Electrified (9 page)

“Oh.” Sienna paused to collect her thoughts, not wanting to raise any more speculation. “Thanks, guys. I’ve seen him here before. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, he’s just a harmless fan. He asked me to have a drink with him tonight and I turned him down. He was probably just looking for another chance.” She gave them both a smile that she hoped looked genuine, and went back into her dressing room.

As she settled onto her chaise longue, her one indulgence in her private dressing room, she realized she still had the slip of paper in her hand. Sienna knew Mike wasn’t going to let this go. He had been with the club since she came to work at the Tunnel. Big Mike might cover up the silver-spoon upbringing he was always trying to shed with a scary face and demeanor, but he was also a softie like Asher when it came to her. He would never let anything make her scared or sad, and had been telling her this since she first came to work for Asher, promising he would always protect her. The bouncer was younger than she was, but he had taken her under his wing with a tenderness that at first had surprised her.

“Sienna, sweetie, we’re gonna take care of you, Asher and me. Nothing is gonna scare you. Nothing,” Mike used to say as he drove her home to that gross motel when she first started to dance. It wasn’t as if he had designs on her. Big Mike was a one-woman man even back in the day, and his girlfriend lived with him. He just cared for Sienna and considered her family, unlike the wealthy parents he had turned his back on years before.

And just like family, she knew he wasn’t going to drop this.

Sienna unfolded the slip of paper.

Name is Carson. Coffee on Saturday or Sunday? Nothing too crazy. I promise.

That was all it said, along with his cell phone number.

Sienna put the note away. She couldn’t think about this now. She had to go back out and dance again soon, and she was pretty sure Asher would be showing up any minute to check on her. Mike had a big mouth, and Asher was already concerned.
Shit
.

Locking the door, Sienna started to change her outfit for her next act. Unable to stop her thoughts from whether Carson was still out there, she began to choose a one-piece lace negligee with him in mind, and then caught herself.

Wow. I’m losing it.

Maybe she needed a little vacation? Perhaps a few days of R&R at one of the spa resorts near Red Rock Desert?

She was obviously not herself with all this thinking about a man, dressing for said man, and that tiny part of her that was considering having coffee with that man.

A little vacation was the answer.

A moment later, Asher knocked on her door as she’d predicted. After a quick check to be sure she was “decent,” Sienna opened the door.

Asher brushed past her and turned to confront her, his protective mode in full swing. “Sienna, are you okay, honey?” Before she could answer, he raked his blond hair off his forehead and frowned. “I’m always telling you to make some time for yourself and date, but let’s not get carried away with some guy from the audience. I know I told you it was natural to feel curious, but did you throw his number away?”

Sienna tried not to sigh. Asher meant well; she knew that. But sometimes he went a little overboard with his big-brother act.

So she smiled and, ignoring his question, said, “I’m good. Really, I am. I had a moment or something, I can’t explain it, but there was a thing with him. Something I never had before. A pull.”

The look that flashed over Asher’s face looked suspiciously like pity. “Oh, doll, you’re so lonely. That’s it.”

Sienna ignored the brief annoyance she felt at the thought of Asher pitying her, and did her best to mollify him. “I know, Ash. I’m all good now. It’s passed, whatever it was. I think I need a few days off. A little vacation will do me good.”

His face brightened and he instantly perked up. “Sounds great, I can go with you. How about Tuesday? Wednesday? Mike can run the place.”

She laughed. “Perfect. Thanks, Ash, love you. Just a little break, a night off will do me wonders.”

“I know, doll. Now it’s time to dance and bring the house down, before we ride off into the sunset.”

With a kiss to her temple, Asher headed back to his office, and she was left alone with the note again. No, she hadn’t thrown it out, and she wasn’t sure why. After all, there was nothing she could do with it.

As much as she loved dancing and it was her ultimate relief, she needed to break away from this place for a day or so. Thank God for Asher and the upcoming getaway. She would go away with Asher, take a breather, and return home restored and renewed to live life. By herself.

As for him, Carson, he was nobody to her. There was no “thing.” No pull. Only a big blip of loneliness filled with need and want, one that could never be filled.

Taking a deep breath and allowing her mind to go blank, Sienna hit stage right before heading out to entice the crowd with nothing less than what they expected. They wanted to feel seduction and sex in the air, so that was what she would make them feel. The more charged the performance, the more anxiety relief Sienna felt—and the more sexually entranced she became.

As she hit center stage, Sienna’s line of vision locked with Carson’s, and her moment of relief was lost.

She’d only learned his name less than an hour ago, but she felt like it had been on her tongue for years. Carson. He watched her intently, as always. He didn’t smile like earlier, but his eyes bore down on her with a look she had never experienced. Want? Intimate need?

How would her name sound coming off this tongue? Sienna…Lila. She wasn’t even sure of her own name. His stare was turning her inside out, something else Sienna had never experienced.

Finding it harder and harder to lose herself in her number, she tried to avoid Carson and his molten chocolate eyes for fear she might melt into a tiny pool herself. Her heart was pumping and it wasn’t from dancing, heat was gathering once again in her tiny panties, and she had to look far away into the back of the crowd to keep from leaping off the stage.

Sienna wanted to jump right into Carson’s lap, an animalistic urge that bubbled up in her entire body. It was a force of nature she never had to control before, but one she had to tamp down, because she needed to survive on her own.

The truth was, she had no clue what came next if she did jump on his lap. Because even though Sienna might have the right moves onstage, up close and personal in real life, she had no idea what to do.

