Stripping Her Defenses Read online

  I slung the heavy purse over my shoulder then turned to Ice who was leaning against the dressing room’s closed door with his arms crossed over his chest. I was expecting his blank face, the one he was a pro at using so no one could tell what he was thinking or feeling, but I was in for a surprise. His eyes weren’t sad per say, but the word resigned drifted through my mind.

  “Known you quite a while now, Kara, and though I knew it would never be love between us, I thought maybe I could make you see it could still be good.” While he paused, as if to gather his thoughts, I watched as his brows furrowed down like he didn’t like whatever it was he was thinking.

  “Seein’ the way he looks at you, the way you try to hide what you feel for him and fail, I know now I never had a shot at makin’ it something good and lasting between us.”

  Damn. My chest tightened and my heart started to hurt a little for the man who’d been more than a lover for a few years. He’d been a damn good friend, too.

  Yeah, I’d known Ice wanted more, but I also knew Ice didn’t love me. He was comfortable with me in our time together. What he didn’t get was that, as much as he protested the idea of love, I knew the perfect someone was out there for him. I desperately wanted him to find that someone. He deserved that sort of happy. That someone just wasn’t me, though.

  “I’m worried about you, Kara.” I started to protest; however, he held his hand off to stop me. “Don’t get me wrong, woman. I know you’re a much stronger person than you were when you walked through my doors. I’m proud of you comin’ into your own, moving past all the pain of your past. You can’t bullshit me, though; I know him poppin’ up has brought it all back to you.”

  I sucked in a breath, bracing myself for what I knew was coming.

  “Him leavin’ you all the time when you needed him home because you were off the rails and didn’t know why…”

  Oh, shit, I knew what was next.

  “Everything that’s happened to you because of that accident. The baby.”

  Damn, the reminder of that pain shot through me from head to toe until it settled in my gut like a lead weight that would drag me down and drown me.

  “Kara, look at me.”

  Focusing on my toes peeping out of my heels, I realized I’d dropped my head at some point, trying to avoid his stare. Forcing myself to pull my head back up, I locked my eyes onto Ice’s.

  “You’ve been re-born, like that phoenix you got tattooed on your side to cover your scars. You rose from the ashes, burning brighter than any light I’ve ever seen. I want to believe under all his jackass mistakes your ex is a good man. If he dims your light, though, I’m gonna snuff his light out. You understand what I’m sayin’?”

  Unshed tears stung my eyes as I nodded my head. He might have just threatened Riley’s life, but he’d done it because he was trying to protect me; once again showing me that, under that rough, lethal bad boy persona he carried like a second skin, he had a heart of gold. I was so damn lucky to have him in my life.

  Walking over to him, I placed my hand on his chest, right over where that heart of gold of his was. “One day, you’re going to find your own light, Ice. She’s going to burn you up brighter than the sun, inside and out. She’ll pull you out of your own shadows, and when that happens, you better be smart enough to fight for her as hard as you’ve fought for me. Harder even. Because you damn well deserve it, and don’t you forget it.” When I patted his chest, he knew our talk was over.

  He opened the door for me and stepped aside to let me leave.

  “See you around, Ice.”

  “Sure, woman, whatever you say,” he murmured as he watched me walk away and down the hall leading to the back exit of the club.

  Somehow, that sounded like a goodbye.

  I didn’t let myself dwell on it. I pushed open the exit door, closed it behind me after I stepped through, and listened to make sure the automatic locks re-engaged behind me. I might not strip here anymore, but I liked most of those girls and would never endanger them.

  I made the slow walk into the brightly lit enclosed parking lot for the employees towards my Jeep. When I was almost to my vehicle, I twisted slightly around and waved to one of the many cameras monitoring the lot, knowing one of the boys was keeping watch to make sure I was safe.

  Pulling out my keys from my purse, I had them in my hand and was reaching towards my driver’s side door lock when his voice came from my left, causing me to have a mild heart attack and drop my keys.

