Love the Way You Lie (Stripped 1)

He doesn’t put my arousal on my body, not this time. Slowly, deliberately, he unbuckles his pants and pulls himself out. He’s as hard as I imagined. As big. As slick at the tip. He runs a fist down his length, mixing my arousal with his precum over his cock.

I can’t say anything, but I don’t have to. How do you want me? I know how he wants me, and I slide to the floor. The floor that’s cold and dusty and damp at the same time, unforgiving against my shins. I’m more comfortable here. Safer. Because this is for sale. And I have the upper hand now. Sex is a battlefield, and this concrete floor is my country to defend.

“What’s your name?” His voice is low—and desperate? That can’t be right. He doesn’t need anything from me. He could have gone to a bar. With that hard jaw and hard body, he would have had his pick. Any girl would have hopped on the back of the motorcycle I suspect he has. And yet he’s here.

He can pay for my mouth. He can even pay for my orgasms. He doesn’t get my name.

“Honey.”

He laughs, a little coarse, a little bitter. But his eyes, they understand. They’re almost soft, tender as they look down at me kneeling. “Pretty little liar.”

But when I lean forward to take him in my mouth, he pushes me away. He fists his cock, fucking himself, still slick from my pussy. He’s taking himself fast and hard—almost like a punishment.

He took his time with me, but not with himself. Now he races himself to the finish line, fist and hips at war until he tenses and comes, spilling into his own hand while I kneel before him and watch.

He collapses back onto the chair, still sprawled but truly relaxed now. Not tense or wary. Not carefully banked power like I felt before. Now he is an animal in repose, a lion spread across a rock, bathing in the sun—even if the rock is a creaking wooden chair, straining under his force. Even if the sun is the flicker of fluorescent lights from the edges of the velvet curtain. It’s still primal.

Still beautiful.

His eyes are closed. His head falls back.

And for some reason I almost tell him my name. I form it with my lips and tongue, but he can’t see. I don’t know why I’d ever tell him…except that I want someone to see me here. To know me here. So that I don’t have to feel alone.

But he isn’t here to know me. He isn’t here to save me either.

Alertness breathes into him again. His expression is sated and…grateful. “C’mere,” he says on a grunt.

And before I can do what he says, he lifts me into his lap. He tucks my legs over the side of his and kisses me—slow, languid swipes of his tongue against mine.

I push away from him, staggering back. I don’t have my balance yet, but it doesn’t matter. I shove aside the velvet curtain and run. He hasn’t paid me, but I don’t care.

“What the hell?” Blue asks, grabbing my arm.

But I break free and keep running. I don’t care what happens behind me. I don’t care about Kip or the fact that I’ll never see him again.

It’s better if I don’t.

I read my mother’s diary until the day she left. That’s how I knew about her affair with the guards. More than one, although it was the last man who got her killed. She thought she loved him.

And she was planning to leave my father.

In that diary I saw her ticket to Tanglewood, West Virginia. There were two words scrawled on the ticket—The Grand. I’d never heard of it then, but it became a kind of North Star for me. As a teenager I had to stay with my family.

And when I’d finally run, I’d known just where we’d go.

I just hadn’t known it was a strip club until I arrived.

Chapter Three

A stranger looks at me from the mirror.

Black thong and red lipstick. They’re my costume, but sometimes it feels like I don’t need them. I’ve been hiding long enough that it feels more natural than honesty. My green eyes and black hair and pale skin are a costume too. I use them to disguise myself when I strip—just another set of tits and ass. How deep does that costume go?

Is there anything underneath?

I’m not sure anymore.

Lola crosses the room toward me. I watch her in the mirror, even when she perches on my vanity table. She wears some kind of red-leather strap bodice that shows more skin than it covers. It looks sexy and almost alien. “What happened?” she asks.