Stripped (10 page)

And now he’s in my club, and he’s staring at me expectantly, and I can’t move. His eyes are quicksilver, a changeable hazel. He’s too beautiful for words, and I’m not sure what to do. My body won’t work.

Music thumps from the speakers, a Jay-Z song. Armand is watching me, a small tube in his fingers, head bobbing to the music. The other two men have beers in their hands and are staring at their phones. They look drunk. They glance at me and then dismiss me by looking away.

“Are you gonna dance or what?” Dawson asks. His voice is darkness, deep and enveloping.

The song ends, and a techno dance beat comes on. I can’t take my eyes off Dawson, but I force my hips to move. I let the music take over and flow through me. I lose myself in his eyes, which seem to darken as I sway closer to him. I know there are other men in the room, but all I can do is focus on Dawson Kellor and hope to get through this night.

I’m in front of him now, nearing him. His knees spread apart, and his hands come to rest on my hips, his palms brushing the bare skin above the denim of my shorts. I’ve never let a client touch me before, but I can’t seem to find the strength push his hands away. My skin burns where he touches me. His eyes are on mine, despite my cleavage in his face.

I’m shimmying to the music, slight, small shakes of my hips, enough to set my breasts bouncing. My arms are over my head in that awkward pose men seem to love. His gaze flickers down to my jiggling breasts and then back up to my eyes. I can’t read his expression. Men always wear their desire on their faces, in their eyes. Dawson doesn’t. But his hands are curled around my waist, possessive. I should make him let go of me, but I don’t.
 

I’ve never been touched like this, never had a man’s hands on my body, anywhere. Not like this. It’s always been stolen touches, brushes across my backside or pawing fingers at my breasts as I dance on stage.

This…it’s a connection. His hands touch me and I’m sucked in, and I’m not a stripper, for a moment. I’m clothed, and he’s looking at me. At
me
. Almost as if he’s seeing Grey, instead of Gracie, even though he couldn’t possibly know the difference.

The song shifts to “Just Give Me a Reason” by Pink and Nate Ruess. I’m not sure why the song filters through my awareness. I force myself out of his grasp and into the center of the room. I dance, and I find myself dancing more like a dancer than a stripper. I know I have to take my clothes off. I can’t get away with just dancing. That’s not my job. But now, more than ever, I don’t want to do that. I want to talk to this man. Not because he’s a celebrity. Not because he was
People
’s Sexiest Man Alive last year. Not because he’s a phenomenal actor, although he is. There’s something in his eyes that’s drawing me in.
 

I make my fingers unbutton the top button of my shirt, and I see Armand and the others shift on the couch. I ignore them and spin in place, bend at the waist facing away from them, straighten, turn again, untie the knot and unbutton my shorts. Dawson never looks away from my eyes.
 

I wonder what he sees in my gaze.

Nausea blasts through me as I slip another shirt button free. I hate this part. My heart pounds with the familiar sense of shame. Now the shirt is open, and my moves are sinuous, silky and serpentine. I roll my shoulder, and the flannel slips, dipping low on one side. Another shimmy and shake of my shoulders, and the shirt falls down around my back. My arms pin the shirt in place, but the tops of my breasts are bared, my crossed arms covering my nipples. My hips sway and rock to the music.

I’m caught in his gaze again, and everything fades away except his eyes.
 

And then I force my arms away, let the flannel fall to the floor. Armand sucks in a deep breath, and I hear one of the other men groan in appreciation. Dawson doesn’t move, and his expression doesn’t shift except for a widening of his eyes. His gaze rakes over me then, from head to toe and back. I go back to dancing, accentuating the bounce of my breasts, running my hands over them, lifting them and posing, all the things I’ve learned get me tips.
 

This is harder than stage dances, harder than lap dances or other VIP room work. This is personal. Other men look at me and they clearly want me, but something in Dawson’s gaze speaks of more than desire. There’s possession in his eyes.
 

I toy with the zipper of my shorts, glancing down at my front and back to Dawson, the calculated coy glance that I don’t feel. I lower the zipper and pull the edges away, showing the triangle of red fabric and the pale skin beneath.
 

I’m struck then, apropos of nothing, by the memory of Candy, on my first day, telling me I had to get my privates waxed. It hurt, and I nearly died of shame.
 

