Drop Everything Now (11 page)

The girls went absolutely nuts as he strolled back and forth across the stage, pointing the guns at several of the girls, mock-shooting and winking at the same time. After he threw the guns into the crowd, he shimmied back and forth across the stage, grinding his hips into nothing and still looking absolutely fucking incredible. He hooked his thumbs into his belt loops and did some line-dance-style moves before falling on his belly and thrusting his hips and knees against the floor in time with the music, showing off every single one of his incredible back muscles in live action. It was like the erotic version of that stupid snake dance the guys in middle school used to do.

I ate every second of it up.

He stood up again, grabbing the sides of his vest and teasing it open. When the girls squealed, he paused and shouted, “You want it off? Why didn’t you just say so?”

And even though I’d seen him with his shirt off half a dozen times by now—had even felt that delicious-looking torso pressing up against me—I wanted it off, too. Bad. He was a master at making me want to stare at every possible inch of his skin.

When he shrugged out of his vest, the sighs and swoons that rippled through the room mixed into a soundtrack of raging, colliding hormones. It was exactly the same soundtrack going on in my head. Every golden, greased-up muscle danced in the red-lit shadows.
He’s yours, Andi. All yours.
Even though I knew, logically, it wasn’t true, the heat gathering between my legs—just like it had when his tongue had been flicking its way over my most sensitive areas—told me it was.

He had to be mine.

I started to drool just in time for Ryder’s chaps to come sailing off over my head. The sight of Ryder wearing nothing but a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and a faux-leather thong with a glittering black applique in the shape of a gun would have been completely, utterly comical if it hadn’t been for the size of the bulge underneath the gun.

I mean, I’d seen it through his shorts, but there was nothing like wrapping a guy’s dick in a neat little package decorated with sequins to make a girl appreciate the size of it.

And what it could potentially do.

I knew right then and there I had to get my hands back on him as soon as humanly possible.

Kat’s voice came on over the speakers, low and sultry. “Now, ladies, we have space for one lucky Kitten on stage tonight. The first little cowgirl to show me she has the goods to pull our Mr. Strong’s very, very sensitive trigger will get to join him on stage and spend just a little second with him behind that hat.”

Mine.

My hand closed around the cash in my back pocket—five twenties—and I waved it high over my head, jumping up and screaming, “Me!” Only a split-second later did I realize how ridiculous I was. Too late now.

Cara clapped her hands together like she was a five-year-old who’d just broken the piñata at her birthday party, squealing and wiggling in her seat. Miss Kat strolled over to me and motioned to the stage-side stairs with an open hand. “You’ve got a firecracker of a girl tonight, cowboy.”

Fear knotted in my stomach, and my neck and face blazed hot. I knew they were blotchy, and I knew I looked ridiculous in my skinny jeans and basic tee, but I really didn’t care. The music kept playing, and I stood up.

My heart hammered in half-time to the rhythm of my shaking hands, which somehow went along with the music. This wasn’t like me—not at all. I’d barely been to a bar with loud music since freshman year. This wasn’t the kind of thing that Andi Herrera did.

But who said I couldn’t do it now?

No one, Andi. Not a single person to say you can’t shove these bills in Ryder’s underwear.

I flicked the bills open and ran my thumbnail down the center, making a long fold in all five of them together.

Ryder had his hat in one hand and was alternately thrusting his gun-covered dick at the audience and turning around with the hat over his ass. Every other second, he uncovered it in time with the music, and the girls cheered even louder.

“Oh, Ryder,” Kat cooed through the speakers, “your cowgirl’s here.”

Ryder flipped his hat back from his palm, caught it in the crook of his arm, and dipped his head down, standing upright with the hat back on. He took a little bow, made his fingers into guns, and shot them each at the audience before turning and ambling toward me in those big, clunky boots.

I was on stage with my ultra-hunky, mostly-naked, strip-dancing crush. In Vegas. With a hundred dollars cash in my hand.

There was only one thing I really wanted, one thing I could think clearly about: his skin under my hands.

