Dear God, Jude Winslow is too fucking cute for his own good. Mix that with his happy-go-lucky attitude, and women fucking swoon for him.
I only wish the ridiculousness ended there.
The voice of the emcee comes over the sound system, closing out the dance and inviting Sunshine, Legs, and Heaven to leave the stage.
The woman I can only assume is Sunshine winks at Jude and scoops up the scraps of clothing she’s shed before leaving the stage on a seductive swing of her hips.
I take a deep sigh, but before I can finish, all the available air in the room escapes me.
“Next, we’ve got a special treat, a bachelor here to celebrate his last night of freedom.”
All the men in the room boo, and I whip my head toward an animated version of the corpse formerly known as my youngest brother.
“Jude, what did you do?”
“You can thank me later,” he says excitedly, just as two women appear at my sides and take me by the hands, pull me around to the side of the stage, and lead me up the stairs.
Oh, sweet Jesus.
“Let’s show him a really good time, girls,” the emcee continues, making the women laugh as Sunshine brings a chair out from backstage, sets it in the center of the platform, and shoves me down into it by the shoulder.
I can barely see my brothers at the edge of the stage thanks to the spotlight pointed in my eyes, but I’ve got to imagine both Jude and Ty are losing their minds.
When the first notes of “Cherry Pie” start up, though, I know I’m really in trouble. There’s not a strip club in existence that doesn’t use this song to its full advantage.
Sunshine is the first to straddle my lap and grab my shoulders as she swings her body back and forth. The other two women dance behind me, so I can’t see them, but I can feel the gyration of their bodies as they press up against me. I put my hands to my face, both in embarrassment and to keep them from accidentally touching anything, but Sunshine shakes her head in reprimand before licking her lips.
I can hear Ty’s holler despite the music. He’s that excited.
Leaning back, Sunshine wraps her legs around me and flips all the way to the floor to do some sort of walkover that ends in a split right in front of my brothers, and I almost breathe a sigh of relief. But another woman, this one a brunette, drops down in her place and takes my chin in her hand, and then pushes her breasts to my face before I get the chance.
I fight to breathe in the air pocket in between them, the smell of coconut body spray all but choking me.
My immediate feeling is one of guilt, for betraying my fiancée in some sick way, but I quickly quiet that to a dull roar by rationalizing that it is in no way my choice to be here, in this club, on this stage right now.
In fact, if someone weren’t tying my hands up behind my back at this very moment, I’d be making my getaway.
As it is, I’m attached to the chair now as the three of them work together to drag me toward the pole and set me up against it.
Sunshine uses my legs to climb, before jumping up to grab the pole and straddling her legs right in front of me. The tiny scrap of bright white fabric covering her vagina is like an airport beacon light, spinning around to alert the approaching traffic.
The brunette drops to her knees on the floor and pushes my legs apart, working to unbutton my pants.
“No, no,” I protest. “That’s okay—”
But the jolt of my zipper hitting its bottom end is all the punctuation I need to tell me I’m on this ride whether I want to be or not—and my baby brother Jude is the one who strapped me in.
How long can my mother really cry if I kill him? A month? Two, tops?
The brunette tugs my pants down over my hips while Sunshine and her other friend work together to put as many boobs in front of my face as humanly possible. Panic sets in when the climax of “Cherry Pie” builds, and the brunette grabs my boxer briefs, pulls them away from my body, and shoves the goddamn spike of her heel right through them, ripping them in two.
Holy. Shit.
I need to get out of here. Right. Now.
The crowd erupts again, and this time, it’s not even close to limited to my brothers. Everyone in the place is losing their fucking shit, and I’m trying not to have a stroke before the age of thirty. I’m also really fucking thankful that somehow the scraps of my boxers manage to keep my dick under wraps. Not to mention, that whole it-almost-got-impaled-by-a-stripper’s-heel thing.