by Harper Sloan
"Move your hand, and I'll listen while I sign it."
"You aren't even listening to me now, so we both know you won't then either. Is it so hard for you to let someone else lead?"
The pen moves, this time lifting off the page. Calm as can be, he places it down next to where I had laid everything out earlier. He takes a deep pull of air, his whole body seeming to grow larger. When he tips his head and waves his hand out, silently telling me to continue, I'm not sure how to take his sudden change. Or if I can trust it. I watch, hesitantly, as he leans back in his seat and crosses his arms over his chest. The thickness of his biceps stretches the shirtsleeves deliciously; something I do my best to ignore.
"Are you actually listening now, or will you just finish signing the second I move my hand?" I roll my eyes when he shrugs, feigning annoyance. "You're hopeless. You know that, right?" I jest, enjoying our banter.
"So I've been told."
The heaviness in his tone makes me pause. There's a story there, but it's what I see clear as day on his face that has me wanting to pretend we aren't what we are. As if I have a right to know what that story is.
But that isn't us.
We're just having fun.
Scratching an itch.
Right?
Moving my hand quickly, I take the papers with me to gather my thoughts. I keep my expression neutral, not wanting him to feel like I noticed his change. He'd wiped his expression off his face, and he was back to looking at me like he was--again--enjoying himself.
If we were something different, I would ask him.
If we were something different, I would make it my mission to make sure that tone and that expression never crossed his handsome face again.
"Okay," I whisper, clearing my throat. "Let me start by saying, I don't intend to back out of our little ... deal. Before I explain these," I add, pointing to the papers I'm holding against my chest, "I want you to know something that may change your mind."
Three little lines appear between his brows when he frowns at me. Other than that, he doesn't say anything; he doesn't even move an inch as he maintains his rapt attention on me.
Heat hits my cheeks, but I ignore it, determined to keep course. "I understand the allure of wanting what you feel is a challenge. I do. I get that what might be happening between us may be just that, some sort of challenge for you. I also want to be completely transparent by telling you I can understand why that might be the case, even if that comes with the added confession that I don't understand whatever it is I feel when you're in my presence or even in my thoughts." I suck in a much-needed breath, and when I pause, I'm hit with the realization that his indifference has shifted. He looks very invested in every word I've been trying to tell him since the food was ordered and wine consumed. "What?" I breathe, his intensity causing my every sense and nerve ending to zap with awareness to its power.
"Finish," he demands, pushing that one word out in a burst. Quietly, but with authority.
"Um, okay ... where was I?" I mumble to myself, trying to get my thoughts back on track.
"Confessions and understanding," he offers, still exuding something that further confirms these confessions and emotions I don't understand.
"Right. Condensed, something happens to me when we're together. I feel it. I know you see it. Pretty sure you feel it. And I'm okay with it, if all that it is for you, is a challenge."
The frown lines are back. Great.
"And before we get to business, I need you to know that I'm okay with it if that's all this is. More than okay."
He leans forward, arms unfolding to put his elbows on the table, leaning over and getting closer--well, as close as one can get with a two-seater round table between us. The candlelight from the little glass holder makes his facial features look harsher. "Let there be no confusion, Ari. This was and never will be a challenge. I know what I want, and I know what I'll get. Calling this a challenge would imply I lack that confidence. What you do challenge, however, is my sanity. Finish the rest about 'understanding,'" he commands, nostrils flaring as he continues to give me his complete attention.
"I have no idea what to do with you," I admit breathily.
A gritty hum comes from his lips. "That's fine because I know exactly what to do with you."
"I'm being serious, Thorn."
"As am I."
He leans back when our waiter, looking less terrified than before, arrives with our food. He places two identical plates down in front of each of us. Steak, veggies, and potatoes artfully displayed and looking delicious. And as hungry as I am, I ignore the food and look back at Thorn.
"I haven't been with anyone in a long time, Thorn. I'm naive about a lot of things shared between two people attracted to each other, but I'm not stupid. I know there's a very real possibility that tonight will end with me giving myself to you. I need you to know, regardless of how the lead-up to that happens, I'm not here because of these." His eyes drop when I lift my hand and extend one finger to the paperwork I'm holding against my chest.
Hunger flashing.
Need sparking deeply.
"Which is why," I rush out, "I had my standard contract for large consignments like yours--well, not like yours because I've never had that large of a consignment--altered." I shift, feeling the need I've sparked in him between my legs when I do. "What I've been trying to explain is that I'll keep our little bet, but you'll need to think of something else for the respective winner because I don't want what I don't understand to be tangled up as a business transaction. I'll finish with I'm sorry for slapping you last night when you made your intentions clear, but I will not be bought, and you don't deserve to be either."
His back slams against his chair, making the legs squeak against the floor. Intense pain slashing against his features briefly.
"What did you do?" he questions, words firm but with a hint of ... fear?
"I didn't do anything. I did, however, have Joseph--my lawyer--add that, no matter what the seller, you, and buyer, me, have on a personal level, our business deal will remain just that, a solid agreement that means you get what you deserve in financial compensation and what you need, being the removal of what I'm purchasing. Neither of us, though, will be exchanging monies of any kind for anything other than a business transaction."
