He raised his eyebrows. “If you wanna see for yourself.”
“Well, I’ve never…” She decided to let that rest—she didn’t want him to think she was any less worldly and wild than he currently did. “I presume women do go to this particular club on occasion?”
He gave a short nod. “I’m sure there’ll be a few other women there.”
She tried to hide her nervous swallow. “All right then. I’ll see you tomorrow night.” Rising to go, she glanced down at the pictures still in her hand. “May I have these?”
“Sure. If you look at ‘em and decide you’re convinced before tomorrow night, let me know and we’ll cancel.”
“All right, but…I’m not expecting that to happen.”
With that, she turned and walked back out onto the street, nipples and crotch tingling for more reasons that she could easily identify. She should be upset, she thought, or livid, or something—at Todd. Instead, though, she was concentrating on the way Jack Wade had made her feel. All hot and crumbly inside. The flesh between her thighs heavy and aching. Something about this man made her feel so dirty—in a delicious way.
As for Todd, there was a part of her that almost wanted to find out he was cheating. She’d once thought she loved him, but now she doubted she ever had. She’d had worries and misgivings for a while now, yet her reaction to Jack Wade these last couple of days had shored up her certainty. She couldn’t truly love her fiancé and at the same time want to get naked and sweaty with Jack Wade.
But she still didn’t think the guy in those pictures was Todd. And she needed more solid evidence before she broke off the engagement. Their lives were too closely intertwined. Todd was from a good family and their parents got along famously—their fathers had even gone into business together, financing a chain of dry cleaning stores back home in Maryland. As far as both their families were concerned, Liz and Todd were as good as married already. So it would be a lot easier, a lot more cut and dried, with proof that he’d done something wrong, and the pictures Jack had taken weren’t good enough.
Liz’s heels clicked down the street toward a nearby deli—she wanted to grab a quick salad before heading back to the office. As she sat eating at a small corner table, she thought more about the pictures. When she’d eaten her last bite of lettuce, she lay down her fork, dug the photos back out of her purse, and looked through them, more carefully this time.
The man in the prints was slouched deep in a small, plush chair, head leaned back, mouth open. Even without being able to make out his face, she could see the raw lust in him. Soon, however, her focus shifted and she found herself studying the women in the pictures. One was large-breasted with big, pointy nipples which dangled teasingly above the man’s face. Her body was so lush and curvy that something seemed sinful about it, even in the still, dark photo. Another had smaller breasts, perky with hard pink nubs at their centers. She looked lithe and acrobatic, in some shots rising up on her knees, in others grinding her crotch against the man in the picture. Despite the shadowy quality of the images, this particular girl looked like a blonde and Liz had the impression of her being young—twentyish. A third stripper was ultra-slender with medium-sized boobs, pretty and pert. She might be a redhead. In the fuzzy darkness, she looked very attractive, sensual. In some of the shots, she touched her breasts or tweaked her large nipples, in others she leaned her head back, looking impassioned. In one picture, she rubbed between her legs.
Looking at something so blatant, dirty, and sexual between strangers began to turn Liz on against her will. Her crotch hummed and her panties felt damp. The women were so lovely, so sexy, so bold and hot. She wondered if Jack Wade had enjoyed watching them writhe on top of the guy in the photos, enjoyed watching them touch themselves. She wondered if he’d gotten hard, if he’d gone home wishing he had a woman—or maybe he’d gotten a woman. For all she knew, he’d had a private dance himself.
A vision of the difficult-to-see redhead straddling Jack Wade’s lap rose to her mind. Had the woman perhaps thrashed about on him, making him hard? Had he gazed up at her, watching her work, letting himself get lost in lust? The image was wildly arousing, even as she felt a mild pang of jealousy—irrationally, she wanted him to lust only for her.
God, what if he was married or something? It was the first time the thought had even occurred to her. He’d been flirting with her, undressing her with his eyes, but married men misbehaved all the time. And she hadn’t noticed him wearing a ring—but some men just didn’t.
Please don’t be married, she thought. Please be available.
And…for God’s sake, what about Todd? Why wasn’t she even thinking about Todd? He might actually be the guy in the pictures, yet she’d gotten more caught up in looking at all those round, pretty breasts, smooth stomachs, and curving hips, and wondering if they’d excited Jack Wade the same way they were exciting her right now.
And to think, tomorrow night she was actually going to Club Venus with him. She was going to watch all this with him, live. One part of her was petrified—what if she was repulsed by what she saw there, what if she wanted to run screaming into the street away from the lewdness? But another part of her—the part she was just discovering over these past couple of days—was anticipating it.
Shoving the photos back in her purse, Liz emptied her lunch tray and went into the bathroom to freshen up before catching a cab back to work. Standing before the mirror, she fastened her hair back from her