The song shifts again, to another nameless dance beat, and I begin the swaying shimmy that leads to my shorts sliding off. Before I can push the denim over my backside, however, Dawson voice fills the room.

“All right, boys. Out.”

“Aw, come on, Dawson. It’s just getting good,” Nate says.

Dawson doesn’t answer; he just casts a long, hard stare at Nate, who sighs in frustration. “Fuck. Fine.” He gets up, and the other two men go with him.

When the door closes behind them, Dawson stands up slowly. It’s like watching a lion rise from the grass, all coiled power and silky grace. He moves toward me, eyes hot and dark, almost the same stormy color as my own somehow. He grabs my wrists in huge, powerful hands.
 

“Leave them on.”

I don’t struggle in his grip, and I’m not dancing. Any time I’m at work, I’m dancing. Every move is a dance. From table to table, booth to booth, onstage to offstage, it’s a dance. Even if it’s just the exaggerated sway of my hips and the bounce in my gait, it’s a dance. I’m never still.

But now I’m frozen by the heat in Dawson’s eyes as he stares down at me. I’m in the high-heeled boots that make me six feet tall, but Dawson stands easily four inches above me.
 

“Why?” I ask.
 

Men always want me to take it off. And I’m a stripper, so I do. But this man is stopping me, and I don’t get it. I don’t dare think of the raw power in his eyes, the easy strength in his hands, the possessiveness in his touch.

Dawson doesn’t answer. He just puts his hands on my hips and gets me moving to the beat. He moves with me. He’s dancing with me, swaying with the beat. I let him. I shouldn’t, but I do. Something in the vibrancy of his presence erases my capacity to resist him.
 

Then his hands push at the denim, and fear hits me like a ton of bricks. “No, you can’t—” I stammer. In my nerves, the Georgia accent is thick.

“Yes, I can. You want me to.” His voice wraps around me, slides over me like blood-warm water.

I shake my head. We’re still dancing together, moving to the music. I’m staring up at him, lost. “I don’t—I don’t do extras. You can’t touch me.”

“Yet here I am, touching you.” His palms slide up to my waist, spanning the space between breasts and denim. His hands are enormous, powerful, yet impossibly gentle.

His touch is fire. I’m trembling, shivering. I gasp when his palms slide down again, and then his fingers hook into the belt loops and tug down. He tugs the denim, tugs again, and then they’re off and collapsing around my ankles. I step out of them and try to breathe.

His palms slide like lava over my waist to my naked hips, and I’m trembling, frightened, terrified. Consumed. He’s touching me. No one has ever touched me like this. Seeing desire in a man’s eyes one thing. Feeling his desire in the raw strength of his grip on my skin—that’s something else. Dawson’s touch is hypnotism made flesh. I can’t resist it. I don’t know what’s happening to me, but it’s terrifying me. I don’t want to want this, but he’s right. I do want him to. I’m devoured by his hands on my hips. He hasn’t touched my bottom, hasn’t touched my breasts. Just my waist and my hips. And Lord help me, it’s like something is eating away inside me, pushing some kind of desperate need through me.
 

I don’t know what it is I need, except it has something to do with this man in front of me, who has stripped away my clothing and my strength and my confidence in one smooth move. I’m naked in front of him. The thong is no cover. Not for the way his eyes see through me.

“Don’t be scared.” His voice is warm. Almost kind.
 

I shrug. “I ain’t…I mean, I’m not.”

He laughs, a single huff. “You lie, Gracie.”

“What am I afraid of, then?” I find my voice somehow, and pretend insouciance I don’t nearly feel.

“Me.” He caresses my hips. “This.”

I suck in a long, deep breath. “Don’t touch me. Please. Just let me dance.”

He backs away, dropping his hands, and collapses to the couch, grabbing the bottle of whiskey and pulling on it. “Then dance.”

So I dance. Naked, afraid, and humiliated somehow, fraught with some kind of desire I don’t understand, I dance. Not like a stripper. Not to provoke lust. I dance. As Grey, I dance.
 

