StripperwithSpice (2 page)

“It is a slow line.” I’m eager to drink something myself. A
little inebriation should make the hour of torture I’ve sentenced myself to
pass a little more easily.

“No shit,” she replies. “By the time we get something to
drink, the men will be gone.”

Before I can think what to reply, she extends her hand. “I’m
Zena Wang.”

The name fits her just as mine fits me.

“Janice Sullivan.”

Looking at me, she cocks her head. “You’re a virgin, aren’t
you?”

If I’d been holding a drink, I’d have spilled it. “Excuse
me?”

She raises her chin and grins. “This is my third
Crave-a-thon.”

Wow.
These conventions must be addictive.

I step forward. Why did I meet everybody standing in lines?
If the mysterious man had been as forthright as this girl, I’d at least know
his name. Is he here? Freezing my neck muscles into ironclad cords, I refuse to
glance around the room.

“This is my first conference.” And surely my last. I should
ask her what to expect but am not sure I really want to know.

Her large dice earrings click as she moves her head. “You’ll
love it. I can’t wait until the dancing starts. Say, the DJ is kind of hot.”

I follow her gaze. Dancing? Here? Tonight? In this
underwear? My breasts are already sitting on a precarious perch. One dance move
would surely send them tumbling out of my blouse. I fiddle with one of the
blouse buttons, tempted to button it up.

After we buy our drinks, a glass of chardonnay for me and a
cosmopolitan with a cherry for her, I follow Zena through a maze of dark wooden
tables, padded stools and occasional love seats lit by subtle colored lights.
She heads to a table with one woman sitting at it. Must be a friend of hers. Am
I the only person in this whole place who doesn’t know anybody?

“She looks lonely,” Zena explains.

Great. That’s probably why she talked to me. Do I have a big
“pathetic” sign plastered to my forehead?

After we ask the woman if we can join her, she looks
apprehensive and relieved at the same time. Dorothy is the opposite of Zena.
She’s married with children and
Older
. In contrast to Zena’s tight pink
shirt and miniskirt, Dorothy wears wire-rimmed glasses and a blue oxford shirt
buttoned all the way up. A mousy-brown pageboy with a dash of gray frames her
face.

Making small talk while we drink isn’t as bad as I thought
it would be. The woodsy, aged flavors of the chardonnay excite my taste buds,
reminding me how long it’s been since I treated myself to a glass of wine. To
my surprise, Zena and Dorothy are both from other states. Just how far would
women travel to celebrate romance?

Now that I’m seated on the high stool with a birds-eye view,
it’s hard to ignore the men. Each is shirtless. They talk and pose for
snapshots. Cochise, a tall Indian, reclines on a couch while a white-haired
woman old enough to be his grandmother pokes his abs as if to test their
hardness. Butch, the one with the crew cut, pulls a woman onto his lap for a
picture. What’s next, an orgy?

“So which one would you girls like to fuck?”

Dorothy takes a deep drink of red wine and coughs at Zena’s
bald question. “I’m a married woman!”

“Not for real, silly.” Zena waves her fingers. “It’s all
about fantasy. If you had to choose, which one would you want?”

“I’m not sure.” Dorothy frowns and sets down her drink. “I
prefer to try something out before I buy it.”

“Ooh, I like the way you think,” Zena replies, nibbling the
maraschino cherry in her drink.

I know she’s going to ask me next, so I plan to give her a
thoughtful answer that’ll satisfy her. My gaze travels freely around the room
for the first time tonight. None of these young hunks are my type. Sure,
they’re nice to look at in an artistic appreciation sort of way but that’s all.

When I glance at the bar, I spot him, the mystery man. He
has his back to me again. His black hair looks sexy and touchable in this soft
lighting. How would that thick stuff feel sliding through my fingers?

And, mercy, he’s traded his earlier traveling clothes for a
pair of tight, faded jeans and no shirt. The woodsy-tasting chardonnay might as
well be old swamp water as I stare at a broad expanse of tan back.

He has tattoos.

His right arm sports quite a few of them in fact. I can’t
even figure out what they are because of the distance and dim lighting. They’re
dark, serpentine things that send something hot and urgent into motion inside
my belly.

Well, that settles it. I’ve never looked twice at a man with
tattoos, especially not such big ones. So why am I looking twice at this one?
If I stay here much longer, I’ll look three and four times, or worse.

