Electrified

by Rachel Blaufeld

  The truth was, she had no clue what came next if she did jump on his lap. Because even though Sienna might have the right moves onstage, up close and personal in real life, she had no idea what to do.

  SIENNA WAS both emotionally and physically drained by the time Mike walked her out to her car after her shift Friday night, happy to know that Simon was waiting to drive her home.

  She loved Simon; the grandfather of two little boys always brought a smile to her face. He’d been a driver in Vegas for thirty-six years, and he always made her laugh with his tales of Las Vegas, then and now. After the night she’d had, Simon was just what she needed.

  Mike opened the car door for her, but touched her arm before she climbed in. When she looked up in question, he frowned slightly. “Sienna, I know Ash is worried and you think that something weird is happening. Nothing weird is going on, you just need a life outside of here,” he said as he motioned behind him to the club.

  “The guy with the note seems like a good guy,” he went on as she gaped at him. He slung his big arm around her slight waist. “You need to take a leap with someone, even if it’s not him, but why not him? What I’m trying to say is, you need to get back out there. You need to live.”

  And before she could say a word, he handed her into the backseat of the big black town car.

  Sienna was shocked; no longer looking forward to Simon’s sweet stories.

  Am I going to take advice from a twenty-five-year-old bouncer?

  Advice was what she needed, and Mike was one of the few trusted people she had in her little world. Petal and Sydney were still at the club working a few private parties, but she could wait and ask them. She could, yet she was their role model.

  What would they think about her indecision? Both Petal and Sydney would think she was crazy not to follow her heart, but like Mike, they didn’t know her real history. They didn’t know why it was imperative that she stay alone.

  Sienna knew Carson had stayed through her second dance. He didn’t get up right away as usual. Did he think she was going to come out and talk with him again?

  She knew he was gone when she finally left for the night, because she had peeked at the club from the one-way mirror in Asher’s office before leaving.

  Was she in high school, checking up on a guy?

  As the town car carried her home, Sienna found she couldn’t stop thinking about him. He was probably still up. Could she have coffee with him tomorrow?

  No one would have to know. She didn’t have to tell Mike she took his advice.

  Without thinking, she pulled out her phone and texted the number on the slip she’d tucked into her bag.

  Sienna: It’s Sienna. Got your note. I don’t typically do this, but coffee tomorrow may work.

  Before she could put her phone away, it pinged with an incoming text.

  Carson: Hi, Sienna. Didn’t expect to hear from you, but glad. Coffee sounds good. Where? When? You name it.

  Her heart in her throat, Sienna enjoyed a quick back and forth with him as she broke another of her own rules.

  Sienna: Canyon Coffee in Henderson? 1 p.m.?

  Carson: Meet you there?

  Sienna: Yes.

  Carson: Looking forward.

  Once the plan was set, buyer’s remorse immediately set in.

  Oh God, I’ve done it.

  As the bright lights of the Strip faded away and suburban Las Vegas passed by her window, Sienna tried to calm her nerves. Perhaps the sexual hype of the club clouded her judgment? Surely, the serenity of her neighborhood with its perfectly manicured rock gardens and well-lit porches would give her a better perspective. She looked out the darkened window, unsure of exactly what time it was, but caught sight of the moon hanging in the black velvet sky over the distant desert. She leaned back into the soft seat and stared at it as her thoughts whirled.

  The problem was, she wasn’t strong enough to resist the desire and urge to connect intimately with someone else. Her heart and her body had another plan, and somehow she had to get a handle on it all.

  She would have coffee with Carson, and give the curiosity a chance to bleed out of her system. Afterward she would go away with Asher for a day or two, and then she’d be ready to move forward on her own, just as she had been doing for years.

  The fact she was an adult star scared her less than getting attached to a man. The adult entertainment world was a place the only other community she’d ever known shied away from, ignored, and pretended as if they weren’t even part of the same secular space. The two universes would never collide. She was safe in the little web she’d spun for herself.

  But she wasn’t safe opening up her heart.

  Sadly, Sienna arrived home before she knew it, having ignored Simon for the entire ride. As he opened her door, held her hand as she exited into the chilly evening air, and walked her all the way up the narrow path lined with tiny pebbles, she felt bad. She shut the door behind her, the lock clicking into place, and made a mental note to make it up to him later in the week with some cookies. Getting her priorities straight was more important.

  A short while later as she slipped into her nightly bath, letting the water warm her skin, Sienna felt solid in her resolve. One cup of coffee and she’d be done with Carson. An hour of mindless adult chatter would ease her ache for the intimacy missing in her life, and then she could continue to move forward with the plan she had set for herself a long time ago.

  Even as her brain worked overtime, trying to convince her heart that this tactic was the right one, the rest of her body tingled, remembering how it had pulsed earlier.

  The feeling radiating through her was something she couldn’t identify. Lust? Desire? It had been years since she’d been intimate with a man, and the only one she had been with did nothing to satisfy her. Which explained why, at the moment, she was having trouble pinpointing why her body was so heated with physical need.

