Stripped (Stripped, #1)(21)
Author: H.M. Ward

Standing suddenly, I shove my way between them. "Go kiss up to the new boss. Odds are you’ll get my job if he likes you."

Beth gives me a weird look, but Gretchen doesn’t contain her excitement. "Already started, bitch. Guess who’s taking me home tonight?" Jon offered to take her home? My head spins and I blink it away, trying not to jump to conclusions, but it can only mean one thing. I hate the idea of the two of them sleeping together. No. This can’t happen.

I lose it.

I’ve only lost control of myself twice in my life, prior to this moment. Once was when I was nine years old and Jennifer Malby stole one of my earrings and said it was hers. She grinned at me as she fastened it on the lapel of her denim jacket, knowing that she’d never have to give it back. Her smug look pushed me over the top, so I punched her in the face and took my earring back. The second time was at the grocery store. Some woman hit me in the head with crap that was sticking out of her cart and told me to watch where I was going, like it was my fault. I took her broom and hurled it down the aisle before giving her the biggest bitch-out she’d ever seen. Both of those times, I’d been under so much pressure that I couldn’t take it anymore, and so I lashed out at the next poor bastard who decided to screw with me when I had no capacity to deal with it.

There’s nothing in my mind telling me to stop. I throw the first punch and then we’re a flurry of flying fists and pulling hair. Screams and nasty things come from my mouth, but I don’t stop until I have the bitch pinned to the floor. My arm winds back to punch her in the face when a strong hand yanks me away and pulls me up off the floor.

"What the hell are you doing?" Jon snaps at me, as he separates us.

Bruce is suddenly there as well and won’t let Gretchen near me. He arrived a second after Jon and yanked the slut to her feet. "Go simmer down," he scolds her and points to a chair in the corner.

Jon still has a hold of my arm. He glares around the room and says in a tone that makes me afraid, "Anyone who fights like this will be fired. No exceptions. Am I clear?"

Gretchen starts crying into her hands, but Jon ignores her and hauls me into the boss’s office. "Sit."

He throws me into a chair and then tosses a blanket at me. I’m barely dressed, still wearing my stripping outfit. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"With me?" I yell and jump up from my seat. "With me? You’re seriously asking what’s wrong with me—"

"Yes, I’m asking. You’ve been acting like a goddamn lunatic since the moment I saw you!" He’s in my face, yelling down at me. My shoes are in the dressing room and my feet ache, my head aches, and my heart aches. I turn to leave. I’m not doing this right now. I can’t. But Jon grabs my arm and stops me from walking away. "Where do you think you’re going? You can’t run away every time something doesn’t go your way. You’re not a child anymore, Cass."

"And neither are you!" I shove my palms into his chest, and then do it again, harder. "You can’t f**k every girl who works here. That makes it a whorehouse and I’m not a f**king whore!" I try to hit him again, but he grabs my wrists.

"No one said you were." His voice softens. I try to pull away, but he won’t let me. His lips are dangerously close and I’m aware of his scent, of the way his breathing is becoming more ragged, even though we’ve stopped yelling. His dark lashes are lowered, his blue eyes singularly focused on my mouth. "What happened to you, Cass?"

My lips part, but no words come out. How can I say it? How can I tell him? I shake my head and refuse to look up. Jon remains close enough that I can feel his warm breath. I want to lean into him, wrap my arms around his neck, and just cry until there are no tears left.

A hot wet tear slips from the corner of my eye and rolls down my cheek. Jon’s thumb catches it and smoothes it away. "Talk to me Cass."

I make the mistake of looking up into his face. His heated gaze catches mine and I’m lost. His hand is still on my cheek and it happens so suddenly that I don’t have time to think. Jon lowers his lips to mine and kisses me softly. The taste of his mouth, the way he holds me, makes me want more. The blanket falls to the floor and I step into his arms.

All the regrets I’ve ever had come boiling to the surface. I never gave him a chance. I wrote Jon off when we were younger and I shouldn’t have. Our mouths press harder together, and his tongue slips into my mouth. I can barely breathe and I don’t care. I don’t stop to catch my breath. I kiss him harder, feeling his lips mash into mine as his hands travel down my back, tracing my bare skin. It’s hotter than any kiss I’ve ever had. Jon presses his lips to mine like he’ll never get the chance to do it again. There are no words that describe the longing I’ve felt for him, and what it means to feel him like this now—his body pressed firmly to mine, our lips tangling together as our tongues intertwine.

I have no plan of stopping, but a knock at the door forces us apart. My heart races hard as I jump away from him and grab the blanket off the floor. I walk to the corner of the room and pretend to look at something outside when the door opens. It’s Bruce.

He pauses, and then says, "I need to know if these two are fired, boss. If you let them go, we have scheduling issues." Bruce lingers, waiting for an answer. I glance at Jon over my shoulder, not able to meet his eyes.

Jon is sitting on top of his desk, legs dangling off the side, leaning over with his head in his hands. He doesn’t look up. "Keep both of them, but no more warnings. If it happens again, with any of the girls, they’re fired. Start to make a backup list of on-call dancers. Work them into the schedule so we have extra staff when we’re shorthanded or someone calls in sick."

