The more time that passed without Xander collecting on his favor, the more nervous I became about what exactly it would entail. That whole incident with Trixie still terrified me, as did Dee’s conversation with me in the parking lot. It had been nearly two weeks since I’d witnessed Xander’s aggression with Trixie, and the shift in her fortunes since then had been extreme. She’d been moved from center stage to left, and her vanity station had been relocated to the end. Dee was getting shifts on center now, and Candy seemed to be back in Xander’s good graces again.
I’d been seeking out Chris as much as I could lately, even though he was worried about my lack of sleep. My feelings for him had become like weeds, growing faster than I could contain them. I should’ve been protecting my heart instead of trying to hand it over so it could be crushed later.
So tonight, instead of pushing him to talk about whatever was making him hurt, I let him have what he wanted: an escape. I could be that.
I was exactly that every night I worked in the club. I was my customers’ escape from life, from the wives who ignored them, or from the girlfriends who didn’t exist. I smiled and batted my eyelashes and pretended their lewd comments were funny.
Tonight I could easily be whatever Chris needed, and if that was naked and a distraction from the things outside of his control, so be it. Or that’s what I told myself as I pushed his boxers over his hips.
My clothing took a little longer to remove since I was fully dressed. Chris wasn’t as slow as usual, or gentle. There was an urgency in him I’d never experienced before. What he wouldn’t give me in words, he gave me in actions. Desperation leaked through, making him frantic as he pulled my shirt over my head and fought with the clasp on my bra.
“Fuck,” he groaned. “I just wanna get my hands on all of you.”
I brushed him away, taking care of the bra for him. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I opened my legs and welcomed him between them. He locked shaking fingers around the waistband of my jeans and paused, his expression clouding.
“You sure you’re okay with this?”
“With you wanting me?” I popped the button.
He lifted his gaze. “I fucking need you.”
I shivered at his tone, wishing it indicated a different kind of need—a sustained one that was more than physical. But I pushed the feelings down, locked them inside my aching heart, and released my zipper. “Then you should have me.”
He tugged, and I lifted my hips so he could take my jeans off, along with my panties. Yanking them free, he tossed them on the floor. His palms slid hard and heavy up the inside of my thighs, pushing them apart.
“I’m tryin’ so hard…” He caressed slick skin with his fingertips, then pushed in. Surprised, I arched into the touch. He usually took his time with foreplay, waiting until I was a total mess before he went ahead and gave me what I craved—or in this case what he needed.
Tonight there was nothing playful in him. He curled his fingers up, pumping into me as he reached for the nightstand with his free hand.
“We could go without,” I said softly.
He stilled, dark eyes meeting mine. A whirlwind of emotions passed through as I watched—lust, want, fear, and sadness among them. The briefest hesitation preceded a vigorous shake of his head. “No chance I’m screwing up your life like I do everyone else’s.”
There was so much weight in that statement, and it made me wish all over again that I could be more than just his escape. He grabbed the box of condoms, nearly crushing it in his fist. Turning it over, he dumped the contents on the bed; two packets fell out. I went for them, but he was faster.
“You come first,” he said, voice rough.
Dropping to his knees, he slid his free arm under me, pulling me to the edge. His mouth was hard, tongue laving, teeth nipping, fingers pumping furiously. The sensation was too much, too fast. The orgasm crashed over me, blanketing out sound and sight. I turned my head into my shoulder, biting down to stop my moan.
His fingers and mouth disappeared. The absence was a secondary shock to my system, and I pulsed around nothing on a whimper. I attempted to close my legs, but I met Chris’s hips as he rose up. I turned to look at him, confused as to why he’d stopped. His dark expression was almost sinister as he towered over me and tore open a condom. Rolling it down his thick shaft, he bent his knees, abs flexing, shoulders tight as he stroked over my still-sensitive clit. I shuddered, so he did it again.
“Does it feel good, Sarah?”
“Yes.” It was more sound than word.
A low noise followed as he entered me on a heavy thrust.
Still standing, Chris hooked his arms under my knees, resting my heels on his shoulders. And then he started to move. It wasn’t slow. It wasn’t gentle. But it was incredible. I wanted him to need me like this all the time, because in so many ways, this was how I felt about him. The ache in my chest when we’d been apart before would likely take over and ruin me if we were separated again.
His hands were tight on my hips, the angle creating sensations that overwhelmed, but couldn’t quite push me over the edge. When he sped up, I grabbed the sheets to hold myself in place.
He was too far away, the physical distance an echo of the emotional walls between us. For all the times I’d sought this intimacy with him, on this night he finally seemed to need me in the same way, even if it was only physically. I found his thigh with shaking fingertips. “Please.”
“What do you need, baby?”
“You. I need you.”
“What part?”
“All of you. Every part.”
He faltered for a second, his grip on my hips tightening further. I ran my palm up his forearm, over the cityscape, and tugged, urging him closer. With one knee on the bed, he leaned forward, going deeper.
The sound that came out of him was part fury, part lust. With my feet still on his shoulders, he bore down, his massive body positioned above me. My knees hit my chest and his mouth pressed hard against mine, tongue pushing past my lips, aggressive and dominating. Releasing my thigh from his grip, his fingers twined in the hair at the nape of my neck, holding my mouth to his as he went harder and moved faster.
