Stripped Down (6 page)

Besides, the bike would still be in the store in six months. There was no guarantee the same could be said for Dad.

“Mommy, can I paint when we get home?”

“Sure. When you’ve cleaned your room like you promised Grandpa.”

“Okay. That’s fair. Can I have some chips? I’m hungry.”

“Chips then clean your room. Is that a deal?”

“Deal.”

I looked down. She was swinging our hands between us, Cookie the Cat tucked tight beneath her arm. Innocence radiated off her like she was a beacon for it, as if all the goodness in the world would be drawn to her purity.

I knew otherwise. I knew that the darkness of the world would be drawn to it, and it would destroy her. Especially in this city. It wasn’t Sin City for nothing—I saw the dark underbelly of the bright lights and laughter-filled gambles every time I walked through the doors of The Landing Strip.

Maybe that was it. Maybe it was why I needed to leave, why I kept kidding myself that one day I’d afford her
Frozen
bike, even though the truth was far from that. Maybe it was why I kept kidding myself that we could only just afford to live and skipped some meals, yet my savings account nobody knew about was slowly growing.

Ten dollars here. Five there. Twenty on a good day. Fifty after a good private dance.

The Escape Fund, I called it. The Get The Fuck Out Of Dodge Fund.

We could afford to live.

I just didn’t want to live in Vegas.

I
kissed CiCi on the head as she ran into the back room to be with Dad. The day had passed in a whirl of questions. Which Barbie head belonged to this body? Where was Ken’s shirt? Why did Barbie have no clothes? Where was the dolly’s diaper?

And mine: Why were all of the tiny plastic people naked?

Eventually, the crisis was averted. We located Ken’s shirt, Barbie’s clothes, and the dolly’s diaper, and we got the heads on the right bodies... Or close enough. Their boobs are all the same, so there’s no logical way to tell them apart when their heads are strewn across the floor.

I needed to add that to the star chart: Don’t pull off Barbie’s head. Any of them. And stop getting them all naked.

After a quick hug with my mom, I blew my dad a kiss and turned around. The walk to the Strip wasn’t far, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, but it was almost excruciating in the high summer heat. The horrid, hot air swarmed around me until I stopped at the end of the block, bit my guilt back, and called a cab.

It got me to The Landing Strip much quicker. The leery stares the driver shot me the entire time made my skin crawl and me remember that I really have to ask for a female driver in the future. The saddest part was, if I’d said that I was going to Rock Solid, the male club next door, he wouldn’t have said a damn thing, would he?

No.

I wanted to kick his chair the entire time. This job wasn’t a choice—not one I’d freely made, at any rate. There’s only so long a single mom can go without working before she has to weigh up her remaining choices. I’d made the one to get half naked for my money instead of doing nothing.

Granted, it wouldn’t set my résumé alight. Or even make it onto it. But whatever.

I threw the fare at him—the exact fare—and got out. I took the side door into the club, slipping in without anyone noticing me. Chills ran up and down my spine, radiating outward, at the knowledge that I would have to see Beckett and speak with him tonight about our...accident...last night.

Yes. Accident was good.

Stupidity was even better.

He had to have good news. We had to be able to get rid of this mistake as quickly as it’d happened. We had to be able to annul this marriage and get on with our lives.

There was no way a union formed while both parties were under the influence of alcohol could be considered a real marriage. Right?

I hoped so. God, I hoped so. So much so that I almost walked into the other half of Rykman and Cruz. West Rykman. The other hot half of my employment.

“Whoa!” He chuckled low, grasping the tops of my arms to stop the collision of our bodies. “You’re Cassie, right? You good?”

“Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry!” I stepped back, away from his touch, and clutched the straps of my bag. “I’m in a world of my own.”

He smiled. “Don’t worry, darlin’. I wasn’t exactly paying attention, either. You headed back to change?”

“Yes. I’ll get out of your way. Again—sorry.” I scooted past him and tried my best not to run down the hall.

Beckett and West’s friendship was legendary. They were brothers from another mother, twins separated at birth, soul mates in the realest sense of the word.

One thing made me feel better: Beckett obviously hadn’t told him what had happened. And, if he had, he hadn’t told him everything. Otherwise, he surely would have asked me.

I let a deep breath go and pushed my way through into the dressing room. I was the first there, and my exhale rapidly became a sigh of relief. I needed some quiet before I went ahead and had to deal with speaking to anyone. I had to stay until one a.m. I wouldn’t get any peace from the moment someone arrived to the moment I’d get home and crawl into my own bed.

I looked like shit. That was the first thing I noticed as I looked into the mirror. The shadows beneath my eyes were so dark that they weren’t even purple anymore. It looked like the devil had nestled itself into the hollows there and set up a damn campsite.

I immediately set to work. This was going to take a special kind of makeup session to hide the bags, and that was before I even focused on the zit I’d successfully managed to kill earlier this afternoon.

By the time the others arrived, I was all but done with my makeup and ready to curl my hair to get out there. I didn’t want to, maybe tonight more than ever, but it was the curse that had come with my decision to do this.

Buck up, Cassie. This is your life. Get on with it.

“Did he mention it to you, Cass?” Melissa asked me, catching my eye in the mirror. “When you spoke yesterday?”

“Hmm? Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.” I put my mascara wand down and spun on the chair. “Who said what when?”

