I relaxed against the stranger’s chest, breath calming and holes on fucking fire.
Jason slapped my ass, and I knew it was over.
I felt him at my side, sitting close as he caught his breath.
“Hot,” he said. “That was fucking hot. What do you think, Steve?”
Steve.
Steve the stranger laughed. “That was really something special.”
“I told you she was a dirty girl, didn’t I?”
I felt strangely proud. Aching like a bastard but fucking proud.
“She’s gorgeous.” Steve smoothed my hair, ran his fingers down my back with surprising tenderness.
I smiled, strangely comfortable.
“Maybe next time you could bring your gothic friends, too,” Steve said.
My ears pricked. “Gothic friends?”
“From the club,” he said. “After the burlesque-whatsit. The ones we saw you with.”
A hitch of breath from Jason.
What the?
Oh my fucking God.
Chapter Sixteen
Jason
I caught Gemma’s hands as she reached for her blindfold. “Stop,” I said. “Just wait.”
“You’ve been watching me? Both of you? What the fuck, Jason?”
Steve mouthed sorry in my direction. Stupid dumb prick.
“Let me explain,” I said, “and if you still want to take the blindfold off, I won’t stop you.”
I let go of her hands, and they dithered before she folded her arms across her chest. Across her breasts. She pulled her knees up, covering as much of her gorgeous nakedness as she could.
“My dress, please.”
She got to her feet and struggled her way into it, shaking off my attempts to help her. I put her shoes in front of her, and she reluctantly accepted my arm to step into them. She wrestled with her coat on her own, then screwed up her knickers and shoved them into a pocket, her expression blank.
Shit.
She held onto my arm as I led her out to the car, but hoisted herself up without any assistance and buckled herself in.
“Talk,” she said as I shut the driver’s door behind me.
“Not here.” I drove us down the track to a field entrance, pulling the Land Rover off road and shutting down the engine. “I can explain.”
“You were following me? Before we’d even met? Your friend, too? That’s weird, Jason. Creepy fucking weird.”
I sighed. “It’s not that weird. There aren’t many burlesque nights in a sex club on a Thursday night. I knew where to find you.”
“It’s still fucking weird that you even wanted to. Were you in there? Watching me?”
“No. I was busy, but I couldn’t stop wondering what my dirty girl looked like, how you looked when you smiled, when you laughed...”
“So you stalked me?”
“That’s one way of looking at it. I called Steve, he came to pick me up and we drove to Soho. We waited outside in his car.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“Red hair, contagious laugh. You were beautiful, Gemma, I knew it was you.” Even in the darkness I could tell she was blushing. “I just wanted to see you.”
She sighed. “It freaked me out in there, knowing I’d been watched.”
“Surely you can see the irony in that?”
“Of course I can see the irony in that,” she said. “But there’s a big difference. I choose to be here. I choose to meet up with you, choose to put myself in these crazy situations you set up for me.” She clasped her hands in her lap. “There was no choice in Soho. You could have been anyone, watching me, following me. Fuck knows what else.”
“I understand that, and I’m sorry,” I offered. “I’d never do anything you didn’t want me to, Gemma. I’m no crazy stalker.”
“I know.”
I shifted in my seat to face her. “Do you know? Truly?”
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
“Good.”
“But that was creepy, hearing Steve talk like he knew me.”
“I get that. If you want to end things here, I’ll understand.”
Please fucking don’t.
She was quiet for a long while, head turned to the window as though she could see out. “What’s going on here, Jason? What’s this thing we’ve got going on?”
“You really want to do this now? The big conversation?”
“This isn’t exactly how I imagined it, sat in a car in the middle of nowhere at God knows what time in the morning, blindfolded, but, yeah, I guess we need to talk things out.” She groaned. “I hate all this shit.”
“Blindfolded, anonymous, casual, dirty... That’s what you wanted.”
“It’s still what I want.”