When his eyes met mine, they flared wide, and he reached me in no time, palming his hat and holding it in front of both of our faces so the audience couldn’t see it. “Andi. What the hell are you doing here?” he whispered, his breath hot on my cheek, mixing with whatever oil was on his muscles and a little bit of sweat and the energy of the room.

“Cara brought me,” I said.

“STUFF IT!” someone shouted from the audience, followed by an eruption of cheers.

“Are you okay?” Ryder asked.

I nodded, biting my lip, and then the hat was back on his head. I held up the bills and, pulling his thong toward me with one hand, stuffed them down the front with the other.

My hand brushed against the hot, smooth skin there, and I practically swooned on the goddamn stage. I had never wanted anything as badly as I wanted him.

Uncontrollable desire was not a feeling that Andrea Herrera, straight-A student, child life specialist, and all-around perfect daughter had ever really felt, let alone acted on.

Tonight would be different.

With one good yank on the G-string, I tugged Ryder to me. His hat came off again like a reflex, covering our faces from the crowd, and his lips crashed down on mine as his other arm clamped around my waist, his fingers digging into my skin. He groaned as he tugged me even closer to him and his tongue swept my bottom lip. It was the sound that told me he’d been thinking exactly the same thing as I was.

His faux-leather-wrapped package was a rock that dug into my belly button, and suddenly, I almost didn’t care that we were surrounded by a middle-aged lady, a fat DJ, and two hundred of Vegas’s horniest women. I wanted Ryder Strong, whether that was his real name or not, and I wanted him now.

I arched up on my tiptoes, releasing his G-string with a snap and clawing my fingers into the close-cut hair at the back of his head. All of a sudden, the hat was gone, and the entire club was watching us make out and feel each other up like two horny teenagers.

I still didn’t care. I wanted him to make the unbearable tension in my center go away.

As the music started to fade, he slid both hands down to my ass, then further down to the backs of my thighs. I straddled him, and he walked me backstage as I rode that gorgeous bare ass that I’d just announced to the world was all mine. With every step, he kissed me again, gasping into each one like he was suffocating and my lips were air. I gladly let him, and to be honest, I was really impressed. This was a guy with some damn good coordination.

But as the cheers faded and Miss Kat’s voice came back on over the speakers, the spell was broken. Ryder carried me into the wings, broke the kiss, let go of my thighs so my feet touched ground again, and ran his hand back through his hair while he stared at me, panting.

“How are you here?”

Panic seized my chest. “What do you mean? I told you. Cara wanted to come see Rob, and I guess…”

“There’s a reason I didn’t tell you this was my second job, Andi.”

Panic became rage, mixed with a little bit of embarrassment. The mixed signals coming off this guy were freaking unbelievable. He didn’t want me here. Was there something wrong with what I’d done? Was it my lack of ridiculous makeup and heels? Did he really want me to be just like all those other girls—just there for a good time?

My voice lowered to a whispered hiss. “Oh, really? I just thought it was because you were too busy giving me the best night of my life and then dumping me back home like a piece of trash.”

Ryder’s face fell. “Andi. Andi, that is not how I wanted it to be at all. It’s me who feels like a piece of trash—you know, being a stripper and all—and I didn’t want you to think I was before you got to know me a little better.”

“Well, you didn’t succeed,” I scoffed, trying to hold back tears. “And also, you’re having trouble making that argument convincing when you’re standing there with a goddamn glittering Band-Aid over your dick.”

He coughed and looked around, then reached behind him to a pile of stuff on a props table, coming back with his jeans and a rumpled t-shirt. After he’d knocked into the table a couple times trying to get into his jeans and messed up his hair in an adorably sexy way while putting on his shirt, I had to tell myself to focus just to keep my head in the conversation.

He stared at the ground and shuffled into some flip-flops. “Guess a girl like you doesn’t belong with a guy like me after all. Congratulations. You were right.”

Tears pricked at my eyes. “Guess I was.”