  “My Kara would have never gone up on a stage and bared her body for men she didn’t know,” Riley said then took a puff off a cigarette.

  My hand was over my heart. I could feel it pounding through my chest as I tried to slow my breathing. “God, you scared the shit out of me, Riley! What are you doing out here?”

  “Waiting for you. Waiting for answers. Waiting for my Kara to come back to me.”

  What was it with the men in my life trying to break my heart tonight? I couldn’t give this man what he wanted, either. The old Kara was long gone. He might not realize it yet, although that was a good thing.

  “Your Kara died in the accident with our son.”

  He flinched as if I had tried to gut him with an old rusty knife and nearly succeeded.

  “I’m sorry about our boy, Kara, but you’re not dead. You’re standing right in front of me, living and breathing. What I want to know is why you felt you couldn’t breathe that air with me?”

  Shaking my head, I said. “You don’t get it, Riley. That Kara really did die that day. Her ghost lingered on for about six months before my mom stepped in and dragged my ass to a psychiatrist for grief counseling.”

  Frustration grew in his eyes, and he started puffing more and more on that damn cigarette of his.

  “I was never the same person after the accident,” I continued softly. “I learned things about myself in counseling. Things that, if I’d known during our marriage, might have saved the train wreck we were headed towards. The accident only sped up the train, Riley. It didn’t cause our crash.”

  He looked down to his boots, which meant I lost my ability to read his face. I watched as he field dressed the cigarette he had and then proceeded to light up another one. God, how much was he smoking these days? If he kept this up, he’d have cancer before he was forty!

  “I wish you wouldn’t smoke.”

  “And I wish you wouldn’t shake your ass in front of other men, but right now, we’re both not getting what we want, are we?” he snapped.

  All sympathy I had for the obviously hurt and defeated man before me flew out the window, anger filling its place.

  Stomping over the ten or so feet that stood between us, I poked my finger in his chest and snapped, “I get it! We have a past! Some of it was good. Some of it was bad. But life happened, Riley! Shit that was way beyond our control. And then we were stuck trying to pick up the pieces afterwards. When I glued myself back together, I became someone else, someone better, whether you realize it or not. I just wish you’d stop insulting me long enough to figure that out!”

  One second I had my finger pressed deeply into his chest while defending myself, and the next, I found myself pressed up against a light pole, pinned from chest to legs by Riley’s rock hard body.

  “So, what, this ‘new Kara’ likes to show her tits and ass for cash?” he snarled. “If you were that hard up for money, you could have reached out to me. You know I would have taken care of you.”

  I was already shaking my head. “Nope. See, that right there proves you don’t get it! I don’t want you to take care of me. I want to take care of myself, goddammit!”

  “And getting naked on the stage was the best way to do that? You couldn’t have just kept waitressing?”

  “It was about freedom, Riley!” I yelled. “Freedom to take care of myself instead of depending on someone else. Pulling myself out of that shell I’d forced myself into to realize that I didn’t have to be the buttoned up Stepford wife. The freedom to push myself pas
t my insecurities about my body to see that men liked me in my curvier form than the stick figure I’d always starved myself to be. Freedom to just learn to be the real me and not the artificial persona I’d become!”

  He dropped his cigarette, grabbed the tops of my arms and held on so tightly I might be bruised tomorrow. “You want to talk freedom, for fuck’s sake? You were my freedom! You were my every dream come true.”

  The tears that had threatened to escape earlier with Ice came back with a vengeance. I did my best to hold them back, although I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do so.

  Riley kept going, oblivious to my internal war. “You walked away after I’d lost a piece of our dream and left me in a cold prison inside my head where I tortured myself over our loss. Where I’d sit at home, working on drinking myself unconscious so I could pass out without dreaming of you. Where I chased random short haired brunettes through crowds because, for a second, I thought it was you. Where I battle nightmares every other night of my life now because all I can see, all I can picture, is you bleeding out in twisted metal, and I’m helpless to save you or our boy. I’m tired of my prison, Kara!” He shook me a little. “I want my fuckin’ freedom back!”

