Taking It Off

  Taking It Off is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Loveswept eBook Original

  Copyright © 2015 by Claire Kent

  Excerpt from Sweet the Sin by Claire Kent copyright © 2015 by Claire Kent

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  eBook ISBN 9780804181341

  Cover design: Lynn Andreozzi

  Cover photograph: FXQuadro/Shutterstock

  readloveswept.com

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  The Editor’s Corner

  Excerpt from Sweet the Sin

  Chapter 1

  Elizabeth Marks faked a smile as a buff, polished man shook his nylon-encased dick in her face.

  She wanted to cringe and back away, but she was afraid of offending Melissa, her college roommate, who was having her bachelorette party at Bare Assets, the most popular male dance revue—which was obviously just a male strip club—in Boston. So she pretended to laugh and quickly stuck a ten-dollar bill beneath the waistband of the guy’s clingy black bikini briefs to make it clear he could move on.

  She hated this.

  She hated the overdone music, the squeals of all the women around her, the vulgarity of the humping motions of all the dancers who had left the stage and were now spread out around the audience. Melissa and the four other bridesmaids all appeared to be having a great time.

  Elizabeth wished she’d had the foresight to fake a migraine.

  Maybe there was something wrong with her, but she hadn’t found the forty-five minutes they’d spent so far at Bare Assets either fun or sexy.

  “Come on, Elizabeth,” Melissa said, reaching all the way over the table so she could tuck a bill into the stripper’s underwear too. “Don’t be so uptight.”

  “I’m not uptight.” Elizabeth looked away as the man walked over to Melissa, pulled her to her feet, and began to hump her, much to the delight of the other women at the table.

  Unlike the rest of them, Elizabeth really didn’t want to see that.

  It wasn’t that she was afraid of sex—not at all. She enjoyed the physical aspects of love as much as anyone else. The real issue was that this didn’t feel anything like sex to her.

  It felt ridiculous.

  Thankfully, when the guy had given Melissa a thorough dry fuck, he moved away from their table, and Elizabeth let out her breath when it appeared that this act—a sexy-construction-worker routine involving five different dancers—was finally drawing to an end.

  “See?” Melissa said, grinning. “It’s just for fun. They’re careful about the sleazy stuff here. The staff is really well trained, and anyone who goes too far is asked to leave. It’s all very professional.”

  Maybe it was professional compared to other clubs like this, but the abundance of guys in tight underwear shaking their dicks around seemed kind of sleazy to Elizabeth.

  “You’ve got to learn to let loose a little,” Jenna told her, holding up her phone to take a selfie with her cosmopolitan.

  “I’m happy to let loose. This just isn’t my thing.”

  Melissa shook her head. “You never let loose. You never let yourself be anything but perfect.”

  Elizabeth faked another laugh, slightly annoyed because she didn’t think a woman had to enjoy male strip clubs to not be considered uptight. “I’m not that bad. I’ve gotten better than I was in college.”

  She said that mostly so she wouldn’t end up in an argument with the bride-to-be. There might have been a little truth in her friend’s words. She did try to make sure everything about her life was in order. She’d done well in school, and then she’d gotten a master’s in art therapy from an excellent school. She’d worked hard to get a job at one of the most exclusive preschools in the Boston area. Given her professional responsibilities and the age of her students, she was more of an art teacher than an art therapist, but it paid well enough and she enjoyed working with the children. She’d generally been a good girl growing up, and she’d rarely gotten in trouble. But none of that was why she wasn’t enjoying this evening.

  She just found this whole scene kind of…gross.

  She relaxed during the brief break between acts, since the music wasn’t so loud and she could look around without being confronted by the waxed body of a barely clad man.

  She scanned the faces of the women at the tables and felt a weird clench in her stomach. She didn’t get it. She just didn’t understand their enjoyment of this kind of show.

  It was like she was alone in a dark corner when the rest of the world was at a party.

  As she looked around, her eyes landed on a man standing at the back, near the bar. He stood out from the crowd because he clearly wasn’t a member of the staff—all of whom were shirtless—or one of the customers, nearly all of whom were female.

  This guy was tall and well built but was dressed casually in jeans and a black T-shirt. It looked like he had tattoos down both arms. He was talking to the bartender, and there shouldn’t have been anything special about him. He was very good-looking, but he wasn’t calling any attention to himself.

  Elizabeth had no idea why she couldn’t look away from him.

  There was just something sexy and kind of deep about him, as if there were layers to his personality that were waiting to be peeled back. She kept watching as his eyes made a detached tour of the room. They paused on her, maybe because he noticed her watching him.

  She felt a rush of excitement as their eyes met, although he didn’t smile or change his expression. She made herself look away, since she didn’t want him to think she was staring.

