Chapter 2: The Striptease
The little black dress pooled at Aria’s feet like a shadow she’d stepped out of. The penthouse air, cool from the climate control, whispered over her skin. She stood there in nothing but a lace bra and matching panties, the city’s neon glow painting her curves in streaks of electric blue and hot pink from the windows.
For a heartbeat, there was only the thrum of the bass and the sharp, collective intake of breath from her friends.
Then Troy moved.
He didn’t pounce. He advanced with a predator’s grace, closing the final distance between them until the heat from his body was a tangible force against her skin. His eyes, dark and intent, scanned her face, then drifted down, taking in the sight of her with a slow, appreciative thoroughness that made her blood hum.
“See something you like?” Aria breathed, the bravado in her voice only slightly tremulous.
“I’m making a list,” he murmured, his voice so low only she could hear it. His finger traced the lace edge of her bra, following the swell of her breast without quite touching her skin. The near-contact was maddening. “Checking it twice.”
From the plush velvet sofa, Sienna whooped. “Get it, birthday girl!”
Troy’s mouth quirked. He took a deliberate step back, giving himself—and her—room. The professional switch flipped, but the heat in his eyes remained, banked like a fire. The music shifted again, the saxophone slinking into a slow, grinding rhythm.
“You all paid for a show,” he announced, his voice projecting to the small audience without ever leaving Aria’s gaze. “Let’s give the birthday girl a show.”
What followed wasn’t the cheesy, mechanical gyration she’d seen at cheap clubs. This was something else entirely. It was a conversation in movement, and she was the sole respondent.
He started with his hands, loosening the cuffs of his hanging shirt with deliberate, slow twists of his wrists. Every muscle in his forearms corded and relaxed with the motion. He shrugged the shirt off, letting it fall to the carpet. His chest was a landscape of defined muscle and smooth skin, dusted with dark hair. He turned, giving her a view of the powerful taper of his back, the muscles shifting like tectonic plates as he rolled his shoulders.
He moved to the music, but it was more like the music moved for him. A dip of his hips, a slow roll that was pure, unadulterated suggestion. He dropped into a crouch before her, his eyes level with her navel. He looked up at her from under those dark brows, a challenge and a promise, before rising with a fluid power that made her throat go dry.
He was playing with her. He’d come close, the scent of him—clean sweat and something like sandalwood—washing over her, then retreating to the center of the room where he’d run his hands down the hard planes of his stomach, his thumbs hooking into the waistband of his trousers. He’d pop the button. He’d lower the zipper a torturous inch. Then he’d turn away, dancing for her friends, making them scream, before circling back to her as if pulled by a magnet.
“You’re killing me,” Aria whispered during one of his close passes.
His answer was a ghost of a smile against her temple. “Good.”
He finally shed the trousers, stepping out of them in a pair of black boxer briefs that left very little to the imagination. The applause from the sofa was deafening. Chloe was filming on her phone, laughing. Sienna was grinning like a cat who’d gotten not just the cream, but the whole damn dairy.
But Troy’s focus never truly left Aria. He approached her for the final act. He placed his hands on the table behind her, caging her in, his body a hair’s breadth from touching hers. He leaned in, his lips beside her ear. The stubble on his jaw grazed her cheek.
“Tell me to stop,” he whispered, the words a rough vibration against her skin.“And I stop. This part’s for you. Just you.”
She couldn’t have spoken if she tried. She shook her head, a minute movement.
He nodded, understanding. Then his hands, which had been gripping the table, came up to frame her face. They were surprisingly gentle. He looked into her eyes, his own stripped of all performance now, showing only a raw, focused intensity that stole the air from her lungs.
Slowly, giving her every chance to pull away, he lowered his mouth to hers.