  I no longer tried to stop the tears that had been pricking at my eyes earlier. I let them flow freely down my face as I pushed wildly at his chest, trying to get away. He kept his hold, though, and instead of pushing, I started slapping and punching, kicking his shins, trying my best to get away from the man who made me feel too much.

  Out of desperation, I stomped on his instep. He cursed, loosening his hold a little, and I used his distraction to shove him backwards with everything I had.

  Running to my car, I heard the back door of the club slam open and whirled around to see Big Jim and Ice heading in our direction. Seeing the look of murder in Ice’s eyes, I threw my hands up to ward him off.

  “No! It’s okay. It’s just a fight, Ice. He wasn’t hurting me.”

  Before I got the ‘me’ out, I felt Riley at my back. Placing a hand on my shoulder, he whipped me around, fisted my hair in both of his hands, and slammed his lips down on my own.

  I knew I shouldn’t give in to the pressure of his lips, the sweep of his tongue trying to force my own lips open… but this was Riley. Just the feel of his mouth touching mine was like being zapped with electricity, lighting up all of my nerve endings. As a result, I opened my mouth because, where my mind screamed ‘no,’ every other part of me screamed ‘yes.’ A thousand times yes. I shut my brain down and kissed him back.

  Feeling Riley’s touch, his passion, was like taunting a starving person with a plate full of food. I hadn’t realized it, but I’d been famished for his touch. Malnourished in a way from cutting myself off from him. Now that I had him in my arms again, I wanted to devour him in every delicious way.

  I moaned into his mouth when he moved his hands out of my hair and down my body to grab my ass. I was vaguely aware he was moving us backwards. Several scuffling steps later, my back hit the hard surface of my Jeep. I couldn’t bring myself to care that we were going at it like teenagers out in the open. I was drowning in Riley, the rest of the world washing away.

  His hands slid down again until he was slipping them under my skirt yet froze when he felt my bare skin. He muttered a curse word and then reclaimed my mouth with a dizzying intensity. Sliding his hands inwards, he ran a finger along the string of my thong until he met the edge of the triangle covering my front.

  Maybe I should have been ashamed about him feeling how wet I was for him already, but I couldn’t bring myself to be. I’d always lusted after Riley; however, this rougher, reckless side of him turned me on more than I’d ever known I could be.

  His fingers spread my wetness up and down my cleft a few times, sending shivers down my back at the teasing touch. I needed more. I needed him to fill me and fuck me until I felt raw with the echoes of his touch for days. I was close to begging for just that when his fingers glided over my clit, causing me to gasp in pleasure.

  He rubbed me in firm circles, and just when I felt that overwhelming euphoria building inside of me, he slid his fingers off my nub, causing me to softly wail in frustration. That frustrated sob didn’t last long before it turned into a cry of shocked pleasure as he thrust a finger inside my throbbing center.

  My head went back, hitting hard on the Jeep, as I let the feel of him inside me wash over me. I didn’t feel any pain through my pleasure as he pumped that finger inside of me a couple of times. Then it was joined by another finger.

  I was riding the edges of something bigger and dangerously beautiful, unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

  As the orgasm flooded my body, my core clamped down on his still thrusting fingers so hard it was painful. What a beautiful pain it was, too.

  When I couldn’t take anymore, I softly cried for him to stop. He pulled his lips from mine, resting his forehead against my own as I came down from my high.

  Ripped wide open. Vulnerable. That’s how I felt from the inside out as I stood in the arms of the man who had always been mine while his fingers were still buried in my quivering flesh.

  His voice was raspy when he said, “Get in the car. I’m taking you home.”

  Still foggy from my release, I asked “Why?”

  He pulled his head back, gazing at me with a steely determination. “So I can fuck you so many times you’ll never forget the feel of me again. Now give me your keys and get in the damn Jeep, Kara.” Uncertain how to respond to that delicious threat, I handed Riley my keys and walked around the front of my SUV until I reached the passenger side door. Movement towards the back of the club caught my attention, and I looked over the hood of the engine to see the back of Ice disappearing through the door.