“The rumor is Beckett Cruz, our boss, is married,” she said, running the brush through her hair. “How did you not hear that?”

I shrugged a shoulder in an attempt at nonchalance despite the fizz of panic I felt hurtling through my veins. “I wasn’t listening.”

“Well, I was over at Rock Solid this afternoon, waiting for some fliers from Mia before I started, and I saw him there,” Roxy butted in. “He was definitely wearing a wedding ring, and he was definitely pissed off about something.”

“I’ve never seen him wear one.” Melissa’s gaze flicked between us. “Have you?”

We both shook our heads, and I suggested, “Maybe he usually takes it off. He might be separated.”

She gave me a questioning look. “Really? After all the women we’ve seen him leaving here with? I’m pretty sure he sometimes goes into Rock Solid just to seduce one of the girls in the club .”

“I don’t know. None of us are really privy to his private life, are we?”

“Hey,” Roxy said. “What he did he want to speak to you about last night? You didn’t come back.”

“Oh.” I slipped my brush back into my bag and tried to act like it was nothing as I grabbed my water bottle. “I asked about getting some more shifts and maybe some behind the bar. He wanted to talk about it, but then my daughter got sick, so I had to leave early.”

“Oh right.” She capped her lipstick and smacked her lips together. “Is he giving it to you?”

I choked midswallow and almost dropped my water bottle.

“Cass? Are you all right?” Melissa asked. She moved toward me, concern in her eyes.

I waved her off as I smacked my chest. “Fine,” I rasped. “Went down the wrong way.” I had another sip of water. “Is he giving me what?”

“The hours.” Roxy grinned. “Boy, you’re not with it today, are you?”

I shook my head. “Not at all. And I’m not sure. He said we’d talk more tonight.”

Her eyes flashed with excitement. “Try to find out about the wife. I wanna know. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if he got drunk and married some floozy ?”

Melissa giggled. “That would be so unlike him. He’s so...stern. A whore, but stern.”

Stern? Beckett Cruz was stern? There were a lot of words to describe that man: hot, filthy, talented, sexy, tempting, wild, impulsive. None of them stern.

I’d seen kittens with a yarn ball sterner than him.

“I’ll see what I can do, but we’re really not that close.” I laughed at myself.

Nope. We were closer than that. As in “the end of his cock played how-do-you-do with my cervix not even twenty-four hours ago” close.

Penelope pushed the door open. “What are you doing? You need to be out here. Now. There’s a big-ass bachelor party with wallets almost as thick as they are. Let’s move!”

Horny grooms were my favorite.

Some of them took the “last night of freedom” a little too literally—and
hey
, you don’t get to judge me. Getting groped by desperate, badly behaved grooms-to-be wasn’t exactly the top of my favorite hobby list, but I withstood it for every dance I was forced to give him because he stuck at least one hundred and fifty bucks into my bra and my thong.

Three dances, for the record.

I wouldn’t want to be his future wife. That was all I was saying.

I ran my hand down the side of his face and smiled before trailing my other hand down his chest. He was hard. His cock brushed against the inside of my thigh every time I flexed my hips against him, but it didn’t do a thing for me. It was just one more erection directed my way without respect.

He slipped ten dollars into the side of my panties then squeezed my ass. I gritted my teeth even as I forced a smile. Thank god this was almost over. I needed ten showers to wipe his sleaze off my skin.

At least, it felt that way.

I kissed his cheek when I was done and grabbed my clothes from the back of the booth. The guy stood as I expertly stepped into my hot pants without catching my heels.

“Hey,” he said into my ear. “Wanna finish what you started?”

Resisting the urge to roll my eyes seemed impossible, but somehow, I managed it. Another night, another guy overstepping his boundaries.

“Sorry,” I said, snapping the waistband of the black, leather hot pants. “I’m a stripper, not a hooker. Step outside and you’ll find plenty of women willing to finish what I started.”

“Are you sure?” He leered at my chest as he spoke. “Because I think you’d regret it.” He grabbed my hand and pressed it against his erection.

His poor fiancée.

“I said
no, thank you
.” I yanked my hand back and hit him with a glare. My fists balled at my sides, and I was ready to punch him if he tried it again.

Hands touched my shoulders from behind, and I craned my head around.

Beckett.

An angry Beckett.

He pushed me to the side, his indigo eyes glinting black in the low light of the club, and he took one step toward the guy who’d just made me touch his cock. “When a woman says no, she means no. You’re lucky you’re still standing here after making her do that. The next time I see you forcing one of my ladies to touch you, I’m throwing you the fuck out of here myself. They’re not your own personal fucking prostitutes. Am I clear?”

I swallowed, hugging my shirt to my stomach, and the guy nodded.

“Sorry,” he said to me, looking me in the eye. “I overstepped.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I muttered so quietly that I was sure he wouldn’t hear me over the music.

Beckett said something else I didn’t hear to him. Then he turned back to me and rested his hand between my shoulder blades. “Come with me,” he said into my ear.

I shivered as he led me through the club, out the back, and into his office. I met his gaze when we stepped inside. “You know I get asked for sex every night, right? I usually just punch them in their pathetically small dicks and they get the message.”

His lips quirked at one side as he turned the lock. “I have no doubt, but any dick-touching you do should be voluntary and not forced on you.”

“True. They don’t generally do that. Even if they are dumb enough to think hookers and strippers are the same.” I pulled my shirt over my head.