The kiss wasn’t what she expected. It wasn’t a hungry, sloppy stage kiss. It was slow.Exploring. Deeply, shockingly intimate. His lips were soft, his tongue tracing the seam of her mouth until she opened for him with a soft sigh. The noise of the room—the music, her friends—faded into a distant buzz. There was only the warm, insistent pressure of his mouth, the taste of him, the faint hint of whiskey and mint, and the solid, thrilling reality of his body so close to hers.
One of his hands slid from her face, down the column of her neck, over the slope of her shoulder, coming to rest on the clasp of her bra. He paused there, a question in the stillness of his fingers.
She arched into his touch, her answer.
The clasp gave way. The lace loosened. He broke the kiss, his breath coming in ragged gusts that mingled with hers. He didn’t pull the garment away. He just looked down, his gaze heavy and hot, as the fabric fell open.
Aria, emboldened by the champagne, by the night, by the sheer unreal perfection of him, let it slide down her arms and drop to join the pile of clothes at their feet.
A beat of stunned silence, then a roar of approval from the sofa.
Troy’s eyes darkened. A muscle ticked in his jaw. The control he’d worn like a second skin seemed to fray at the edges. He leaned in again, his mouth finding the sensitive spot where her neck met her shoulder. His kiss there was not gentle. It was possessive, a sharp, sucking pressure that she knew would leave a mark. A claim.
“Troy,” she gasped, her hands coming up to grip his biceps, the muscles hard as stone under her fingers.
He pulled back, his own breathing uneven. The public persona was gone. What was left was a man looking at a woman, utterly captivated.
The spell was broken by the sharp, digital ringtone of Sienna’s work phone. It sliced through the music, jarring and insistent.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Sienna groaned, fumbling in her clutch.
Troy didn’t move away from Aria. He rested his forehead against hers, their breath mingling. “Duty calls?” he asked, his voice rough.
“It always does,” Aria whispered back, regret already coloring the words.
Sienna was on her feet, phone to her ear, holding up a finger. “I have to take this. It’s the Henderson merger. Crisis. Five minutes, I swear!” She hurried toward the master bathroom, the sound of her lawyer-voice already cutting through the mood.
The energy in the room deflated, shifting into a lower gear. Chloe and the other friends began chatting, refilling glasses, giving Aria and Troy a semblance of privacy.
Troy straightened, but his hand came up, his thumb stroking her cheekbone where a flush burned. “Your friend has terrible timing.”
“The worst,” Aria agreed. She felt exposed, standing there before him and the room, but his gaze made her feel powerful, not vulnerable.
He reached down, grabbing his discarded shirt. He didn’t put it on. He draped it gently over her shoulders. The fabric was warm from his skin and carried his scent. It was a gesture of unexpected tenderness that unmoored her more than any of his moves had.
“So,” he said, his smile returning, softer now. “A lawyer who reads briefs.”
“And you’re a… performer who reads rooms,” she countered, pulling the shirt closed around her.
“I’m good at my job,” he said. Then he tilted his head, his eyes searching hers. “But this? This wasn’t the job.”
Before she could ask what he meant, Sienna burst back out of the bathroom, her face a mask of apologetic fury. “I am so, so sorry.That was my senior partner. There’s a filing disaster. I have to get on my laptop for like twenty minutes. I swear, I’ll be lightning.”
Aria waved a hand, the gesture feeling dreamlike. “It’s fine. Save the world.”
Sienna blew her a kiss and vanished into a side room, presumably an office.
An awkward, quiet laughter bubbled up among the remaining friends. The jazz trio, picking up on the shift, transitioned into something mellower, a cool down.
Troy glanced toward the hallway where Sienna had disappeared, then back to Aria. He nodded toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, away from the small crowd. “Get you a fresh drink? That one’s probably warm.”
She looked at the champagne flute she’d forgotten she was still holding.“Yeah. Okay.”
He took her glass, his fingers brushing hers. He walked to the champagne tower, his movements easy, unselfconscious in just his briefs. He poured two fresh glasses, the bubbles spiraling up like liquid stars.