“You gonna come again for me?” He nipped my bottom lip.
I breathed out a soft yes.
Any thread of civility evaporated. He was like blazing fire, untamed and all consuming. Eyes holding mine, his lip curled into a sneer. “I wanna hear it. None of this holding back shit you pull every fucking time. You think you can give me that? Let me know you like it when I make you come?”
Chris was a lot of things—rough around the edges, closed off, secretive, sensitive, stunningly gorgeous, attentive, affectionate. But one thing he had not been was demanding in bed. Until now.
Before this he’d always been careful with me to the point of reverence. He sweet-talked and teased; he went slow and made me feel like I was something precious. Whatever had happened tonight had caused a shift. I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad, but I liked it, even though it created conflict I wasn’t sure how to manage.
Instead of fighting the moan when the orgasm rushed me, Chris’s name tumbled out on a scream.
A low groan rumbled up from his chest, and words I couldn’t make out hissed through his gritted teeth on his final, deep thrust.
He collapsed on top of me, his legs still hanging off the bed. He shifted mine so they were no longer on his shoulders but beside his ribs. He breathed like he’d run a marathon, which wasn’t far off. It was the most unhinged sex we’d had since we started seeing each other. I’d be sore tomorrow, and I wouldn’t mind at all. I was a limp, boneless mass of complete satiety.
“Shit.” Chris pushed up on his arms, panic setting in. “That was way out of line.”
“What was way out of line?”
“I shouldn’t have fucked you like that.”
I ignored the twinge in my chest at his choice of words. To me it had been more than that. I placed a palm on his cheek, drawing his mou
th back down to mine. “I want you to need me like I need you.” The honesty was unintended.
Chris shuddered, and a dark sound passed over his lips. His kisses were soft, tentative and gentle. Almost apologetic.
I wanted this to bring us closer; I needed a way to bind us so he wouldn’t walk away when he realized I was weak and damaged, and that I’d fallen into a trap I couldn’t find a way out of. But sex was the only time he’d let me in, and now that it was over, I could sense the distance expanding between us.
Chris sat back slowly, his hands roamed over my thighs and stomach, eyes following the movement as if he were looking for signs of damage. He wouldn’t find any. Even at his least restrained, he was still a considerate—albeit intense—lover.
When he was done with his examination, he went to the bathroom to dispose of the condom. I slid under the covers and snuggled into the pillow. I must have dozed off in the few minutes he was gone, because the next thing I knew he was tucking me into his warm embrace. Chris’s apology was the last thing I heard before sleep claimed me.
* * *
I left Chris sprawled across his bed the next morning. He’d moved from his pillow to mine as soon as I’d rolled out of bed. Though I remained thoroughly satisfied by last night, our lack of conversation still didn’t sit well with me. Chris’s inability to let me in was an echo of my issue, a reminder of the emptiness that consumed so much of my life.
And I didn’t like it. Being closed out by him hurt. Not because I didn’t understand his motivation—I did. Maybe that was part of the problem. What I liked the least was that I’d resigned myself to being an escape for him rather willingly. I hadn’t fought to be the person he felt he could confide in.
We’d been doing this for months now, and keeping all these walls up was getting harder. At least for me. I wasn’t sure it was the same for Chris, and that scared me. I was certain he’d tell Lisa the whole story today at the shop, and I’d be left wondering exactly how much I had to push before he’d give me more of him, so I could give him more of me.
I didn’t want to keep secrets from him anymore, but I had no idea where I stood. I didn’t want to be his next Candy.
The tattoos and the danger, as well as that killer smile, might’ve been what drew me to him, but they weren’t what kept me around. In the beginning, his distance made mine easier to maintain, and that’s what gave me a sense of control, of invulnerability. Because as messed up as his life might’ve been, mine wasn’t a shining beacon of stability either.
My mother had always gone through men like underwear. She didn’t marry them, because she couldn’t. She was the woman on the side. Except now that she was in her forties and the plastic surgery needed touch ups, she wasn’t quite as appealing. The men who had willingly cheated on their wives with her were now looking for younger, less-used options—or women willing to engage in fringe activities that fed their baser, more reprehensible predilections, because their wives were too precious for that.
In a lot of ways, Mom was exactly like the dancers at the club who found ways to earn more money off the stage than on it. There was more of that going on at The Sanctuary than I’d first realized, and that scared me.
Anyway if I was honest with myself, I wasn’t much better than that. I used my body to make tuition money. Maybe I didn’t take off my clothes, but it wasn’t far away, especially now that Xander had me in his debt.
Hell, who was I to complain about Chris’s distance? I’d broken up with him once to protect my own. But now that I was weeks away from finishing my internship, and getting out of The Sanctuary for good looked more plausible, I wanted what I’d never had—what my mother had never had: constancy. More than that, I wanted love.
Which was stupid. Because from the beginning I’d known Chris wasn’t a more kind of guy. We’d met at a strip club, for God’s sake. And his refusal to let me in, even after all this time, should’ve made that clear. But I still searched for a way to close the distance, though I feared it wasn’t possible.
