I laugh. “Uh, no.”
“Then why will you do it? Spend so much of your life on something that makes you clearly unhappy?”
A spark of panic flares in my chest, but I manage to quickly tamp it down. This is my safe place—this strange space that Ansel and I have found—where I can say or do or be anyone I want.
And so I choose to avoid answering at all, directing the focus back onto him. “Lots of people are unhappy with their jobs. Do you love yours?”
“Not this particular one,” he says. “No.”
“But you continue to do it.”
“Yes . . .” he says thoughtfully. “But mine is temporary. I know what I want to do with my life; this job is simply one door that will lead to another. This job will let me have my pick of positions anywhere in the world. Two more years of school is a long time, and I saw the way you reacted when I brought it up.” He laughs softly. “Like your life had just flashed in front of your eyes. If the prospect of school makes you unhappy . . .” His voice trails off and he watches me, waiting for me to finish the sentence myself.
“I can’t dance anymore,” I remind him. “Screws through my leg and three centimeters of metallic alloy artificial bone aren’t something I can overcome if I just try hard enough. It’s not mind over matter.”
He spins his glass, widening the dark ring of condensation that’s formed on the coaster beneath it. The ice clinks against the walls of the empty tumbler, and he seems to be considering something carefully before he says it. “Not professionally,” he adds with a shrug.
I shake my head but don’t offer more. He doesn’t understand.
“Your career as a stripper, extinguished before it ever began.”
A laugh bursts from my throat. “Which sucks because I had a name picked out, monogrammed pasties ordered and everything.”
Ansel leans against the bar and turns toward me. His eyes scan my face before slipping to my mouth and down . . . down again. It’s such an obvious, silly attempt at seduction that I can’t hold in my laugh. This is the guy I couldn’t take my eyes off in Vegas, the one who drew my attention no matter where he was in the room. The one I told my entire life story to in the span of a few hours, the one I married, the one I’ve had sex with many times.
“I’m really glad you got stood up,” I say, hoping the way I’m looking at him makes him feel half as wanted as the way he’s looking at me.
He brushes a single finger over my knee. “So am I.”
I’m not sure where to go from here and so I decide to try out brave. “Would you like to leave?” I ask. “Maybe go for a walk?”
He doesn’t hesitate, just stands and motions to the bartender to pay our bill.
“I’m going to run to the bathroom,” I say.
He watches me with hungry eyes. “I’ll be here waiting for you.”
But when I step out of the large, art deco bathroom, he’s right there in front of me—head down, face obscured by the lack of light. Dangerous. He looks up at the sound of the door and his features look stronger here in the shadows, hard, thrown into sharp relief under the neon glow. In this dimly lit corner his cheekbones resemble carved stone, his eyes shadowed, his lips lush and exaggerated.
He doesn’t give me time to hesitate, just crosses the tiny space to back me against the wall.
“I couldn’t wait,” he says, gripping my neck, his palm cool and steady while his thumb presses to the pulse beating wildly in my throat. It’s a possessive hold, and so different from the Ansel I know that it sends a silent thrill of fear up my spine. In this game we’re playing, he’s a stranger again. He doesn’t know me and beyond what he’s told me in the last hour; I’m not supposed to know anything about him, either.
A smart girl would walk away, I tell myself. A smart, quiet girl would pretend she has friends waiting and head right out the door. She wouldn’t stand in a darkened hallway with a man she doesn’t know, liking the way he’s manhandling her so much it never occurs to her to leave.
“I can hear you thinking,” he whispers, tightening his hold. “Let go. Play with me.”
And it’s exactly what I need. I relax my shoulders as my head clears. The tension melts from my body as I lean into him.
Even though I’m in heels and he’s inches above me, I only have to lift my chin and he’s there, the tip of his nose brushing over mine.
“I don’t usually do this,” I say, lost in the idea of a one-night stand. Of letting this sexy stranger do whatever he wants to me. “I hardly kiss on the first date, I never—” I close my eyes and swallow, opening them again to find him smiling down at me.