All motion and power and confidence, I dance. I lose myself in it, in the music and the movement, heedless of my bared body. When I stop, Dawson is on the couch still, the bottle forgotten. His eyes are dark and conflicted, but the bulge at the zipper of his tight, expensive blue jeans shows me the effect of my dance. He sets the bottle down and stands up. I resist the urge to back away from him, but he doesn’t touch me again, although he reaches for me.

“You don’t belong here.” He gingerly extends his hand, brushes a lock of hair away from my mouth. It’s a tender gesture, and it confuses me, scares me. Hits me somewhere deep inside.

His mouth descends to mine, and his lips brush across mine, hot and moist and soft. I’m not breathing. How can I? He’s kissing me. Why? My heart is frozen. My blood is a scorching river of fire in my veins, and I’m shaking all over. The black silk of his button-down dress shirt is stretched taut across his chest, and as he kisses me, he draws me against him. Silk is cold against my flesh, sinfully soft against skin and brushing my bare nipples, turning them rigid. His tongue slides across the seam of my lips and his fingers curl into the muscle of my backside, sending thrills of heat through me.
   

It lasts a mere moment, and then it’s over.
 

He spins away abruptly, departs with a slam of the door, and I’m left limp. Emptied of everything, gasping for breath and trembling.

What just happened? I collapse back against the couch and struggle to breathe.
 

When I return to the main club floor, he’s gone.
 

And I’m changed, totally.

Chapter 8

I get home after three in the morning, so I don’t have time to go back through the project files before classes the next day. My first class is at eight, and since I have to be at the Fourth Dimension office immediately after class, I dress in my business attire before I leave the dorm. There’s no time between classes for anything but hurrying to the next class. I don’t even have time for lunch, like most days. By the time I leave my “History of Europe from 1700” class, my stomach has been growling for hours. I shoulder my backpack full of textbooks and notebooks, sling my purse across my body, and click in my three-inch heels to the bus stop.
 

My stomach is a mess, roiling and growling, waffling between ravenous and nauseous. Today is the first day the Fourth Dimension team meets the cast of the film. The project has gone through development and preproduction, and now we’re getting ready to start actually shooting. I don’t know what to expect. I should, but I don’t. I should have every aspect of the project memorized by now, but I don’t even know who the lead is. I’m jittery, excited, and scared. In my film classes I’ve gone through the entire process of film making in miniature, from development to sound and electrical, camera to auditions to post-production. But that’s all been in-class mock-ups. This is for real. I’ll be working with a real actor, dealing with his rider and various other requirements.
 

The Fourth Dimension parking lot is filled with expensive cars. There’s a Ferrari, a Bentley, a stretch limousine, and an assortment of Mercedes and BMWs. And then, in the back by itself, is a low-slung sports car painted a kind of silver-chrome that’s almost a mirror. The car looks like it’s worth more than all the other cars in the lot combined, although I couldn’t tell you what brand it is. And here I am, arriving on foot from the bus stop.
 

I step into the ladies room before going up to the conference room. I’ve brought a fresh blouse to change into, knowing I’d sweat through the one I’m wearing. I put on deodorant, my new blouse, touch up my makeup and fix my hair. I’m dressed in my most conservative outfit. It’s a plain gray linen skirt that falls to my capri line, a pair of black heels, and a non-revealing white blouse. I look professional, like a businesswoman. There’s not a shred of sexy in my appearance at all, and that’s exactly how I want it.
 

I take the elevator up and follow the sound of voices to the conference room. The meeting is in full swing, but Kaz knows I come right from class. I pause outside the door, out of view, and suck in a deep breath, hold it for a ten count. Through that door sit some of the most powerful and influential men and women in Hollywood. And then there’s me, a messed-up pastor’s daughter from Georgia, a film student stripping her way through college.
 

I don’t know why this thought hits me now. No one knows what I do. Lizzie barely acknowledges my presence, Kaz thinks I work at a bar (which is kind of true), and there’s no one else who cares. I’m not friends with any of my classmates. Devin is busy with her own life at Auburn, and my dad doesn’t want to know I’m alive. It’s better this way. I’m not lonely; I’m too busy for friends.

Then why do I blink away the blurriness, the wet salt at my eyes? The plain beige carpet under my feet wavers.
 

Deep breaths, long and slow and steadying. I can do this. I can do this.