  She wanted to stare, though. Something kept drawing her to him in a way she wasn’t accustomed to.

  It took real effort to keep her eyes away from him. And every time her gaze drifted back, the man was looking at her too.

  Her heartbeat accelerated at the idea that she’d caught his attention.

  Not that she would ever date a man she met in a club like this. She had fairly high standards for romantic relationships. She was looking for an educated, attractive professional who would fit into her social circle, wouldn’t be intimidated by her family’s affluence, and was basically moral and upstanding. The guy she had in mind wouldn’t spend any time in a place like this.

  But it was still nice. That he’d noticed her.

  Of course, he might have just noticed her because she kept looking over at him.

  When the lights briefly dimmed, signaling the beginning of a new act, she shook her head at the squeals from the women around her. She couldn’t help but wonder yet again what they found so appealing.

  The brief shared glances with the guy in the back were a lot sexier and more exciting than any of the vulgar moves from these dancers or their unnaturally shiny, beefed-up bodies, with everything on display.

  When three men dressed as soldiers came out onstage amid ecstatic shouts from the women, Elizabeth let out a resigned sigh and
discreetly glanced back toward the bar.

  The man was no longer there.

  She told herself not to be disappointed. Meeting a guy’s eyes a few times wasn’t any sort of a sign or a promise. It didn’t mean he wanted to talk to her or get to know her. It didn’t mean she would ever see him again.

  She tried to keep smiling so Melissa wouldn’t call her uptight, but as the evening progressed, she found it harder and harder to fake interest—especially since the good-looking mystery man never made a reappearance.

  During a fireman routine, as the performers spread out into the audience, one of the guys came over to her and wanted to give her a lap dance.

  She tried to decline—the attention she’d had from a dancer earlier had been more than enough for her—but her friends all demanded she participate, so she felt trapped into doing so.

  The guy was attractive and very young, and he was playful rather than genuinely sexy, but still….She found the whole act of his grinding against her with his hips—all of his “assets” fully visible beneath the tight briefs—so uncomfortable it was almost repellent.

  She kept the smile plastered on her face and hurriedly offered him a tip afterward, but she pulled away as soon as she could without offending him or Melissa.

  She should never have come here tonight.

  She sat stiffly for a few minutes afterward, blindly watching the guy’s tight butt as he made his way back onstage.

  “It’s really not that bad,” Katie said, leaning over close enough to be heard over the music. “You don’t need to act like you’re being tortured.”

  “I know. I just hate this.”

  Katie was Elizabeth’s best friend, and she was the only one of the women at this table with whom Elizabeth could be fully open and share what she felt. “Just laugh at it,” Katie said. “A lot of the women here are having fun because they think it’s funny. You could try to enjoy it that way.”

  “You don’t think it’s sexy, do you?” Elizabeth asked.

  Katie was eying a gorgeous black man who was built like a rock. “Not all the moves, no. But I don’t mind looking at the guys.”

  Elizabeth frowned, vaguely disappointed in her friend and genuinely confused about the look in her eyes. Katie was married to exactly the kind of man Elizabeth was looking for. Her husband, Steve, was a nice-looking lawyer with good manners and a good sense of humor. He loved their two kids, and he made a healthy income.

  Occasionally Elizabeth would feel jealous when she looked at Katie’s life. She didn’t want Steve herself, but she wanted a family and lifestyle like that. It had all worked out so smoothly and perfectly for Katie, but Elizabeth couldn’t even find a guy she was remotely interested in dating.

  Steve wasn’t any sort of movie star, but Elizabeth thought he was more attractive than the overinflated physicality of the strippers in this club.

  “Nothing wrong with looking,” Katie said with a little smile. “You know guys do it too.”

  “I know. But just looking doesn’t do it for me.” When Katie laughed, Elizabeth hurriedly explained, “I mean, I don’t get excited by a body in a vacuum. I need something more.”

  Katie didn’t even seem to hear her, since she was ogling another one of the strippers.

  Elizabeth sighed and tried to consciously loosen up and find something to enjoy about this experience.

  She tried and tried and tried and tried—until she was absolutely exhausted from working on loosening up.

  Finally she couldn’t stand the noise, the gyrations, the crude physicality any longer. Maybe it meant she was uptight. Maybe it meant she was repressed. Maybe it meant she was boring and vanilla. But she didn’t like this, and she didn’t want to be in this room anymore.

  She told the others that she needed to go to the bathroom, and she maneuvered her way through the crowd until she could shut the restroom door on the screaming and pulsing music.

  She didn’t like to sit on public toilets and she didn’t really need to go, so she just stood in a stall and tried to breathe, gradually relaxing her body, which she hadn’t realized had been so tense.

  Maybe she could pretend to be sick so she could go home. It would probably be another hour before her friends were ready to leave.

