“That’s not really your business, is it?”
“I guess not. But it must not have been a very good date, if it ended before ten. I was starting to think you were reneging on our deal.”
“It was a challenge. It wasn’t a deal. I can decide not to keep it without reneging in any way.”
His little smile widened into a broad one that was breathtaking and obnoxious both. “If you say so.”
“I do say so.”
He chuckled and started to walk away. “Enjoy yourself tonight.”
Something about the way he said it made her wonder whether he was thinking about her visceral response when he’d pulled her into his performance on Thursday.
Did he know how turned on she’d been? Did he find it amusing that she was so easy?
She hated the idea of being thought easy, so the smile she gave him was a little cool.
He went over to the bar to say something to the bartender—the same grizzled guy who’d been there on both previous occasions she’d visited the club.
Matt must be busy, she decided as he disappeared into a back room she thought might be an office.
This was his business, after all. She assumed there was work to do to keep it running. She understood that he scheduled out the dancers for private showings, so it was more than just the two big evenings each week.
He probably made good money doing this. She wondered how and why he’d gotten into it to begin with.
Did guys really want to be strippers when they grew up?
After a minute, one of the waiters came over and told her there was a free table. She followed him over to the seat in a far corner and knew this table hadn’t been available when she’d been looking before.
She wondered if Matt had done something to free it up for her.
If he had, she really appreciated it.
She sat down, aware of the interested eyes of some of the women around her. She supposed she looked kind of out of place, in her dressy outfit and without any friends.
She let the self-consciousness slide off her. It didn’t matter what any of them thought.
As the next performance began, she tried to pay attention. But the whole thing was getting a little old. There was a limited repertoire of performances, so she was beginning to recognize a few that were recycled from last week. It made sense. Most women came to this club only once in a while—for special occasions like bachelorette parties—so they wouldn’t be able to recognize repeat performances. And putting some of these elaborate routines together must take a lot of practice and preparation.
Elizabeth was recognizing the repeats, though. And they weren’t any sexier or more fun than they’d been the first time she’d watched them. Only Matt held any real interest for her, and that must have been just a fluke.
She kept looking around for Matt, assuming he’d come to talk to her again the way he had before, but he didn’t. She saw him a few times, but he was always busy—talking to members of the staff and at one point doing what looked like a head count.
He obviously didn’t have time for her tonight. He probably wasn’t even planning to dance like he had both evenings last week. If she’d understood Melissa correctly, he wasn’t in the habit of stripping anymore.
She glanced down at the table, at her manicured hand against the scarred wood, and she suddenly felt a wave of disgust.
What the hell was she doing here, anyway? Panting over some guy. A guy she could never have a future with. Hanging out at a place that was nothing but empty and sleazy.
She watched one of the women getting humped by a dancer. He’d picked her up so her legs were wrapped around his waist, and she was obviously thrilled by the way he was thrusting against her.
Elizabeth wondered if she’d looked like that on Thursday night—silly, desperate, pathetic.
She hated the thought of it. Then she suddenly imagined what her father would think if he knew she was here right now.
He wouldn’t believe it. She wasn’t that kind of girl.
She didn’t want to be that kind of girl. With a shudder and a surge of determination, she stood up and made her way to the exit.
She was getting out of here. She wasn’t coming back. Matt might have been hot, but that wasn’t enough to keep her returning to this place.
She wasn’t going to do this anymore.
—
She’d left the building and was approaching her car when she heard fast-moving footsteps on the pavement behind her.
She turned instinctively and froze when she saw that Matt had followed her and had now almost caught up.
“Where are you going?” he asked, his brows pulling together when he reached her. He was breathing a little faster than normal, which told her he’d had to hurry to catch her before she reached her car.
“I’m going home,” she said, feeling her heartbeat speed up, which was absolutely ridiculous after the resolution she’d just come to. “What does it look like?” She managed to start walking again and, as she did, dug into her purse for her keys.
She’d clicked the lock and reached out to open the door when he covered her hand with his on the door handle. “Why are you going home? The evening isn’t over yet.”
For no good reason the slightly hoarse words caused a ripple of arousal to pulse through her body, but she’d already decided that this strange little detour in her life was over. “Because I’m not sure why I was even here. I’m tired, and I’m ready to go home.”
“You don’t look tired. You look like you’ve just talked yourself out of doing what you want.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Isn’t it?” He was standing close to her—too close—his lean body trapping her against the car.
She released the door handle and straightened up, clenching the keys in one hand. “No matter how arrogantly you believe you know what’s going on in my mind, the fact is we’re strangers and you can’t possibly know why I make the decisions I do. I don’t enjoy this kind of thing, and that’s not going to change.”
“You enjoyed Thursday night.”
She stifled a shudder at the memory of how much she’d enjoyed it. There was no way he could know how much. “That’s irrelevant. I don’t—”
“Why is it irrelevant? You were starting to let yourself go on Thursday, and now you’ve pulled back tightly into your safe, fancy shell. What happened earlier tonight?”
