Trick Play (Mavericks Tackle Love Book 3) Read online

  All the guys hollered “Ooh!” and cheered at my obvious dig as Quinn shook his head from his spot in the center of the booth. Ten feet of huge guys crowded on either side of him, he’d safely padded himself from any incidental contact with any of the talent.

  I had to laugh at his Barney Fife attitude, but at the same time, I had to respect him.

  It took a really good guy and a seriously special woman to drive a man to that kind of unflappable devotion, and I truly hoped one day I’d find it.

  Quinn and I weren’t that far apart in age—I was a little older—but we were in completely different places in our lives.

  One week from tonight, he’d be saying I do.

  He was ready to give it all to a woman, to creating a family—to being the kind of man who was a hero to more than just the people who watched him on the field.

  Other than my parents, my little sister, my teammates, my coach, and my boss, I didn’t have much of anyone I looked to impress.

  The terms of my life were pretty cut-and-dried, and my list of priorities was pretty damn short.

  Family, friends, and football.

  The three fucking Fs. Well, I guess four Fs if you counted the fucking.

  I might have not been in a committed relationship, but that didn’t stop me from occasionally enjoying the company of a beautiful woman from time to time.

  “Fuck you, Mitchell,” Quinn spewed good-naturedly. “How many times have you had to flush your future children down the toilet tonight?”

  An uproar exploded once again, this time at my expense, and I laughed at the ironically opposite nature of the truth. It was ironic because, based on my lack of penile reaction, I feared maybe there weren’t any more potential children in there to flush.

  I mean…hypothetically…is it normal for a guy to get dozens of lap dances in a night and not get an erection? Asking for a friend and all that.

  Just in time to save me from having to come up with a quippy comeback, the music started pumping at full volume again, and the lights danced to announce a new arrival to the stage.

  The slamming pulse of the beginning of “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC forewarned of something spectacular, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as everyone turned to face the stage.

  I knew it was her the moment her first foot rounded the wall that blocked backstage, and just like that, my cock jerked its attention.

  Okay, then. I guess maybe he’s not entirely broken. Good news.

  My pulse climbed right in time with the music, and my skin broke into a sweat. The room around me faded, and every part of my being tuned in to the woman onstage.

  She moved, she gyrated, she climbed and swung.

  She did most of the things the others had done, but let me tell you…she did them differently.

  There wasn’t a murmur in the crowd, not a closed mouth on a face. She was sex and innocence, and she was the perfect combination of the two.

  She was a woman with more to her story, and God almighty, I wanted to find out what it was.

  As the song came to a close, I lost all pretense of cool and collected and dug right into my own pocket.

  Sean’s eyes danced as the words fell from my mouth, but I didn’t even have it in me to care. “You know what, fellas? I think I’ve got just one more lap dance in me tonight.”

  This—she—was my destiny, and it was about time I started seeing to it.

  Famous last words, friends. Famous last words.

  “That was Trixie, everyone!” Donnie announced through the club speakers as the sounds of Lenny Kravitz’s “American Woman” slowly drifted into a less adrenaline-inducing club beat. “And since I’m pretty sure we all enjoyed the sexy show she just provided, if you haven’t shown my girl Trix your appreciation, now is the time to get some fucking manners and toss those well-deserved tips onto the stage,” he added, and his soft chuckles reverberated into the mic.

  Donnie was the resident DJ at Skins and, if you couldn’t already tell, self-appointed club comedian.

  And me? Well, for tonight, I was Trixie.

  Applause, hoots and hollers, and demands for the first lap dance when I came back out filled my ears, and I offered the mostly male crowd of drunks and stripper-enthusiasts a flirtatious smile as I leaned down and snagged my “well-deserved” tip money off the shiny black stage floor.

  With my nearly bare ass to the audience, I turned on my stilettos and sashayed off the stage with more money in my hands than I had clothes on my body.

  From mysteriously dark to neon bright, the change in lighting assaulted my eyes once I reached the employees-only back room, but luckily, it only took a few pointed blinks for my vision to readjust.

  When you first walked through the front doors of Skins, the dark-lit atmosphere and intimate setup made it difficult to realize it was the biggest strip club in Hoboken. But if you were involved enough to reach the back room and take inventory of the number of girls getting ready to do their exotic dancing thing, you’d realize just how damn big the club really was.