S
IENNA WAS
both emotionally and physically drained by the time Mike walked her out to her car after her shift Friday night, happy to know that Simon was waiting to drive her home.

She loved Simon; the grandfather of two little boys always brought a smile to her face. He’d been a driver in Vegas for thirty-six years, and he always made her laugh with his tales of Las Vegas, then and now. After the night she’d had, Simon was just what she needed.

Mike opened the car door for her, but touched her arm before she climbed in. When she looked up in question, he frowned slightly. “Sienna, I know Ash is worried and you think that something weird is happening. Nothing weird is going on, you just need a life outside of here,” he said as he motioned behind him to the club.

“The guy with the note seems like a good guy,” he went on as she gaped at him. He slung his big arm around her slight waist. “You need to take a leap with someone, even if it’s not him, but why not him? What I’m trying to say is, you need to get back out there. You need to live.”

And before she could say a word, he handed her into the backseat of the big black town car.

Sienna was shocked; no longer looking forward to Simon’s sweet stories.

Am I going to take advice from a twenty-five-year-old bouncer?

Advice was what she needed, and Mike was one of the few trusted people she had in her little world. Petal and Sydney were still at the club working a few private parties, but she could wait and ask them. She could, yet she was their role model.

What would they think about her indecision? Both Petal and Sydney would think she was crazy not to follow her heart, but like Mike, they didn’t know her real history. They didn’t know why it was imperative that she stay alone.

Sienna knew Carson had stayed through her second dance. He didn’t get up right away as usual. Did he think she was going to come out and talk with him again?

She knew he was gone when she finally left for the night, because she had peeked at the club from the one-way mirror in Asher’s office before leaving.

Was she in high school, checking up on a guy?

As the town car carried her home, Sienna found she couldn’t stop thinking about him. He was probably still up. Could she have coffee with him tomorrow?

No one would have to know. She didn’t have to tell Mike she took his advice.

Without thinking, she pulled out her phone and texted the number on the slip she’d tucked into her bag.

Sienna
: It’s Sienna. Got your note. I don’t typically do this, but coffee tomorrow may work.

Before she could put her phone away, it pinged with an incoming text.

Carson
: Hi, Sienna. Didn’t expect to hear from you, but glad. Coffee sounds good. Where? When? You name it.

Her heart in her throat, Sienna enjoyed a quick back and forth with him as she broke another of her own rules.

Sienna
: Canyon Coffee in Henderson? 1 p.m.?

Carson
: Meet you there?

Sienna
: Yes.

Carson
: Looking forward.

Once the plan was set, buyer’s remorse immediately set in.

Oh God, I’ve done it.

As the bright lights of the Strip faded away and suburban Las Vegas passed by her window, Sienna tried to calm her nerves. Perhaps the sexual hype of the club clouded her judgment? Surely, the serenity of her neighborhood with its perfectly manicured rock gardens and well-lit porches would give her a better perspective. She looked out the darkened window, unsure of exactly what time it was, but caught sight of the moon hanging in the black velvet sky over the distant desert. She leaned back into the soft seat and stared at it as her thoughts whirled.

The problem was, she wasn’t strong enough to resist the desire and urge to connect intimately with someone else. Her heart and her body had another plan, and somehow she had to get a handle on it all.

She would have coffee with Carson, and give the curiosity a chance to bleed out of her system. Afterward she would go away with Asher for a day or two, and then she’d be ready to move forward on her own, just as she had been doing for years.

The fact she was an adult star scared her less than getting attached to a man. The adult entertainment world was a place the only other community she’d ever known shied away from, ignored, and pretended as if they weren’t even part of the same secular space. The two universes would never collide. She was safe in the little web she’d spun for herself.

But she wasn’t safe opening up her heart.

Sadly, Sienna arrived home before she knew it, having ignored Simon for the entire ride. As he opened her door, held her hand as she exited into the chilly evening air, and walked her all the way up the narrow path lined with tiny pebbles, she felt bad. She shut the door behind her, the lock clicking into place, and made a mental note to make it up to him later in the week with some cookies. Getting her priorities straight was more important.

A short while later as she slipped into her nightly bath, letting the water warm her skin, Sienna felt solid in her resolve. One cup of coffee and she’d be done with Carson. An hour of mindless adult chatter would ease her ache for the intimacy missing in her life, and then she could continue to move forward with the plan she had set for herself a long time ago.

Even as her brain worked overtime, trying to convince her heart that this tactic was the right one, the rest of her body tingled, remembering how it had pulsed earlier.

The feeling radiating through her was something she couldn’t identify. Lust? Desire? It had been years since she’d been intimate with a man, and the only one she had been with did nothing to satisfy her. Which explained why, at the moment, she was having trouble pinpointing why her body was so heated with physical need.

Since arriving in Vegas, Sienna learned all there was to know about sex, acting sensual, playing up the more naughty ideas, and how to please herself. She even had a vibrator. Growing up, Lila didn’t even know something as miraculous as a vibrator existed. When Penelope gave Sienna one as a gift, she was mystified, but after a few times experimenting with it, she was sold.

Taking care of herself with the tiny little “pocket rocket” was the only sexual pleasure she had ever had. Sad that it was at the effort of her own hands and a little battery-operated friend.

She was pretty sure it would be different with a real, live man, but since that wasn’t a reality, Sienna had figured out to take care of her own body’s needs. Now it suddenly didn’t seem enough.