The question was gently spoken, but it felt intrusive and intimate both. “Nothing happened. I had to go to a dinner my parents were throwing. It has nothing to do with my leaving now.”
“Doesn’t it? I think it does. I think you’ve decided to be their perfect little girl again instead of taking a chance and being who you really want.”
She was starting to get angry—something that rarely happened. “Stop acting like I’m a coward or a weakling. I’m perfectly willing to take chances on things I really want. This…this strip club isn’t what I want. I don’t know how else to explain it to you. It’s all…” She waved her hand, trying to find the best word to describe her feelings. “It’s all empty, superficial. It’s fake, and I don’t want it.”
He leaned a little closer until his T-shirt brushed against her breasts. “What happens in the club isn’t any more empty and superficial than all of your pretty little dreams of a fairy-tale romance and perfect life. They’re just as fake as the humping and grinding, and they’re not nearly as much fun.”
“They are not fake, and they’re not empty. That’s the life I really want.”
He planted a hand beside her on the car, breathing heavily, and a kind of fire awakened now in his eyes. “But that’s what I’m trying to say. The life you want doesn’t exist. The real world can never look like that. It’s always hard and dirty and messy and complicated, and it can never fit into any sort of plan.”
“I know that,” she snapped, stiffening her spine as she was trapped between arousal and annoyance. “I’m not a fool or a child. I can want to ha
ve a certain kind of life without assuming it’s all going to be perfect. All I’m saying is that what happens in there feels empty to me. It’s fine for you, if you like it, but it’s empty to me.”
His expression changed, and she was suddenly sure he was thinking about sex too. “What’s wrong with emptiness if it makes you feel good? Why does everything have to be deep and meaningful?”
“It…it doesn’t.”
“So what’s wrong with this kind of emptiness?” He suddenly looked like he did during his dance—with that sensual power lurking beneath the surface of him. And then his body was moving with a low, rocking motion, rhythmically pressing against hers.
She gasped in pleasure as her body immediately responded. She clutched her keys desperately and tried not to hump him back.
“Stop trying to make everything deep and meaningful,” he murmured against her ear. “Stop trying to make it all fit into your world. Just take it for what it is, for what makes you feel good.”
“It doesn’t,” she panted, her empty hand fumbling until it was gripping the fabric of his T-shirt at his side. “It doesn’t…”
She couldn’t finish the sentence, since he’d obviously know it was a lie. This did feel good, so good she was burning with desire and rocking with him eagerly, wishing she could wrap her legs around him so she could feel him even more.
“That’s right,” he breathed, one of his hands sliding down until it was cupping her bottom, guiding the rhythm of her hips. “It feels good, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” She let her head fall back and could barely suppress a moan as she felt the bulge of what must be his arousal in his jeans.
“You’re turned on now, aren’t you?”
“Oh yes.”
“You don’t want me to stop, do you?”
“Please don’t stop.” She didn’t even care how helpless and shameless she sounded. She wanted him so badly she couldn’t see straight.
She tried to lift one leg to wrap it around his thigh, but the skirt of her dress was too tight and restricted her movement.
He bunched up the fabric in his hand and pulled her dress up enough to free her legs. With another moan, she twined one leg around his so she could feel him more intensely.
“You want this, don’t you?” he asked thickly, pushing her gently back against the car door so she was completely trapped. He was still thrusting sensually against her.
“Yes. I want it. So bad.” She’d dropped her keys back into her purse and was now clawing at his T-shirt, then stroking her hands over the ink on his arms, utterly incapable of stopping herself. She could hardly believe this was her, but she thrilled at the idea that it really was.
He lowered his head until his mouth was at the throbbing pulse in her throat. He teased her skin with his tongue and then sucked hard, causing her to cry out in surprised pleasure.
“Tell me what you want to happen now,” he murmured against her skin.
“I want…” She couldn’t stay still. She was grinding herself against him, despite the fact that they were right there in a public parking lot. “I want…more.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to fuck me.”
“What else?”
“I want you to make me come.”
“What else?”
“I want you to take me hard.”
She couldn’t believe she was saying it. She wasn’t even sure where the words were coming from. But she meant them. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d wanted anything so much.
He made a rough sound in the back of his throat and straightened up, staring down at her with eyes that looked hot, possessive, and strangely urgent. “Do you really?”
“Yes,” she gasped. “Yes, Matt, please. I can’t wait any longer.”
He opened the back door of her car and, before she could realize what was happening, he’d put his hands on her waist and maneuvered her into the backseat. He crawled in behind her, shutting the door.
Before she could start to feel awkward or embarrassed, he pulled her into a hard kiss as he eased her down onto her back. She wrapped her arms around him, rubbing herself against him eagerly, her skirt bunched up around her hips and her heels still on.