“I don’t even have to ask which one you want, Janice.”

“Who, h-him?” I stammer. “He’s not my type. None of these
men are, really.”

Zena sends me a shocked look over the rim of her glass.
“None of them? Are you alive?”

“I came here for other reasons besides men.”

Dorothy watches us talk as if she’s following a tennis
match. She’s probably relieved Zena isn’t grilling her instead.

“His name is Carlos Aguilar,” Zena supplies.

My heart jumps with excitement. She knows his name, which is
more than I do. What else does she know? Do I dare find out? Maybe I need a
distraction from worrying about my career. As she said, this is about fantasy.
I work hard and deserve a harmless little fantasy, don’t I?

After I go home, I’ll forget all about Carlos.

“Where’s he from?” I ask before I can stop myself. Maybe I
should stop drinking. I can’t afford to lose control tonight.

“Originally? The Washington, DC, area, I think,” she
replies. “He’s Mexican-American and single.”

Olé!
my libido shouts.

“How old is he?” I blurt out next.

She frowns in thought. “I don’t know but most of the guys
are in their twenties or thirties. Occasionally there’s one or two in their
forties who still look hot. Their days are numbered though.”

Yeah, I know all about the forties.

One of the men, tall with a long blond ponytail, approaches
our table and puts his big hands on Zena’s shoulders.

My own shoulders tingle when I wonder how good Carlos’ touch
would feel there.

“Hey, sexy. How’ve you been?” he asks her in a deep,
seductive voice.

“Missing the hell out of you.” She closes her eyes and her
head tilts backward as if she’s having the orgasm of her life. “Ooh, Rolf. I
missed those hands.”

Rolf?
That can’t possibly be his real name. Maybe
Carlos has another name too.
Stop thinking about him
, I tell myself.
He’s
just a silly fantasy, which will end when I leave this bar in—
I look at my
watch. When did the hour start? When does it end?
Oh, hell.
I’ve
completely lost track of the time. I guess I’ll leave when I’ll feel like it.
And I don’t feel like it quite yet.

When Rolf bends to kiss Zena on the cheek, she turns her
head to catch most of his lips on hers instead. My fingers tighten around the
stem of my wineglass.

Maybe I wasn’t exaggerating when I wondered if there would
be orgies later. Zena looks ready to eat this man alive. So does Dorothy, for
that matter, judging by the way she’s blinking her blue eyes at him.

He shakes a finger at Zena. “You’ve been to enough of these
to know that’s not allowed.”

“Can’t blame a girl for trying.” She sighs and turns to
Dorothy and me. “Rolf is from France.”

Of course he is.

“Go on, baby. Share the love.” Zena pulls his hand off her
shoulder and pushes it in Dorothy’s direction.

The older woman blushes darker than her red wine. “Oh, I
really shouldn’t. My husband wouldn’t like—”

Zena makes a loud hushing noise. “No one has husbands
tonight. Enjoy it. We won’t tell, will we, Janice?”

“Of course not. Uh, Zena, what really goes on at these
things?” I wince. No, I can’t ask but I need to know. “Do the men…uh…sleep…”

She looks at me as if I’ve lost most of my brain cells.
“They keep late hours but they sleep like the rest of us.”

I clutch my drink almost hard enough to break the glass. “I
mean do they sleep with the…uh women here?”

Her mouth twists with disappointment. “No. Like I told you,
it’s all about the fantasy.”

I nod, unsure if I’m relieved or disappointed.

Before long, Dorothy’s head weaves in a drunken haze from
the pleasure of Rolf’s expert neck rub. Zena whips out her phone from the small
purse on the table and takes a picture of them. After Rolf says his goodbyes,
Dorothy almost slides off her barstool.

“That felt heavenly. Oh the things I could do with that
man.” Then she points to the phone. “Where—”

“Don’t worry,” Zena replies. “I’ll post it on Facebook and
send you the link. What’s your email addy?”

Dorothy’s eyes grow as large as dinner plates. “Facebook?
You can’t post that. What if my husband sees it?”

Zena shrugs. “No prob. I’ll just email it to you.”

What about my employer? I’m glad I didn’t pose for a picture
with that blond giant. Pictures of me with a shirtless man wouldn’t be too good
for my career.

