Beauty from Pain (19 page)

Lachlan walks over to the car and opens my
door for me, but says nothing about the man or why he’s at the
vineyard the day after Christmas when all of the other employees
are still off for the holidays. Of course, it’s not my business, so
I don’t ask.

When we’re inside, Lachlan grabs a coldie (his
name for beer), and we go into the living room to hang out. “Today
is Boxing Day. If we were in Sydney, I’d take you to the harbor to
watch the start of the yacht race to Hobart.”

“
I’ve never heard of that before,”
I reply.

It’s a big day for hitting the after-Christmas
sales. And there’s a lot of sporting events planned for today.
Australia’s National Cricket team had a test match scheduled this
morning, which is a big deal around here.”

He grabs the remote for what he refers to as
the idiot box. “I need to see if we won.”

After he sees the results of the game, he
turns the television off. “That’s enough of that. Will you play
something for me?”

I can’t resist his request or the urge to play
since I haven’t touched it today. I play several of Lachlan’s
requests, but he gets that wrinkle in his brow and I know he’s
thinking hard about something. “What’s on your mind?”

He watches me a second before he says
anything. “I was just wondering if, when you’re back home and
you’ve become a huge success, if you’ll write a number-one hit
about us?”

“
I really hope not.”

“
Why not?” He sounds offended. Or
disappointed.

I watch my fingers strum the strings so my
eyes don’t have to meet his. I don’t want to see them when I
explain. “Because the best songs are written from the heart and the
emotions you feel must be one extreme or the other. I’d have to be
desperately in love or devastatingly hurt by you.”

Lachlan settles back onto the couch and kicks
off his shoes, casually propping his feet on the coffee table.
“Have you ever experienced either of those things?”

“
I’ve never been desperately in
love.”

“
Does that mean you’ve been
devastatingly hurt?”

I think of Blake and the way I felt when I
found out he was married. “I’ve been hurt and it felt shattering at
the time.”

“
I don’t think you can’t have one
without the other, so the two must coincide.”

He sounds like he knows a little something
about love and pain. “Is that your opinion because you’ve
experienced both?”

He laughs loudly and I look up from my guitar.
“Hell, no. I’ve never been in love, so no one has ever hurt
me.”

How is it possible that someone as beautiful
as Lachlan has never had that experience? “You’ve never even
thought you might be in love?”

“
Never. What about
you?”

Blake is in my thoughts again, reminding me
just how wrong a person can be when it comes to love. “I thought I
was in love once, but I was dead wrong.”

“
I’m guessing he’s the one you
were telling me about last night?”

I almost forgot about that. “Yeah, that would
be him.”

“
Did you ever dance for
him?”

That came out of left field. “No. I never even
told him I did it.”

Lachlan gets up from the couch. He grabs my
wrist, pulling me to his side, and sets my guitar in its case.
“Come with me. I want to show you something.”

He leads me to the gym and stops outside the
door. “This is why Mike was here. He was installing this for you.”
He opens the door and I see a shiny new pole toward the back wall.
I cross the room and touch it before I look at Lachlan and
smile.

Damn, he wasn’t kidding. He freakin’ installed
a pole for me. Or for him.

“
I want you to dance for me.” He
opens one of the cabinet doors and takes out a box. “And I want you
to wear this while you do it.”

I
lift
the top to find a black
one-piece romper inside. The sides of the waist are cut out,
leaving only a thin strip to cover me down the middle between the
top and bottom. It’s hot and not like anything I’ve worn while
dancing. When I
take it
out of the box, I have another surprise
underneath: a pair of red fuck-me pumps. I hold one up—they look
like they’ll fit me perfectly.

He swallows hard. “Will you do it for
me?”

I know in that moment that I’ll never be able
to tell him no to anything. I want to be the woman to make his
fantasies real. “Yes, I’ll do it.”

He leans forward to kiss me and catches my
bottom lip between his. “Now?”

“
If it’s what you
want.”

“
Oh, it’s what I want.”

“
But I need a minute to get
ready.”

“
Absolutely.”

I take the box from his hands and go to his
bedroom. I quickly line my eyes with black kohl and make them smoky
with gray and black eyeshadow before adding a fresh coat of mascara
to make my lashes extra lush. My hair is windblown from riding in
the convertible, so I brush it out before I flip my head over and
fluff it with the hair dryer. I leave it down because I like it to
cascade when I’m upside down on the pole.

I slip into the romper and damn, is it ever
skimpy. There’s way less of it covering me once I get into it
because it’s stretched so taunt from my shoulders to my crotch. I
put the pumps on and give them a test drive as I walk circles in
the bathroom. I wouldn’t want to walk too many blocks in these
tall-ass things, but they’ll be fine for what I’m going to
do.

I inspect myself in the mirror. I’m hot as
hell and it boosts my confidence to an all-time high. I’m about to
make Lachlan’s fantasy a reality.

I go to the gym and wonder where he is. I ease
the door open and see him sitting in a chair facing the pole. He’s
waiting for me with all the lights off except the ones over the
area where I’ll be dancing. I walk up behind him and lean around to
whisper in his ear. “Close your eyes.”

I connect my phone to the receiver in the
cabinet by Bluetooth because I need to use my own music. The deep,
dark thumping bass of “Angel” by Massive Attack begins and I put it
on repeat because I expect this performance to run long.

I take my place by the pole and inhale deeply
before I start my performance. “You can open your eyes
now.”

When he sees me, he begins to smile. Big
time.

I turn my back to him and reach over my head
to grasp the pole. I slowly bend my knees and slide my bottom down
it and then back up again as I peer over my shoulder at him. I
circle with slow agility and hold the post with one hand as I step
out and whirl around a few times. It’s total amateur stuff until I
kick my leg up and over to lock the pole behind my knee and climb
the brass staff while swiveling upward.

