“Ouch, ouch, ouch.”
She received a sympathetic groan from her instructor. He knelt by her side, patted her shoulder. “That hurts. Boys and girls.”
She stared guns at him, only drawing another smirk, and slowly knelt up on one leg. Her pussy throbbed and it wasn’t because of him. Well, it had been pulsating before since the guy was a sculpted work of art, especially watching him strain to keep the hold, but it pounded now.
Owie, shit.
He gave her his hand to help her up. She took it only because a small part of her really, really wanted to touch him again. A zap of adrenaline shot up her arm when she closed her hand over his—it was long and it was wickedly warm—and let him hoist her to her feet. She bent in half, took a few long breaths. She desperately wanted to rub her crotch but forced herself not to in front of him. There was a long hot bath in her future tonight.
“It’s not as easy as it looks,” Archer offered as he crouched by her side so he could look up into her eyes. His chiseled arm twitched when he used the pole for balance. “Trust me, that’s a small bump compared to the really nasty injuries you can get on these things. I ripped muscle and tendon in a shoulder last year. Had to have surgery.” He showed her a spot near his armpit. Joan could’ve stared at the fine, fine pec well past all bounds of propriety. A tiny pink scar glistened on his otherwise flawless skin.
And in that interlude of sublime visual adoration, all her brain could come up with was…
He totally waxes his chest.
“You have to show these things some respect.”
Joan nodded, gradually feeling like an ass for acting in such a macho way. “Yeah, I can see that. I’ll be more careful from now on.”
“Good. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
He smiled again, this time no attitude shone through and if that grin just didn’t make her heart pump twice as fast. His pale eyes narrowed when he smiled for real, as opposed to The Smirk, which only pulled his decadent lips sideways. Actually, she’d never seen eyes such as his and suspected for a second the color wasn’t natural, only funky lenses, but no, it was all his, that icy blue, and reminded her of the bottom of icebergs, the part just underneath the water. Well, according to National Geographic’s pictures anyway.
“We’ll start again, okay?” he said, standing.
She smiled, relieved he wouldn’t press the issue of her lesson well learned. “Sounds good to me.”
He crossed his arms, checked her out from head to toe. “We can’t go electronica because of your age—”
“My age?”
“You’re what, thirty, thirty-two? It’s not old but for what you want to do, for the kind of people who’ll run the audition, believe me, they’ll think you’re ancient. As dumb as it is. So we have to go with something a bit more mature for music. A nice rock song or some classic pop with good bass, right?”
Ancient. Mfft!
“I guess. Rock is what I prefer anyway.”
He nodded, which made a ribbon of black hair come down over his eye. It still looked damp in places. Ohh please let me tuck it back. Or better yet, let me make it all messy.A two-fisted comb! She loved guys with longish hair. It made one hell of a handle when they ate her out!
“Then go choose a piece and I’ll get us something to drink.”
She watched his glorious butt as he disappeared through the door leading to the waiting room. The whoosh whoosh of his black “karate” pants made her skin pebble. With a sigh, she walked slowly—her pubic bone hurt for real—to the CD player, sifted through the pile of cases there.
Then it happened.
Nooooooo, not here!
As she pulled one she enjoyed, her elbow accidentally knocked the expensive-looking CD player and in her haste to keep it from sliding off the stainless steel counter, she dropped the CD case, which knocked the pile. Despite some valiant juggling, she sent a few falling to the hard, unforgiving, laminate floor where they broke in the usual place—one of the hinges. Always one of the hinges. The noise made her cringe and desperately try to keep the rest from following, and in so doing, nudged the player again and this time wasn’t quick enough to catch it. As if in slow motion, it skidded over the smooth surface…
“Damn!”
Flinching, Joan was still clutching at CD cases, all pell-mell, when a pair of long hands deftly immobilized the player before it fell off, brought it back on the counter.
