There was a chorus of good-natured giggles from our booth, and a clear-as-day “You go, girl!” from Tyler Swan. I couldn’t look behind me for fear of losing all my newfound vodka-aided conviction. Mateo pulled me closer to him, leaving a trail of kisses from my chest to my neck, until his mouth was hot against my ear. “I’m going to fuck you so hard,” he whispered. “So deep, Tally. You’re going to feel me on your body for days if you keep this up.”
My clit thrummed. There was a distinct clench and release going on internally that made it clear if I didn’t have this man inside me soon my petulant little Kegel workout was going to be for nothing.
I pushed him back onto the booth, leaving my hand against his chest like I was warding off a predator. At that point, I was. Another hot sentence out of his mouth and I wouldn’t care who was watching anymore. Mateo’s gaze was burning, so serious and savage I couldn’t bring myself to match it. Mateo lifted his hips ever so slightly and I choked on a groan. He was reading me like a motherfucking book. Reading me to filth. He reached between us and adjusted himself, brushing his knuckles so fucking close to the apex of my core it was like someone blowing out birthday candles. Except the candle was my fucking clit and the breath was too weak to blow out the flame.
The song started the bridge and I unwound my legs from him, turning and placing my back to his chest and my palms on his outstretched thighs, rolling my ass over his lap. That earned me another animalistic grunt from the depths of his stomach.
I made the mistake of looking up and immediately regretted it when I found our entire wedding party watching intently. Not just them—we’d earned the attention of quite a few people in the club who might have thought we were part of the club’s entertainment. All but Frankie, who had clearly learned his lesson from Christmastime and was hiding his eyes behind his hand and staring at the table. My sisters were somewhere between pride for how seriously I was taking this scavenger hunt item, and the sheer inability to look away. I knew I had that effect on people, based on hundreds of thousands of dollars of experience.
“We’re going,” I heard uttered gruffly. Mateo’s hands slipped around my body, one pinning my waist down so I couldn’t move it anymore, the other over my thigh like a seatbelt. His fingers drummed on the inside of my leg impatiently.
“Going?” I squeaked. “Where?”
“Oh, baby girl.” He said it so sarcastically, condescendingly. “How does it usually end when you put on this little show?”
With my feet tickling my ears? A stack of pillows under my hips? My head hanging off the edge of the bed and my mouth wide open? We were at a borderline rave where none of those choices seemed like an option, but I wasn’t underestimating Mateo’s creativity. Not with his possessive hands on my body and that determined dark stare—the one that only came out for a very specific reason and didn’t go away unless that reason was satiated.
He wouldn’t, I dared to think. It would be so goddamn obvious why we were leaving and what we were about to do.
The music mixed into a different song and Mateo’s grip tightened just before he hefted us both off the leather booth, keeping me pressed to his body, no doubt hiding the boner I could still feel pegging me in the back. I was deranged enough to smile about it even though he could swipe a finger between my legs and put me on blast just as easily.
“I don’t know whether I should clap or not.” Tyler held his two palms about a foot apart from each other. “It was almost like you’ve rehearsed that before.” I sent a silentthank youinto the universe for giving Mateo friends who were outwardly unabashed because it made the pregnant awkwardness of the lap dance coming to an endthat muchmore bearable.
That was short-lived, of course, as my darling husband pushed me forward by the small of my back, steering me like a grocery cart with a wonky wheelawayfrom everyone. Ophelia was amused; my sisters were baffled; Angelo avoided eye contact like an animatronic with a loose screw, unsure of which direction to turn or what to do with his hands; and Sam was buried in his drink, unfazed.
We were one hell of a dysfunctional group.
“We’re going to sort something out,” Mateo announced. My cheeks flushed, and my lower half buzzed in anticipation as I tripped over myself adjusting to the quickness in whichhe turned us toward the dark hallway leading straight to the bathrooms.
Two steps later, we were screeched to a halt by a strange man and a deep voice that chilled me straight to my bones.
“I thought I recognized you two.”
chapter thirty-five
Natalia
My head whippedto the side and I was blindsided by a man my father’s age. Dark hair, the hint of a beard circling his thin mouth and sharp chin. Light eyes that literally cut the air from my lungs in half when I glared into them, because I didn’t know that face, but he very clearly knew mine. The recognition made my stomach turn over as I realized he knew us for all the wrong reasons.
No, not here. Notnow.
I’d never had to face a subscriber in the wild. We’d been lucky despite the online popularity to remain under the radar. This was a thousand times worse considering it was happening in front of my sisters, our friends—people who were none the wiser.
My heart thudded so violently my ribs felt like they might crack. One of our streaming rules was to keep personal livespersonal. The only information we asked for was valid identification, and a lot of the time the men I did requests for were trying to keep themselves incognito too. They had wives, and kids, and very important high-paying, travel-dense jobs that made splurging for my service possible, but a dirty little secret. The less I knew the better.
I’d gone rigid, and Mateo noticed. His shoulders widened, and he stepped in front of me, putting a very large, intimidating body between the man and me. “Do we know this guy?”
“No,” I lied. Maybe that would be enough to get him to walk away. Make him think he’d mistaken us for someone else, or realize this wasn’t the time or the place and he was stepping over a boundary I’d never had to verbally place before.
Don’t be fucking stupid,I thought to myself.Walk away with a shred of stolen dignity, dude.My breathing stuttered as our wedding party became more aware of Mateo’s protective body language and the uncomfortable conversation.
“Mat and Nat, right? Sorry if you’re trying to keep it lowkey, I watch your stream every week,” he retorted with a disturbing amount of charisma. His unsettling stare raked down my body slowly as if he was reminiscing on the skin beneath my clothes and I felt so exposed knowing this man had that intimate knowledge of me. Like I was nothing but a toy. “The little lap dance is what gave it away. IknewI’d seen that somewhere before. But I had to get a closer look. Natasha and Matthew in the flesh. Had I known you were doing live shows I’d have brought some singles.”
“Forget you saw us,” I said through gritted teeth.
He recoiled, a flash of confusion spreading across his face. The man had clearly had a few drinks and was looking for more from the both of us, like we were purely entertainment and expected to behave like we did online.
“Everything okay?” Sam came to our aid, flanked by the rest of our group who I wanted to stay far, far away.
