“You’re welcome. I hope he likes it!” She left the room.
I slowly pushed up from the table and reached for my yoga pants. The thin fabric felt cool and smooth against my skin. No underwear necessary until the irritation eased. I slid my flip-flops on.
“That is some hickey! And bite marks right up your thighs. Tell me you came like a freight train? Please! Who was this animal?”
My head turned toward the shrill female voice rising from behind the curtain to the next therapy room.
“A very hungry animal!” said another female.
A burst of loud laughter.
“His mouth was just awesome.”
“Lucky!”
“And he was an old guy, too. I know it sounds crazy, but he had this freaking gleam in his eyes from the get-go. I’m telling you, the man knew how to appreciate the female body.”
More giggles.
I rolled my eyes as I glanced at the mirror and smoothed my hair back.
“He laid me out on this huge wooden table. He’s the president, after all. He can do whatever he wants, you know?”
“Yeah, and he did you!”
“Oh my gosh, he was sucking on me. I mean, really sucking on me. Mindy was giving him head.”
At the sound of that name, my ears pricked up like a jungle animal’s listening for prey.
“I keep telling you, Stace, you gotta try a threesome,” the girl continued. “It’s so freaking hot. With me and Mindy, there’s this trust and it’s just fun. You should come with me next time there’s a party. You need to get out more anyway.”
“Yeah, I need to get a life. Maybe a party at the One-Eyed Jacks would be just the ticket.”
Spikes of ice raced over my skin. This was Mindy’s new dancer friend whom Nina had mentioned when she’d told me about the doings at the Full Moon Howl earlier in the car.
They had fucked Jump in the club meeting room?
“You guys are wild. I don’t know if I could do that, Shell.”
“Never know until you try it. That’s it. Next time, I’m bringing you with us.”
“I’m not a dancer like you and Mindy. My body—”
“Oh, they just want good * that can give as good as it gets. Wear something super hot, and they’ll be all over you in no time, like bees to honey. You’re having a dry spell, Stace, and this is how to end it.”
The curtain on the other side of my room flew open.
“Hey, how’d it go?” Nina’s lips curled into a grin. “Let me see.”
I touched my fingers to my lips, my head tilting toward the next curtain. The women’s voices rose again, and Nina’s face clouded.
“There are lots of hot guys at that club, Stace. A few of them are taken, but for the most part, that’s not an issue. Mindy was sleeping with this other older one. Now, he’s hot! You should see this guy—long, long dark hair, big green eyes. Too thin for me, but he had some hot tats on his arms.”
My pulse ratcheted up a couple of hundred notches. Nina held my gaze, her eyebrows springing up her forehead.
“At this other party we’d gone to at the club, me and Mindy were gonna do him together, but he didn’t want to. Weird, huh?”
Something snapped inside me. They were talking about my man, his body, like he was a piece of fucking meat. He was meat to them. Some sort of prize to be seized and devoured, then the carcass tossed away.
My man. My beautiful, sweet, savage— “Anyway, she said he was just okay, so I guess I didn’t miss much. Whatever.”
Nina charged across the small room. She ripped open the curtain to the other room.
“Hey, orgasm queen, that’s my friend’s old man you’re talking about,” Nina spit out.
The color drained from both Stacey’s and Shelley Anne’s faces.
“Uh…oh,” managed Shelley Anne from her lying down position where she was having her legs waxed. She quickly sat up. “Sorry, sorry! It was meant as a compliment. I didn’t mean nothing by it. Just that—”
“Just that, what?” I asked.
“He’s really good-looking and you’re a super lucky lady.” She smiled, as if she’d just gotten caught eating the last cookie in the jar and was denying it with crumbs all over her face.
“She is super lucky, and so am I,” said Nina. “My old man is a member of the Jacks, too. And I’m gonna make sure that you and your little friends don’t come around the club anymore. That kind of kiss-and-tell bullshit is a serious no-no where I come from.”
Stacey’s gaze bounced from Nina to me and back to Nina again.
Shelley Anne raised her hands in the air. “I’m sorry. You’re right. That wasn’t cool.”
“You want to have girl talk about great sex you had? Terrific,” I said. “But you don’t talk about the club or its members or what goes on behind closed doors. Ever.”
“You’re right. Totally,” said Shelley Anne. “I’m sorry. Um, listen, I just got a job dancing at the Tingle. I like my job a lot, and I really, really need it. Please, please don’t tell them. I promise, it won’t happen again. I won’t ever come over and party or sleep with any of—”
Nina let out a dark laugh. “Aw, you promise, huh?”