A Beautiful Distraction(85)

Fallon released her breath and slid down from her desk.

Her fingers fluttered to her lips, her lipstick smeared across her face from Rafe’s kiss, feeling the lingering sensations his flawed mouth had left there.

Pulling her straps down her shoulders, she let her dress fall to the floor. She was dancing. This was part of her. If he didn’t want to see, then he sure as hell didn’t have to stay.

Opening her wardrobe, she pulled out a costume she very rarely wore. It was for a routine that she very rarely performed, one she hadn’t done in the two years since she’d taken over the club and rechoreographed most of the numbers. It was grittier, dirtier, and a hell of a lot sexier.

Rafe couldn’t accept her choices? Fine. Wouldn’t be the first time someone turned their back on her.

But she hoped he would enjoy the show—because she was going to give him a good one.

• • •

Rafe was watching her, fighting back the urge seething inside him to take a swing at every man in the club. He wanted to drag her beautiful ass off that stage.

The last time he’d watched her dance, it was different. God, yeah, it was sexy as hell, but the way she danced now—she was trying to prove a point. But the only point she was proving was that she knew how to work his last nerve. She wanted to get to him? Mission accomplished. He was worked up, in more ways than one. And he was thoroughly pissed.

“Hey, handsome.” Amelia approached him where he was sitting at the bar. She eyed the empty glass next to him on the counter. “Whiskey, right? Simone! Get this gentleman another shot.”

His lips closed around his cigarette, pulling much-needed nicotine into his lungs. Then he quickly smiled, nodding his thanks. Then went back to watching Fallon.

Amelia stood next to him for a second longer and he had the pressing suspicion that she wanted to say something more. But she didn’t. And Rafe was wound up so tightly at the moment that he couldn’t find it in him to care enough to ask.

God, how many minutes had she been up there?

Picking up the shot Simone had just slid next to him, he knocked it back, the glass clanking against the bar as he slammed it down and skidded it back across to Simone for another.

Thank fuck, the music finally ended and Fallon was leaving the stage. ’Bout damn time.

“She’s hot, huh, bro?”

Slowly, looking for the calm that was submerged somewhere inside him, Rafe turned his head and glared at the douche bag suit next to him.

“She doesn’t get onstage often, but damn. Too fucking bad she doesn’t take it all off, huh?”

Rafe couldn’t understand for the life of him why this guy was running his mouth when it was obvious he was about one second from losing it.

His barstool flew back and landed on its side as he jerked from his seat and stalked toward the stage. That beautiful body of hers was his. He knew it and she knew. She just needed a little reminder.

• • •

Shutting the door to her office, Fallon leaned against it and rolled her eyes closed. Her skin was heated and slicked with sweat and the cold steel felt good. She didn’t know how long she stood there, inhaling slow breaths of much-needed oxygen into her lungs, but when she finally pushed away, her pulse had returned to normal.

Reaching behind her, she unhooked the sheer bustier covering her feminine parts with bronze and gold crystals. It was a beautiful costume, sexy and scandalous.

There were so many eyes on her tonight—just like every night she danced. She felt the intense heat of their eyes grate across her body at every move. But unlike every other time she was on that stage, tonight the power her body had given her and the control she’d yielded was gone. The liberation she felt on that stage was suppressed by the opaque, sable stare that never left her.

Her body was hyperaware of him—of his eyes, of the tension wringing his body, of the wanton need that was cloaked with anger tightening in the flex of his jaw.

And it distracted her.

He distracted her.

Her mind, usually lost in the movements of her routine, had been prominently and irreversibly fixated on the only man that had ever stolen her control.

But it wasn’t stealing when she gave it willingly, when she craved his eyes on her, claiming her, needing her.

Pulling the crystal-embellished briefs down her legs, she whipped her head around as the sound of her door slamming shut met her ears.

Her fingers opened, dropping the thin costume to the floor. Her eyes widened—but she was not surprised.

“You’re still here.”

Rafe’s chest expanded with his deep breaths, his taut arms hanging at his sides. “Yeah. I’m still here.”

She was naked, completely exposed to him, but his eyes never once left hers.