“I knew you’d be hot,” he muttered, when the kiss finally broke. He was breathing heavily, and his skin had broken out in perspiration. “I knew you’d be hot and wild and eager beneath that ice-princess demeanor.”
“I’m not an ice princess.”
“I know that. Isn’t that what I just said?” He was smiling that little smug smirk that seemed to turn her on even more. “You wear the ice princess like a costume, and the very first time I saw you, I wanted to take it off.”
She was too aroused to think clearly about what he’d just said, so she just pulled his head down so she could kiss him again. She wrapped both of her legs around his hips, squeezing him between her thighs, and she vaguely wondered what she would look like if someone happened to walk by the car.
For some reason that made her even hotter—the idea of someone seeing her sprawled out like this in the back of a car, with this incredibly sexy man between her legs.
Matt’s body was tense and hard, and it seemed to get harder by the second. After they’d kissed and thrust together for a minute, he jerked his head to the side and took a few ragged breaths. “We need a condom.”
“Don’t you have one?”
“Inside, but I don’t carry them around in my pocket.”
“Why not?” she asked, relieved when she remembered her purse was right there on the floor of the backseat. She pushed him up a little and reached for it. “What kind of stripper are you, not having condoms available on a moment’s notice?”
“I’m a stripper who’s getting too old,” he said, a wry note in his voice now, despite the hoarseness of arousal.
She found a condom packet in a zipper pocket and handed it to him. “How old are you?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“How old do you want me to be?”
“I don’t get to decide men’s ages just by the power of my thoughts.”
He chuckled and readjusted both of their bodies in the backseat, moving himself into a sitting position and slouching down as he undid his jeans.
She gave him a questioning look.
“I want you on top of me,” he said, reaching a hand out toward her. “I want to be able to see you.”
She’d never been a big fan of being on top, but she couldn’t resist his voice, so she straddled his lap as he raised her skirt.
She reached into his jeans to free his cock, stroking it enthusiastically and was excited when his breath hitched in response.
Together they rolled the condom on and she lowered herself over him. He moved aside her panties as he guided himself inside her.
She groaned aloud at the sensation of full penetration. She wriggled on his lap, adjusting her body around him until she felt more comfortable.
“How is it?” he asked roughly, both of his hands gripping the flesh of her hips.
“Good.” She gasped and arched her back when he gave a little thrust into her from below. “Oh God, good!”
“That’s right, princess,” he murmured, his eyes raking over her face and body. “Let me see how good it is for you.”
As he spoke, he’d reached behind her and found the zipper to her dress. He pulled it down slowly, causing the fabric to gradually slide down her shoulders. He eased the dress off all the way, exposing her bra and bare skin.
Her pussy was throbbing so urgently she couldn’t stay still. She rocked over him, desperately needing friction.
“That’s right,” he said. “Let me see how much you want this.”
For some reason his voice was only stoking the flames of her desire, and she rode him even harder, causing her breasts to shake and her breath to come out in little pants. She could feel him watching her, and she should have been self-conscious at her obvious eagerness, but she wasn’t.
She want
ed him to see her like this.
“Ride me until you come,” he said, guiding the motion of her hips as her bouncing became even more vigorous, so he wouldn’t accidentally slip out of her.
It didn’t take long until her pants turned to breathy grunts and then to cries of pleasure as her pussy started to clench hard around his cock.
The orgasm lasted a long time, and she hadn’t fully come down when he started to fuck her from below, pumping up with a hungry rhythm that felt exactly right to her. It felt so good that the pleasure in her body tightened around it again, and then both of them were grunting as they fucked as hard and primitive as animals.
Elizabeth had never experienced anything like it—anything quite so uncivilized. She’d had no idea she was capable of this.
She’d had no idea she could like it so much.
She was biting back a scream when another orgasm broke, causing her to shake and arch. She could feel Matt tensing up and then shuddering through a climax of his own, the pleasure causing him to release a rough exclamation that he smothered with a kiss.
She was still kissing him as her body started to relax, and she could feel him softening beneath her as well. And everything felt so good—so deliciously satisfying—until she felt his hands on her hips, easing her up and off him so he could take care of the condom.
Then she started to feel self-conscious. A little embarrassed. And kind of stiff and awkward as she tried to zip up her dress and pull it back down over her thighs.
She had absolutely no idea what had come over her, how this had even happened.
It was like she’d been possessed.
No one in her life would ever believe she’d just fucked a male stripper in the back of her car—or that she’d enjoyed it as much as she had.
—
Matt could see the change of expression on Elizabeth’s face—like she was remembering who she was, wondering why she’d just done what she’d done—and he didn’t like the transformation at all.
He’d known exactly what he was doing. He’d wanted to take her like that from the first moment he’d seen her, sitting primly with her friends at the table in his club with a look of faint disgust on her face.