I do a series of elaborate spins and stunts
that took years to master. When I finish the lengthy routine, I’m
upside down. I reach for the floor with my palms and spin several
times before dismounting. I look at Lachlan when I stand and I’m
not sure he has even blinked since I started.

The music is still playing and I walk to where
he is sitting. The song playing is one of my favorites to dance to
because it’s bizarre and almost hypnotic. I love the way it makes
me feel, like I want to lose control and do strange
things.

“
Baby, you’ve fucked my mind
without touching my body.”

I turn my back and smile as I lower my bottom
to give him a lap dance. He grabs my hips and I swat his hands
away. “You know the rules. You can’t touch the dancer.”

He sits all the way back in the chair and I
take a seat on his lap with my legs spread on each side of his
thighs. I put my hands into my hair and lift it from my neck. I
lean against him with my back to his chest and let it fall into his
face. I’m torturing him. I know this, but it’s all part of the
fantasy.

“
You’re my private
dancer.”

I lean forward and spread my legs further
apart as I put my hands on his knees. I begin a steady rhythm of
stroking my bottom against his groin and I can feel how hard he is
beneath me. “Oh, I’m much more than that.”

He groans and I know I’m pushing him to his
brink. And I love it.

I get up from his lap and then lower myself to
straddle him. I take his face in my hands and search his intense
blue eyes. They’re different, darker. And fixated on me.

I feel him tremble under me and then his
fingers slide into the crotch of my romper. But he doesn't touch
me. I feel a sudden jerk downward and I realize he has ripped the
bottom of my romper and pushed it up over my hips. “Laurelyn, I
need to fuck you right now. Don’t make me beg.”

I reach for his fly, but my hands miss it
because he almost bucks me off trying to get his pants shoved out
of the way. He’s feral and demanding and I know there won’t be
anything gentle about what’s going to happen. I’d be disappointed
if there was.

When his pants and boxer briefs are out of the
way, he jerks me down onto him as he thrusts up into me. I cry out
because it’s so much deeper in this position. It feels like he’s
pounding against my womb and I can’t decide if it’s pleasure or
pain. He continues to thrust upward as he grasps my hips tightly to
slam me down against him. There’s no doubt I’ll have bruises on my
hips tomorrow from where his fingers are digging into my skin, but
I don’t care. I wouldn’t have him stop for anything in the world
right now.

I feel my explosion building and I don’t know
how or why, but my mind registers the fact that Lachlan didn’t put
a condom on. After all that grief over the busted rubber the night
before, I can’t believe he doesn’t wear one tonight.

Dammit. I’m about to ruin the best sex I’ve ever
had.

I lean back to see him and he thrusts deeper
than ever. “Lachlan, you didn’t put a condom on.”

He grabs my hips painfully and thrusts deeply
one last time as he groans loudly and then hisses through his
teeth. “Ooh, Laurelyn.”

Shit. He just came inside me, no doubt at the
door of my womb since he’s been knocking on it so hard. My
immediate instinct is to get off him, but he’s holding me so
tightly, there’s no way I can budge an inch.

When he’s finished, I’m still straddling him.
We’re face to face. I fist a handful of hair and bring our
foreheads together. I’m staring him directly in the eyes, about to
chastise him for the missing rubber, when he grabs me around the
neck to pull me down for a kiss.

When he stops, our foreheads are still
touching and we’re both gasping for breath. “You are
fan-fucking-tastic. I’ve never seen anything like that. When you
told me you pole danced, that is not what I thought you
did.”

“
What did you think I
meant?”

“
I thought you’d hold on to the
pole and spin around, maybe climb it a little if I was lucky, but
damn, baby … you’re bewitching on that pole.”

I kiss him because I’m pleased by his praises,
but I’m still going to bring up the absentee condom. “Was it my
dancing or the hypnotic music that made you go crazy and forget to
put on a condom?”

“
I didn’t forget. I put it on when
you started dancing.”

Oh. He slipped that one on without me knowing.
“I should have known you wouldn’t forget after the huge deal you
made about it last night.”

“
It’s a good thing I put it on
while you were dancing because there’s no way I could have stopped
to do it once you straddled me.” He’s shaking his head like he’s in
disbelief and pulls me into a tight hug. “I don’t want you to dance
for anyone but me.”

I’m confused by that. Does he mean he doesn’t
want me to dance for anyone else for the next three
months?

As I’m catching my breath, the thought fades
and my mind moves on to other things I don’t understand. I have to
know if he felt the same unexplainable energy I did. “Did you feel
different?”

He laughs and it vibrates against my chest. “I
swear I’ve never come so hard in my life.”

That’s exactly how I felt. “Me, either, but it
was strange. I almost felt hypnotized, like I was being controlled
by something else more powerful than myself.”

“
I think we were both being
controlled by some mighty strong orgasms.”

“
And you gave it to me. Thank
you.”

He kisses my forehead. “Thank you for dancing
for me. And for giving me sex so spectacular, I’m not sure it can
ever be topped.”

I don’t say it, but I definitely think
it—we’ve both just experienced something that can never be
topped.

22

Jack McLachlan

We’re finishing dinner and I haven’t been able
to look at Laurelyn one second without remembering her on that
pole. I’ve been in a lot of strip clubs, but I’ve never seen
anything like what she did. No stripper on a pole ever made me feel
that way.

Putting that aside, there’s much more to her
than being sexy, and I can’t wait to peel back all the layers to
see what’s underneath. If she’ll let me. I worry she might not when
I remember how she was about me learning her real name.