I dressed in the bathroom, putting on my gray pinstripe skirt and conservative white blouse. I felt like a fraud a lot of the time at Media Mogul, even though I loved what I did there, and I was good at it.
The people side of things was the most difficult for me. I was better at analysis, programming, and planning than social interaction. It had been the same in my classes. I’d forgo lunch with colleagues most days to work on projects, but I forced myself to get involved on occasion. I figured that was part of what I needed from the internship experience. I could look at statistics, numbers, and various marketing campaigns and figure out what worked and what didn’t, but making small talk with the other interns was painful.
I had nothing in common with most of them. I could tell they’d never dealt with poverty. They’d grown up in nice houses with nice cars, and even if their hundred thousand dollar’s worth of education amounted to nothing more than a framed degree on the wall, they wouldn’t have to worry about whether they could afford their next meal, or next month’s rent.
I understood the girls at The Sanctuary so much better, even though I didn’t engage with most of them either. I didn’t feel like I fit anywhere—except with Chris and his friends. We’d all fought to get out of the bad places we’d started in, and some of us still were.
So I kept my head down and worked my ass off at my internship. I put my energy into making an impression on the right people. And I didn’t care if that made me unpopular among my peers. Guys who felt slighted because I wasn’t interested in their version of a date weren’t my concern, even if it meant they considered me stuck up. In the end, they weren’t the ones who could give me a job.
That night I headed to The Sanctuary without stopping to see Chris. From the window of my apartment I could see he was working on a client, and he hadn’t responded to the message I’d sent earlier in the day. So I wasn’t going to push it. What had happened with his family was likely still plaguing him. I didn’t want to add to that stress, so I gave him space, even though it hurt to do it.
Despite drinking a pot of coffee before my shift, I was exhausted when I got to work. The caffeine only made me jittery and irritable.
Dee leaned against the jamb. Over the weekend private dances in the booths had become part of her routine after her shifts on center stage. It scared me how much had changed for her in such a short time.
“You look like hell,” she observed.
“Hi, Dee. It’s nice to see you. How was your day?”
She snorted. Her lip curled up in a lazy smile. “My day was shit. Night’s shaping up to be more of the same.”
“Aren’t you on center?”
“To start.” She checked over her shoulder. Lowering her voice she said, “Xander booked me a private party after. Some big business dicks comin’ in. He wants me to show ’em a good time.” A tremor made her hand unsteady as she picked at her fake nails. They had jeweled tips.
“What do you mean a private party? Like, in the booths?”
Dee shook her head. “In the private rooms. Xander says it’s real discreet and to keep it all quiet, so you can’t say anything to anyone.”
I thought back to our conversation in the parking lot, and the look on her face when she’d told me to stay where I was. I couldn’t imagine how Xander had worn her down, getting her to agree. Or maybe I could. He’d surely made it seem like a privilege. Like she was special.
“You said yes to this?”
Dee shrugged and looked behind her again. “I get two grand for an hour.”
That was a lot of money. That alone would cover rent and expenses for an entire month. But there was a different kind of price to pay for crossing that line.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
She laughed, but it was high and anxious. “It’s only an hour, right? How bad can it be? Plus Xander’ll give me lots of perks if I do a good job.” Her smiled faded. Her eyes were slightly unfocused as she pulled a pill bottle out of her purse an
d dropped it in my hand. “You look wrecked. This’ll help you get through the night.”
I read the label. “What is this?”
“It’s a prescription. It’ll help keep you alert.”
The name was familiar. I racked my brain as to why that would be. Then I remembered: one of the girls in my program had them. Prescribed to kids with attention deficit, the drug was used to calm them down and help them focus. It had the opposite effect on people without the disorder. It was like taking speed, making you hyper focused and able to stay up all night. It was great for cramming for an exam and popular among wealthy grad students. And it had the added benefit of being an appetite suppressant for girls looking to stay slim.
“You’re sure that’s what’s in the bottle?”
“Yeah. I take ’em sometimes when I don’t sleep so well.”
I held them out to her. I didn’t want this kind of thing in my possession, not when I’d managed to stay away from all the illegal substances floating around in this club. Just because it came from a doctor didn’t mean it was better. A drug problem was still a drug problem.
She shook her head. “Keep them. Xander’ll give me more if I ask. ’Specially after tonight.”
Grant called her name as he rounded the corner. His eyes passed over me as I dropped the bottle into my bag. I didn’t want to get Dee in trouble for giving them to me.
He pointed at the clock on the wall. “You better hustle if you plan to be out there on time.”
My shirt was unbuttoned, and I was shoeless. I rushed to put on the rest of my outfit, adjusting my skirt so it covered more instead of less. Grant turned his attention to Dee, pulling her aside, away from the vanity stations.
He skimmed her arms with gentle hands. “You okay, Dee Dee girl?”
She nodded, but the tremor in her hands showed the truth.
He stroked her cheek in a gesture that spoke of real intimacy, not placating. “You can change your mind.”
Fractures in Ink Page 14
