Offensive Behavior

She took a breath, he really was a good-looking guy, and not drunk, not sick, he was so much more appealing, so the idea of him in a blindfold, at her mercy, hmm. “You won’t look?” She glanced at her trainers, splashed with rain. It was ridiculous.

“You know where I live,” he said with an indignant huff.

She looked him up and down and failed at making the gesture snarky like Melinda had. He was tall, lean, with wide shoulders and a stance that said go around me I’m not moving. “You don’t think you’re safe from me?”

He lowered his chin. “I’m not the one who went all Black Widow in the alley.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. Reid kept smiling and they were both getting wet.

He pushed dark hair away from his face. “The way out of this is to let me buy you supper, breakfast, coffee, whatever.”

She’d had worse offers, from less interesting men. And he really had bent himself into a pretzel over this.

“Come on, Lux. You don’t ever have to see me again after this.”

“Promise?” He’d better keep that promise, because liking him might become a problem.

He put a large spread hand to his chest. “Cross my pickled heart.”

He did have a sense of humor.

She got in the SUV and Reid squished in beside her, his thigh aligned with hers, his arm over the back of the seat to make more room. Her shoulder was wedged against his chest and it didn’t make her feel uncomfortable. She thought about him wearing a blindfold all the way to the diner, and she dried her rain-wet clothes from the inside out.

SEVEN

Reid didn’t have to say much, the place was

buzzing, the women kept up the chatter, the food was good, and he was genuinely hungry for the first time since he’d been sick. He sat between Vi and Lavinia. Cinnamon and the new dancer, Tiffany, the one who’d cried on stage, were opposite him with Lux between them. It was clear they didn’t want him to have their real names. It was equally clear he was only here as their wallet.

He tried not to stare at Lux, which logically should’ve been easier than when she’d stood in front of him wearing not much at all, but he’d felt the warmth of her body from rib to hip and all along his thigh in the car and there was no getting away from the fact his obsession with her had exploded into full-scale ambition.

She had a gray hoodie on with jeans, not a lick of makeup on her face. It was positively church on Sunday in comparison to her usual look. The only skin she showed was at her face, neck and hands, but still he did a slack job schooling his eyes, and then she unzipped her hoodie and revealed a scoop-neck tank and he gave up trying not to look at her.

He liked looking at her no matter what she wore, and what did it matter? This wasn’t work, he didn’t have to hold himself apart. The women knew he’d sent the flowers, and had been a dickhead in the alley, and he’d keep his promise, thwart his own ambition, and never see Lux again after he sent everyone home in the car.

The one mystery, if he put aside the overwhelming desire to know what Lux’s skin felt like under his palm, what it might be like to touch her shiny hair, run his finger over the peaked bow of her full top lip, was why she hadn’t told the others how she’d saved his sick sorry self from being rolled on the street or picked up for vagrancy.

Curious that.

Why would she do that?

“Aren’t you going to ask why we’re strippers?” asked Lavinia.

He wasn’t. He intended to watch Lux and construe increasingly more distracting fantasies of them together in his head, like holding her hand, making her smile, kissing her, rubbing his hands over her naked body, so he didn’t pick up the subtlety until it was too late.

“Why are you all strippers?” he said.

Mass-scale grumbling ensued. He wasn’t supposed to ask that. Shit. Lux met his eyes with her patented kiss-off look. Up close and casual like this when it couldn’t be construed as part of her act, he didn’t like it one bit. And he didn’t like the disapproval either.

“Ah, none of that. You’re not strippers, but why the hell not? You’re more than halfway there, why not own it?” It was the same logic he’d used at Plus. Halfway good was never good enough. To succeed you had to commit one hundred percent, even when that went against common sense and collected wisdom.

“Wow,” said Cinnamon. “I’m a pole dancer because one day I’m going to be a chiropractor and not crippled with debt when I get there. You do know what a stripper does?”

Interesting, they expected him to judge them poorly for what they did. “Earns more than you guys. Works in better clubs. Gets to become a debt-free chiropractor a whole lot quicker.”

“Takes her clothes off for money,” said Lavinia. “Let’s men touch her. Gives lap dances.”

“None of that is a crime. It’s a choice. It’s an art. It’s an industry.”