When she turned to Archer, she had time to see the mix of dismay and amusement in his expression before he put back on the smirking mask, pulled from her fingers the cases that seemed closest to destruction and set them on the counter. He also picked up the few she’d sent to the floor.
“So sorry. I’ll buy them back for you. The broken ones, I mean.”
“It’s okay. It’s just the cases. The CDs are fine.”
Joan took a long breath. Attagirl, Murphy.
“You must be barred for life at domino championships,” he remarked without meeting her gaze.
Har har.
Good thing he wasn’t looking or he would’ve seen the hurt his words caused. Joan knew how expressive she was, mostly unable to keep her emotions from showing, even if sometimes she’d prefer keeping a bit of mystery around her. It’d always been her thing, make people laugh, act the fool, knock things over. For the first time, being a big goof wasn’t all that funny. Not with him. Not when she was trying hard to look feminine and poised and…and…
And what?
Sexy, woman. You want to look sexy for that damn job.
For the job or for him?
Shit. Did that make her a pathetic, needy, weak sissy with no spine if she wanted Apollo to think her sexy?
“Look,” she said as she aligned CDs on the counter. “That sting has to work, okay?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Because you’re a woman and you need to prove yourself to your sexist boss?”
“My boss is a woman. No, I need, we need, to nail him because the guy we’re after brings underage girls into the country to be prostitutes. Desperate kids from the old Eastern Bloc countries, some of them barely twelve. So we have to get him. That means I have to get inside The Quicksilver.”
Archer gave her one of the water bottles he’d put on the counter before rescuing his CD player. “You will.”
“Damn right.”
A wicked half smile pulled his lips sideways. Oh? She hadn’t seen that one yet and it gave her goose bumps. She knew her nipples must have shown through the No Pain No Gain cami. Did she care right now? Not a bit. After the initial flash of anger at Laramée’s odious enterprise, what remained was very much a nice healthy flush of sexual tension.
Archer must have felt the change too for he froze, his hand still on the cap of the bottle he’d given her while she hugged the bottom part. Their thumbs touched. Joan shivered.
She wanted to lick her bottom lip because it itched like hell but she didn’t want to add to the tension coiling between them. He didn’t seem to share any of her qualms for he tucked his bottom lip between his teeth—nice teeth too—and cocked his head to one side. That lock of hair fell over his eyebrow again.
Uh-oh.
When he released his lip, she watched the blood fill it back in and experienced one splendid series of tiny pulsations in her pussy, which tightened painfully with every beat of her frenetic heart. Even if a big neon sign flashed TROUBLE in bright red above his head, Joan still couldn’t help the attraction. He was a beautiful man. A very, very—
“We have just four days.” His voice was hoarse, deeper.
“Yeah, just four.”
“That’s not much.”
“Just a quick taste.”
“It’s a tease really.”
Joan felt her face lifting up toward his. He didn’t move away. He should move away because it sure as taxes wouldn’t come from her! Joan groaned inwardly. She’d just met the guy an hour ago.
How inappropriate.
How wicked.
Only easy w
omen did that.
Or very lucky ones.
Shit.
Yum.
As if Archer shared whatever fever had just gripped her, his eyes narrowed, that wicked, wicked smirk rose to his lips. Oh, he knew exactly what he was doing. The tease.
“I love that stuff on your lips,” he murmured. He did that thing with his mouth, played with the phantom mint. “Lip gloss?”
“Just…just lip balm.”
A black eyebrow twitched. “Can I be brutally honest?”
“Sure.”
“You have the most gorgeous lips I’ve ever seen. And I have a pretty damn good pool of samples to compare them.” His breath warmed her cheeks and also destroyed all her mental faculties, one neuron at a time.
“Wow, you’re just the humblest guy in the world, aren’t you?”
“What? You thought I was a virgin?”
The thought of this bad boy being a virgin was so ludicrous, so far-fetched, Joan shook her head. “Ehh…no.”
He reached for her arm, let his index finger trail down the length of it.
Whew! She’d be able to cut through glass with her nipples.
