Electrified(36)

But it didn’t work.

Sienna wasn’t hiding anything in the looks department. The irony was that she was even more appealing when she wasn’t all done up in makeup and a sexy little outfit. She was a natural beauty, and seeing her in a baseball cap and oversized sweater made her seem more approachable, more a real person. The way her leggings clung to her legs, shifting with her ass as she moved, simultaneously hiding yet revealing long limbs, had made his cock hard. But her soft features had his heart pumping.

She was multidimensional. The woman who took the stage like a pro and provocatively twirled around a pole, baring most of her body, wasn’t the same woman who showed up for coffee. The Sienna he shared coffee with was stunning, interesting, and thought-provoking.

Yeah, he got wood from that version of Sienna, too, but his mind was as equally stimulated as his body by the time he left the coffee shop.

Carson had been the best of the best in the FBI. He was the guy who could read a person better than anyone else, yet he must be losing his edge. An hour with Sienna, or whatever her name might really be, and he was questioning the only thing he knew for sure about himself—that he wasn’t a commitment kind of guy.

His thoughts flew around his brain so quickly, he could barely keep up with himself. Jesus Christ. How did he get so freaking obsessed with an adult dancer?

“I just hope you trust me enough one day to allow me to do the protecting.”

Really? He couldn’t believe he’d actually said that. And meant it.

He needed to go out, and not to the Electric Tunnel. Thankfully that was already predetermined; she didn’t want him there. He was wound too tightly with this crazy case of the missing cult member. He didn’t like the people who hired him, and he was beginning to resent looking for the person. He didn’t like the clients, didn’t want their money anymore.

He just wanted to move the fuck on…with Sienna.

Nothing about her outside the club said stripper. Her eyes were all innocence. Clear, blue, wide, and open to life, her eyes weren’t those of someone hardened by selling herself. She had looked so young and pure wearing that ball cap with her hair pulled back, her face practically bare, as if she had nothing to hide.

Come on, Carson, put two and two together. The innocent look can’t be real. Is it just an act to reel in a guy?

His initial pull toward her at the club had been purely sexual. He was a warm-blooded male in need of an orgasm, and he liked her, wanted her in that way. The way that involved hot, steamy, sweaty sex without getting tangled up in each other’s lives.

Meeting her outside the Tunnel was a bad idea, as it brought other latent needs to the surface for him. Desires he’d never had before. All of a sudden he wanted to get to know her, protect her, let her into his life. And she was a stripper.

Carson turned the volume down on the TV and tossed the remote aside, then poured himself another scotch and tossed it back, biting against the burn it brought.

He needed to solve this whole West Coast case and get back to Philly, to his actual life. His life with no one significant in it, but at least he had his bachelor pad, good takeout nearby, his motorcycle, and the occasional date. He didn’t even have the agency to worry about anymore; he was a one-man show. He made his own decisions and rules, both in work and in life.

For some reason this stripper, Sienna, was making him abandon all his own rules, but until he got back to all that was great about the bachelor life in Philadelphia, there was nothing wrong with getting to know her. She was an enigma and the investigator—screw that, the man—in him wanted to know more. His dick wanted to know her from the moment he saw her, and now after talking with her, he was even needier.

He felt the insatiable urge to dive into her head-on, body and mind, and take whatever she would give him, all the while knowing he would be asking for more. But she’d made it very clear that sex with her wasn’t on the menu just yet, which left him with two choices at the moment.

Another woman, or his hand. Again. Fucking hell.

Since he was only a few fingers of scotch in, he decided to step downstairs and see what was going on in the hotel bar, have one more drink, then consider the possibilities.

He was pretty sure that made him an asshole.

Yeah, definitely a jerk.

Ignoring his conscience, Carson dressed to go play some table games in the casino. He was burning up with a feeling he didn’t quite recognize, nor was he sure he liked very much. Jealousy lodged like a bad case of heartburn in his chest as he thought of Sienna dancing tonight, and everyone but him watching her on the stage. He imagined hundreds of other men salivating over her.

Christ, she was a dancer. That happened every night because it was her job to take her clothes off and dance sexually, to make men’s mouths water, and allow them to go home and jerk off to thoughts of her.