After her last show, Hayley wanted to rush out of the club, find Ry, and demand a screaming orgasm. She was pretty sure her seduction had succeeded, and he’d be just about dying to oblige.

But Kat was in the dressing room too, getting ready to leave, and for the moment the two women were alone. No matter how badly she craved sex, Hayley couldn’t turn her back on this opportunity.

So, Hayley began to change into street clothes as Kat slowly removed her makeup. The other woman looked subdued. Tired, perhaps.

Trying to empathize, Hayley said, “It’s been a long night. I’ll be glad to go home and put my feet up.”

“You find it tiring? I guess, but it makes me feel so alive.”

“Dancing does? Performing?”

“All of it.” The other woman gazed at her own reflection, the sweetly pretty face of Jennifer Mortimer emerging from under Kat Dancer’s dramatic makeup. “Having men think I’m beautiful. Being in control for once. Earning my own income. Doing something I’m good at. Something fun and exciting.”

Dressed now, Hayley sank into the chair beside her. “Oh, yeah. I can identify. I’ve only been onstage a few times, but already I’ve changed.”

Jennifer gave an understanding smile. “You feel like a whole new woman?”

She smiled back. “Exactly.” And in that moment of sharing, she had a hunch. No, she didn’t think Jennifer Mortimer was hooked on drugs, or having an affair with another man.

Ry was outside in his Jeep waiting. Hopefully, waiting to have fiery hot sex.

But right now, she was going to follow her hunch and see how Jennifer responded.

Half an hour later, Hayley hurried out of the club and rushed to the spot where Ry had said he’d pick her up.

When she leaped into the Jeep, he grabbed her arm. “Are you okay? I was getting worried.”

“Sorry, but I finally had a chance to talk to Kat alone.”

“Great.” He pulled away from the curb and drove quickly, leaving the area where they’d be likely to run into anyone from the club.

All ready to tell her story, she noticed he was heading in the wrong direction for her apartment. “Ry, where are you going?”

“My place. Gastown. Tonight, we’re gonna have a bed.”

Oh, yes! He was so hot for her he didn’t want to talk about the case, just get her into bed. She put her hand on his leg and trailed her fingers upward.

His thigh was warm and hard, powerful muscles shifting as he varied pressure on the gas pedal. The bulge under the fly of his pants was growing.

Work could definitely wait, even though she’d cracked the Mortimer case.

“Thought you didn’t want us to have sex again,” she teased.

He rested his hand atop hers for a moment, then returned it to the steering wheel. “Turns out I can’t be with you and not want you, Hayley.”

Nice phrasing. He might mean that he couldn’t watch her dance, see her naked, and not want to fuck her, but she’d like to believe that the actual words he’d spoken were true. Or, even if they weren’t yet, that they’d become true if he spent more time with her.

“I feel the same.” Her exploring hand curled over his erection and he groaned again.

If she was right, that there could be something real between them, something much bigger than sex, might it cause problems at The Private Eye? If so, she’d quit. She had a feeling her days as an administrative assistant were nearing an end anyhow. It was time to find a job with more responsibility, more excitement. More independence.

Mostly for herself, but also because she wanted to be the kind of woman who truly deserved a strong, sexy man like Ry. For the past six months she’d believed he was out of her league. Now, damn it, she was ready to create a league of her own.

As he pulled into an underground parking lot, she stroked his firm erection through his pants, feeling an answering tug of hunger in her pussy. “I know you mentioned a bed, but how about I give you a lap dance? Both of us naked this time.”

His cock jumped under her hand. “You do that and I’ll last all of a minute.”

Hmm. She wanted longer than a minute.

She glanced around as he pulled the Jeep in between a SUV and a Smart Car. The parking lot was stark and unromantic, the lighting neither bright nor dim. No doubt a security guard patrolled it.

Still, what she had in mind wouldn’t take more than…oh, probably a minute. She unzipped his pants. “Then let’s take the edge off.”

A second later, his warm, throbbing cock was in her hands, then she bent and closed her lips around the crown.

“Jesus.” He groaned, fisted her hair.

He was all musky, turned-on male, his scent in her nostrils, his taste in her mouth. Arousal perked her breasts and quivered between her thighs as she sucked rhythmically, swirled her tongue around him, and pumped his shaft.

He’d been right about not lasting more than a minute. He gave another deep, wrenching groan, and surged to release.

She swallowed every delicious drop, then lifted her head. “Now, how about that lap dance?”

He chuckled. “Woman, I like the way you think.”

Gingerly he zipped himself up and, hand in hand, they hurried to his apartment.

