Stripping Her Defenses (12 page)

Twelve hours later, I was sitting at a table in the VIP section of After Midnight with Declan and Lucas, contemplating ripping my own goddamn eyeballs out of my head.

Hammer had stopped at our table five minutes ago to warn me that Kara was about to do her set, and that if I caused a scene, he’d take me outback and shoot me in both my kneecaps. Consequently, I could sit here and make sure no one got handsy with my wife while she flashed everything she should only be flashing to me, or I could go outside and smoke myself to death.

As much as I knew it was going to kill me, I wasn’t moving from my chair. Yeah, logically I knew the bouncers in the club wouldn’t let a single soul manhandle Kara, but every cell in my body refused the idea of leaving her without my protection.

Sometimes, love sucked giant-sized, hairy, donkey balls.

The DJ’s voice came over the mic as our waitress stopped by our table, dropping off fresh beers. “We brought back someone very special for After Midnight’s 10th Anniversary, but before we bring her out, you randy bastards need to know that it’s last call, so go get your damn drinks while you can.”

The crowd of men started going nuts with shouts of “Fuck Yeah” and “Bring her out!” as quite a few customers stepped up to the bar to order their drinks.

The DJ laughed before saying “Awww, come on, guys. Is that all you’ve got? Surely you’ve missed her more than that?”

Fists started banging tables, the shouts becoming a deafening crescendo, and the businessmen were whipping off their ties and swinging them in the air.

Just when I didn’t think the place could get anymore nuts, the DJ asked, “Who’s ready for Kitty to take off her mask?”

The entire club erupted. Not just the men, but the serving girls, the bartenders, and I even saw a couple of the bikers shout back in response. All of which made my blood boil. The place was fucking packed with perverts who were about to watch my wife get naked. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

Once the lights went down and the stage went dark. The crescendo of a guitar started to sound. Then the words “porn star dancing” and a sexy rock beat burst through the club’s speakers as the colored lights flashed on the oversized main stage to reveal six women spread out in a V formation wearing skin tight, white, cropped tops so thin you could see their bare breasts underneath, red thongs, and black leather, biker chaps. So far, none of them were Kara, though, so thank God for that. The longer it took for her to get on the stage, the shorter the time it would be she’d be parading her body around to the song.

As the singer started his lyrics about things women wouldn’t do for him, the girls on the stage did the opposite to kick off the show. Two girls leaned in to give each other a no holds bar kiss full of tongue and lip biting. On the other end, another woman leaned over to the woman closest to her and started groping her breasts over her shirt. The third pair of women who were at the top of the V formation started dancing with one another, moving their hands up and down the other’s body, petting each other in sensuous ways that could give a damn corpse a boner.

Through all the action and moving bodies, I could see a seventh woman standing hidden behind that V formation. I caught small glimpses of her tan skin, long wild hair, and a glittering orange mask over her face. Even though I couldn’t see much of the woman, I knew down to the bottom of my soul who it was. Kara.

The lyrics moved on to the singer talking about having a girl who would put on a show for money, deciding how far she would go, and that’s when Kara pushed past the front two women and stepped into the limelight. She was dressed differently from the women behind her.

With her black leather vest that looked just a bit too big for her and a micro-mini, leather skirt I wished was a little longer, you could tell she was the star of the show. She didn’t stop moving forward until she had wrapped her hands around the stripper pole and begun to move. And, by move, I mean fucking the pole in ways I wish she was fucking my pole right now. She danced around that pole, licked her lips, swaying her hips, and blew my motherfucking mind until I worried about coming in my jeans like the teenager she’d met in chemistry class so many years ago. Every little move she made felt like an invitation. Every swipe of her pink tongue over her red painted lips looked like a promise a man damn well wanted her to keep. What’s more, the way she undulated her body, as if mimicking sex, was enough to both turn me on and piss me off.

She stopped dancing around the pole once she was standing in front of it, her back braced on the pole, as she started to undo the buttons. Behind her, the other six women were ripping the thin shirts off each other to the raucous calls of the club’s patrons. I’m certain those girls were putting on one hell of a show, and by the whistles my brother was giving them, they must have been doing an exceptional job, but my eyes were still glued to the woman at the front of the stage.