"Ari."
My name, softly spoken from lips I already know hold a promise of intoxication to my soul, just reinforces my resolve to separate business from the thick desire surrounding us.
"No, Thorn. It's important to me that you not think I'm using you to get what you're selling. It's important to me that you know I would want you even if all of that was off the table. It's really important."
"Give me the papers." When I don't move, he does. One long arm reaches over the table, papers gone from my grasp, and his dish shoved to the side carelessly. My breath speeds up as he lifts his pen back from the table and continues where his scrawled TH is waiting. His hold on the ink pen so strong I wouldn't be surprised if he somehow snapped it in half.
When he's done, he recaps the pen, then holds it out for me. My hand shakes as I take it, putting it next to my clutch to deal with later.
Neither of us looks away.
He repeats the move, picking up the papers and holding them out. And again, I silently take them and place them back into the folder.
Still, we just stare, and if the heat our connection is producing was capable, we wouldn't have to worry about our dinner spoiling.
"Eat. And eat fast, Ari. I'm suddenly finding I'm impatient to get to the part where your ass is in my car."
I nod.
He nods.
We eat.
Then my ass is indeed in his car.
When I win, I get you
A challenge.
She wasn't wrong. She most fucking definitely started as just that. The second I pulled up in front of her girly store, looked through the windows, and locked eyes with her, I knew I would stop at nothing to get my cock inside her.
That c
hallenge she convinced herself was all I felt, though, only lasted seconds.
When she walked away from me, putting a goddamn counter between us, my fingers itched to explore, and I felt the shift. Something I had never experienced ripped from deep inside my body, creating an intense wave pulsing between us that was so severe, I felt the invisible strings tugging me with great strength in her direction.
She thinks she doesn't understand this?
Funny, because she's not the only one.
Only I'm not even close to naive when it comes to what I want to do to her.
I haven't been with anyone in a long time, Thorn.
Her confession was spoken so damn softly, I almost didn't think I heard her correctly. But I did, and each of those ten words slammed into me with such force, what had cracked in my normal shield of indifference the second I saw her, started to rip apart even greater than before. The cravings I hungered to quench made my mouth water, and the hollowness inside me began to fill with warmth. I've never experienced a fucking thing like it. What I had experienced in my life told me to wrap my hands around what inspired such things and never fucking let it go.
Ari was giving herself to a monster.
She had no idea what she was offering the beast. Her naivety even more apparent because if she had the experience, she would know to run. Run as far as she could and never look back.
It's unfortunate that I wasn't a better man. A man who would just sign the papers and let her go.
But I can't.
And more importantly, I won't.
Seeing her shift in her seat causes my hand to tighten on the steering wheel. My foot presses down on the accelerator, and with a loud vibration of my engine, my car speeds through the streets of Vegas. She changed the stakes, but I'm going to make sure the reward is just as sweet.
She will be mine in every way I can make it possible.
She will feel this oppressing weight that I've been carrying around when I make her want me as fiercely as I want her.
"What are we doing here?" she whispers into the silence of the car when I pull into the parking lot of The Alibi.
I ignore her, steering my car behind the building and into my parking spot directly between the two back entrances. One leads into the female's lounge area. The other, to the men's.
"Thorn?" she questions, this time with a twinge of trepidation.
Shutting the engine off, I climb from the car and walk around to her door, opening it and reaching down to help her out. When our hands connect, I feel the same buzz of warmth tingling from our connection as I did at The Hunting Ground. My eyes immediately slide to her legs when they shift to stand from her seat. I've been itching to bury my face between those fucking legs since she walked up to me in that dress earlier tonight. Instead of stepping back to give her room, I crowd into her, getting so close that she's forced to tip her head back to look up at me.
"Why are we here?"
"I've got thirty seconds, don't I?"
Her eyes roam over my face before shifting to the back doors. "But what does that have to do with this place?"
"Babe, really?"
She looks back at me; only this time, the sass she's shown me a few times is ready to come back out.
Fuck, she's beautiful.
"Yes, really. I thought ..." she trails off, looks back at the door, and then, fuck me, her shoulders drop like she's disappointed.
"You thought?"
"It's nothing," she whispers, still looking fucking defeated.
Christ, she was right when she said she was a challenge. Not the way she meant it, though. She's a fucking challenge to understand. "Don't keep yourself from me, Ari."
"I just didn't think this was where we would end up, okay? Happy? I thought you were taking me back to your place."
Didn't see that coming. At all. A challenge, indeed. "Who said this is where we will end our night? Got thirty seconds, Ari. Thirty seconds to make you beg. Then, and only then I can take you where I want you."
"And you want to do that ... here?"
"What's wrong with The Alibi?"
"Well, nothing, I guess. I just hear things about how wild it gets in there, and I already told you I don't have a lot of experience, but Thorn ... I really mean that. If you're thinking about doing stuff with other women or using those thirty seconds with another woman to win the bet we don't even have anymore, then maybe you should just take me back to my car."
Goddamn she's refreshing.