His place was a top floor loft, she discovered, open and informal. A little messy, and definitely a place he’d made his own. “I like this. It suits you.”

“You suit me.” The words came out gruffly. Like he really meant them, and felt embarrassed to admit it.

Her heart warmed with hope.

He pulled her into his arms, hard and tight, then he kissed her. Passionately, lingeringly. The way she’d always dreamed a man would one day kiss her.

After endless minutes, he broke for air. “It’s been one hell of a long night.” Then he was kissing her again.

The next time their lips separated, they hastily peeled off their clothes.

“Go sit in that chair.” She picked a straight-backed solid one.

He obeyed, cock eagerly erect.

She picked up his suit jacket and searched the pockets, finding the tie he’d been wearing at the club.

“Uh-oh,” he said, looking intrigued.

“Full contact,” she said, “except you can’t use your hands.”

“Man, Hayley.” But he didn’t object as she secured his hands to the back rails of the chair.

“Condom?”

“Cabinet under the bathroom sink.”

She went to get one, and grabbed a couple more for good measure.

He looked so sexy she was tempted to skip the dance and leap straight to the conclusion. But he’d been right when he said building arousal higher and higher resulted in stronger orgasms.

So, after sheathing him, she flicked quickly through his CDs. Who’d have guessed that, among the harder-driving guy music, there’d be some mellow stuff like Harry Connick Jr. and Diana Krall, and some classics like Leadbelly and early Joni Mitchell?

Aha! He had Boney James’s old album Body Language. The music would be a perfect accompaniment to the body language she intended to speak to Ry.

When the music started, she sauntered over to where he sat spread legged, hands bound behind him, erection fully alert.

Letting the music move through her, the power of her own sensuality fill her, she danced slowly, close to him but not touching, caressing her body and reveling in finally knowing she was beautiful. Sexy. A woman who could captivate Ry Montana.

She saw it in his rapt expression, the skim of sweat on his brow, the tautness of his muscles.

Teasingly she turned her back, sent him a flirtatious look over her shoulder, then bent down, spreading wide to give him a clear view of her curvy butt cheeks all the way through to her damp pussy.

Slowly, sinuously, she rose and moved closer, almost sitting with her bum on his lap. Her back brushed his chest, the bottoms of her legs grazed his thighs. Between them, his cock jutted insistently, pressing hard against her backside. Her body’s hunger urged her to grab hold of him, ease him between her legs, and ride him to climax.

Resisting, she shimmied her bum, stroking back and forth against his rigid organ until he begged for mercy.

She raised herself, turned to face him, and caressed both his thighs. Then she slid them together and put one leg on either side of his, not sitting on his lap—not yet—just gyrating with her unconfined breasts close to his face.

Resting her hands on his shoulders for balance, she slid forward until he could take a nipple in his mouth and suck on it.

Pleasure streaked through her body, a hot rush of need.

Rotating her hips in the air above his thighs, she brushed against his cock. No matter how good his lips felt on her breast, she knew something that would feel even better.

Lowering herself to sit on his lap, she kept up her seductive gyrations, but now his cock rose proudly between her legs, and each swirl of her hips pressed her pussy tight against him. Her juices slicked both of them so their bodies slid against each other, swollen and aching.

Her movements grew uncoordinated as tension coiled tighter inside her, demanding release. If she moved just right, his cock nudged her budded clit, and the need grew and grew.

She whimpered, and he said, voice hoarse, “Take what you need, Hayley. Or untie me, and let me give it to you.”

Grabbing his shoulders, she squirmed, pressing harder, not caring about the dance, the music, only about her need. Staring down, she loved seeing how ripe and swollen his cock was.

Ry’s cock, rising between them, all hers to use for her pleasure.

She ground hard against him, then cried, “Ry, oh God!” as the tension burst in surges of climax.

“Now,” he grated out. “Now, Hayley.”

Fingers clumsy with urgency, she reached down to grasp him, lifted herself, and guided him to her entry. She was so sensitive, still on the edge of that first climax, that when he plunged into her in one hard thrust, she burst apart again.

His hips jerked as he drove into her, hard, over and over. Somehow, amazingly, she kept coming around his rigid shaft. Then he shuddered and shouted out with his own release.

She clung to him for long minutes.

“Hayley, for God’s sake untie me.”

Oh, right, he was still bound.

She freed him and they embraced silently for long minutes. Finally he said, “Gotta deal with the condom. Sorry.”

Untangling themselves, they rose. Her legs ached—from dancing, from stripper shoes, from spreading wide for Ry. But it was a wonderful ache.

“What an incredible night,” she said with satisfaction when he returned.

