“We’re not having a threesome,” Rachel countered. “Especially not with your exes.”
“All right, all right.” Zack said, gesturing to her phone. “Start swiping so we can see what kind of hotties are out there. Juuust for you.”
“You know most of these hotties are going to be men, right?”
“Yeah? So?”
“You’re seriously okay with me going out with a guy while fooling around with you?”
“You’re the one who keeps saying we’re not serious. Keeping it open.” Zack sucked the lemon Rachel had pulled out of her drink. He tossed the rind onto their shared plate of breadsticks. “As long as you’re cool with me going out with other women, I’m cool.”
Rachel would see about that.
“What about him?” She showed him one of the first men to show up in her app. Same age as them, brown hair, dark eyes, and a sweet Doberman pup nipping at his heels. “Jeff looks hot to smash.”
“Swipe left. He looks like the kind of guy who looks up girls’ skirts.”
“Ew.” Rachel turned her phone the other way. “What makes you say that?”
“I went to college with a guy named Jeff who liked dogs and did just that.”
“I don’t think it’s the same guy.”
“Doesn’t matter. Skirt flippers.”
“Got it. Every Jeff on Earth is looking up women’s skirts.”
“No, just the ones who also like dogs.”
Sighing, Rachel swiped left.
So it went for fifteen minutes. Rachel was too buzzed to properly read people’s profiles and became the most superficial woman when she only went by pictures. Beside her, Zack set up his own dating profile, swearing that no man had ever looked sexier in his selfies.
He wasn’t wrong. What was it about certain people that made them the most photogenic assholes on the planet? Zack could be wearing a leotard and passed out drunk on a frat room floor and still look like a rock-hard stud ready to seduce every woman he came across. It wasn’t fair. Rachel had dug deep into her older photos to find one where she wasn’t so bloated that she wanted to heave. She had settled on a photo of her in a fluffy black sweater and smiling at someone in front of her. Zack had given his thumbs up and decided she needed to add the picture of her standing in front of the Tokyo Tower. “People love swiping on others who look well-traveled.” He had added about ten flags to his profile. Were they countries he had been to, or countries he had yet to go to?
“Know what would be awesome right now?” Rachel asked, both elbows on the table. “Strip club. I wanna go see some titties.”
“The can of worms have been opened.” Zack put his phone down. “All you can think about is women now. God send a prayer circle for me to have a chance with you again now that you’ve remembered that women exist.”
“What? Don’t you wanna go to a strip club?” Zack seemed like the kind of guy who would live in one if given the chance. “Don’t tell me you don’t have your favorite place here.”
“I do.” Zack folded his arms on the table. “I’ve also slept with two of the women working there and maaaay have started a feud between them.”
“Sheesh. You would.”
“If it’s something hot you wanna see…” Zack sucked in his cheeks while he looked around the bar. “I know a very exclusive place willing to give us temp memberships.”
Rachel gave him a dubious look. “Is that so? How exclusive are we talking about?”
“Exclusive enough that we would need my name to get us in.”
Sometimes Rachel forgot that Zack was the son of one of the richest men she had ever met. Granted, it was an awkward meeting, but Feldman Steel was worth tens of billions of dollars. The Feldmans themselves were worth only a fraction of that, but a fraction of tens of billions was still…
An easy few billion.
And they’re old ass money to boot. Maybe one of the oldest money families still around. Not that Rachel would claim to know any of the other families around there. She wasn’t even a native to the city. Nor did she read trash rags or give clickbait articles the time of day. They could be surrounded by local millionaires right now and she would have no idea.
She admitted that the thought of going to a club exclusive enough to need Zack’s name appealed to her.
“What about a strip club made you think about this place?”
“Baby, there is a place in this city we could go to if you want to see the most expensive tits in America. We’re talking Grade A,” he clicked his tongue and made an OK sign with his forefinger and thumb, “Daddy Warbucks graduation present to his little girl boobage.”
