Page 17 of That Girl is Trouble

The thing with Axe though? While he gives me the highest of highs, he also gives me the lowest of lows. It’s a hard crash coming down from this man, and I swore to myself I wouldn’t play this fucking game again. Yet here I am, motioning for him to sit as I grab the bill out of his hand and step towards the speaker system to start the first song.

“How do you usually start?” he asks.

I don’t look at him when I respond. “Depends on the night. The pole, I guess.”

“Then get on the pole.”

It’s a command. And I’m already losing. He’s wrestling for control. But that’s not how things work in this room.

“Thieves and Kings” by the Peach Kings thrums over the speakers as I step onto the platform and reach for the top of the pole. Dancing up here is different from dancing on stage. Here, it’s up close. Personal. Up here I can’t blur out the faces or pretend I’m alone, that it’s just me and the green lights and the cool metal against my skin. Down there is an escape, a therapy of sorts, a way that allows me to live in the quiet without wanting to rip my fucking hair out.

Up here, it’s about control.

Men like to think they’re calling the shots when they step into this room. But I’m the one who decides who gets to feel what. I’m the one with the power. It doesn’t belong to some asshole in a suit, and it certainly doesn’t belong to Axel Donovan.

Hoisting myself up, I wrap my body around the pole and stretch out my legs, giving him a show of what lies beneath my skirt. I twirl around, moving with the music, the bass of the song thrumming in my chest, the feel of his stare on my skin lighting my nerves on fire. But despite the adrenaline barrelling through my veins, Axe seems… unaffected. Like I’m not practically naked in some perverse version of a school uniform, spreading my legs around a goddamn stripper pole.

The man looks bored.

Attention on me, he rests his elbows on his knees and watches. Face passive and emotionless. The sharp lines of his brows burrowing deeper with disappointment.

Despite my best efforts, I fixate on the meaning of that look. Is he disappointed in me for doing this? That this is what I’ve become? Or is he disappointed in my performance. Because I’m not pleasing him. Because I’m not good. It suddenly matters to me, like it did back then. I’m thinking about those times. When I really was too young. When I needed him to want me, to feel the emotions and the desires he kept telling me I was too young to feel.

As the last notes of the song ring out, I slide down the pole, finishing on my knees. I wait for him to speak, to look at me in that way he used to sometimes—where he was all hunger and emotion and need.

When the next song starts, he stays silent, his focus finally breaking from me and moving to the screen of his phone.

His fucking phone.

Is he serious?

“No phones in here, Axe,” I say through gritted teeth. “It’s against the rules.”

He barely acknowledges my words as he thumbs out a text, then he slides his phone back into his pocket and tilts up his chin. “Not sure that was worth a C-note, Kat. What’s next?”

“What’s next is I take my clothes off.”

Lifting his eyebrows, he says seriously, “You’ll be keeping your clothes on.”

I slide down to the carpeted floor and crawl towards the couch. “You sure?”

His throat bobs, and he leans back, his arms sliding flush against the back cushions. “I’m sure.”

It’s so quick I almost miss it—the hungry, heated look flashing across his face. That’s when I know I’ve got him. This cold, apathetic façade he’s fronting is hiding a well of desire and need. Everything a red-blooded heterosexual male should feel when he’s sitting in this room.

Smiling, I pull open the few buttons holding my blouse closed over my chest and toss it to the floor.

“Kitty,” he warns, but his eyes are already dropping to my light-pink lace bra.

Moving onto the couch, I steady my knees on either side of him and straddle his hips. Once I’m settled, I move my body to the music still filling the room. It’s a heady feeling—being this close to a man so dangerous, so powerful, and knowing that I can unravel him with a simple roll of my hips.

The pads of his fingers slide up my thighs, but I catch them before they get to my ass. “No touching Axe,” I whisper.

“Kitty,” he says again, and this time it’s a plea. Let me touch you.

I grind my body closer to his, and his hands find me again. This time, I let them linger. I let him glide them over my calves and up my thighs and under my skirt. Goose bumps litter my skin, a pool of heat flooding between my legs and dampening the thin material of my panties. Gripping his shoulders, I drop my face close to his. Too close. So close I could kiss him.

I’ve dreamt of that—his lips on mine, the stubble on his chin scraping against my skin, his teeth sliding against my tongue. I’ve fantasized, because I never got that from him back then. I was too young to kiss, he’d said, even though I craved it every goddamn time I was close to him. I was too young to touch, even though he broke that rule more times than I can count.

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