  She stayed as long as she could in the bathroom, until there was another break between acts and several women entered at the same time. Feeling bad about occupying a stall she didn’t really need, she flushed the toilet with her foot and went to wash her hands, giving a polite smile to the middle-aged woman wearing a sash that said I’M 50 YEARS YOUNG who was waiting for an available stall.

  When Elizabeth left the bathroom, she wasn’t yet ready to face the main room again, so she lingered in the foyer, near the door, pulling out her phone so she could pretend to be texting, which would give her an excuse if anyone wondered why she wasn’t going back in.

  She was so absorbed in tapping out nonsensical fake text messages that she didn’t notice anyone approaching her until a low, male voice said, “You’re going to miss the next act.”

  Elizabeth jerked in surprise, looking up from her phone to see the handsome mystery man she’d noticed earlier by the bar.

  Up close she saw that he had smoky gray eyes, a hint of stubble on his strong chin, and an elaborate scene inked down both of his arms.

  “Oh,” she said, feeling rattled since he’d surprised her and she was still ridiculously attracted to him. “That’s okay.”

  “You aren’t enjoying it.” The words were a statement rather than a question.

  She made a face. “I’m sure the guys are doing a great job, but it’s not really my thing.”

  “Why did you come, then?” He didn’t look offended or annoyed—just curious.

  “It was my friend’s idea. This is her bachelorette party.”

  His eyes lingered on her face with an intentionality that confused and excited her. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  She had to pause a moment to think through what he meant, and she could feel her heartbeat accelerate even more. Her skin flushed slightly. “I came because I didn’t want to offend my friend. Why else would I have come?”

  “I don’t know.” His lips lifted very slightly in a small smile that was sexy and strangely entitled. “So why aren’t you enjoying it?”

  She gave a small half-shrug. It was odd to have such a personal conversation with a stranger, but it felt inevitable somehow, as if she’d been waiting all her life to be talking to him. “It’s not my thing.”

  “You said that before. I was wondering why.” He moved a little closer, his eyes never leaving her face, except to glance down her body.

  She wore black capris and a blue top with a scoop neck that made her breasts look bigger than they were. She thought she looked pretty good tonight, and it seemed like maybe this guy thought so too. “I just don’t see the appeal,” she admitted. “It’s really not sexy to me.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No. I’m surprised so many women think so. The guys have good bodies—sure—but it’s all so blatant, right there in your face, and the moves seem kind of silly and over the top. That’s not sexy to me.”

  Again he had that little smile on his face, as if he knew her, understood her, in a way that he couldn’t possibly. “So what is sexy to you?”

  “I don’t know. Different things. But I need…I don’t know…some kind of context to find someone or something sexy. I need a story behind it. You can’t just thrust a buff body in my face and expect me to get excited about it. That might work with guys, but it doesn’t work with a lot of women.”

  “There’s a theory that men are turned on with their eyes and women are turned on with their hearts.”

  “Yeah,” she said with a smile, feeling strangely validated. “It’s something like that, I guess. This is all about the eyes.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t think that theory is universally true. Why shouldn’t women get turned on with their eyes as much as men?”

&nbs
p; Elizabeth frowned, her relief from the moment before fading. “I don’t know. Maybe some of them do. I’m just saying that I don’t.”

  “I think it’s because you’ve never allowed yourself.” He had a low, mesmerizing note in his voice that made everything he said seem like a seduction, even when it obviously wasn’t.

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I can get a sense of a person quickly, and I’ve already gotten a good sense of you.”

  He was smiling again, but Elizabeth stiffened her shoulders, suddenly not sure she wanted to hear his assessment of her. “That’s kind of presumptuous.”

  “It’s very presumptuous, but that doesn’t mean I’m not right.”

  “Okay, fine. If you’re so good at reading people, what have you read about me?”

  “You come from money—maybe not huge wealth, but you always had enough growing up, and your parents indulged you. Your purse and shoes are really expensive, so you must still have plenty in the bank. Maybe you’ve got some sort of cushy job, thanks to your parents’ connections.”

  This was partly true, but not entirely, and she sucked in an indignant gasp at the implication. “I worked hard for the job I have.”

  “I believe it,” he said, his eyes still resting on her face. “You’ve probably been an overachiever all your life, never wanting to disappoint anyone.”

  “What makes you say that?” She didn’t bother denying this. Everyone who knew her would testify that it was true.

  “I watched you with your friends—all those fake smiles you put on. You didn’t want to offend or disappoint them by admitting how much you wanted to get out of here.”

  “Oh.” She swallowed hard, feeling a buzzing now in her chest, her head, her fingertips—like something important was about to happen. “I don’t like to disappoint people, but that’s true about a lot of women.”

  “It’s particularly true about you. And I think it might explain why you’re having such a hard time here.”