“So… Annie’s boobs?”
“What?”
“Daddy Warbucks’s little girl was Annie.”
“Yeah. Sure. Whatever. Her tits.” Zack shrugged. “You wanna go or not?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“All right.” Zack pulled out his phone. “Let me make a few calls while we go home and change.”
“Change?”
“We ain’t getting’ in dressed like this.” Zack glanced at her, smiling. “I have been waiting for this moment, Rachel Taylor.”
She closed her dating app and put her phone away. “What moment?”
“The moment I put you in a dress of my choosing.”
That sounded ominous enough to give Rachel the shivers. Somehow, she was completely complacent with that answer. It was probably the booze.
Too bad she didn’t start drinking more right there.
***
Rachel would have never guessed that one of the buildings she walked by every day housed one of the most secluded, exclusive, and heavily guarded clubs in New England.
She didn’t catch the name of it on their way there. She was too busy pulling down the skirt of the slinky black dress Zack happened to have on standby in his closet. Whose dress is this? She had to admit, though, that it fit her rather well. The skirt was the perfect length, hugging her thighs and falling high above her knees. At her modest height, most skirts either tripped up her feet or frumpily made her look much more modest than she would ever describe herself. There was also plenty of room for her chest and her shoulders. This must be tailor made! Or at least had enough adjustments to take a basic dress and give it enough room to make dear Rachel stand out. The only things that didn’t quite fit was the loose waistline and the baggy back area. My ass isn’t big enough for this dress… Zack had come to her rescue again, expertly pinning it as if he personally adjusted his dates’ dresses every day. He didn’t have sisters. His mom didn’t seem the type of woman to enlist her youngest son to help her with wardrobe malfunctions. So what gave? Previous girlfriend experience? Seriously, whose dress was this?
Once they stepped out of the back of the cab Zack insisted on taking – and what a gander he was in his three piece suit that was more bespoke than Sita’s wedding dress – a bouncer wearing sunglasses and a permanent frown stepped forward, speaking into the discreet headset wrapped around his face.
“Mr. Feldman?”
“Yes. That’s me.”
“Right this way, please.”
Rachel didn’t ask about anything she was told to do or where she was taken. For once they went down a flight of stairs and passed through a thick, metal doorway, they were swept up in an endless barrage of men and women in black uniforms making sure nobody saw them as they went through a front hallway.
Zack wasn’t a formal member of this establishment, and Rachel was a nobody. He had used his name to get them a reservation for a guest pass, but that meant both he and Rachel had to sign a stack of NDAs and other legally bound statements that freed the club of certain liabilities. Rachel didn’t look at them. Zack wasn’t. He signed his name so quickly that she almost couldn’t keep up while a check girl offered to take their coats and jackets.
“This is Tatiana.” The hostess at the front desk gestured to a svelte young woman with straight brown hair and smoky eyes. She instantly flashed the guests a tantalizing smile. “She’ll be your personal guide for tonight.”
“I’m looking forward to it.” She looked Zack up and down in his suit. A surge of jealousy that Rachel had not been anticipating almost choked her out.
Then Tatiana looked her up and down, still grinning. I feel… like I was mentally undressed by her eyes!
“Right this way. I know exactly where to seat you two.”
Rachel had picked up enough hints to guess what kind of club this was. What she could not have anticipated, however, was the scale of what she was about to see on a Friday night.
She expected a quiet lounge built around the promises of carnal pleasure. Personal strippers who danced on tables. Scantily clad waitresses flirting for more tips. Male guests, both stag and with their female partners, being catered to everywhere they turned. If this place was truly for the upper echelon of society, then maybe there would be under-the-table sexual services provided as long as the house didn’t officially hear about it.
Rachel was right about that. Again, though, the scale was completely lost on her until Tatiana led them through a final pair of doors and into a large, thumping club full of family heirlooms and three-piece suits crafted by nameless European families that went back hundreds of generations. Italian. French. British. Norwegian.