Chapter 15

I stormed
out to the parking lot without a single goddamn plan for what to do next. I dug my phone out of my back pocket and hoped I had the cab company’s name saved in there, or I’d be shivering here for a good few minutes trying to find it on my phone’s shitty Internet. I scrolled through the numbers with the phone’s battery icon flashing at me. “Shit,” I whispered, now holding back tears.

“Andi!” Ryder called.

I didn’t look back at him, but before I knew it, he was by my side. We breathed in impossible sync, our lungs fighting against the rapidly chilling night air. The words tumbled from my lips before I could stop them.

“I could have handled knowing you were a stripper. I don’t really care. But I have a huge problem with you not telling me your real name when we were about to…you know…”

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? When you called me Ryder, that was the first time I realized I hadn’t told you. And I really like you, you know? I wanted everything between us to be real. Ryder’s not real.”

It sure as hell had felt real when he’d kissed me, but I decided to leave that for later. I wanted to know one thing desperately. “Yeah, that was a nice piece of news. Do you want to take this opportunity to tell me your real name?”

He looked down and blew out a breath. “It’s Bryan. Bryan Strong. My friends have always called me Ry, and when I came here looking for work, Kat liked me but didn’t like my name. She came up with Ryder on my first day, and I’ve been the cowboy who takes twenties for a kiss on the cheek ever since.”

“A kiss on the cheek?”

His eyes caught mine, and he flicked an eyebrow up. “Well, yeah. I don’t typically kiss the girls. I mean, I never kiss the girls. There’s a no-touching policy, so we only do what we want to do.”

“But you kissed me,” I said, stepping back toward him, itching to shove my hands into that robe. “You picked me up.”

He laughed and looked at the ground. “Well, I wanted you. I mean, I wanted to kiss you. I wanted you closer, I guess.”

I stepped even closer, and carefully smoothed my hand around his waist. “I wanted it, too. I’m not the kind of girl who gives two hours’ worth of tips to a stripper. Often. Or ever. Or has ever seen a stripper actually.”

He bent his head down to mine, his lips a whisper away. “But you wanted to tonight?”

“You never kiss the girls?” I asked.

“Never,” he breathed.

“Do you let them touch you? Lick you? Bite you?”

His eyes fluttered closed, and I drew in a deep breath, waiting for his response. “Never, never, never.” His lips brushed against mine, and I almost lost it.

“Do they ever get to see you go…you know…all the way? Completely naked?”

He moved his head so that our cheeks were flush, and his hot breath tickled my ear. “Not. Ever.”

That was it. I couldn’t wait any more. My hands flew up to the sides of his head, palms cupping his ears, my nails scratching his scalp.

His arms clenched tight around my waist, tugging me into him, pressing my stomach and my hardening nipples and my aching core flush to his body—giving it exactly what it wanted but with too many clothes and too much public space cloaking it.

When we finally broke the kiss, we stood there, still holding each other, gasping.

“There’s one thing you need to know,” I said in a ragged whisper. “I fucking hate country music.”

Ryder—
Bryan
—kissed me again, smiling against my lips. “I’m done for the night.” he said softly, waiting for my reaction.

“Are you going home?”

“Yep. Can I give you a ride?”

I grinned, flooded with a mix of relief and pure lust. “I think that would be really good.”

Bryan reached down for my hand and tugged me toward his truck. The moon shone bright and icy blue overhead, and I took a deep breath of the cooling air, savoring the feel of his hand in mine. After we reached the truck, he kissed me one more time, hard on the lips, and brushed the hair back from my face. “Will you stay with me tonight? At least think about it?” he asked, giving me that same look, drowning in emotion and longing, as he had just the other night.

“Well, I forgot to grab those sheets you left me at work,” I said breathlessly. “So I’ll have to use yours anyway.”

“Nothing would make me happier,” he said, unlocking the door with his keys, opening the door with a pinky finger, and practically throwing me into the truck.

He jogged around to his side, and I tried to calculate exactly how many minutes it would take us to get home.

I couldn’t believe I had actually thought of this place as “home.”

We took the ride in silence, occasionally glancing at each other and grinning like we shared some huge secret. And really, we did.

