Drunk on You Read online

  "That's ..." I trail off as I think about what she's saying. I can say it different ways, but she's right. He's been keeping me from moving on. While it might not be because I'm pining away--as he would appear to wish--being afraid another man will cheat on me and hurt me might as well be the same thing. "Exactly what I'm doing." I slap my free hand against my forehead. The sound of my palm meeting flesh a loud snap in the room around us. "Stupid, stupid, stupid girl."

  "Nah, Nik. You aren't stupid. I would have been more surprised if you had been able to move on without a little nudge. You aren't stupid because you're protecting your heart. That is never a stupid thing to do."

  "I guess it's hard to want to open myself up, to be honest. I spent four years of my life with Seth, and I probably would still be stuck in a dead relationship if he hadn't cheated. When I find another man to try with again, how do I know he is going to be worth giving myself over to--worth losing myself in the process again?"

  Her pixie face scrunches up. The freckles across her nose look like they're dancing as she twitches her nose at me in confusion. "You didn't lose yourself."

  I nod, my face washed clean of emotion. "Yeah, I did. I didn't do anything for me for years before we split. It was all about what would make him happy. I spent so much time afraid he would leave if he wasn't happy that I didn't even realize I wanted him to leave."

  "So learn from it! Open yourself up to the idea of moving on, but do it on your terms. Start tomorrow by living for Nikki and making sure no one doubts your happiness when they're on the outside looking in."

  Long after Nate had come to pick up Ember's drunken self and I had punched my pillow to try to get comfortable, her words filter back through my mind. She's right. I'm in limbo, and I don't really want to be. I've lost something I loved by keeping myself from getting close to someone--the happiness I feel knowing I'm the reason someone else feels that way. I miss the connection I've deprived myself of. The chemistry between a man and woman. Companionship. What better way to prove to Seth that I'm serious about us never getting back together than to jump back in with both feet. No one says I can't sate my desire for some extra friendly friendship with some no-strings fun.

  It's a win-win that even sober me would agree with.

  I think ...

  "FOR THE LAST TIME, LACEY, it's not gonna happen."

  She pouts. Something I used to find adorable now makes me grind my teeth instantly. In the year since breaking up, I seem to have a laundry list full of things I used to like about her. Fuck me; I'm not even sure there's anything left about her that I still like.

  "But Shane," she starts, but I hold my hand up to silence her, the beginnings of a migraine already clawing at my temples.

  "No more of that 'but Shane' bullshit. You want to jump from licking pussy to riding dick because you can't decide which you like the most, that's cool, Lace, but you won't be doin' that shit with me. I'm not judging this new life of yours. I couldn't care less what type of genitals you want to poke around with. But you need to do it anywhere fucking else than right here."

  "We love each other!" she whines. The pounding in my head continues to grow.

  "You don't know what love is, Lacey. You don't fuck around on someone you claim to love. I would've given you the world a year ago, but you ruined that when you fucked around. Now you don't just not get my world; you don't get a single fucking piece of me."

  Her chin quivers and she blinks rapidly. I know her well enough, though, and she isn't fooling me. When Lacey cries because she actually is upset, she is the ugliest crier I've ever seen. Messy, loud, and hysterical. But this Lacey uses that delicate image of a woman against my protective nature. The one who fakes whatever tears she can muster to get me to cave.

  That right there is the kind of woman I never saw because I liked her pussy too much. I let her use me, but I'm not stupid enough to let her back in.

  Seeing that her one measly tear isn't going to work, she switches gears, and it's so swift and obvious. I have no clue how I missed this before now. Her chin stops, her eyes still for a beat before fluttering slowly, and I'm sure, she means to be seductive. Her tense posture melts slightly as she walks around my desk with a sinful strut.

  "Don't even, Lacey." She stops abruptly, and I can only imagine she's confused as fuck now that both of her go-to manipulations have failed her. "I've got too much shit to do tonight, and we're down two bartenders. The last thing I wanted to do even before all that shit landed on my plate was explain to you, again, that we're not ever going to be together again."

  "You don't mean that," she hedges.

