It wasn’t like I had a whole lot of choices. In the end I picked my nicest shorts—which meant they didn’t have any holes. They were black and shorter than my other ones, which I thought made them sort of sexy. And I wore my maroon tank-top camisole, which I usually slept in.
I used two of the conditioner packets on my hair and it was actually soft and lying at least a little bit flat against my head, instead of sticking up like a haystack.
With my tan and a little lip gloss and mascara…it wasn’t half bad, I thought.
I spent the evening re-reading my favorite parts of Fifty Shades of Grey and I didn’t touch myself once, so I would be too worked up to chicken out. And truthfully, it would have been nice to have a bucket-o-something to get my courage up.
But at eleven o’clock I put down the book, grabbed my keys, and crossed the point of no return.
The Velvet Touch was three exits back on the highway. It was a dark, cement-bunker-type building sitting in a vast sea of parking, with a billboard so big and so pink it could probably be seen in space.
The parking lot was half full of pickup trucks and big rigs, and there were a half dozen motorcycles lined up near the entrance. The chrome reflected the lights and the black silhouettes of naked women on the billboard.
My courage was flagging, so I pulled out my phone and called Dylan.
“Hey, baby,” he said. “You okay?”
“I’m sitting in the parking lot of the strip club.”
The sound he made low in his throat was sexy. “Having second thoughts?”
“No. I mean…I’m nervous.”
“Nervous is okay. Nervous is exciting. This is naughty, baby. And you like naughty.”
“Yeah, but…what do I do?”
“You’re going to walk in those doors, order a drink, find a dark corner, and you and me, we’re going to talk about what you’re seeing. How it makes you feel.”
“What if it doesn’t make me feel anything?”
“Slip your fingers down your pants, baby.”
“Dylan…”
“Do it.”
Rolling my eyes despite the fact he couldn’t see, I sucked in my belly and shoved my fingers down my pants past the thin elastic of my underwear.
I gasped when my fingers brushed my clit and then again when I felt how wet I was. In my nerves I hadn’t noticed.
“What did you find?” he asked, like he knew. But of course he knew. Somehow he knew everything about this.
“I’m wet,” I whispered.
“Tell me.”
“I’m so slippery,” I moaned low in my throat, giving in to the feeling.
“Don’t come,” he said, his voice sharp, like he knew what I was doing.
“I’m so close,” I protested.
“Go inside. Call me when you get there.”
He hung up, and reluctantly I pulled my hand out of my pants.
I didn’t give myself a second to doubt what I was doing. It was just like getting out of my car in front of the grocery store.
Here goes nothing, I thought and started to pull open the big outer door, but just as I pulled, someone pushed and I nearly fell back on my ass.
“Whoa there,” a man said, reaching out to grab me before I fell. He was big, with a round belly and a long beard.
“Knocking women over again?” asked another guy coming out behind him. They both wore black leather vests over their shirts. A third man came out, younger than the other two, and taller. Bigger seeming, though he was actually kind of thin. He had dark hair and his eyes, when they ran over me, made me wish I had on a bunch more clothes. Like a snowsuit.
Bad news. That’s what my gut said. That man was the worst kind of news.
“Let’s go,” he said, dismissing me the moment after he saw me.
“You all right?” the bearded guy asked and I nodded, and the men got on three of the bikes and roared away.
Shit, I thought. This was ridiculous. I would tell Dylan that he had to come up with something else. Something less…extreme. I could go skinny-dipping again. Or watch some porn—I’m not sure where, the library? Could I do that at the library?
Anything would be easier than this.
But you want this, I thought. And you like that it’s hard.
“You coming in?” a giant black man standing on the other side of the open door asked me. “It’s Ladies’ Night.”