Exactly eight minutes and twenty-eight seconds later, we pulled into the parking lot and tripped up the stairs. I had a vague, fuzzy memory of this route from the other night, but something about doing this completely sober was that much more thrilling.

Bryan wrenched the door open, and we barreled inside, falling against the wall in a flurry of lips and tongues and tearing clothes. Before I knew it, my blazing hot skin felt the cool air of the room across my back and my belly. Bryan’s mouth soon followed, kissing a path between my breasts and down to my belly button, unbuttoning my pants along the way and pressing soft kisses all over the front of my cotton lace panties. My fingers threaded through his hair, and I moaned with the memory of what his mouth had been able to bring me to, trying to tell him without words that I wanted more from him tonight. I wanted all of him.

As painful as it was, I pulled away from his kisses and dragged him up from under his arms to kiss me. My hands flew to the snap at his jeans.

I broke a nail prying it loose, and I didn’t even care. When the back of my hand brushed his hot length for the second time that night, I lost it. I had to have him naked and on top of me. Now. I tugged furiously, and the jeans fell to the floor. Ryder stepped out of them and guided me toward the bed. He fell backward and pulled me down on top of him, and the refrain thank God thank God thank God ran on repeat through my head.

I sat up, straddling him, and went into command mode. “Take your shirt off. I want to see you.”

“Haven’t you already seen enough of that tonight?” he laughed.

“I saw Ryder,” I said, pushing my hands up under his shirt, shivering as I felt the hard ridges between his stomach muscles. God, I could lick them over and over again and never get tired of it. “Now, I want to see Bryan.”

A soft smile curved his lips, and a look of pure adoration crossed his eyes. And then, I was flying through the air because he’d sat up so quickly that he’d flipped me down onto the mattress. “Take off your bra for me, baby,” he said. “You’re not the only one directing here.”

Holy shit, I loved that. In all of my sexual encounters so far, it’d been all nervousness and uncertainty, all shaking hands and stammering dirty talk. Being with a guy who knew what the hell he was doing, what the hell he wanted, made me feel powerful—because I could give it to him, and I wanted to. Without any more thought, I unsnapped the front of my bra and wiggled my arms out of the straps, making my boobs sway in the process.

“Holy shit, you’re gonna kill me,” Bryan growled, planking over me and dipping his head down to take one of my nipples between his teeth. An electrical jolt shot through my entire body, making my back arch off the bed. I groaned while he took more of me into his mouth, swirling his tongue and sucking until I was mindless. If he kept this up, I’d end up coming right then and there.

Then his hands moved down and pulled that ridiculous thong of his off. I would have laughed at the heavy, crinkling noise as it hit the floor if I hadn’t been so desperate to see him.

He released my nipple with a loud pop and sat back on his heels.

The most incredible hard-on I’d ever seen bobbed up in the air. Thick and smooth and waiting for me. Before I could say a word, before I could breathe, he was on top of me again, pressing between my legs, already hot and slick even though a scrap of lace panty still separated us. His mouth descended on my other nipple, giving it the same incredible attention, and between that and the way he was grinding against my clit, I felt the pressure building to a boiling point.

When he nipped at the sensitive skin just underneath my breast, lining my rib with his tongue, I whimpered, half because it sent waves of warm electricity spilling through me and half because of the agony of that hardness no longer pressing between my legs. So with one hand, I tugged him up to me, and with the other, I pulled down my own panties because I was so desperate for us to be skin on skin that it hurt.

Bryan started to devour my neck, finally making his way up to my ear and growling, “You’re so wet.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck tighter, wanting more of him touching more of me. “I want you so bad,” I murmured.

He moved his hips the slightest bit into me, crushing himself against the tiny spot between my legs that felt like it was about to catch on fire, and when he did, the entire world exploded over me. A cry spilled out of my throat as I threw my head back and tried to catch my breath, sated for the moment but definitely, definitely not satisfied.

“You are so fucking incredible,” Bryan murmured as his lips returned to my breasts and his thumb dug into my belly button. His other hand stretched over to his bedside table and tugged the drawer out, tearing into a small box of condoms.