While Dorothy tells Zena her email address and Zena punches
it in, my gaze drifts back to the bar. Mystery man is gone.
Thank God.

“Hey, Carlos! Over here,” Zena yells.

Didn’t this girl ever quit? I can have my fantasy gazing
from afar, thank you very much.
Oh crap.
He’s walking this way! My mouth
dries to the consistency of day-old glue. What am I supposed to say? “I’m the
horny old woman who ogled you in the check-in line”?

“Good to see you again, Zena,” he says.

Oh God.
His clear voice, which reminds me of the gold
color of honey, is even hotter than the mesquite-spicy scent of his cologne.

“I never miss a Crave-a-thon,” she replies. “Meet my new
friends, Dorothy and
Janice
.”

I lower my eyes. Could she be any more obvious? The way she
stresses my name makes it sound as if she says, “Here’s Janice who’s dying to
fuck you.”

The last thing I expect is for him to take my hand and kiss
my knuckles. The warm lips on my skin break a dam in my abdomen, releasing
something hot and wet into my thong. I never imagined someone with big tattoos
would be such a gentleman.

“Carlos Aguilar,” he says.

“Janice S-sullivan.”

“Is this your first time, Janice?” he asks.

First time what? Having sex? With him? I push away my drink.
It’s not helping me think, but it’s not to blame for scrambling my brains
either. He is. All I can do is nod as if I’m mute or an idiot.

“Why do you have such smoldering, haunting eyes?” I itch to
ask but don’t dare. My nails dig into my palms as I struggle for
something—anything—intelligent to say. He props his left hand on our table,
leaving his right arm in full view along with its tattoos. I realize the
swirling things are bird talons. The image fits him.

“Eagle or hawk?” I ask.

“What was that?” He leans his face close enough to my ear to
lick it.

The thought makes the metallic-colored lace in my thong feel
as if it’s real metal and searing hot. Close up, his scent wraps around me full
force until I’m on the verge of swooning off my stool.

I touch his arm, unable to do much but point. “Bird… What
kind?”

Someone put a muzzle on me, please. I sound like a
three-year-old. And touching him is a big mistake. My hand has a mind of its
own and yearns to slide from his wrist up his bronze biceps and across his
pectorals. “Put a shirt on before I attack you,” I want to shout.

“Eagle,” he answers, moving his head away from my ear but
not as far as it was before. “I had an amazing experience with one when I was a
boy.”

His voice is low and intimate, as if I’m the only woman in
the room. For some reason, a scalding blaze races across my chest. Then it hits
me. Because he’s standing up, he has a full view of my new push-up cleavage. As
if I could forget this underwear. So much heat has built up between my legs the
thong feels as if it melted and fused to my vagina.

“Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime,” he adds.

My chest is flushed from his dark gaze, which lingers on my
exposed skin as if it’s smoke in a closed room. He must like what he sees
because he’s still hanging around even though the women here must outnumber the
guys twenty to one.

I finally remember to answer him. “I’d like that.”

He looks down at the table. “Well, it was a pleasure meeting
you, Janice. I’d better go mingle.”

Don’t go!
Kiss me. Fuck me. Do something. Just don’t
go. Anything but that.

“Say cheese!”

Zena’s voice pierces the moment with the finesse of a
battering ram. I forget I’m sitting with other people. Nothing exists in my
world but Carlos. I look in her direction to find her phone aimed at us.

He steps even closer and puts his arm around me while I melt
into a puddle on my stool. All too soon, it’s over. In a way, I wish she’d asked
my permission first, but I’m glad she took the photo. It’ll be a nice memento
of a short-lived fantasy.

He drops his arm and I shiver. “I’ll see you around?”

“Sure,” I reply.

He’s probably just being polite. Why would a young stud like
him seek me out later when half the women here appeared ready to throw
themselves at his feet? After he leaves, Zena shows me the picture, asks for my
email address and sends it off into cyberspace.

“Please don’t put that one on Facebook either?” I ask.

She puts her phone back in her purse. “You girls are no fun
at all.”

“He’s very nice.”

Zena laughs. “Girlfriend, he was eating up your cleavage as
if it was a smorgasbord.”

Sparks of excitement zap through me. “You think so? I got a
new push-up bra.”