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“Don’t sound so surprised. I was a damn fucking good teacher,” he tells me.
“I’m not surprised at all about you being a teacher. You’re smart, and you’re commanding, and I can just picture you pacing back and forth in the front of a classroom, talking passionately about a subject,” I assure him. “I guess I’m just surprised you aren’t anymore. I mean, Charming’s is a great place, and PJ and Eric are wonderful, but . . . it’s not exactly Magdalene Preparatory.”
“No, it’s definitely not.” Vincent lets out a laugh without any humor in it. “I was engaged a few years ago. To a woman named Kayla. She was a dancer at Charming’s. We were together for three years and . . . I thought she was the one. It turns out she thought every man who walked through the door of that place was the one, as long as he had more money than the guy before. I found out she was sleeping with half the customers, and I showed up there one night after I finished grading papers. Found her in the back room in between one of her sets, ten seconds away from fucking a customer. Long story short, I beat the shit out of him, the school board found out when he pressed charges, and they fired me. PJ tracked me down a few weeks later when his regular bouncer quit, offered me a job, gave me the nickname Beast, and the rest is history. I’ve kept this room locked since then because coming in here reminded me too much of everything I’d lost.”
“Oh, Vincent, I’m so sorry,” I whisper, taking a step towards him and resting my hands on his chest. “That must have been horrible. A clinical psychologist who specializes in relationships said in a recent study that she thinks cheating can be contagious, and you’re more likely to do it if people around you are. So, if you think about it, cheating is kind of like herpes. It’s gross, painful, and the scars never go away.”
The corner of Vincent’s mouth tips up into a smile, and a few seconds later, I’m rewarded with small chuckle from him as he stands shaking his head at me.
“You’re so weird,” he whispers, staring down at me with a smile.
“So, that’s why you don’t trust strippers.”
He just nods.
“Well, at least now I know you weren’t hiding dead bodies in here,” I tell him with a sheepish smile. “I really am sorry we got drunk and broke in here. If it makes you feel any better, I was firmly against it and tried to talk the girls out of it. At first. And then—”
“You let the wine do the talking,” he finishes for me. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I was planning on unlocking this door and letting you in here when I got home from work that night anyway. I felt like you deserved it after all that shit I said to you that day about you pretending to be sweet and innocent. And I know that makes me sound like a hypocrite, after the way I behaved when I caught you in there. I guess I just wanted to do it on my own terms, and it pissed me off when it was out of my control. I haven’t set foot in a library or even touched a book until the first night I walked into your library. You made me realize how much I missed reading and talking about books.”
“And then I had to screw it all up by breaking your trust.”
Suddenly, he grabs onto my hips and pulls me flush against him.
“You didn’t break anything. You’re exactly who you say you are and I guess . . . I’m just not used to that kind of honesty.”
His fingers dig into the skin of my hips, but not in a painful way. It’s almost as if he’s trying really hard to hold himself back, and it makes my skin heat with excitement.
“Are you going to keep teaching me how to be sexy and flirty now?” I ask in anticipation.
He lets out another chuckle and shakes his head at me again.
“Not until you’re comfortable.”
“I’m wearing a soft, cotton jersey dress and I’m barefoot. This is about as comfortable as it gets,” I reply.
His hands tighten on my hips and he lifts me up a few inches, setting me down on one rung of the ladder.
“That’s not what I mean,” he mutters, moving forward until his body is between my legs. My hands come up to grab on to his thick biceps. “I meant, not until you’re comfortable with me.”
I let out a nervous laugh when his hands move from my hips, trailing down the outside of my legs.
“Oh, ha ha, yeah, that. Um, I’m totally comfortable with you!” My voice comes out high-pitched and squeaky, and he raises one eyebrow at me as both of his hands slip under the skirt of my dress, his palms sliding up my bare thighs until he gets them back to my hips.
