Taking It Off Read online

  She was starting to get annoyed. “It does not. It has nothing to do with not enjoying that whole silly scene in there.”

  “I think it does. A lot of the women here find it sexy. They find it a turn-on to be able to live out in that room what they can’t at home—a fantasy man who is completely focused on them and their pleasure. But some of them don’t find it sexy. They come here for other reasons—to let down their inhibitions, to enjoy themselves with their friends without worrying about the impression they’re making on others, to take off the armor they habitually wear around all the men in their lives. It’s not about sex for them. It’s about shedding what normally restrains them. Even if you don’t find those guys sexy, why can’t you at least enjoy it for a different kind of release?”

  It was a serious question—not an insult or reproach—but she still felt strangely defensive. “I don’t have any impulse to shed restraints or inhibitions, and I don’t think there’s something wrong with me for not wanting that.”

  “I didn’t say anything was wrong with you. Just that maybe there’s a side of yourself that you haven’t gotten to know yet.”

  For some reason the way he said the words sent a little shiver down her spine.

  “Who are you, anyway?” she demanded, even more rattled than before but now having to struggle not to laugh at his bold nonchalance.

  “Matt Stokes.” He reached out for her hand, and she automatically returned the handshake, his fingers strong and warm as they wrapped around hers.

  He didn’t release her hand immediately, and she didn’t pull hers back.

  “Elizabeth,” she said.

  “I bet everyone calls you Elizabeth, don’t they? No one calls you Liz or Lizzie or Beth.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with that. Why do you think I’m judging you? It was just an observation. I wasn’t insulting you.”

  “Weren’t you?”

  “No. I wasn’t.” He was still holding her hand in his grip, and his eyes never left hers.

  Elizabeth suddenly felt a tremor of anxiety. This man was a stranger. She didn’t know anything about him. She shouldn’t be responding to him like this.

  She pulled her hand away.

  He didn’t make an effort to hold onto it. “If you’d occasionally indulge another side of yourself, you’d learn to enjoy what happens in there.” He gestured with his head toward the main room of the club, where the music and squeals had started up again.

  “I doubt it. There’s no part of me that would ever find all that humping and gyrating sexy.”

  “That’s because you’re only looking at this from one perspective. If you’d let go of some of your assumptions, you might surprise yourself.”

  “It’s ridiculous to think that all women are the same or that there’s something wrong with me for not liking all that stupid grinding. It’s not about letting go or loosening up. It’s about what actually does it for me. And that”—she waved a hand to indicate the whole performance—“doesn’t do it for me at all.”

  “Maybe.” He arched his eyebrows. “But I bet that if you came to this club twice a week for, say, a month, you’d find yourself really enjoying it. You’d want to keep coming back.”

  “I definitely would not.”

  “I think you would.”

  The man’s presumption was astonishing. She really shouldn’t be humoring him by having this argument at all.

  But she was undeniably enjoying the banter as much as she was enjoying his sexiness and the mystery around him.

  “I promise I wouldn’t. If I could even make it through a month of this, I’d be thrilled not to ever have to set foot in this building again.”

  “I think that’s a challenge, then.”

  “What’s a challenge?”

  “You visit this club twice a week for the next month, and we’ll see who’s right at the end of it.” There was a gleam of amusement in his eyes, but his face was otherwise perfectly sober.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I’m not kidding. I’m issuing a real challenge.”

  “What’s the bet, then?”

  “It’s not a bet. It’s a challenge. Whoever wins will get the satisfaction of being right. You claim to not be holding anything back. Here’s a way to prove it.”

  “I don’t want to come here again. I can barely make it through one evening.”

  “I should have known you wouldn’t want to accept a real challenge. You always play it safe, don’t you?”

  “You don’t know me at all.”

  “Then prove it.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “We’re open to the public on Thursdays and Saturdays.”

  “How will you even know if I keep coming back?”

  “I’ll be here. I’m here every night.”

  “Are you security or something?” For the first time since she’d initially seen him, she wondered what he was actually doing here, standing around in the back of a male strip club.

  “Something,” he replied. “So I’ll see you on Thursday, and we’ll see if you really can accept a challenge.”

  She started to reply, but he was walking away, summoned by one of the shirtless waiters.

  She watched him go, and she suddenly asked herself what the hell had gotten into her. Had she actually agreed to some sort of ridiculous game that would force her into coming back to this vulgar club twice a week for an entire month?

  She couldn’t imagine anything less appealing.

  Anything except admitting to this strange, sexy, arrogant man that he was right about her after all.

  —

  Matt Stokes tried—unsuccessfully—to keep from watching Elizabeth as she made her way back to her table.

  Everything was going smoothly tonight, and nothing needed his attention, so he didn’t actually try very hard to fight the instinct.

  She was gorgeous with that auburn hair, fair skin, and startlingly blue eyes. She wasn’t particularly small, but there was something about her that felt fragile, delicate, as if she were made of porcelain or crystal.

  She looked like she could break if treated too roughly, so it was ironic that he wanted to fuck her hard.