He returned, handed her one, and clinked his glass softly against hers. “To terrible timing,” he said.
“And amazing presents,” she replied, taking a sip.
They stood side-by-side, looking out at the endless carnival of the Strip. The silence between them wasn’t empty. It was full of the echo of his hands on her skin, the memory of his mouth.
“You’re not what I expected,” he said after a moment, not looking at her.
“Neither are you,” she said. “I thought there’d be more… fireman poles.”
He chuckled, a genuine, warm sound. “I save those for Tuesdays.” He took a long drink. “Seriously, though. Most of the time, it’s a bit. A fun bit. But it’s a bit.” He finally turned his head to look at her. “You didn’t feel like a bit.”
Aria met his gaze, the city lights reflecting in his eyes. “What did I feel like?”
He considered it, his expression turning thoughtful. “A beginning,” he said, the word simple and devastating.
From the side room, they could hear the rapid, angry clack of Sienna’s keyboard. The real world was insisting on its due.
Troy set his glass down on a nearby console. “I should probably… make myself semi-decent before your friend re-emerges,” he said, gesturing vaguely to his state of undress.
“Probably a good call,” Aria smiled, tightening his shirt around her.
He didn’t move immediately. He reached out, tucked a strand of her dark hair behind her ear, his touch lingering. “Twenty minutes, she said?”
“Something like that.”
A slow, new kind of smile touched his lips, one that had nothing to do with performance. “Good to know,” he said softly. Then he turned and walked toward the pile of his clothes, leaving Aria by the window, his shirt around her shoulders, and the taste of him still on her lips, wondering what, exactly, had just begun.
Then he turned and walked toward the pile of his clothes. Aria watched the play of muscle in his back as he bent to retrieve his trousers. She took a shaky sip of champagne, the bubbles sharp on her tongue, and tried to assemble her thoughts into something coherent.
They scattered completely when he straightened but didn’t dress.
Instead, he tossed the trousers back onto the velvet couch. He just stood there, looking from the closed office door to the eager faces of Chloe and the others, then finally back to her. His expression shifted, the tender thoughtfulness burning away into something more dangerous and deliberate. He walked back toward her, and the room seemed to contract with each step.
“Twenty minutes is a long time to wait,” he said, his voice carrying. It wasn’t just for her now.
“It’s a lifetime,” Chloe chimed in from the sofa, her laugh a little too high.
Troy stopped in front of Aria. He didn’t touch her. His eyes did all the work, trailing over the white fabric of his shirt draped on her, down to her bare legs. “You kept my shirt.”
“You gave it to me.”
“I did.” He reached out, not for her, but for the two top buttons of the shirt. His fingers were steady. He undid them slowly, the plackets falling open to reveal the lace of her panties and the shadow between her breasts. “I want it back.”
Aria’s breath hitched. The air conditioning was on but she felt scorched. “So take it.”
A grin, all teeth and promise, flashed across his face. He hooked his fingers into the collar, his knuckles brushing her clavicle. He pulled, not hard, but with an undeniable insistence. She didn’t resist. The shirt slid off her shoulders, down her arms, and he let it drop. She was exposed again to the room, to his gaze, to everything.
A whoop went up. Someone clapped.
“You heard her,” Troy said, addressing the room but locking eyes with Aria. “She wants a show.” His hands landed on her hips, his thumbs pressing into the soft skin above her hip bones. “No more interruptions.”
He spun her around, her back against his front. His heat was immediate, a solid wall behind her. One arm banded across her ribcage, just beneath her breasts, holding her firmly to him. The other hand slid down her stomach, over the lace, palming her through the thin fabric. Aria’s head fell back against his shoulder, a moan escaping her before she could catch it.
“You see that?” Troy said to their audience, his voice a rough murmur by her ear. His hand moved against her, a slow, grinding pressure. “She’s already right there. And we’ve barely started.”