“I saw you looking at my butt. I think I forgot. Did you like what you saw?”
What an ass! With a nice ass!
“Very much so. But you already knew that. Do you like looking at mine?”
“Very much so. But you already knew that.”
Luckily for her self-esteem, Archer smiled wide, a bit too triumphantly for her tastes, before releasing the bottle of water he still held in his hand. Of course by that time, her hold on it had become tenuous at best so it dropped and landed right on top of her foot.
“Ow!”
Lightning-quick, he bent, picked it up. “If you lose your grip this way on the pole, you’re in for a nasty fall.” He then marched back to “his” pole. “Your choreography will last three minutes and some change. It’s a lot to remember. We should start now.”
“Yeah, I guess we should.”
Yeah, let’s start now before I chew your clothes off, ride you hard right where you stand and spend the rest of the evening kissing every inch of you.
Where had the smooth ladies’ man gone?
The same way his neurons had. He’d almost kissed her. And Joan hadn’t looked about to push him away either. He’d only meant to tease her, what he did best. Only he’d ended up teasing himself and almost succumbing. Sure, he had sex with his students. All the time in fact. Why not? They were mature women, adults all of them. But he’d just met Joan.
That never stopped you before. Plus, she’s hot and she wants you back. So where’s the fucking problem?
It was different this time. She was different. She was a cop with an important mission to accomplish, a bad guy to catch. That pig had to be stopped and Archer would make sure he kept the image of a twelve-year-old prostitute firmly in mind next time he felt like getting a taste of this bombshell here.
Keep telling yourself you care about the bad guy getting caught.
Honestly, in the bottom of his cynical, privileged and socially connected heart, he didn’t really care all that much. Bad guys were like mushrooms, cut one down and three will take his place. So no, it wasn’t about the guy. Truth be told, it wasn’t about saving a couple of kids either.
Wow, I am a charming man, aren’t I?
Sure, as anybody else, he thought lying to and using teenagers as prostitutes should carry some form of highly painful punishment followed by prison. Or vice versa. He wasn’t a pig. But he was a bit, let’s say, self-centered. His needs always came first. Except in bed where he’d discovered that if he fulfilled his lady friend’s needs first, his own would be met and then some. Altruism had never ranked high with him. And right now, even the revolting notion of underage sex slaves didn’t alleviate the desire clawing at his every nerve ending. Each muscle screamed for the kind of workout he knew Joan would give. Ten fingers clamored to touch her. Hell, toes too! His dick was ready to explode. Good thing he wore boxer briefs underneath the exercise pants otherwise he’d look quite the ass. She probably suspected he was hard anyway.
Argh.
He shook himself out of his downward spiral, plastered on the usual smirk that had women fanning themselves and threw a slanted glance at Joan. “I’ll show it to you, the whole thing, just to give you an idea. Then we’ll do it together, slowly, hold by hold, move by move.”
She nodded, approached her pole and leaned against it. A blush still darkened her cheeks. Man, she was hot!
Archer gritted his teeth, grabbed the pole two-handed and, counting the strokes in his head, executed the whole routine he’d prepared for her. It was simple but sharp and would show her nice long legs, with only one difficult move—a reverse knee spin, one leg extended, that’d blow them all away if she did it right.
Joan followed him with her eyes getting bigger and bigger. And boy did that make his day! Archer suspected that if he tried to walk out the door right now, his head would get stuck.
He landed on one foot, let himself slide down to the floor, jerked back to his feet “hiding” behind the pole, his hands around it down low in one hell of a phallic symbol, and by her gasp, he knew he’d given her a good jolt.
“That’s my routine? All of that?” Joan asked, her voice tremulous and doing wonders to his ego. He was used to that sort of reaction and shouldn’t feel so damn macho-man right now. But he did and that was that.
“Yeah,” he said, panting a bit. “But because you’re a woman, you’ll have to point your feet until you get cramps and stick your butt up as high as it’ll go.”
“Yay for me.”