  My neck cocks back a twitch, and I laugh out a frustrated breath. "Woman, are you dense? You fucked off on me and picked your lover of two months over the man you had been with for years. You decided you wanted to lick some cunt and be wild and free, babe, and that's what you can have. When all that you did came out, that was the day you became no one to me."

  "Shane," she huskily murmurs, going back to wounded and tearful Lacey.

  "Seriously, get the fuck out. I haven't banned you from Dirty yet, but don't mistake my kindness for weakness. When it comes to you, babe, there are no weaknesses because you. Are. Nothing."

  She frowns, I think--I really can't fucking tell anymore now that she's a little too close to her Botox injector friend. I see the spark in her brown eyes the second she decides to, yet again, convince herself that nothing I just said happened.

  Fucking hell, I want this bitch out of my life.

  "I'm going to run because I know you're busy. I'll call you tomorrow, honey."

  And it takes every ounce of self-control for me not to snap. I hold my body still, my face emotionless, and my words to myself. Lacey walks out of this office only because I've had years of practice at keeping myself in control. Inside my head, though, I've got that skinny giraffe neck of hers between my hands and I'm whipping her around like a ragdoll until she can't fucking slither her way into my fucking life anymore.

  She's not going to go far. I know she's downstairs below my office within the club. She'll hide in the shadows, but she won't leave while I'm here. Watching from the outside to make sure no one moves in on me--a man she lost a year ago because she got busted fucking another person--another woman--in our bed.

  What I need to do is blacklist her from Dirty Dog, the club I'm part owner of with my buddy Nate. I hadn't wanted to do that, but no matter how much bad-mouthing Lacey will do because of it, I can't have her pulling that shit again.

  I walk from behind my desk and over to the edge of the room, toe-to-glass with the window that covers the whole back wall. My eyes roam over the room below. Bodies undulating to the music, laughter and yelled conversations hitting my mind like a phantom echo of what I know it sounds like down there in the thick of it. Each of the bars in the vast club are swamped with bodies, and it isn't even time for the dancing.

  Business is damn good. Another reason I can't have my ex bringing drama and bullshit to stink up that good business.

  With a deep sigh, I rock on my feet and study the room. Two years ago, I moved to Hope Town on a whim when Nate called to let me know of his plans to open a club in his hometown. At the time, I was just managing Dirty and hadn't become business partners with him yet, but I believed in this place just as much back then as I did today.

  Dirty Dog is that club everyone buzzes about. Everyone. It doesn't matter if you live here in Georgia or in the middle of the Pacific on the Hawaiian Islands. We're all over the internet. Celebrity gossip magazines almost always have some celeb coming or going from here. And with our recent decision to add-on to the building and make Dirty even bigger--the talk of Dirty being "the place" to be doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon. Or ever, I hope. What I had been working my whole fucking life to find was a stable job doing something I love that put money in the bank and food on my table. I was completely in control of my life now. Nothing would change that.

  Letting Lacey lead me around by my dick is the last fucking thing I'm going to let happen. She must have had her brain sucked out of her pussy while she was getting to know her scissor sister because not one time did I let her call the shots when she had my cock.

  Control.

  As long as I keep it, I don't have to deal with bullshit like Lacey that I finally washed myself clean of.

  Three nights later and I'm still short staffed, exhausted with Lacey's persistence, and so busy I've forgotten--again--to fill Nate in on what's happening with her showing up here. I figure, between the two of us, we can figure out how to detach her from me.

  Nate took this shift working the bar, something the two of us rarely do but always alternate when they're shorthanded. If I'm being honest, though, I don't mind working the bar. And I know Nate doesn't either. My lips turn up when I see Nate jump on the bar and grind his hips in the woman's face in front of him. A laugh bursts from my mouth when that woman--his wife--shoves him away with a laugh lighting up her face. I'm happy he's found what he has with Ember. She's a damn good woman and the rare breed who doesn't mind what her man does for a living. Something I had thought--at one time--that I would have with Lacey. In my experience, when you're in a sex-driven industry and a relationship, it never ends without jealousy infecting things. Nate and Ember, though--they break the mold. He found his diamond in the rough. Sure, more women like Ember are probably out there, but I'm not willing to sift through all the other bullshit women on the way to find one of my own.

