On The Ropes Read Online Free PDF Page A

pretty much decided it before tonight, and while that possibility skeeved me out a little, it wasn’t my business. I was just a dumb little culinary student who shook her tits for tuition and attention.
    Not anymore.
    Before I could try to catch Gio’s eye again, I was shoved hard from behind, and sent sprawling across the table. It surprised me more than hurt, though I bumped my lower lip against the edge. My skirt was flipped up, and hands sculpted my flesh. Greedy hands.
    “Goddammit, no. Get your filthy hands off her.”
    Giovanni’s harsh command made me whip my head around in time to see him take a swing at the groper, who I surmised to be the guy who’d let me out of the booth. In an instant, Gio’s arms were pinned behind his back, and he struggled against the men who kept him caged. His muscles bulged, on the verge of ripping the sleeves of his shirt. I hated that I noticed that even while I was sprawled on my belly in front of six men.
    You’re used to being looked at next to naked. You like it. Stop pretending you don’t.
    But not like this. Never like this.
    “Gio,” I said quietly, and he stilled, his blue-black eyes wild. I’d seen tigers at the zoo with less leashed power simmering under their skin. “Do it.”
    I don’t know what made me say those particular words, or how I could even speak when fear rode me hard enough to make my legs shake. They were spread open, putting me on display thanks to the insubstantial thong I wore and hairband-sized skirt that had been raised to bare my ass. And even as I trembled, some part of me reveled in being the center of focus for all these powerful men.
    For Gio.
    Something had twisted inside me, gone wrong at a point I couldn’t identify. Maybe it was when my sister was kidnapped on her way home from school that sunny September day, shortly after the new school year had begun, or maybe it was when I’d seen all the people looking for her and wondering when she would return home. If she would. I’d wondered too, and I’d cried so many tears that I could’ve drowned in them. But when she came back, and they printed the pictures of the beautiful, horrifying man who’d held her hostage, a sick, shameful part of me had yearned.
    For what, I hadn’t even known. I was only eleven. But now I had an inkling. I yearned to be coveted to the point of madness. Beyond it.
    Like the way Giovanni was looking at me right now.
    He was trying to hide his desire. I sensed his revulsion at it, and there was no denying his fury and rage at the whole situation. But from my prone position, it was easy enough to see the outline in his pants. He would never act on it. Never take advantage. Even if it meant our lives hung in the balance, he would stay firmly on the other side of the moral line.
    I both admired and hated him for that.
    It would be easier, simpler, if he took my choice away. Then I wouldn’t have to acknowledge the dark, humiliating side of myself I fed every week when I eagerly participated in something that all the other dancers I worked with hated. I was broken, and I was about to admit it.
    At least in that, I had no choice.
    “I want it to be you,” I whispered, and he swore ripely in Italian. His eyes pleaded with me to refuse to be part of this, to say no and doom both of us to a painful death.
    I wouldn’t do it.
    “Please.” Though it pained me, I kept my eyes on his as I rose up on my bare toes. Presenting myself like an offering, as if this was our choice. As if our first time being witnessed by five men who were already going slack-jawed and glazed-eyed at the prospect wouldn’t traumatize me in ways I couldn’t begin to enumerate now.
    Maybe I needed to slake this dark curiosity to finally kill it forever. Or maybe I would kill myself—not my body, but my soul. My spirit. I didn’t know.
    I had to find out who I would be on the other side. Who he would be, and if we would be anything together.
    “Why are you dressed like that?” The