As if the post-orgasm nirvana wasn’t enough, something else swept over me—reassurance and safety. If he’d been screwing a new girl every other night, his drawer would have been stocked with condoms ready to go, or at the very least, he would have been buying them in the big twelve-per-box packs.

“Bryan,” I panted. “You really haven’t slept with anyone in a while, have you?”

He moved back up, letting his face hover over mine. That same deep, captivating look in his eyes stared down at me as he shook his head slowly, and then a smile crept onto his face.

“What?” I smiled back.

“Say my name again,” he pleaded.

“Bryan?” I asked softly.

His mouth crushed down onto mine, his fingers tangling in my hair and his tongue languidly stroking into my mouth in the most passionate kiss I’d ever, ever had. I was already aching for him again, that same pressure—insatiable, it seemed—rebuilding deep in my belly. So when he finally broke the kiss, I arched my neck up toward him and said it again. “Bryan.”

That elicited a needy groan and the most incredible neck- and shoulder-kissing ever. My lips parted.

“Bryan.”

He trailed a hot path down to my stomach, nipping at the soft flesh there, blowing across the wet skin as he went. A tremor rumbled through me.

“Bryan,” I said again, but when he sucked at my hip bone, I was done for.

“Need you,” I managed. “Now.”

He sat back on his heels, his chest heaving, his eyes hungry. I could see, even in the pale moonlight shining through the high window, that his hands were shaking.

I almost asked if he was okay, but I bit my tongue. From the way his dick sprang up toward me, I knew he was okay enough for the activity at hand. When he finally got the condom out, he rolled it on easily enough, but after watching him for so many seconds, each one ticking by as if it were an hour, I was so ready I couldn’t restrain myself. I sat up, grabbed his shoulders, and pushed him down on the bed beside me. I wrapped my fingers around him, and he throbbed against me. I had never, ever in my life wanted something more than I wanted him inside of me at just that moment.

He was absolutely freaking huge, but I was dripping wet and as ready as I’d ever be. My knee flew to the other side of his waist, planted itself on the bed, and I sank down on top of him, taking in every exquisite inch with a gasp and a sigh. A deep groan rumbled out of him, and it was just about the damn sexiest thing I’d ever heard. I rocked my hips in and down, over and over again, trying to feel and memorize every inch of him. His thumbs dug into my hips, and his fingers grabbed my ass, pushing me on with such urgency that I thought I would burst. We were both trying to keep our eyes open, but the almost unbearable pleasure of every movement was too much. The most sensitive part of him stroked the most sensitive part of me in a new, more intense way each time.

We moved together like we’d been made for it, groaning and sighing at exactly the same moments, rocking together with a perfectly synchronized rhythm that made me wonder how people ever had sex that wasn’t this good. Or how people who were lucky enough to have sex this good ever stopped.

A few minutes later, though, a burning in my thighs gave me the answer. My movements became shallower, and he looked up at me, his brow furrowed. “Bryan,” I whimpered weakly, and before I could say another word, he was flipping me onto my back. I practically sobbed when he pulled out of me and cried out when he thrust back in again.

“Are you okay?” he asked between hard breaths.

“Perfect,” I panted. “I’m amazing.”

Still, he moved cautiously from then on, easing into me and back out again like we would just do this forever, like this was all he could imagine doing for the rest of his life. That made perfect sense to me. That is, until he shifted and hit that same spot inside me that his fingers had brushed when he went down on me. Suddenly, I was desperate again, aching to have him pumping inside me, hard and fast. I wrapped my legs around his waist and dug my heels into the backs of his thighs. He responded by wrapping one arm full around my waist, pulling me up and into him, and grabbing at the headboard with the other. My world spun completely out of control around me; there were no colors, no sounds, no heat, no life outside these walls. Every movement added to the huge buildup of lust and longing and pure, desperate need spiraling inside of me until Bryan bent his forehead to mine and whispered, “Come with me, baby.”

In that final, earth-shattering thrust, the energy condensed to a speck of dust, and then it all exploded, shooting waves of pleasure down my legs, around my torso, through my whole body.