  “Who is that?” Robbie asked, evidently noticing his preoccupation.

  Robbie—a grizzled man with a perpetually laid-back manner and a keen eye for human behavior—was the bartender and had been with the club since Matt’s father opened it thirty years ago.

  Matt raised his eyebrows as he turned away from where Elizabeth was laughing, a little self-consciously, with her friends. “A customer. I was talking to her out front.”

  “Why?”

  “Bored.”

  Robbie gave a mild snort.

  Matt didn’t bother to ask the source of his amusement. “She’s interesting.”

  “I thought customers were off-limits.”

  “They are.”

  “Then why are you looking at her like she’s something good to eat?”

  Matt liked that idea. He liked that idea a lot. With effort, he dragged his thoughts away from that particular fantasy. “Looking is harmless enough.”

  Robbie finished the three cosmopolitans he was mixing—it was the drink he made most often—and gave Matt a slow head shake. “That one is way out of your league.”

  Matt’s shoulders stiffened slightly. “I didn’t realize I had a league.”

  “Of course you do. You and I—we don’t get girls like that.”

  It was probably true. Elizabeth’s world was so far from Matt’s that he could hardly imagine them existing in the same space. He’d lived hard. Nothing in his life had ever come easy, and he hadn’t been afraid to take shortcuts or get his hands dirty. She’d probably shudder in disgust if she ever encountered his mother. But for some reason Robbie’s words felt like more of a challenge than a discouragement.

  He was good with women. He’d never had trouble getting the women he wanted into bed. There was no
reason Elizabeth should be different.

  Of course, if she didn’t come back to the club, he’d likely never see her again.

  He had to do something to close the deal—to intrigue or excite her enough to return, to follow through on the challenge.

  He suddenly knew what he needed to do.

  “You’ve got an idea,” Robbie said, evidently reading something in his expression.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Matt cleared his throat and tried to recall if he had anything available to change into. “I’m going to take the stage.”

  —

  Elizabeth wanted this evening to end soon so she could be alone at home and think through her conversation with Matt. It was silly for her to be so attracted to and intrigued by him, since she had no idea who he even was. But her mind was whirling from the conversation, and she felt alive in a way she hadn’t in a really long time.

  She was seriously considering coming back here on Thursday so she could see him again.

  At the moment, however, she was getting tired of holding on to her smile and laughing whenever one of her friends squealed with excitement over some crass move made by one or another of the performers.

  Maybe Matt was right. Maybe they didn’t really find all of it sexy. Maybe they were just having fun.

  It just wasn’t the way Elizabeth was used to having fun.

  She was about to plead tiredness so she could finally leave—it was almost midnight now and it felt like they’d been here forever—when the announcer came on and said they had a special treat tonight.

  She couldn’t even hear the name of the performer being introduced because the screams in the room were suddenly deafening.

  Elizabeth looked over to Melissa, who was clapping her hands, clearly excited about whatever was about to happen.

  Seeing her questioning look, Melissa leaned over and shouted in her ear, “He owns the club. He never dances anymore. I can’t believe we got so lucky!”

  The lights flickered a few times and then went dark, and a blue spotlight searched the room until it finally landed on the stage, at the feet of a man who must have walked on in the dark.

  There was a loud response from the women as the light slowly climbed his body, accompanied by a strong, slow drum line of music Elizabeth didn’t recognize.

  It was crazy, but she actually felt her heartbeat accelerate. It was well staged, if even she was holding her breath waiting for the light to reach the man’s face.

  He wasn’t dressed in an obvious costume like all the other strippers. He wore dark trousers, a white dress shirt, untucked, and a loosened tie, like a businessman after a long day at work.

  That look was a lot more attractive to her than skintight bikini briefs or chaps and a cowboy hat.

  He looked real. Natural. Like an actual man in her life might look.

  She wanted to see his face.

  Just before the light reached his chin, it blacked out and the music intensified. Instead of the upbeat popular songs used in all the other routines, this was one she didn’t know.

  It sounded like old jazz—strong, slow, and seductive. She was just getting a feel for the music when the three white spotlights illuminated and made slow trails from different directions to land on the man onstage.

  Her gasp was hopelessly drowned in the exuberant screams of the women around her at the sight of his face.

  It was Matt Stokes. Whom she’d been talking to earlier.

  Never once had she dreamed that he was actually a performer, a dancer, a male stripper.

  Evidently he owned the club.

  She was too distracted to think through this new reality. She couldn’t keep her eyes away from the man on the stage. He wasn’t doing the full-body rolls and ass shakes that she’d found so silly-looking earlier. He wasn’t even really dancing. He struck some poses—which seemed to get the loudest reaction from the crowd—but what Elizabeth found more appealing was the slow, sensual way he was moving.

  It wasn’t vulgar and in-your-face. At least it didn’t feel that way as she watched him.

  He was slowly removing his clothes—his tie, his belt, his shirt. Instead of the elaborate props used in the other performances, he had nothing but a chair.

  And he touched the chair like a lover.

