As for him, Carson, he was nobody to her. There was no “thing.” No pull. Only a big blip of loneliness filled with need and want, one that could never be filled.
Taking a deep breath and allowing her mind to go blank, Sienna hit stage right before heading out to entice the crowd with nothing less than what they expected. They wanted to feel seduction and sex in the air, so that was what she would make them feel. The more charged the performance, the more anxiety relief Sienna felt—and the more sexually entranced she became.
As she hit center stage, Sienna’s line of vision locked with Carson’s, and her moment of relief was lost.
She’d only learned his name less than an hour ago, but she felt like it had been on her tongue for years. Carson. He watched her intently, as always. He didn’t smile like earlier, but his eyes bore down on her with a look she had never experienced. Want? Intimate need?
How would her name sound coming off this tongue? Sienna…Lila. She wasn’t even sure of her own name. His stare was turning her inside out, something else Sienna had never experienced.
Finding it harder and harder to lose herself in her number, she tried to avoid Carson and his molten chocolate eyes for fear she might melt into a tiny pool herself. Her heart was pumping and it wasn’t from dancing, heat was gathering once again in her tiny panties, and she had to look far away into the back of the crowd to keep from leaping off the stage.
Sienna wanted to jump right into Carson’s lap, an animalistic urge that bubbled up in her entire body. It was a force of nature she never had to control before, but one she had to tamp down, because she needed to survive on her own.
The truth was, she had no clue what came next if she did jump on his lap. Because even though Sienna might have the right moves onstage, up close and personal in real life, she had no idea what to do.
SIENNA WAS both emotionally and physically drained by the time Mike walked her out to her car after her shift Friday night, happy to know that Simon was waiting to drive her home.
She loved Simon; the grandfather of two little boys always brought a smile to her face. He’d been a driver in Vegas for thirty-six years, and he always made her laugh with his tales of Las Vegas, then and now. After the night she’d had, Simon was just what she needed.
Mike opened the car door for her, but touched her arm before she climbed in. When she looked up in question, he frowned slightly. “Sienna, I know Ash is worried and you think that something weird is happening. Nothing weird is going on, you just need a life outside of here,” he said as he motioned behind him to the club.
“The guy with the note seems like a good guy,” he went on as she gaped at him. He slung his big arm around her slight waist. “You need to take a leap with someone, even if it’s not him, but why not him? What I’m trying to say is, you need to get back out there. You need to live.”
And before she could say a word, he handed her into the backseat of the big black town car.
Sienna was shocked; no longer looking forward to Simon’s sweet stories.
Am I going to take advice from a twenty-five-year-old bouncer?
Advice was what she needed, and Mike was one of the few trusted people she had in her little world. Petal and Sydney were still at the club working a few private parties, but she could wait and ask them. She could, yet she was their role model.
What would they think about her indecision? Both Petal and Sydney would think she was crazy not to follow her heart, but like Mike, they didn’t know her real history. They didn’t know why it was imperative that she stay alone.
Sienna knew Carson had stayed through her second dance. He didn’t get up right away as usual. Did he think she was going to come out and talk with him again?
She knew he was gone when she finally left for the night, because she had peeked at the club from the one-way mirror in Asher’s office before leaving.
Was she in high school, checking up on a guy?
As the town car carried her home, Sienna found she couldn’t stop thinking about him. He was probably still up. Could she have coffee with him tomorrow?
No one would have to know. She didn’t have to tell Mike she took his advice.
Without thinking, she pulled out her phone and texted the number on the slip she’d tucked into her bag.
Sienna: It’s Sienna. Got your note. I don’t typically do this, but coffee tomorrow may work.
Before she could put her phone away, it pinged with an incoming text.
Carson: Hi, Sienna. Didn’t expect to hear from you, but glad. Coffee sounds good. Where? When? You name it.
Her heart in her throat, Sienna enjoyed a quick back and forth with him as she broke another of her own rules.