  Since arriving in Vegas, Sienna learned all there was to know about sex, acting sensual, playing up the more naughty ideas, and how to please herself. She even had a vibrator. Growing up, Lila didn’t even know something as miraculous as a vibrator existed. When Penelope gave Sienna one as a gift, she was mystified, but after a few times experimenting with it, she was sold.

  Taking care of herself with the tiny little “pocket rocket” was the only sexual pleasure she had ever had. Sad that it was at the effort of her own hands and a little battery-operated friend.

  She was pretty sure it would be different with a real, live man, but since that wasn’t a reality, Sienna had figured out to take care of her own body’s needs. Now it suddenly didn’t seem enough.

  As her hand slipped into the tub and ran along her soft heat, she couldn’t help but think of Carson.

  She’d never touched herself or gotten off while thinking of a specific man before; no one had attracted her like that. But since she worked in the sex industry, she needed a release after breathing the sexually charged air at the club, so she took care of herself.

  Allowing herself to feel some sort of pleasure was a big step for Lila. She’d been raised to service a man in his release and making babies. Never once had she thought about her own body and its needs when growing up.

  Even now as she took care of feeling good, it wasn’t the kind of multicolored fireworks Sienna had heard other women talk about around the Tunnel.

  It just took the edge off.

  But at the moment, her own finger was deep inside herself, the palm of her hand hitting her most sensitive spot, her mind on Carson, it wasn’t even beginning to take the edge off.

  No man had ever captured her attention enough to warrant what she was doing with him solely in mind.

  Thinking of his broad shoulders, his dimple, and the glimpse she’d had of his tattoo, shivers burst through Sienna as her orgasm hit, and she wanted to do it all over again.

  She wanted to push her fingers deeper, increase the pressure where she needed it most, and feel herself explode to thoughts of it bein
g Carson’s hand strumming her.

  This thought shocked her to her core, and she froze. She was in trouble, deep trouble, because her plan to stay safe was based on not getting attached to a man. She further reminded herself of this as she stepped out of the tub and dried off, then put on her silky camisole and pajama bottoms.

  Her reminders were fleeting because all it took was the soft feel of the silk on her raised nipples to cause her thoughts to move immediately back to Carson.

  His hands on my nipples, pulling them, then putting his tongue on them. That’s what I want.

  Despite being worn out from the emotional roller coaster of her day, Sienna thought sleep would elude her as she crawled into bed with her rapid thoughts and ideas. With her body still humming from her orgasm, she drifted off quickly, though, to thoughts of more. More Carson.

  Unfortunately, her body wasn’t in agreement with her thinking. The Carson of her dreams was on top of her, his head buried between her legs, then sliding back up her body and plunging his hardness deep inside her.

  CARSON COULDN’T sleep when he got back to his room. She was all sizzling sex and natural beauty with something else he couldn’t put his finger on, and she had stood right next to him. Somehow over the last few weeks, Sienna Flower had become something more than an obsession for him.

  An addiction? He couldn’t stop going to the Tunnel, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to stop.

  The “dirty” dancer with sparkling eyes stole all his fantasies since he first saw her. Christ, he had turned down a night of hot, no-strings-attached sex with Lucinda the night before because he couldn’t get Sienna out of his head.

  Tonight when she came over to him, he didn’t even know what to say. He lost his words over a woman, which was about as unusual as Sienna walking the club floor on a weekend night.

  Actually, fucking rare, as in it never happened to him. Ever. And from what everyone said, Sienna Flower never walked the floor on Fridays, and she definitely didn’t approach patrons alone.

  Yet she had walked right out into the crowd and stopped at his table, waiting for him to say something, make the first move. And he simply said, “Hi.”

  Smooth. Real smooth moves, idiot.

  Carson had really wanted to ask her to dinner. Somewhere nice. Go to a quiet place and stare at her. Have her all to himself, not in a room full of men who were all fantasizing about her. He wanted her to have only eyes for him while sharing cocktails, and then ravage her afterward.

  Fucking ravage her. Every inch of her.

  What did all this mean? Did he want to date her? Have a relationship with her?

  She’s a stripper. She takes off her clothes for money. And I don’t date.

  Christ, he was hard just thinking about her standing next to his table, leaning up against the chair. He had never wished to be a damn chair before in his life. Her little nightie-thing with the pink thong peeking through it had controlled his thoughts from the second she walked up next to the empty seat at his table. He’d never wanted to touch a woman so badly, and he couldn’t stop thinking about who else had touched her.

  He needed to forget about who else had touched her, because the thought made Carson want to kill them.

  What the hell was he thinking? How could he become addicted to a stripper? Let alone, ask her out to coffee on a little slip of paper like he was in high school? Fucking fool.

  He was a good-looking dude; he knew that. He didn’t need to pay someone to fuck him, but she didn’t have sex with men for money. She made an honest living stripping.

  This was what was rolling through his head when the text came through. He could tell she was obviously on edge with her curt text message, but he was still happy as all fuck to get it. He’d bet that when she sent the text, she probably hoped he wouldn’t reply. Oh, but he did.