  My heart started pounding in my chest and a war of emotions bombarded me. My once lover had watched as my ex-husband had brought me to orgasm in a parking lot.

  “Kara. Get. In,” Riley ordered as he opened the driver’s side door and slid in.

  His barked command had me moving forward again. I sat in my vehicle, buckling up, all the while trying to figure out how I should feel about what had just happened.

  Part of me was mortified for not only myself, but also Ice. That was a shitty way to have his face rubbed into whatever it was I had with Riley right now. On the other hand, I knew Ice better than any other woman besides his ex. The man liked to play in the bedroom, and he’d fucked plenty a woman out in the open so others could watch. He’d also let me know that anytime I wanted to experiment with that sort of thing, he’d be happy to show me how hot he could make me burn under another’s eyes. I’d never taken him up on that offer; however, knowing how he was, I was pretty sure, even if he wasn’t the one making me orgasm, watching me had turned him on so much he was hunting down a barfly and fucking her right now.

  “I don’t know what you’re thinking, babe, but I’ll let you know right now that, if you’re thinking about running, I’ll tie you hand to foot so you can’t get away from me until I’ve fucked some sense back into that pretty head of yours.”

  Shocked at his threat, I snapped, “I wasn’t thinking about running!”

  “Yeah? Then you want to tell me why you have that deer-in-the-headlights look on your face?”

  “Ice was watching us!” I blurted out, which probably wasn’t smart because the tension between the two men was off the charts, and there was no way to tell how either one of them would react to any situation when it involved the other.

  I watched as Riley’s face took on a strange blank quality before he quietly asked, “It bother you he was watching?”

  My mind was going a million miles an hour with my confused emotions running amok. “Yes… No… I don’t fucking know!”

  His eyes scanned my body yet stopped abruptly when they reached my chest. “Kara?” he crooned in an almost scary ‘I’ve got you all figured out’ sort of voice.

  “What?” I asked, suddenly nervous.

  “Did it turn y
ou on when you found out he’d watched us?”

  I squirmed in my seat as my girly parts started to throb again.

  “You like it when people watch you, babe?”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but closed it again when I couldn’t figure out what to say.

  “Is that why you wanted to become a stripper?” he growled. “You wanted that so called freedom to flash your body, let men see it and want to fuck it? Have them picturing fucking you on that stage with everyone watching?”

  I was shaking my head no, although part of me was picturing what he was saying in vivid detail. Only it wasn’t some strange customer fucking me on that stage. It was Riley.

  With a graceful quality I didn’t know a man his size could possess, he slipped into the back seat of my SUV and then dragged me back there to him. I had to struggle to unclip the seat belt.

  “Meek, little Kara blossomed into a woman who wants a little excitement. You want to know what I think of that?”

  “What?” I breathed out.

  He grabbed the collar of my thin, pink baby doll T-shirt and tore it down the middle, exposing my lacy covered breasts. “I think I’m gonna give you so much pleasure you won’t care if we’re being watched or not.”

  He pulled the tatters of my shirt off my shoulders and down my arms before he threw it on the floorboard. Pushing me back until my skin was pressed against the window, his hands went immediately to my waist as he slid them around the back to my skirt’s zipper. His mouth went straight to my right nipple where he sucked my bud into his mouth until I was almost positive he’d left a hickey there. Then he gently bit down with his teeth at the same moment I heard the soft sound of my zipper descending.

  He switched his mouth over to my left breast, licking the skin above the lace then over the fabric until he was sucking that nipple into his mouth. My hand grabbed the handle above the door as I groaned at the exquisite sensation, so lost in the feel of his hot mouth on me I barely noticed as he slid my skirt off my hips and down my legs. He didn’t bother to take my panties off as he once again filled me with his fingers. “Fuck, you’re soaked, babe.”