffs of her past.
You used to love getting down and dirty in bar bathrooms, dank alleys, and the backseat of a guy’s muscle car. Remember how you and Shona superglued Steve O’Halloran’s dick to a tree on Route 81 because he cheated on you with that skank, Jenny Gustafson? Remember how you took him back?
Tonight, that girl had returned with a vengeance and corrupted Mr. Kane. There was no way he’d have crossed that line if she hadn’t incited him. How could she ever again look him in the eye?
Won’t have to for much longer, you naughty girl. Ta ta, Score Property, nice knowin’ ya!
Back in the dressing room, she encountered breasts of all shapes, sizes, and varying degrees of fake tan. Katerina clutched her arm, her slender fingers grazing Brody’s suit jacket approvingly. “How did it go? Big tip?”
Sure, but not in cash. Just thinking of Brody’s thick length inside her drew a rash of heat all over her body.
Katerina smirked, understanding her blush. “So, he gives more than just tips?”
Emma grabbed her street clothes, hesitating at first but realizing that she had nothing any of these girls hadn’t seen before or wanted to see now.
“You are leaving?”
“He’s bought my time for the rest of the night. Ray said I could go.”
That earned an arch eyebrow lift. “Your first night and you have already hit the jackpot?” She looked at Emma with a new appreciation. “If you play the cards right, you can land him. Like big fish. Clothes, jewels, apartment—all for the taking.”
No, he’s my boss, you see, and the only landing I’ll be doing is my ass on the asphalt when he boots me to the sidewalk.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be back.” Given she had likely lost her day job, that was a foregone conclusion. She suspected a million girls had trod Katerina’s advised career path before, thinking a Prince Charming would ride in and be so impressed by a lap dance, they wanted to tap that ass off-site and forever. Women only escaped lives like these in body bags, not limos.
“You must be more optimistic, Emma,” Katerina said, mighty strange words coming from someone so dour. “Fairy tales do come true. Look at me.”
The woman worked in a strip club and endured pasty rash on a regular basis. Some fairy tale.
Katerina’s smile was sly. “I hope never to see you again, Chardonnay.”
Emma stepped outside and right into Ray. He had some weird rule about not going inside the dressing rooms. Dignity and respect, he called it.
“You said I could leave?”
“Yes. I did.” He stared at her as though he might have underestimated her. It wouldn’t have been the first time. “Do you know who your client was tonight?”