1
Gabi
The lights glowed a bright orange over the door as the huge bouncer grunted and moved aside to let us in. I couldn’t help but snicker as we walked in, nudging Sasha. “Please explain to me why they feel it necessary to have a bouncer outside of a male strip club? What, do they think we’re all so desperate for the dick that we’re going to bum-rush the place?”
A small noise escaped her throat and I knew I’d made her laugh, even as the noise got swallowed up in the deep, thumping bass from the music.
We made our way to an open spot by the bar, where Britney and Sasha both plopped down, leaving me standing up behind them.
“I cannot believe I let you guys drag me here,” Sasha groaned, dropping her head as she glanced around the noisy club. “Dex hates when I go places like this.”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at my best friend. “Who cares what Dex thinks? It’s not like you’re out there trying to fuck one of the strippers or something. If you ask me, he needs to get his priorities in order.”
“Oh boy, here we go.” Britney sighed dramatically.
“What? Am I wrong?”
“Look, Gabi, I get it. Liam fucked you over big time, but that doesn’t mean you have to turn into this man-hater,” she said, leaning toward the cute bartender. “Two coke and rums and one White Russian. Top shelf, please.”
“One, he didn’t just fuck me over, he cheated on me. With his parents’ maid. And two, I’m not a man-hater. I just have a better sense of independence now, that’s all.”
It was true mostly, anyway. The night after our big engagement party, naturally thrown by my father, I’d come home early dressed in Liam’s favorite lingerie. Except when I went into the bedroom, I saw the maid modeling her own trashy thong for him, and nothing else. It took him a second to open his eyes and stop sucking her huge nipples, before he realized I was standing there with my jaw on the floor.
That was two months ago. After throwing myself an exquisite pity party for the first few weeks, it occurred to me that I should probably do something to make myself happy again. Standing there in front of my friends, I wasn’t quite there yet, but I was a huge believer in faking it ‘til you make it.
Britney slid a couple of fives in the bartender’s direction, winking at him for added effect before doling out our drinks. I swilled the rum and coke around, happy to gulp half of it down. Even with my newfound independence, I was still having trouble accepting the fact that Liam cheated on me. It wasn’t something I liked to talk too much about with my friends, and I was pretty sure that they figured I’d gotten over it. But the truth of the matter was that I wasn’t entirely there yet. I mean… I hadn’t even thought about another guy, much less slept with one. So, while I was cool to go along with my friends to The Kingdom, I didn’t really know what was in it for me. Maybe I just went for the laughs.
“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, look! There they are!” Britney squealed as she turned around in her seat. “Just look at those abs!”
The rest of the room had gone dark, with the spotlight on the main stage in the front, where three tall, sexy men of varying tastes strolled out, their skin oiled up and shining in the brightness. The blonde, who was only wearing a bowtie and what appeared to be some sort of sock thing over his dick, took center point, gyrating his hips in time with the dance music. I couldn’t help but laugh as I looked between Sasha and Britney, and ba
ck to the guys on stage.
It was cheesy. The good kind of cheesy, where my cheeks were starting to hurt after grinning so hard. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to go here, after all.
The all-female crowd let out an audible gasp as the two men who flanked the guy in the middle both did crazy looking flips in midair, before switching spots and continuing dancing while the guy in the middle took a microphone from one of the fully dressed middle-aged men down in front.
“How you doin’ tonight, ladies?” his voice boomed through the speakers. “Are you all ready to have a good time?”
The roar and catcalls were almost deafening, but maybe that was because both Britney and Sasha were screaming their heads off on either side of me. I clapped along with everyone, wondering if this night could get any more cliché.
“Come on, Gabi! We need better seats,” Britney shouted, trying to pull both me and Sasha along after her.
I held back. “You two go on ahead,” I said, smiling at Sasha, who threw me a dirty look. Britney didn’t even seem to care, and a minute later she had pulled Sasha to the very front of the crowd, whistling along with the rest of them.
I couldn’t help but shake my head and laugh at the two of them. Deciding to pull out of the crowd altogether, I found an empty seat back at the bar and sipped my rum and coke.
“What, feeling a little shy?” a deep voice said from somewhere behind me.
Setting my drink down, I slowly turned, figuring it was one of the older guys that worked at the club. I wasn’t really in the mood to get hit on by some guy twice my age. “Hardly. It’s just that this whole thing feels a little —”
But I froze as I looked into a pair of big dark eyes, framed with lashes so thick that I was instantly jealous. A smile curved on the man’s face, perfectly accenting his strong nose, sharp jawline, and five o’clock shadow. It didn’t help that he was towering over me, easily over six feet. Instinctively I knew I should’ve pulled back—this guy was definitely invading my space—but something held me there under his gaze.
“Not a fan of the male specimen, then?”