My woman.

Who, for whatever reason, wouldn’t give me five fucking minutes to apologize to her for leaving her behind so I could go on a mission while she lost our son. Not that I blamed her. I deserved all of it.

I knew it was selfish of me to hope that there was some way I could fix this between us. It was selfish to want her back when I’d done so much to hurt her, but that didn’t stop me from being an inconsiderate, self-centered bastard.

I wanted my wife back. I’d do whatever I had to do to get her back, too.

As she undid the last button, she teasingly flashed little glimpses of the tops of her breasts before holding the vest closed together again. Then she spun around to give us her back, and it was then that I could see she was wearing one of the Regulators’ cuts as she danced. I didn’t like the thought that she might be wearing one of the member’s cuts and hoped like hell it was a prop instead of the real thing.

Kara didn’t give me long to think about my irrational jealousy. She looked at the crowd over her shoulder, gave them a wink and a big smile, and peeled the vest off until it was hanging from her fingertips in one hand. Then she started swinging it above her head while she shimmied her ass to the beat of the song.

It was hard to see from where I was sitting at the back of the club when I was looking at her back, but I was praying with everything I had that she had something covering up her breasts in the front. Oversized pasties, chocolate frosted donuts, what-the-fuck-ever that would keep me from seeing all these men ogling her bare breasts while I had to sit here and take it.

I felt my brother tense beside me, as if he could read my mind and knew that, if she turned around and all there was for the crowd to see were her beautiful, dusky brown nipples, I would flip my shit, and he would have to restrain me.

Luckily for both of us, when Kara turned and started dancing in profile, I could see she was wearing a tiny, tiger print bikini top. It wasn’t much since it was probably about two sizes too small for her naturally oversized breasts, but it was better than nothing at all.

Dancing back around to face the crowd, she threw the cut she’d been wearing to a man sitting at one of the front tables. He caught it with one hand while shooting her a confident smirk that said he knew exactly what she had to offer, and it had me seeing red.

That man was none other than Ice. How many times in the past had they done this little number? Was that his cut she wore? It took everything I had not to pull my piece and blow that motherfucker away.

Forcing myself to look back up to the stage, I watched as Kara ran her hands over her body, starting with her breasts and then moving them down until they were running over her skirt. She worked the stage from left to right, sashaying that round, pretty ass of hers as she slowly un-zipped the skirt in the back. Men were yelling at her to take it off, while it was taking everything I had not to scream at her to keep it the fuck on.

Kara slipped that excuse for a skirt down her legs until it hung from around one of her ankles before kicking it to the back of the stage. What was left behind was the supremely tiny tiger print thong like the one I’d caught a glimpse of last night. And, while I loved to see her in it, I was fuming because so did everyone else.

There was brightly colored ink down the left side of her body in the form of two tattoos. One, a large phoenix spanning her side across her ribs. And, on her thigh, she had an enormous tattoo of a tiger that spanned from just above her knee to the uppermost tiger paw ending on her hip bone.

At that moment, the DJ appeared behind her, grinning as he reached his arm around until the mic was up next to Kara’s lips.

The crowd was still going nuts, throwing money up on the stage like it could be their way to everlasting pleasure.

Kara gave them a killer smile right before she said, “Who wants to pet my
pussy?
” before she ran a hand over the tiger tattoo.

If the men in the crowd had hungered for her before, now they were damn well starving. My once meek and sweet wife turned sassy sex kitten fucking knew it, too. She turned, placed her hands high on the pole, and then swung her body around it until she started climbing it. Once she was up high, with her thighs gripping that pole the way I wanted them to grip my head while I went down on her, she flipped herself upside down so the only thing touching the stage was the ends of her hair.

The crowd went nuts again as she held herself there, arms out to the side. Then she pulled her arms back in until they were braced on the pole underneath her and let her legs slowly fall wide open so she was in an upside down split.