  It was ridiculous—utterly ridiculous—because from an objective point of view he wasn’t moving in all that different a way than any of the other men—but she couldn’t look away. She didn’t want to look away. Her cheeks were flushed and her breath was coming out quickly, and the squeals around her faded into nothing as she was aware of nothing but him.

  He wasn’t meeting her eyes. He moved around the stage, focusing his attention on various women, although he didn’t come out into the audience or let anyone touch him. He never looked in her direction at all, and Elizabeth started to feel ignored—a little rejected. They’d talked earlier. He’d seemed interested in her, at least enough to issue the challenge.

  The least he could do was acknowledge her existence.

  The music got louder and more intense, but it was just as slow and seductive as before, adding to the ambience of the dim lights and Matt’s sensual moves.

  His body was gorgeous—long limbs, perfectly toned muscle development, and artistic tattoos that ran from his arms up over his shoulders—neither overblown nor overly polished. She was holding her breath when he took hold of his trousers. They weren’t tear-aways, like all the other guys’, but he didn’t pull them down his legs quickly. He let them fall so leisurely that Elizabeth found herself leaning forward, straining to see what was beneath.

  He wore black boxer briefs, and her eyes lowered uncontrollably to the impressive bulge she could see there.

  Impressive, yes, but that looked real too.

  He finally reached the part of the stage that was directly facing her table. He was moving against the chair now, like it was a woman’s body.

  And she wanted it to be her body.

  He met her eyes then, at last, and she held the hot gaze for a long time. She could swear that he knew exactly what she was thinking. She tried to school her face—act nonchalant and relaxed about the whole thing so he wouldn’t think he’d scored a victory.

  But he had.

  Because no matter how stupid and vulgar she’d found most of the evening’s performances, she didn’t feel the same about this one. About Matt.

  She found it sexy. She found him sexy.

  Which meant she might not be as immune to his challenge as she’d initially believed.

  Chapter 2

  On Thursday afternoon Matt leaned into the back of his SUV and looped the handles of ten plastic grocery bags over his wrists—five in each hand.

  A clenched knot in his gut made him feel rather sick as he walked around the building to the door of his mother’s small apartment. The neighborhood and amenities weren’t as nice as the ones in the apartment he’d originally picked out for her, but she’d gotten thrown out of her old building and so had to move into this shabbier one, in an area of the city that wasn’t as pleasant.

  If he hadn’t paid the rent himself, she would almost certainly have ended up living on the street.

  He knocked before he let himself in. He had a key, but he didn’t always need one—since half the time she forgot to lock the door.

  She wasn’t anywhere in sight, a fact that caused him to let out his breath in relief. He carried the groceries over to the one small stretch of countertop in what counted as the kitchen area. The apartment smelled like beer and sweat and something that had gone bad.

  When he opened the refrigerator, he discovered the source of the stench. Leftover Chinese food that had been here since the last time he’d stopped by two weeks ago. Trying not to gag, he pulled a garbage bag out of the box he’d brought with him and dumped the Chinese food into it.

  Then he dumped the milk, lettuce, cheese, and grapes—all of which he’d brought over last time and no
ne of which had been touched. Something that looked like piss—although surely it wasn’t—had spilled and never been wiped up on one of the refrigerator trays, so he pulled the tray out to clean it before he stocked the new groceries he’d bought.

  His mom never ate the fresh food, but he kept bringing it over anyway.

  When he’d unloaded the groceries, he took the garbage bag and went through the kitchen and living area, picking up old fast-food wrappers, beer bottles, and wadded paper towels. He almost gagged again in the bathroom when he saw a couple of used condoms, but he bunched up a lot of toilet paper to pick them up and threw those away too.

  He had enough money to hire someone to clean his mom’s apartment each week, but he always came over himself. Occasionally he’d vow to never do it again, but he always ended up changing his mind and driving over for a private torture session as he saw how his mother was living.

  After he’d picked up all the trash and cleaned up the worst of the messes, he started to search for her stash. She was gradually getting better and better at hiding it.

  The first time he’d found her drugs and thrown them away, she’d shown up at Bare Assets and screamed at him, throwing herself at him in a physical attack and digging her fingernails into his face and neck. Her violent response hadn’t stopped him, though, so she kept finding new places to hide the drugs.

  She didn’t have a job, and he never gave her cash, so he didn’t know where she was getting the money to buy the cocaine.

  He didn’t want to know.

  He searched for about ten minutes, but he had to give up when Robbie called and said one of their vendors had messed up their delivery and they wouldn’t have enough tequila for the night unless they figured out some other way to get it.

  So Matt gave up the search, sweating and in a bleak mood as he pulled the apartment door shut and locked it.

  The first time he’d cleaned up one of this mother’s messes, he’d been four years old. She’d been high and had dumped out the bowl of canned pasta she’d nuked for him.

  In a fit of anger, she’d cursed and smashed the bowl against the floor so it broke into pieces, and Matt had silently picked up the broken glass. Since he was hungry, he’d gone ahead and eaten the pasta.