  When I was stripping, I knew the chance of finding the 'it' girl was less than none. While Dirty isn't a strip club, all the men who work for us--and ourselves included--were once strippers. We used what we learned early on while stripping. Exploiting people's obsession with sex leads to immense profitability. We started with the base, the bar, and sprinkled in the rest. Damn good music, strong drinks, lines out the door every day from lights off to lights on, and ... our ability to dance.

  When Nate opened Dirty Dog, it was popular right out of the gate, gaining even more notoriety for being the male version of Coyote Ugly. The men danced for the sex-obsessed patrons to a tune so filthy the only difference from our days of stripping was that we didn't take anything off anymore. Well, not always.

  Because of those not always nights--which really, we have some who touch a little too much every night--it was clear to me that a relationship with anyone other than a woman like Ember would never work, and I was sick of wasting the energy to find it.

  I turn and walk back to my desk, the mountain of paperwork I had been putting off for a week looking a little thicker than it did two nights ago when I was here. Which only served to amp the migraine that had been building in my head for the past three nights. What I need is to release some fucking stress. Find someone who knows how to play without getting attached.

  Maybe tonight ... the thought filters through my mind, and I glance out the window looking into the dull light of the bar below. "Who knows," I mumble to myself, not dismissing the idea of finding a good old-fashioned one-night stand.

  I stretch, looking over at the clock to see two hours have passed since I started doing payroll. My back tenses as I stand to work the kinks out of my body, reminding me how long it's been since I went to the gym. With a look at the still thick-as-fuck pile of work, I huff a breath.

  "Fuck it." Taking off my suit jacket, I toss it on the back of my desk chair and start walking. I'm wound up tighter than hell, and I'm not going to get shit done if I don't go work out some of that pent-up energy. No better place to gain back some of that lost gym time and work out that energy than by working the bar at Dirty Dog.

  "Well, well! Look at how lucky the bar is tonight," Nate booms when I jump over the bar top and land next to him. His arm drops over my shoulders, and he turns us both to face the excited crowd around us. "You are the luckiest motherfuckers in this whole damn place because not only do you get this sex god ..." He pauses and waves his hand down his own body, moving me with him as he does some thrusting of his hips because his arm is still around my neck. "But you all get Shane, too. Now, I'm a happily married man who can recognize a hot thing when I see it, and you don't want to miss this stud muffin when he gets a hankering to be ... fucking ... DIRTY!" He bellows out the last word, and screams erupt around us. Nate grabs the opposite side of the bar and pulls himself over on his belly toward Ember. Her laughter stops the second his mouth crashes against hers.

  I smile at the two of them and shake my head, turning from them to get to work. That is when I notice her. No fucking idea how I missed her before now.

  Nikki.

  Blond goddess with a killer ass, legs begging to wrap me up, and the sweetest pair of tits I've ever seen.

  The first time she blinked up at me with those dark blue denim eyes, I knew she was trouble for me. A temptation on every level. She screamed at me to take her while my real life warred. She tempted me when I was with Lacey, making me feel guilty to desire someone other than the woman I was with. But it was what I discovered when I saw past her stunning looks. She was so much more than the fake type of woman I had originally thought. The vapid users that I had always seemed to attract.

  Nikki was hilarious, smart, and driven in her career. She's only happy when those around her are happy. I'm not even sure she has a single vindictive bone in her body.

  And worst still, she was dating a sonofabitch.

  Until the day that changes, I'm going to keep doing what I've done since the day she crashed into my life ... ignore the twinge inside me that demands I claim her.

  THE MUSIC POUNDS AGAINST MY body, cascading a series of chills down my spine and across my skin. Almost like a physical touch. Of course, that probably has a lot to do with the dress pant covered ass shaking everything God gave him right in front of my face. Let me tell you, having so much sinful perfection in front of your face like that isn't the fun you would think it was. It's pure torture to sit here and act like I'm not affected by the show in front of me. Hell, I'm not even sure why I try to hide it anymore.

