With one hand around the pole, Lola circled the stage. The gown would inhibit her, but she got the feeling Beau wouldn’t mind. The music was fast. She found a slower beat within it. She jumped, grabbed on and spun with one leg partially hooked around the pole. Angel and Golden sat on both sides of Beau. He was unblinking, unwavering in his attention. Even in the red haze, she saw the gleam in his eyes, the black shape of his bowtie. Her body rattled like a speaker with the music’s bass.
Facing Beau, she raised her arms behind her. She snaked down the metal, cool through the back of her dress, and back up. Beau stood suddenly and walked to the base of the stage. He took her calf and pressed his lips to the inside of her knee. His mouth left wet spots on her dress as he kissed up her thigh to her hip. He gripped her, nuzzling the fabric between her legs.
Lola’s breaths swelled from her stomach. She felt him—felt him there—acutely for the first time. God, it was unfair. He’d barely touched her and her will to fight him dissolved in seconds. She put one hand in his hair and pulled it with all the betrayal, shame and arousal she felt.
He looked up at her.
“Touching’s not permitted in here,” she said.
His smile was more than just crooked and sexy. For all her effort to hide, that smile told her he knew he had her. He turned and cleared both women from the room with a word.
He backed away to the sofa, and this time, Lola went to him. She pulled her dress up around her thighs. One knee went outside his hip and one stayed between his legs. She held on to the cushion behind his head. She was careful not to touch him as she danced over his lap, but now and then her skin would brush against the fabric of his tuxedo pants. When he looked as though he might touch her, she got up, pushed his knees apart. She let her hands wander over her body as she swayed her hips. She dipped a hand between her legs and slid the other up her neck.
Beau reached for her, but she stepped back and shook her head. “You can’t—”
“Come back here.” His level tone left no room for play. “Don’t deny me when I’m like this.”
When she was back at his knees, he took her wrist in one hand. “Kneel.”
She got on the floor.
“You’re all red,” he said.
“It’s the lighting.”
“No, it isn’t. You’re hot.” He let go of her and pressed his cold tumbler to the side of her neck. She sucked in a breath with the chill. Condensation trickled between her breasts. He lifted the glass to her lips. She tilted her head back and let the liquor run down her throat.
He set the drink aside and nodded at his lap. “Take it out,” he said quietly.
This was it. This was why she was here. She had wondered several times what exactly lay under his suit, what was the source of his unshakeable confidence—now she would know for sure. Hold it in her hand.
Her fingers were slow and shaky as she undid his fly. He lifted his hips for her to pull his pants down. Through his underwear, she pressed her palm against the bulging outline of him. His head fell back. She lifted the ends of his dress shirt, dragging her fingertips up the hard crevices of his stomach. His body expanded with each breath.
“Don’t tease me, Lola,” he said. “I want your red lips on me.”
There was new desperation in his voice that made Lola ache badly for him. And this deal—this promise—she’d already made it. Johnny, even, had made it. So she put a bullet through her guilt and gave Beau what he wanted.
She pulled him out, looking into his eyes while she took him in her mouth. He fisted her hair, then stroked it, then pulled it again. He thrust up, hitting the back of her throat. She tried to taste even more, wanting him deeper, wanting him to the last inch, but still he was too much, every bit as big and daunting as she’d suspected.
“Your mouth alone could ruin me.” She paused, unsure how he’d meant that, but he kept her going with a hand on her head. “Don’t stop,” he said. “I want to be ruined.”
With her tongue, she traced him—the ridge of his head, the veins of his thick shaft.
“You’re driving me to the edge,” he said. “I don’t know whether to come, or bend you over and finally take you.”
She became ravenous from his rumbling, suggestive words. He responded, pushing her down so he was crammed to her throat with every bob of her head. Her underwear dampened with the way he thoroughly fucked her mouth. With both his hands tight in her hair, he came. She gripped the red velvet cushion and swallowed everything.
There was calm in the eye of the chaos, in the labored breaths, the pounding music, the room, which had turned pink again sometime during it all. But while they looked at each other, anything else, including the regret she thought she should feel, faded into the background.
On impulse, Lola stretched up and kissed him on the mouth. He wouldn’t lower his head to meet her or move his arms from his sides. She pressed her hands down on his thighs, her breasts into his wall of a chest. His body breathed beneath her.
“How’d you know?” she asked. “How did you know I’d react like this?”
He seemed to stiffen under her. “It’s not even midnight,” he said. “We aren’t finished.”
“I know.”
He touched her cheek with his whole palm. “You’re burning up.”
She bit her lip. She could feel it too. “It’s a good thing.”
He helped her to her feet, and they left the room while it was blue.
“You’re supposed to tip them,” Lola remembered once they were outside again.
“It’s taken care of. They won’t be millionaires after this, but they’ve been well compensated.”
“Millionaire,” she repeated to herself. She still couldn’t wrap her head around it, and it’d be a while before she could. After tonight, she’d be a millionaire and all this would be over. The thought didn’t give her as much comfort as it once had.
* * *
In the car, driving down Sunset at a much easier speed, Beau asked Lola what she planned to do with the money.
“You already know,” she answered. “We’re buying Hey Joe.”
“I know what he wants. But what about you? You’re the one doing all the work.”
Lola balked. “It makes me feel cheap when you say that.”
“Believe me, sweetheart. You aren’t cheap.”
She shook her head and sighed up at the Lamborghini’s roof. “I want us to be happy and have a shot at a real future.”
“But what do you want for yourself?”
“That’s what I want. Making Johnny happy makes me happy.”