My head started to pound as I listened to all the disgusting things men shouted at the stage. Things they were telling my wife they wanted to do to her. Yet, here I sat like a dumb bastard, unable to do anything about it. Because Kara was right; I didn’t have a right to say a goddamn thing anymore.

That was going to fucking change just as soon as I could manage it.

Unable to watch the woman I loved more than life itself flash her body to a bunch of men whom I now wanted to torture and castrate, I shoved out of my chair and stormed outside. Some fresh air and about a dozen cigarettes could keep me occupied until Kara left to go home. Then I’d pin her against her fucking car if I had to, but the woman was going to talk to me before she left.

Chapter

12

Kara

“You know he’s out there waiting for you, right?” Ice asked.

My stomach was in knots. Hell, yeah, I knew Riley was outside waiting for me. It was the reason I was dragging my feet about leaving the dressing room. I was ready to talk to him now, only I didn’t know if he’d want to talk to me after seeing the show. I knew he was there at the start since I’d spotted him and damn near tripped over my own two feet because of it. However, when I’d looked to where he’d been sitting by the end of my act, I’d found his seat empty and Declan shaking his head.

I wasn’t sure when he left, but part of me really hoped it was before I’d taken my top off. If not, then at least before I’d shimmied out of my mini skirt, bent over, ass to the crowd, showing off how little my g-string really covered. Riley might have seen it all before, so-to-speak, but he’d never seen it like that.

Under better circumstances between us, I wouldn’t mind showing him all of the moves I’d learned since we divorced. Under the current circumstances… Yikes!

I gathered up my courage, pretending like it was an emotional, bulletproof vest, and stowed the last of my stuff into my tote purse. This was my last performance at After Midnight; therefore, I had to make sure I took all of my stuff with me. Otherwise, the vultures would swoop in.

I slung the heavy purse over my shoulder then turned to Ice who was leaning against the dressing room’s closed door with his arms crossed over his chest. I was expecting his blank face, the one he was a pro at using so no one could tell what he was thinking or feeling, but I was in for a surprise. His eyes weren’t sad per say, but the word resigned drifted through my mind.

“Known you quite a while now, Kara, and though I knew it would never be love between us, I thought maybe I could make you see it could still be good.” While he paused, as if to gather his thoughts, I watched as his brows furrowed down like he didn’t like whatever it was he was thinking.

“Seein’ the way he looks at you, the way you try to hide what you feel for him and fail, I know now I never had a shot at makin’ it something good and lasting between us.”

Damn. My chest tightened and my heart started to hurt a little for the man who’d been more than a lover for a few years. He’d been a damn good friend, too.

Yeah, I’d known Ice wanted more, but I also knew Ice didn’t love me. He was comfortable with me in our time together. What he didn’t get was that, as much as he protested the idea of love, I knew the perfect someone was out there for him. I desperately wanted him to find that someone. He deserved that sort of happy. That someone just wasn’t me, though.

“I’m worried about you, Kara.” I started to protest; however, he held his hand off to stop me. “Don’t get me wrong, woman. I know you’re a much stronger person than you were when you walked through my doors. I’m proud of you comin’ into your own, moving past all the pain of your past. You can’t bullshit me, though; I know him poppin’ up has brought it all back to you.”

I sucked in a breath, bracing myself for what I knew was coming.

“Him leavin’ you all the time when you needed him home because you were off the rails and didn’t know why…”

Oh, shit, I knew what was next.

“Everything that’s happened to you because of that accident. The baby.”

Damn, the reminder of that pain shot through me from head to toe until it settled in my gut like a lead weight that would drag me down and drown me.

“Kara, look at me.”

Focusing on my toes peeping out of my heels, I realized I’d dropped my head at some point, trying to avoid his stare. Forcing myself to pull my head back up, I locked my eyes onto Ice’s.

“You’ve been re-born, like that phoenix you got tattooed on your side to cover your scars. You rose from the ashes, burning brighter than any light I’ve ever seen. I want to believe under all his jackass mistakes your ex is a good man. If he dims your light, though, I’m gonna snuff his light out. You understand what I’m sayin’?”