I sat back. Downtown Kansas City came into view, glass and brick monoliths scraping against a lavender sky, the river a steel-gray snake below.
“They also used to joke I had the celibacy gene,” I said. “Although now I’m not so sure.” Streetlights and stoplights flashed across through car, and Poppy deftly maneuvered through the traffic to pull into the heart of the city.
“Maybe it wasn’t the celibacy gene,” I said, more to myself than to her. “Maybe it’s just that I was always waiting for you.”
She sucked in a breath and jerked the car into an alley between two buildings. Before I could ask her what she was doing, she’d put the car in park and was crawling onto my lap, which made my dick perk up with interest.
Her lips met mine with urgency, a hot, determined hunger, and her hands were everywhere—in my hair, on my chest, pulling impatiently at the fly of my jeans.
“I love you,” she breathed, over and over again, and the tension of the drive melted away. “I love you, I love you, I love you. And I’m so sorry for everything today.”
I found her ass under her dress and squeezed, sliding my fingers beneath her thighs to run my fingertips along the crotch of her thong, which was damp.
But before I could delve any further into this interesting new development, she pulled back, breathing hard.
“We have a big night ahead, so I don’t want to ruin it by getting started early,” she said with a smile. “But you don’t know what you do to me when you say things like that.”
“They’re all true,” I whispered to her. “I care about you so fucking much and I just wish—” I pulled her tight to me, her chest in my face, her pussy flat against my denim-clad erection. “I just wish it was like this all the time. You and me. No decisions. No problems. Just…us.”
She kissed the top of my head. “Well, if it’s escape you’re looking for, then you’ll like tonight.”
At first, I thought maybe Poppy had lost her mind, because instead of going to a restaurant or a movie theater or anything remotely date-like, she pulled into an office parking garage (and I only knew it was an office because the Business Brothers worked two skyscrapers down and Aiden used to date a girl who worked here.)
We walked over to the glassed-in elevator vestibule and Poppy ran a keycard over the secured door. When it clicked open, she led me to the far elevator, ran the keycard again, and we shot up to the 30th floor.
Finally, I ventured to ask. “Where are we going?”
She gave me a small smile, one of those smiles that left me transfixed by her mouth. “To my job.”
I barely had time to process this before we were walking inside, before Poppy was nodding at the woman at the front desk (who was dressed in a tailored suit, as if she was working at an investment firm and not at a strip club.) Poppy pushed at the smoked glass doors, and I followed, and then we were inside the most exclusive club in this city, the place that had lured a Dartmouth MBA to stay when Wall Street couldn’t.
Walls had been constructed along the perimeter of the space, blocking the windows, presumably so the flashing lights wouldn’t shine out during the night (and so that daylight wouldn’t shine in during the day.) But there was a sizable gap between the walls and the windows, meaning any guest could take his drink and roam in between the two, gazing out at the cityscape, as several men were doing now, some of them fielding what sounded like business calls as Poppy led me past.
Here and there, the walls broke, giving me a glimpse inside the main room. Two or three women danced alone in glassed-in boxes, but several were out on the floor, and I instinctively turned my eyes away from all the exposed female flesh. Maybe I was still a priest at heart.
But then my eyes were drawn back to Poppy’s short tunic and where I could see the shape of her ass through the fabric.
Yeah, right.
We ducked through one of the openings and then Poppy led me inside a room.
“What are we doing?”
“My boss said I can use these rooms whenever I want. And I want to right now.”
“For me?”
“For you. Now wait here,” she said with a grin, and then left, closing the heavy wood door with a snick.
So these were the private rooms she’d told me about, like the one she’d fucked Sterling in. That thought sent the now-familiar corkscrew of jealousy spiraling deeper, but then I remembered the car, her desperate I love yous. She was here…with me. Not with him.
But why did this snake of anger still slither in my belly? I hated myself for feeling it, but I couldn’t chase it out, couldn’t dig it out. It slunk through my veins, tickling the inside of my fingertips with the urge to—to what? Spank her ass for spending time with her ex without my permission? Fuck her until she grunted, until my cock was the only thing she knew?
God, I was such a fucking Philistine.
To distract myself, I examined my surroundings. I’d never been to a strip club before, but this was admittedly much nicer than what I’d expected. There was a chair and a sofa, both leather (easily cleaned, a bitter voice thought) and a dais in the middle of the room, wide enough to host a pole and also wide enough for a dancer to dance without it.
The light was low—shades of blue and purple—and the music was loud but not loud enough to be annoying. The kind of volume where it sank into your blood with a thrumming, demanding beat, where it fused with your own thoughts and set your pulse higher, set your adrenaline on a slow, steady drip.
I sat on the leather sofa and leaned forward, looking at my hands. What was I doing here? Why had she brought me? Of all the places—
But then the door opened and I stopped wondering anything except when I could push my cock inside her because fuck.
She wore a wig the color of blue cotton candy, and eye makeup so heavy that all I could picture were those kohl-rimmed eyes peering up at me as she sucked my dick. And I immediately saw what she’d meant when she said the club liked to hire girls who looked expensive. Because while I knew fuck all about lingerie, I did know that the delicately embroidered fabric of her sheer panties was not probably not the usual stripper garb. Nor the matching silk shelf bra or the lace pasties covering her nipples—all in a soft champagne. A strip of the same champagne-colored silk was tied around her neck in a bow, and I wanted to unwrap her like a present, right then and there. She always looked amazing—in clothes and naked—but she was transformed right now, a Poppy I had only seen glimpses of even in our most intimate moments.
She strode over to me, just as graceful in six-inch heels as she was in ballet flats, and held out her hand. “Your wallet.”
Confused, I dug it out of my (suddenly very tight) jeans and handed it to her. She dug a roll of crisp fifties and hundreds out of her bra and slid them neatly inside my wallet, handing it back to me. “I want to play a game,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, my mouth suddenly dry. “Let’s play a game.”
She licked her lips, and I realized that I wasn’t the only one crazy fucking turned on right now. “You’re just a client, and I’m just a dancer, okay?”
“Okay,” I echoed.
“And you know there’s certain rules about private rooms, don’t you?”
I shook my head, unable to keep my gaze from raking over her form, over her expensive lingerie, over that strip of silk tied around her neck that could so easily be turned into a leash…
“Well, first you have to pay me for being here.” And then she put a hand on her hip, looking so impatient and so hot, and any philosophical arguments Good Guy Tyler might have had about pretending something so degrading—about being in a strip club in the first place—vanished. And the moment I placed the bills in her hand, the air instantly changed. The game vanished and this was our reality—no matter that we loved each other, that this wasn’t even my money—I was paying her and she was taking it and now she was on the stage, one hand on the pole, her eyes on me.