  Didn't I just decide the other night to be all wild and free and enjoy my life as a single woman who dances with others ... naked ... in bed? There's no one to hold me back--I'm a free woman.

  I laugh at myself, my eyes still not able to look away from the erotic show before me, and I almost spill my drink when I blindly reach for it because of his intoxication. Playing it off, I place the straw between my lips and drink while my chest heaves. The cold chill of the liquor racing down my throat does little to cool my overheated system.

  My eyes roam down from his face and over the hard ridges of his naked chest now that he's unbuttoned his dress shirt all the way. The tails flapping as he dances. His hands move into view when he hooks his thumbs in his suspenders and pulls them from his taut muscles ... then he lets go. The loud snap when they hit his chest through the shirt, dancing above the music, occurs at the same time a zap of lust shoots through my body. My eyes continue to trail over his hard torso until I reach his hips. Then my eyes widen and I almost choke on the sip I had just swallowed.

  Is he ... hard?

  Oh, my. He totally is. Son of Bon Jovi with Meatloaf on top!

  How long have I thought of what it would be like to be on this end of Shane's dancing? It burns me alive from a distance; so unbelievably hot, I knew it would be just as strong up close and personal. I just never imagined the heat would be so scorching that it literally takes my breath away.

  I gulp, my eyes unable to look away from the man who's invaded my mind for way too long. Watching the solid bulge behind his zipper as it becomes more pronounced, I admire the way he rolls his hips in tune with the beat of the music in the most delicious of ways. There is no way he's missed where my attention is stuck either. He takes a step closer, his black dress shoes framing the spot in front of me where my drink had just been. When he's this close, there is no doubt he's not dancing for the crowd anymore. My pulse speeds up as I start to lift my gaze. He towers above me, his tattooed forearms peeking out from his rolled-up sleeves when he raises his arms above his head, holding on to the large bar that runs parallel to the bar top, his face tilted down as he winks and pulls his bottom lip between his teeth as the beat drops and the music gets that perfect sex rhythm.

  That's when he starts moving. And I mean realllly moving. I've never seen him dance like this, but I know one thing for sure, I want to see him do this naked and between my thighs.

  "Should be illegal, right?" Ember says in my ear, loud enough to be heard over the pulsing music around us but still just for me. She keeps her head close but leans back to look at my face.

  I nod, incapable of doing much more, and glance back up.

  "Starboy" by The Weeknd continues, a song that never really seemed as sexual as it does right now, and still, I just stare.

  Good heavens, I might start drooling. My eyes widen, and I bring my hand up to pass over my chin ... just to make sure and all.

  His shoe makes a loud boom when he slams his foot against the thick bar top, right in front of me, and I startle with a tiny jerk. I trail my gaze up his legs, pausing on that hard crotch again. Clutching my drink to my chest, I realize I'm feasting on the poor man again and continue my perusal upward. Then, I see the sinfully handsome face of Shane Kingston. One of his thick, dark brows goes up in a way that I just know he's daring me. For what, though, I'm not sure.

  This man, this ridiculously sexy man, knows he affects me. Heck, he's probably always known.

  I watch as one heavily tattooed arm reaches behind his back, and before I realize what he's doing, he's maneuvered his shirt off while keeping his suspenders in place. Then he's tossing it in my face. I jump with a gasp, my nose filling with a scent that's all Shane--sweaty man and expensive cologne. Ember laughs, and I know she's enjoying seeing me speechless because that's a rarity.

  Am I going to let this man get the best of me?

  No.

  Hell, no.

  I'm ready to be wild and freaking free!

  Tossing the shirt in Ember's general direction, I say a silent prayer that she holds on to it because I'm stealing the damn thing. My drink goes next, my hand shooting toward her until she takes it from me. The whole time, Shane continues to dance on top of the bar with the rest of the bartenders at Dirty Dog. I couldn't tell you what came over me next; all I know is I was a new woman after finally seeing what my cheating, no good, son of a nutcracker ex was still doing to me long after our breakup.

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