“Yay for me too.”
Joan chuckled, avoided his gaze as she wrapped a hand around her pole. He tried not to imagine her hand around another pole, this one pink and hot, hot, hot.
We have to at least get through the routine a couple of times.Then we’ll get a treat for our hard work.
Oh shit! Condoms. He’d have to find an excuse to go get some from the house. He did not want to have to deal with another unwanted pregnancy. Not unwanted by him though.
His ex-flame’s argument came slicing back in.“It’s my body. My decision.”
Sure it’d been, and he’d respected it, even accompanied her to the clinic. It’d still broken his heart though.
So condoms. We need some condoms.
Maybe he should keep them inside the studio for impromptu trysts with hot lady cops? Unless she was on the Pill.
“Are you okay?”
Archer snapped back to the here and now. “Huh?”
“You look cranky all of a sudden,” Joan replied with a tentative smile. The woman smiled all the time. “Everything all right?”
“Sure,” he replied a bit too quickly to evade another arched eyebrow and inquisitive look. Well, she was a cop, so undoubtedly trained to recognize certain signs. Such as when a guy was lying through his teeth.
“Okay, together now. Face the mirror,” Archer said, turning his back to her so he could face her in the mirror. Keep his distance that way. Add a layer of detachment. “Stand behind the pole.”
Joan did as he instructed.
“Now look at yourself as if you meant to say ‘Want some o’ that? Nuh-uh, can’t have it’. See? Like this.”
Sweat glistened over his chest and arms when he stood behind his pole and looked into the mirror. But it wasn’t at his reflection he stared, it was at hers. Only he wasn’t saying “Want some o’ that? Can’t have it”. It was more “Oooh baby, if you only knew what I have for you”.
You’re a pathetic moron.
Nipples the size of baby olives—perfect size—stood out where the dots on the pair of “I”s sparkled teasingly. No Pain No Gain her cami stated.Had the designer meant for that, to put both “I”s right where the nipples would be? Probably. Guys were like that.
His gaze on hers, he flexed his arms, dropped into a crouch then slowly stood straight again. His bare feet tingled, as did the res
t of his legs. “Your turn.”
With an awkward chuckle, Joan seized the pole, spread her feet wide, looked at herself, squatted then straightened. Only her expression wasn’t teasing as much as saying, “Look at how I’m spending my education savings plan, Mom!”
Archer shook his head. “You’ll have to look at them when you dance at that club. Talk to them with your eyes, call them to you but at the same time, let them know you’ll break their teeth if they touch.”
She laughed.
He did the same move—squatted, stood and put all the ooh la la he could into his eyes. The effect was instantaneous. The dots on her cami’s “I”s tightened even more. She didn’t laugh this time. If he had anything written on his underwear right now, it’d look as if someone had used another font altogether. Three times the size of the rest. He was so hard it hurt.
“You do it,” he said with an encouraging hand gesture. “You look at your face and think to yourself, ‘Want it? Nuh-uh, bad girl, can’t have it.’ Come on. You can do it.”
She repeated the move.
“That was just…” He didn’t say pathetic because it would’ve hurt her feelings and a woman with her feelings hurt only meant trouble for the guy causing said hurt. He may not be a rocket scientist, but he’d learned pretty damn quick to be careful with a woman’s heart. If only to live a long happy life.
“Try again, Joan. But really put it all in your eyes. It’s all in the eyes. It’s making love with the lights on while someone is watching.”
She shook her head, tried again. She looked more aggressive than teasing. As if she were saying to her reflection, “You touch and I break your arms!”
Arghhhhh. Bad on so many levels, he couldn’t even begin to fix it. And after a few more times, he could tell she wasn’t going to get it right unless he went there and helped.
Awwww, you poor thing.
Archer couldn’t help the small smile of satisfaction when he abandoned his pole, went to stand behind Joan, very, very close behind her, and gazed at their reflection. They looked good together. In fact, they looked pretty damn good together.
Tease Page 3