We were already close, but when I inch closer, it erases any space that remained between us. Her tits press into my chest, my cock into the softness of her belly, and the satisfaction I feel when she sways is intoxicating. She sighs when my hands frame her face, her eyes hooded, and lips parted slightly. I hold her where I want her and bend my neck to get closer, our breaths mingling and the sound that comes from her lips makes my cock twitch.
"I don't fucking share, Ari. Understand?"
She nods or, rather, tries to.
"Anything you heard about The Alibi, babe, wild would be putting it mildly. I didn't bring you for whatever you have running through that beautiful head of yours. You said I had to change the bet, so here it is. You win, you pick whatever the fuck you want, and I'll make it yours. I win ..." I close the distance between our mouths, closing my lips around her pouty as fuck bottom lip, and bite. Her whole body shakes, and her tiny hands grab my sides tight enough for her nails to bite into the skin through my shirt, and then, fucking fuck, she moans so deeply I know I'll never forget that sound. When I release her lip with a pop, I lick the spot I just bit before I pull back slightly. "When I win, I get you."
With the taste of her skin still on my tongue, teasing me, I promise myself that she will be mine. Even if I lose, I'm winning Ari Daniels.
No matter the cost.
Your time starts now
Wait here.
Thorns last words echo through my mind; the two words on repeat as they continue to play over and over just as clearly as they did when he pressed his lips right on my ear and said them. Even with the music pounding through the room he left me in, it sounds like he's still right next to me.
But he isn't. He left me here alone. In a room full of screaming women, flying dollar bills, and half naked ... and fully naked ... men.
No one is paying any attention to me. Even the men--no, strippers--ignore me when they walk through the room, teasing the women and making sure they're the ones who get their dollars. No, that's not right. They don't ignore me, but they don't get close. The last one who walked by studied me so long, I almost ran out of here.
I take a chance that I won't almost get slapped in the face with a penis like the last time I tried to look around and one of them was walking behind my chair, and start to search through the screaming women and oiled men.
That's when my gaze collides with Meggie and Melissa's boss. He's standing off to the side where there's a door that says do not enter on it. I jerk back around, not wanting to be caught gawking at him. My lord, I really thought he had been looking at Piper with interest the night I met him. I never would have thought he was gay.
Oh, my God. Had I been that long out of the game that I couldn't tell when someone was interested or just being polite? No, I know I didn't get it wrong. There is no way. He wanted her.
I turn back, and he's still there. Still there and still watching me. I give him a small wave; not really sure what proper etiquette is for running into someone you kind of know at a male strip club. He shakes his head, smiles, and starts walking over to me.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God. What the heck am I supposed to talk to him about in this place? The weather?
"You look terrified," Wilder says, talking over the music and dropping down in the chair next to me, the only chair next to the small round table where Thorn had me sit ... right smack in front of the empty stage that looks all kinds of foreboding.
"I would say that's accurate."
"Relax. You're safe here."
&
nbsp; I snort a nervous giggle. "I saw a penis, Wilder. A naked penis just bobbing all over the place like it was completely normal to walk through a crowded room with an erection. That same penis almost took my eye out when the man attached to it walked behind me. That isn't safe."
This time, it's Wilder who laughs. "I see it now."
"See what?"
He shakes his head. "Nothin', darlin'. Not a damn thing."
"There was nothing safe about that boy's penis either," I grumble on a huff, crossing my arms. "He could hurt someone with that thing."
"Do you say everything that you think?"
I shrug. "No, I was simply continuing my observation so you would understand how not safe it is here."
"It's safe, darlin'. Saw Matteo walk by. He wasn't that close. No one's going to get close enough to even chance touchin' you."
My brow pulls in, and I frown at him. "I hate to point out the obvious, but aren't you sitting right next to me?"
"I'm hardly a threat to you."
"I don't know you well enough to know if that's true or not."
"I'm not a stupid man. They're not going to get close because they're terrified of just the thought of what he would do to them if they did. Me? I know exactly what he'd do to me if I did, and darlin', those guys are smart to be terrified."
"I'm not following?"
He leans over, checking his watch as he does, and then smirks at me. "Sweetheart, you walked in here on the arm of the boss. That was not something missed by anyone. A woman who looks like you, innocent and gorgeous, would be surrounded by all o' them in seconds, had you not been on his arm. These men aren't weak. They aren't afraid of shit, but they do fear his wrath, and getting anywhere near you would ensure they felt it. You couldn't see his face, but everyone else in the room could. Trust me on that."
I gasp, fingers curling into my chair while I stare at Wilder with wide eyes.
"Now, as for me? You don't have to worry about me. I'm here because I wouldn't miss this for anything. I'm not afraid of him, and I know damn well he'll kick my ass for getting near you--even if it's for just a friendly chat--but there was no way I would miss watching him work so hard when he normally has easy being thrown in his face. Now, close your jaw and eyes to the stage. His ten minutes are up."
What the heck?
Then I remember the watch glance, and suddenly, I know exactly what's about to happen on that stage. When the music changes, the most sexual beat I've ever heard starts to play through the vast space around us. My skin prickles, each heavy thump seemingly vibrating throughout my whole body. Oh, wow.
