“All I’m saying,” Damien whispered back as he walked toward him, “is if the shoe were on the other foot, you’d be warning me to keep my head. There’s something not right here.”
“And this is your wolfie senses speaking?”
“Maybe,” Damon bit out before softening his tone. “Maybe it’s that I’m a friend, and I don’t want to see you hurt.”
Jim breathed slowly, letting his frustration ride out along with his exhale. He closed the distance between himself and his friend. “Tell you what.” He offered Lady Luck to Damon. “This needs to be given to the judge anyway. Why don’t you arrange that this morning—plus set up the rules of engagement. Where we report in, what we bring to prove we completed the challenge—all that shit. Do it today, and that’s one less thing for us to worry about.”
“No problem. Anything for you.” Damon took the coin with reverence, as if being offered something precious. He offered Jim a wry smile. “Sorry for being a jackass. I don’t know why I’m itchy about her.”
Jim pressed his hands to Damon’s shoulders and held on tight. “I appreciate your concern, more than you know. You’ve been a rock in my life, Damon, and I don’t tell you often enough. Things really are okay.”
Damon patted him on the back, and Jim gave him an extra squeeze, and they ended up doing that guy thing where you almost pound each other into the floor rather than actually give each other a hug.
As close to saying I love you as two best friends could, or ever would.
“Are you sure there’s enough material in this outfit I won’t get arrested for indecent exposure?”
The woman helping Lillie into her dance costume cracked her bubble gum loudly, her bright red lipstick contrasting sharply with her sparkling white teeth. “Oh, you look just perfect, darlin’. You wait till you try those moves you practiced in the studio out there on stage.”
A shiver rolled over Lillie’s skin. “There’s no real audience, right?” she asked for the fifth time.
“Of course not. You’re nowhere near performance ready, but it’s a good thing to try your moves on the stage for fun. See if you learned enough to be able to go and do some sexy dancing for that someone special.”
Sylvia winked as she adjusted the miniscule bra over Lillie’s breasts, pulling the strategically placed tassels into tangle-free lines. “And that someone special out there, you won’t be able to see, not really. We turn on spotlights the same as you have on a stage. No, just do the routine we taught you, and if you have any trouble you peek up at the right corner where there’s a video playing to remind you.”
Lillie took a deep breath. “It has been fun.”
“Of course it has.” Sylvia smoothed the line of the barely there shorts Lillie wore. “Not only am I a fabulous instructor, this is all about getting in touch with your inner sensual beast.”
It didn’t seem right to giggle.
This was definitely a story she would share with Addie. Her friend would have gotten a kick out of seeing her shy little Lillie up on the stage.
“Right through there, and you can use the pole on the left. We’ll have the music start once you’re in place, and remember there’s nothing you can’t do in this routine. This is about having fun and celebrating your sexuality. Let your inner goddess pour out of you as you celebrate being a woman.”
Lillie had an attack of the giggles she fought valiantly to keep under control.
While she liked her sexuality, she didn’t tend to talk about it in those terms. Walking out onto the wooden stage, her high-heel boots clicking against the surface, she was more worried about keeping her balance than strutting her stuff.
Still, the dance lessons had been a blast. The spotlights on her blocked the entire view of the audience, and when another set turned on, this time with a red glow, Lillie let herself fall into the fantasy.
She was two days away from having to meet her destiny. Two more days to be wild-and-free Lillie with the sexy Jim who sat in the empty auditorium watching her.
Even that thought couldn’t make her nervous as she wrapped her right hand around the pole and stood beside it. Chin lifted high, legs spread shoulder-width apart, she stared straight ahead like Sylvia had taught her and pretended no one was around.
No one who mattered but herself…and Jim.
The music began. Slow and bluesy, with lots of low horn tones that reverberated off the high ceiling of the stage. Lillie worked through the first moves Sylvia had demonstrated, stepping around the pole and concentrating as she wiggled her hips and struck different poses.
But after the first few moments, it was less about exactly duplicating what she’d been taught as she slipped into a happy zone, pulsing to the beat of the music with more than one body part at a time.