  Carson was ex-FBI and he knew how to read a person. He knew that if he didn’t respond quickly to her text, there would be no second chance with Sienna. He knew enough from watching Sienna dance (and googling her) that she was a loner, stayed to herself, and let no one in close. But she was texting him.

  I am going to get her in bed and fuck her right out of my system.

  Then he was going to wrap up his current case, spend some time in the Bahamas, and come back and only take well-vetted jobs. He’d agreed to coffee with Sienna, but in reality wanted much more. And he was unsure about whether he could get it.

  Do I really want her?

  And if I have her, will I be able to let her go?

  The plan was set to meet the next day, and now Carson was even further away from sleep as he lay on his king-sized hotel bed. His hand roamed down his own abdomen and he gripped himself hard. For a man who prided himself on his lasting power, it didn’t take long to get himself off with his own hand.

  Like an adolescent male opening up a nudie magazine for the first time, Carson grasped his dick and pumped his hand up and down his shaft, thinking of the one and only woman he’d been able to conjure up in the last few weeks.

  He wasn’t ashamed of taking himself to pleasure. He was a hot-blooded male with a pretty large sexual appetite, and he’d been watching Sienna Flower week in and week out with very little release.

  Taking himself over the edge had recently become his greatest pastime with a mental Rolodex of images of Sienna onstage, but it was doing less and less when it came to his sexual hunger. The more he jerked himself off, the greater the need he felt to sink deep inside the woman he only recently began to think of as more than sexual eye candy.

  His palm was working fast and rough on his dick, and before he could control himself, he came all over his hand to the mental images of a mouth-watering and dick-hardening adult dancer.

  When he stepped into the shower to clean up, his dick was rock hard again. The only choice he had was to lean up against the wall and rub another one out, or turn the water temperature freezing cold.

  Leaning up against the tile in the shower with the hot water beating down his back, Carson wrapped his hand around himself for the second time that evening. This was getting to be ridiculous. He wasn’t really that big a fan of beating off, but something about Sienna and her eyes pulled him in…all the way in.

  He didn’t want to go down to the bar and seek the company of someone else. He wanted her. Only her. This was definitely a first.

  After relieving himself twice, Carson tossed and turned for a few hours before getting up and working on his current case a little.

  He called back east, where he knew some of his contacts would be hard at work already. He pressed the speed dial on his phone for Rich, a fellow PI, and didn’t bother to say hello when he answered.

  “You ever work with cults? People you just don’t get? Maybe don’t even want to get? That’s what I got going on here in hell. Talk to me.”

  Rich chuckled. “Hello to you, Carson, too. Yeah, I worked with some people out toward the Amish community. Fuck, they’re weird, but those psychos were rolling in the dough. Made it worth my while.”

  Carson scratched his head, messing his hair while thinking of what he wanted to say next. “Starting to think my recent case with my very own sect of weirdness is not worth my while. Not only is it a huge time suck with no end in sight, but the shit is fucking with my head, making me do things I’d never ordinarily do. Like date.”

  “Uh, buddy, what do you want to do? Talk like we’re high school chicks going to the prom? No way.” Rich snorted. “As for your case, run it by the big dogs at the Bureau.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Nah. Too early to admit defeat and ask for their help. Thanks, Rich. You’ve been a dreamboat. Remind me to call Ray next time.”

  Rich laughed good-naturedly, then disconnected the call.

  Carson’s zigzag thinking moved to how he’d acted like a teenage boy the night before, and he decided to do something to get himself in check. How many times could he masturbate? He was going to get calluses on his hand and his cock.

  So he hit
the hotel workout room with a vengeance. He went for double his usual workout, grabbed a protein drink, and was shocked when he wasn’t one bit exhausted. He was practically buzzing with energy.

  In an effort to kill time and his raging hard-on, Carson decided to do some more work until it was time to meet Sienna. He was starting to despise his current case, and looking it over was like dumping a bucket of cold water on his erection. He reviewed the notes he’d made when he initially met with his client.

  Call the big dogs? No way in hell.

  Originally, he’d thought this was going to be a cake case. Find missing person, deliver to family, collect money, and move on. Instead, he wasn’t one bit closer to finding the victim.

  But was the person really a victim? Or were they just seeking a different life than the fucking cult family who’d hired him?

  He needed to make a visit back east to collect more details. What they gave him was shit, and he was starting to think he’d been set up. He had the strangest feeling that someone, a third party, was planting information in their minds, leading them on, and screwing with his investigation.

  They were wasting their money and his time. Time he could be spending watching Sienna.

  Noon approached quickly as Carson was deep in thought over his next course of action in his current assignment. Sunday night, he planned to start researching what he wanted to do next. Monday, he would go back east and make arrangements to see the client. He couldn’t call them now; that would be a waste of time. They wouldn’t answer on their weekend.

  For now, Carson decided to put the missing person to rest, get ready to meet the woman of his fantasies, and desperately try to convince himself he was making a stupid mistake.

  He hoped that gorging on her would get her off his mind.

  Yeah, right. As if she’s going to just fuck me at the coffee shop.

  Saturday

  SIENNA WOKE up sweaty and restless, itching for the dreams to be reality.