“Fuck yeah she is!” Sienna’s voice rang out from the hallway. She was leaning against the doorframe of the office, phone forgotten in her hand, a wild smile on her face. “Don’t you dare stop on my account!”
The permission was a switch. Aria felt it in the way Troy’s body tightened around her, in the low groan that vibrated through his chest into her spine. His playful control evaporated, replaced by a singular, driving focus.
He turned her again to face him, his kiss obliterating any last thought. It was all consuming, a claiming without apology. His hands were everywhere, learning her, and when his fingers found her wetness through the lace, he broke the kiss with a sharp, satisfied sound.
“Look at you,” he murmured, pulling his hand away and showing her, then the room, the glistening evidence on his fingers. The vulgarity of it sent a shock through her system, equal parts humiliation and blinding arousal.
He pushed her gently toward the large, low ottoman in the center of the room. “Hands and knees.”
The command, delivered so calmly, left no room for debate. The jazz trio had stopped playing, the musicians watching, frozen. The only sound was the hum of the city and Aria’s own pounding blood. She glanced at Sienna, whose eyes were wide, her nod a frantic, go on.
Aria got onto the ottoman, the velvet nap rough against her knees and palms. She felt absurd, on display, and utterly, powerfully alive.
She heard the rip of a foil packet, the sound deafening in the quiet. Then his hands were on her again, pulling her hips back. He shoved her panties to the side, not even bothering to remove them. The broad, blunt head of him pressed against her, a staggering pressure.
“Tell me,” he growled, not entering her, just holding there.
“Yes,” she hissed.
“Louder.”
“Yes!”
He drove into her, a single, deep, conquering stroke that punched the air from her lungs. Aria cried out, a raw sound she didn’t recognize. The ottoman shuddered. Her friends erupted, a chorus of cheers and shouted encouragements that melted into a formless roar in her ears.
He didn’t start slow. There was no gentle build. It was a punishing, rhythmic claiming, each thrust jolting her forward. His grip on her hips was iron, sure to leave bruises. She could hear the slick, obscene sound of their bodies meeting, could see the rapt, hungry faces of her friends in her peripheral vision. The shame she might have expected was incinerated by the sheer physical magnitude of it, by the animal approval roaring from her best friends.
“Look at her take it,” Sienna shouted, her lawyer-voice gone, stripped down to something primal.
Troy leaned over her, his chest damp against her back. “You hear them?” he grunted into her ear, his rhythm never faltering. “They love it. They love watching you.”
He slid a hand around her hip, his fingers finding her clit, working her in rough, perfect circles. The dual assault short-circuited her mind. The pleasure was a coil, wound too tight, fraying at the edges. Her arms gave out and she collapsed onto her forearms, her cheek pressed against the velvet, every nerve ending screaming.
“Come for them,” he ordered, his voice ragged. “Let them see.”
The coil snapped. Her vision whited out as the orgasm tore through her, violent and relentless, her body clamping around him. Her shout was muffled by the fabric.
He followed seconds later. With a final, deep thrust that pinned her to the spot, he shuddered, his own groan long and guttural. He stayed there, buried inside her, his weight heavy and complete, as their breathing echoed in the sudden, ringing quiet.
Slowly, he pulled out. The cool air hit her skin. She heard him dispose of the condom.
Aria couldn’t move. She felt hollowed out and remade. The penthouse lights seemed brighter, the city outside more vivid.
A glass of champagne appeared on the ottoman in front of her face. Sienna’s hand, steady and familiar, gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Happy birthday, you filthy animal,” she whispered, her voice thick with awe and laughter.
Troy’s hand, warm and surprisingly gentle, smoothed her tangled hair from her sweat-damp forehead. He said nothing. He just knelt beside the ottoman, his own breathing still uneven, and waited for her to look at him.
When she finally turned her head, his eyes held none of the crowd’s fevered triumph. They were quiet, searching, a private question in a very public ruin.