“Oh, yeah. You’re fantastic, Hayley, Penny, whatever your name is.”

She laughed softly. “And I haven’t even told you what Kat said.”

“How about a glass of wine and a snack in bed, and you can tell me?”

Her heart quickened. “Are you asking me to spend the night?”

He touched her cheek. “Can’t think of anything I’d like better.”

Oh, yes. They were only just beginning and there was everything to learn about each other, but the tender light in his eyes told her there was a lot more to Ry than that devil-may-care attitude he showed the world.

A few minutes later, settled cozily in the loft bedroom with wine, salty pretzels, and the man of her dreams, she clicked her glass against his. “I solved the case.”

“What? You’re kidding. Already?” He was reclining, propped against pillows, strong torso naked, covers draped casually at his hips.

She sat cross-legged facing him, wearing one of his T-shirts. “It’s not what her husband feared, but all the same he may be losing his wife. Not because of another man, but because of himself.”

Ry punched up the pillows behind his back so he sat straighter. “Go on.”

“Paul’s almost ten years older than Jennifer and he married her as soon as she graduated high school. She never had a job and he didn’t want her to get one. He prided himself on taking care of her, providing everything. The guy sounds like something out of the fifties.”

He grimaced. “Believe me, some women want that kind of life.”

“Jennifer was too young to know what she wanted. Paul looked after her, but he never told her she was beautiful or smart, never gave her fun, exciting, or sexy gifts. She always felt second class and dependent. She wasn’t unhappy, but she wasn’t happy either.”

“Why didn’t she do something about it?”

“She was passive, stuck in her rut, and Paul liked things the way they were. Until he lost his job and couldn’t find another. Jennifer had to work, and discovered stripping. She was good at it and made good money. Men adored her, she was the center of attention. The one in control.”

Slowly, he nodded. “I can see that.”

“Dancing gives her a high, then she goes home and it’s a letdown. She wants to get back in costume and dance.” Hayley reached for a pretzel from the bowl resting between them. “From the beginning, Paul wanted her dancing to be a deep, dark secret. She couldn’t tell her girlfriends, and besides she’s afraid they’ll think it’s immoral. Now she feels like she has more in common with the other dancers.”

“She can’t talk to her husband about this?”

“No. He hated that she was stripping, so she could hardly tell him it turned her on way more than he did. She just withdrew.”

He gave a low whistle. “That’s a pretty unhealthy situation for both of them.”

“Yeah. And it won’t get better unless she’s honest with him. Even then, I don’t know if they can work things out, but at least they’d both know what the problem is.”

“You’re sure there’s no other man? No drugs?”

“Yes. She’s faithful to Paul, though they rarely have sex. As for drugs, a couple of the girls use them, but Jennifer says they take away your control, so she’s against them.”

He lifted his glass to her. “Job well done, Hayley. I’m impressed.” Then he grinned. “Hey, you can call an end to your career as a stripper. Gotta say, I’m not unhappy about that. I don’t like all those guys gaping at that gorgeous body of yours.”

She toyed with her own glass. Some of the dancers had talked about boyfriends who got jealous and possessive. Surely Ry wasn’t the kind of man who’d try to control what she did. “I think I should finish out the week.”

“In case there’s something else going on that Jennifer didn’t tell you about?”

“Partly. And I want to encourage her to come clean with her husband, maybe get counseling.”

He frowned. “So have coffee with her.”

“I could, but…” Ry needed to know the truth. She took a deep breath. “I want to dance. For me. I’m learning things about myself. Good things. I’ll do this on my own time; it won’t be an expense for our client.”

He studied her for a long moment. “You’re not thinking of becoming a stripper, are you?”

She tilted her chin. “Would that be so bad?”

“Jesus, Hayley.”

“You think there’s something wrong with stripping?”

“Uh…No, I guess not, but—”

If she’d ever had the slightest prejudice against strippers, she’d lost it tonight. “It’s a job like any other job, with pros and cons. And it’s dance, performance, and I’m pretty darned good at it.”

One corner of his mouth kinked. “You’re damn good at it. Too damn good. But hell, it’s hard to think about my girlfriend being naked each night in front of a roomful of guys.”

His girlfriend. Oh, yes! Warmth flooded her heart.

“Okay. Finish out the week,” he said. “Just make sure I’m the guy you come home with.”

“No question about that.” She’d wanted Ry since she first saw him, and now they were boyfriend and girlfriend. It was her dream come true.

She was flattered that he wanted to keep her for himself. Besides, she wasn’t likely to decide she wanted to become a stripper for real, so there wasn’t going to be any issue between them. They weren’t going to be like Jennifer Mortimer and her husband.