would take care of me as he promised, if only I would stay. In that moment, I knew I wasn’t going to leave.
“Kat?” His voice deep and firm.
“What?” There was no more bravado left in me, just a sinking sense of my own shame and emptiness.
“It’s going to be okay. I promise, you just need to trust me.” There was a restrained hunger in his voice like I had never heard and my heart clenched in my chest.
“Okay.”
“You promise then? Whatever I say you have to trust me. I’m going to take care of you, you just have to let me. Tell me you promise .”
I was so tired. Tired in my body, tired in my spirit and my soul. Tired in my mind. There was no one else, nothing else to rely on. I was spent and I needed someone to show me the way out of the darkness and back into the light.
“I do Jess. I promise. Please, just help me. I’m so lost.” The tears overflowed as I spoke. The deep depression that always overtook me the morning after I drank myself into oblivion was a place I sometimes was not sure I could lift myself out of, and I desperately needed his help.
Powerful arms lifted me up and onto his lap as he pulled my head against his shoulder, and the tears came without any noise, but flowed like rain down my cheeks. Sitting there, I realized something else had happened as Jesse’s hand stung and reddened my skin. I was wet. Like soaking, pounding, throbbing, screaming to be fucked kind of wet. And, there was a desperate part of me that wanted to tear off that fucking white t-shirt and beg him to fuck me as I pressed myself against his shoulder that felt like straining fissures about to explode.
But, suddenly I was so self conscious sitting there with no panties and my jeans pulled half down my legs. My full, round hips and not-so-flat tummy on full display. I knew when I stood up, there was sure to be evidence of my soaking sex on his pants and my heart began to beat like a mad man running from some invisible specter.
“You ready to go?” The deep timbre of his voice vibrated in his chest as I pushed my hands down into my lap, trying to cover myself.
I nodded, breathing in his scent and feeling the gentle scrape of the masculine stubble on his jaw line against my forehead.
“Can you live without your panties ‘til I get you home?” He pushed me until I stood up, turning his head slightly to the side as I pulled my jeans up and over my naked lower half. He thankfully pretended not to notice the small dark spot on his lap where I sat.
“Yes.” My voice shook.
Home? What did that mean? He’s taking me to his home?
“What time is it??” I was still so disoriented. There were no clocks and certainly no windows in a strip club.
“It’s 10:30.” He rummaged through his desk drawer, pulling out his black key fob.
“A.M. or P.M.” Honestly, I really was a mess.
There was the slightest upturn on one corner of Jesse’s lips, his hard, intense face showing the smallest of softening.
“Come on. I guess you’ll see when we get outside.”
I slept like I hadn’t slept in years those first few days at Jesse’s place. It was more than having a beautiful room that looked out over a huge lake with the peaks of Tarrington Mountain range in the background, although, it was a nice perk.
Jesse didn’t go to any of his clubs for four days while I laid in bed, shivering and sweating. He carried me once when I couldn’t even walk from the convulsions that wracked my body into the bathroom, gingerly taking off my clothes and lowering me down into a steaming hot bath that smelled like fresh linen and rose petals. He washed my back and neck, sending wild torrents of desire deep inside me even as my body fought the sickening pull for a drink, a joint, anything to feed the dark fingers of my bad habits that curled around my neck.
But, Jesse stood quiet and commanding when I cried and begged him to just let me have a sip. Something, just a glass of wine. He never wavered. Nothing. He didn’t even