Page 51 of Gilded Fake

“I didn’t ask for your heart.”

“Good,” she says. “Then like I said, you’re just another client. You pay for an experience you can’t get at home, and I give it to you, no questions asked.”

“That’s not what I want,” I growl in frustration, but when I reach for her, she catches my hands and places them back on the chair.

“What exactly do you want?”

Everything. I want every fucking thing from her, even the things I didn’t ask for. I want her body, her soul, her heart, her mind. I want her trembling submission, her bitter tears, her shining triumphs, the wild laughter that lives in my memories as they return like sun-dappled daydreams, with her head thrown back and her hair spilling in wild tangles down her back. I want her lips on my chin as she stretches up for a kiss, her fingers in my hair. But I have no right to ask for any of that when I asked for someone else’s hand last weekend.

“You,” I say hoarsely, unable to stop myself from saying something, even if I can’t put into words everything I want without having her laugh in my face.

“And you have me,” she says with a coy smile. “For three hours.”

“This is all I’ll ever get from you?”

“While you’re engaged to someone else?” she asks. “Yeah, Colt, that’s all it can ever be. Purely physical, purely professional.”

“That’s enough for you?”

She shrugs. “We all take what we can get.”

“This is all I can get?” I ask bitterly. “A tease? And maybe, if the price is right, an emotionless fuck? What happened to the girl who soaked my lap, who fucked me in the freezing rain, who screamed she loved me like a curse?”

“Come on, Colt,” she says. “You can’t think any of that was real. A strip club isn’t a place you come looking for love. It’s a place you come to indulge your fantasies.”

“Fine,” I say, placing my palms on her thighs and pressing firmly, backing her off my lap. “Then go back to the stage.”

Her gaze is wary, but she doesn’t call for her bodyguards. Instead, she turns and walks away slowly, her round ass bare around her G-string, bouncing with each step.

My mouth goes dry, and my head is absolutely scrambled by the time she reaches the steps.

“Stop,” I order.

She hesitates, then slowly turns back to face me, her sapphire eyes steady with a strength I can’t wait to conquer.

“That’s a good girl,” I say. “Now get on your knees and crawl to me.”

*

I sit in my truck in the parking lot, the constant nagging now an incessant scream inside me. I can’t do it. I can’t fucking do it.

Maybe I could have if she’d let me drown myself in her instead. If she hadn’t climbed off my lap the moment my time was up, if she’d said yes when I asked her to continue the night elsewhere.

But she didn’t.

I open the console, my fingers trembling like a starving man searching for morsels with the last vestiges of his strength. The dim overhead light shows me nothing out of the ordinary though, nothing but car wipes and tissues, a crushed cigarette pack, a couple lighters, a baggie or two with crumbs of weed left in the corners, and a handful of orange bottles, each as empty as the ones beside Mom’s bed when I found her.

“Fuck,” I mutter, pawing everything out and tossing it onto the other seat, as if I’ll find something that doesn’t exist if I just get everything out of the way, get rid of the shadows the trash casts over my life. When the console is empty and bare, I slam my palm against the steering wheel and my head back against the seat. “Fuck!”

I roar the word this time, knowing I’m spiraling but unable to stop, unable to help myself. The need has taken over, the beast on my back no longer content to hang onto me and sink its claws into my ribs, its teeth into my spinal cord. It’s finally brought me to my knees the way I did Lo tonight, pinned me flat on the pavement, crushed the last of my willpower, snuffed out the fight in me. I swing open the door and hop down from my truck, already halfway across the street to the tattoo parlor in my mind, the relief so close I can taste it spreading over my tongue.

And like an apparition, Maverick is there, alone under the glow of a streetlight.

I raise a hand and call to him, but a car pulls out of the lot and onto the street that separates us, the engine drowning my voice.

I move in slow-motion, as if I’m in a dream, a nightmare where I need to run but every step is like wading through quicksand.

The car swerves, glides to a stop at the curb in front of him. I hear the window slide down, or maybe I imagine it.

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