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Lorenzo pats his lap and waits for me to take a seat. He wraps an arm around my waist to hold me aloft while I encircle his neck with mine. If this were any other man, I wouldn’t feel a thing. But Lorenzo gets to me like no other customer ever has. The scent of his cologne is like an aphrodisiac, and the warmth of his breath on my chest makes me want to rip off this lace bra and let him bury his face between my breasts. “I bet you say that to all the boys,” he whispers into the crook of my neck.
I’m only a few inches taller than him in this position, but it keeps his lips eye-level with the most sensitive parts of my body. Even though he doesn’t drag his tongue across the skin on my collarbone, I can feel his lips trailing a soft pattern toward my chest. “It’s only true about you, though.”
My skin is on fire and covered in goosebumps all at the same time. We’ve been dancing an erotic little dance for months now. He touches me as much as I’ll let him, but he never pushes the envelope. He knows how to use the tips of his fingers and the brush of his lips to leave me wishing I’d let him do more.
“Are you busy tonight?” The heat of his mouth dances on my skin.
It takes me a few moments to answer; I’m distracted by his touch. “I have floor shows every hour and a half.” We each take turns dancing on the poles. Nobody skips a floor show because it’s where most of us make the most money.
Lorenzo wants to challenge that. “What if I tell you I’ll pay for two hours of your time in the Diamond roomplusa tip?”
An hour in the Diamond room is a $200 affair. He knows this because he pays for an hour twice a week. Tonight he’s promising me $400 minimum, plus whatever he considers a fair tip. He’s given the bartender a fifty as a tip before just for pouring drinks for all his buddies. I can only imagine what he’ll shell out after two hours of my time. “I think that can be arranged. I just have to let someone know.”
He gives my ass a sharp little swat. There isn’t much sting, but heat radiates from where his fingertips were. “Tell them now,” Lorenzo commands, “and tell them I’m willing to pay for complete privacy.”
My stomach churns as I get up from my place on his lap to go find Hattie. This is precisely what she warned me not to do, but how is a girl supposed to say no? Lorenzo is about to spend a fortune on me. Am I supposed to turn him down? I’ve got bills to pay, and he’s single-handedly funding my father’s cancer treatments. I can’t turn that down.
Hattie isn’t pleased; I didn’t expect her to be. “It’s $1,000 to keep that room closed; we have to make up for our loss in revenue.” As if they’d get five one-hour Diamond room clients in the two hours that Lorenzo wants to rent me out. “That privacy money goes back to the club,” she insists with a glare. “Youdon’t get to pocket it.”
“I’ll let him know.” Money doesn’t seem like an issue to Lorenzo. He reminds me of the owner, Nicholas Calvino. I know that Nick isn’t a savory character. Whenever his name is in the press, it isn’t because he saved a kid from a burning building or got a cat out of a tree. When Nicholas Calvino’s name is in the newspaper, it’s because he’s being accused of a crime. If Lorenzo is anything like him, he’s wealthy and dangerous. I should stay as far away from him as I do the owner, but there’s just something about powerful men that draw me to him like a moth to a flame.
3
LORENZO
SIX MONTHS BEFORE
“I’m too hungover for this shit,” Riccardo groans. “Go home, Enzo.” He covers his face with a pillow to block out the light in the room.
“Unfortunately for you, thisismy home.” After getting outrageously and disrespectfully drunk last night, trying to get Riccardo back to my place was a chore. I didn’t want Jacqueline to see him that fucked up, even if he did keep saying that he loved her and couldn’t wait to be married to her. There are some things your future wife doesn’t need to see, and sleeping on the bathroom floor for two hours before being carried to bed is one of them.
Riccardo makes a strangled sound that’s a cross between a moan and a whimper. “Then go to another part of your home. Jesus Christ. Can’t a guy sleep?”
I rip the comforter off the bed and find my brother naked beneath it. He wasn’t naked when I put him to bed and I can’t see his clothes littering the floor. I look around and find nothing that indicates he was wearing clothes the night before. “Where the fuck is your underwear?”
“Who cares?” He rips the pillow off his head. “If you want to talk, close the damn curtains, and we’ll talk. My head is pounding, Enzo, and I’m pretty sure that’s because you were feeding me shots last night.”
Guilty as charged; this is the only time I’ll ever own up to a crime. “Someone had to.” I shrug at him, but he doesn’t see it. With his eyes squeezed tightly shut, he has to wait for me to walk over to the curtains and draw them closed before he even bothers to acknowledge my presence.
“You’re a piece of shit,” he groans when the room finally grows darker again. “A man can’t be miserable in peace?”
Not in my house,but I don’t say that out loud. “You got the thunderbolt with Selene, right? What did that feel like?”
Riccardo sits up and looks down at his raging hard-on. “Can I have the blanket back, or are we going to discuss the thunderbolt with my morning wood out?”
I grab the comforter off the floor and throw it at him. I wasn’t looking at his dick and frankly, I don’t care that he has it out. “Enjoy it,” I wrinkle my nose in disgust, “I’m going to burn those sheets when you go home. Why are you buck naked in my guest bedroom?”
It takes him a few seconds to situate himself. “Beats me,” he replies with a shrug. “Why am I in your guest bedroom when I have a perfectly good master bedroom at my place?”
I don’t have time to discuss these pedestrian matters. Once I find his underwear, I’m going to burn that along with the sheets. “Tell me about the thunderbolt, Ric.”
“You’re like a broken record,” he says with a roll of his eyes. He makes himself comfortable by scooting down in the bed once more until he’s almost parallel with the mattress. “Yeah, I got the thunderbolt when I saw Selene for the first time. I think I drank myself half-blind that night trying to forget her. It didn’t work, by the way.” A rueful little smile curls on his lips. “When the thunderbolt hits, nothing else matters. It’s like really, truly breathing for the first time in your life. You know immediately that the rest of your life will be meaningless if you don’t have her.”
I flop down in a chair a few feet away. I’m exhausted from spending all night trying to sleep and instead being woken up by dreams abouther. “I figured,” I grumble.
Riccardo raises an eyebrow, suddenly invested in this conversation. “Wait. Are you saying you were hit with the thunderbolt last night?” I don’t have to answer; he only has to look at my face to know for sure. “Wow.” A low whistle emits from his lips. “I never would have expected that from you. I don’t know why,” he says quickly, “you just don’t strike me as the thunderbolt type.”
If there’s a type of man that gets hit with the thunderbolt and a type of man that does not, I would bet my house that Riccardo’s the first type and I’m the second. There’s nothing wrong with me; I just don’t know if love is for me. That’s a perfectly normal thing to say, right?
