Chapter 186
“Hi!” I say, falling into the cheerful persona that always works best in the clubs that I’ve worked at the moment we step through the door. Frankie follows coolly at my heels as I stride forward towards the manager, playing idly with my hair, knowing it makes me look silly and a little dumb. “Um, I was wondering if you had an opening for a dancer tonight?”
The manager takes a moment, looking me up and down, taking in Christian’s baggy clothing and the too-big sandals. He shifts his eyes, for a moment, to Frankie, who looks casually over at the stage, where two girls are dancing. “Tonight isn’t amateur night,” the manager murmurs, looking back down at his clipboard. “Come back on Tuesday.”
“Oh, I’m not an amateur,” I say, giving a tinkly little laugh and rolling my eyes. “I just to work at the Satin Slipper up north?” His eyebrows go up at the name and I know he heard of it.
I mean, it’s a very good club.
“Yeah?” he asks, clearly not believing me fully – at least not yet. Then he sighs and shakes his head. “Look, on another night I might give you a chance, but Friday’s are our top earning nights –“
“Oh, I’ll bring in money,” I say, taking a single step towards him, blocking his path a bit as he tries to walk away. “And I’ll give you…twenty percent? On top of your general fee?”
“Twenty percent?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at me like I’m crazy. “What, you trying to walk out of here tonight with twenty bucks for a quick hit or something, kid?”
I laugh again, wrinkling my nose at him like that’s a cute idea. “Nah. I’m going to make…a lot more than that.”
The manager sighs and then looks down at his clipboard again. “Look, a girl just called out so…let’s see how you look in the clothes and we’ll go from there. Did you…bring anything?”
“I’ll just get something from the Matron on credit,” I say with a happy sigh, giving him a wink.
“What’s your name, doll?” he murmurs, clicking his pen and raising it to the paper.
“B-“
“Bunny,” Frankie snaps out. I look to him in surprise but he gives me a serious nod. I realize quite suddenly that he’s right – that Bambi isn’t precisely a rare name in a strip club, but if someone’s looking for me…
I turn to the manager and give him an eager nod. He raises his eyebrows again but writes the name down without asking any questions. I turn towards Frankie, reaching for his hand and giving it a squeeze. “See you in a bit!”
He groans, tugging me forward and wrapping me in a hug before letting me go. I hug him back quickly before I break it and stride confidently away, heading towards the back of the club where I know the dressing room will be. Behind me, I hear the manager give a little laugh as he addresses Frankie. I angle my hearing towards them, curious to hear what they’ll say.
“Boyfriends sit in the back,” he says, probably pointing the way. “And they do not interfere with my business, or they get kicked out. Is that clear?”
“It’s fine,” Frankie sighs. “She’s not even my girlfriend.”
“Your loss, my man,” the manager says, and I can’t help a little smile. “Your loss.”
Then I push through the door, eager to take a shower and make some deals that will score me an outfit and some makeup.
Frankie sits quietly in the back of the club, sipping casually at the free coke that he wheedled out of a very pretty cocktail waitress, watching the dancer on the stage. Bambi, he knows, can handle herself in a strip club – but god, was this stupid?
Seriously, everyone in the Romano family and everyone attached to it knows that she stripped before Christian got his hands on her. Not only will the Romanos be looking at strip clubs when they anticipate that she will run out of money, but if anyone here posts pictures of her on social media…
God, this could go bad fast.
Frankie takes a deep breath, attempting to focus on the stage, attempting to calm his rapid heartbeat.
A pulse that’s rapid, he’s well aware, not just because he’s anxious about Christian finding him.
But. He’s well practiced at lying to himself, after all. He’s been doing it for days now anyway, telling himself that they’re not going to get caught, that this was all a great idea, that he’s just doing this selflessly for Iris’s sake, to save her from that violent world.
Bullshit, all of it.
He sighs, shaking his head, staring at the girl on the stage, trying to ignore the unhelpful thoughts in his mind.