Bruce nods and leaves without another word. I find myself staring at Jon, wondering who he really is. I so much want the boy I knew to still be inside of him, but he was going to f**k Gretchen. Tucking my chin, I hurry past him. Maybe he is the boy I knew and maybe that’s why I should stay away from him. Jon has no idea how badly he hurt me, or why I told the reporters who he was that summer in Mississippi. He doesn’t know, and I’ll never tell him.

As I reach for the door, he says, "I’m sorry."

I glance back at him. "For what?"

"I shouldn’t have taken that from you. It wasn’t—" He looks up at me from under thick lashes. "I know how you felt about things and I shouldn’t have taken that kiss. I’m sorry, Cassie. It won’t happen again."

I want to tell him, but I can’t. He still hates me for what I did. I force a smile and look away. "Much more was taken from me than that. Besides, I gave it to you." I duck out the door before I can say more.

CHAPTER 29

JONATHAN

I avoid the club for the next few days because I can’t stand the thought of seeing her there. My plan got f**ked up the moment I made it. I didn’t think about guys hanging on Cassie and saying they wanted to bend her over and have a good time. I didn’t think about how I’d have to stand there and smile, like a f**king jackass, while they said these things about all the women working there. So, I’ve been going in during the day when Cassie doesn’t work and going over things with Bruce. It’s funny how fast the guy has my back. I doubled his salary, so maybe his reaction was predictable, but thank God for small wonders. I need something predictable right now.

"Why’d you buy a strip club?" Trystan is hanging upside down off the side of a club chair. His hair stands on end, sweeping against the dark carpet as he eyes the empty stage. It’s early, and as soon as he heard what I did, Trystan came over to smack me in the head. "It looks better upside down, man."

I throw a phone book at him. It lands on his lap with a thud. Trystan shoots me a look and rights himself in the chair. "Seriously, Jon—this place is a f**king hole, your mother is going to kill you, and I can’t hang out here. It’ll totally ruin my reputation."

"What reputation?"

"That women come to me. Guys that dick around in strip clubs don’t have women hanging off of them. Come on, Jon, what’s this about? Did that asswipe get to you the other night? You didn’t have to buy the club to get his ass fired. You know that right?"

I’m sitting at a nasty old desk, looking through an endless mountain of paper. The previous owner didn’t believe in filing cabinets. I’ve been ignoring Trystan, not looking up, until he makes me by smacking the papers out of my hands. "What the hell is wrong with you? I need to go through this stuff and I don’t have much time."

Trystan slams his hands on my desk and leans in. "Why?" A necklace slips out from the neck of his shirt. It’s a silver band—a ring—dangling, spinning on its chain.

"Because I have other things to do and I can’t be here—"

"Why?"

"Because!"

Trystan straightens and tucks the ring away so it can’t be seen. He slips his hands into his pockets and turns, pacing the floor. A huge smile spreads across his face like he understands. "Oh, because. Yeah, that’s a great explanation for acting like a crazy bastard." While he speaks, Trystan’s index finger taps his chin, and his eyes flash like he knows damn well why I bought this place. The smirk falls off his mouth. Leaning against the wall, he folds his arms over his chest, and doesn’t look at me. Long strands of dark hair block his face when he asks, "So, who is she?"

I stare at him. There’s no point in denying it, he already knows something’s up. I’m acting like a goddamn idiot, but I can’t admit it. "No one, all right?"

"No one wouldn’t make you act like this. You’ve been—shall we say, tense—since Peter’s party, and I think I know why. That girl, the one he handed to you, the one you ran off with—she’s the one that messed you up, isn’t she?"

"Fuck, no. She’s the one who patched me up." The words tumble out of my mouth before I can stop them.

Trystan is silent for a little bit. When he speaks he points out something I’d never thought about before. "You know why we’re friends, right? Why we get along so well?" I glance at him, but Trystan’s gaze doesn’t meet mine. Instead he pushes off the wall and runs his hands through his hair. "There’s no hiding what I lived through. The papers plastered it everywhere. Since then, I’ve found a few people who lived through their own hell, and it was always inflicted by someone else. You might not have said it, but there’s something about people like us, Jon. We gravitate toward one another and try to protect each other."

I don’t look at him. I know Trystan’s been through the shitter and what his dad did to him. I don’t disagree with him, although I have no idea what the hell he sees in me. I sound like a girl. I blink hard and look up at him. "You’re like a brother to me, Trystan. You don’t have to—"

"No, I think I do. You don’t seem to realize what this girl means to you. She’s seriously the one who put you back together?"

I nod and watch him as he sits on the edge of my desk. "Yeah, she was totally wrong for me." I smile, thinking about Cassie sitting at her Aunt’s house and the way she smiled and danced around the place late at night when we were both too tired to sleep. "And yet…" I shrug, because there are no words—because she was and is the right woman for me. She always has been, which makes it hurt even more.

"You love her?"

The words hang there like a noose, waiting for me. It’s always been waiting for me, and buying this place was like building the scaffolds so I can go hang myself. Rubbing my hands over my face, I say, "Trystan, she stabbed me in the back. It doesn’t matter how I feel about her because I can never trust again, not after that."