The girl twirls around on the stage topless, giving sexy little pouts to the men at the tables in front of her, winking and pulling out all the stops she can to get as many bills on the stage as she can. But Frankie knows it’s all fake – that she’s not a real stage girl, that she’s just showing what she’s got to the men so that they’ll by a lap dance or maybe some time in the back room with her, where she’ll earn her real money.
Her song ends and Frankie sighs as the girl gathers her money, hoping Bambi comes on soon so they can get out of here faster. He’s never been so uncomfortable in a strip club in his entire life – an experience that is a sincere disappointment.
“Gentlemen,” a deep voice says from the loudspeaker, “please welcome to the stage a special guest…put your hands together for Bunny!”
A few people clap as a new song comes on – sexy and sultry, as opposed to poppy and upbeat, like the last one. Frankie sits up straight, his heartbeat increasing again as he leans forward, peering at the stage.
When Bambi appears, his mouth falls open – not only because she’s…gorgeous. But god, because she…she really cleaned up. Gone, obviously, are the articles of men’s clothing that she stole out of Christian’s closet. Instead, she’s wearing a blue bikini set with rhinestones all over it, and sky-high heels, and her mane of blonde hair…god, but it flows around her, fresh and clean, looking like satin under the stage lights.
But there’s no longer any time to think about what she’s wearing as Frankie begins to watch her – really…watch her. His mouth stays open as his eyes follow her around the stage, taking in the way she falls to her knees, runs her hands through her hair, moves her body lower so that she slides across the ground, all the while looking out into the audience with these half-lidded eyes, her full lips lightly parted, like she’s...
Frankie groans, letting his eyes drift shut as he covers his face with his hand for a second.
Because how the hell is he supposed to survive this?
He doesn’t keep his eyes closed for long though, dropping his hand as the crowd starts to call out their appreciation. That hand moves immediately to his back pocket, where his gun is tucked, the impulse to just kill every single one of these men staring at Bambi just a little too tempting in this moment.
But that thought – and every single other of them – are immediately wiped from Frankie’s mind when he sees why all the men are starting to make so much noise. Bambi has moved to the pole at the center of the stage and is swinging artfully around it, taking time to pose her body in the sexiest ways he’s ever seen. God, fuck, the arch of her back, the way she lets her head hang back, her mouth falling open…
She is…a fucking fantasy made flesh.
Frankie begins to grind his teeth, his left hand so tight around his glass of coke that it’s at desperate risk of cracking.
She begins to climb the pole then, artfully and in time to the music. Men hurl their money on the stage as she begins to slide down it, looking out at all of them with that sultry expression, one hand drifting over her breast, giving it a little teasing squeeze at which she smirks.
It’s that smirk that does it for Frankie. He just stares at her, so incredibly sexy on the stage, so…so fucking perfect and beautiful. And it’s more than that – he knows it is. She’s not just the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen, someone who he’s desperate to take to bed – which is what he thought at the beginning, the first night Christian brought her home.
No, what these other men don’t know is that she’s also incredible – funny, and sweet, and caring, and adorable, and god can she cook –
Frankie continues to stare at her as she moves away from the pole, ending the song on her knees, her thighs spread wide apart as she lowers her torso and her face to the floor so that her ass sticks up in the air, so that her hair spreads around her as she smacks the stage hard once, twice, in beat with the music.
And then it ends, and she’s just laying there on the stage with her ass up, panting.
Frank fucking grips the table to keep himself from knocking it over, from striding up there, from grabbing her off the stage and tossing her over his shoulder and out of this fucking club.
Which is what he should have done the first time he saw her.
But…he knows that he can’t do that, and that he won’t.
Because even if she let him pull her off the stage…
Bambi. His Bambi. She’s still very, very much in love with Christian. And Frankie knows it.
So even if, sitting here, watching her laugh and sit up on the stage, waving to all of her fans who hurl hundreds of dollars at her in an attempt to make her look at them once, to just grace them with her attention for half a second – even if Frankie finally can admit that he is desperately, shatteringly in love with that girl?
He knows that he can’t have her, because her heart is with someone else.
And maybe it always will be.