  With a main stage, two smaller stages, a group VIP area, and enough private rooms to make a horny, big-tits-minded man feel like a kid in a candy shop, Skins was the place to be if you enjoyed seeing curves, getting lap dances, and drooling over the beauty that was the female form.

  I tossed the cash in my hands to my vanity and removed the rest from my G-string and bra. Receiving your paycheck in your underwear wasn’t your everyday norm, but I guessed that was one of the occupational hazards of being an exotic dancer.

  With one glance in the floor-length mirror near the wall of lighted vanities, I took inventory of all the necessities.

  Stilettos? Check.

  Silky white thigh highs? Check.

  White garter and G-string? Check.

  Boobs nearly bare but nips still covered by the lacy push-up bra? Check.

  Just enough glitter-infused body lotion to make my skin shiny and tempting? Check, check.

  Ten years ago when I’d graduated high school and set my sights on college, I didn’t exactly picture this in my future.

  But now, it was just another Friday night.

  “How’d you do, sweetie?” Star asked, and I met her eyes in the reflection of her vanity mirror.

  “Not too bad.” I shrugged, pretending to care about fixing my hair by poking at the long, loose, nearly black curls.

  “You know,” she said and lifted a mascara wand to her lashes. “Marco just came back to let us all know that Quinn Bailey is here tonight.”

  I quirked a brow. That name sounded familiar, but it took me a moment to put two and two together. “Wait…isn’t that the Mavericks’ quarterback?”

  “Yep. He’s celebrating his bachelor party.” She waggled her brows briefly before applying three coats of mascara to her right eye. “Did you see him out there?” she asked just before switching to her left eye.

  I shook my head.

  Honestly, I wasn’t exactly a sports enthusiast. And if Quinn Bailey would’ve slipped a hundred-dollar bill into my G-string and asked me to call him Big Daddy, I still wouldn’t have had a clue who in the hell he was unless he told me.

  “Fingers crossed he fills the place with Mavericks tonight,” she said, and a giddy grin covered her lips. “God, I love when professional athletes come to the club. Deep pockets are my favorite quality in a man.” Deep pockets weren’t the first thing that came to mind when I was thinking about my version of the perfect man, but that didn’t say too much. It wasn’t often I wasted precious brain power dreaming up my future husband.

  Hell, I didn’t even know if I wanted a husband. Or boyfriend, for that matter.

  A relationship wasn’t on my current agenda. Far from it, actually.

  Star offered a wink, and I grinned in response.

  It was brittle and weak, but she didn’t notice the difference. Frankly, genuine, bright smiles were probably a lot less common around here than the substitute I was giving anyway.

  “Shit,
” Chastity muttered as she stepped out of the private bathroom right beside us and closed the door with a click. “Tonight is going to be rough.”

  “What’s wrong, sweetie?” Star questioned. I didn’t doubt that she cared about the answer, but as she stood in front of her vanity mirror and applied a healthy coating of red lipstick to her pouty lips without actually looking over to Chastity, it would have been easy to believe the opposite.

  Chastity sighed, teetering high on her clear, incandescent stilettos, and strode across the carpeted floor until she plopped her G-string-wearing ass down onto an empty chair on the other side of us. “I got my fucking period.”

  “I hate when that happens.” Star offered a brief look of sympathy before pressing her bright red lips together several times, spurring a soft, popping sound from her mouth.

  Chastity stood up from her chair, turned around, and bent all the way over until the only thing shielding a complete view of her ass crack was the minuscule material that made up her underwear. “Can you see my tampon string?”

  This, right here, was what you’d call a certified stripper dilemma. I’d also call it one of the more uncomfortable moments of my life, but that wasn’t really important right now. A lot of my life was awkward these days, and I didn’t get much say in the matter.

  “Uh…I don’t think I see anything,” I said cautiously—helpfully, I thought—but Chastity looked up at me from between her spread thighs and rolled her eyes.

  “You’re like a million miles away, Trix.”

  A million miles away? More like five feet. If I got any closer, I would’ve had to charge her for a vaginal examination.

  Lucky for me, Star took it upon herself to check from all angles, even kneeling down behind Chastity and getting an intimate view.

  I was all for feminism and female empowerment, but checking another chick’s twat for a tampon string wasn’t on my list of girl-power priorities.

  “You’re good to go, sweetie,” Star said and offered a reassuring pat to Chastity’s bare ass.

  The stripper life, ladies and gentlemen.

  Chastity stood up straight in response and pushed her tits out far and high. With one last glance in the mirror, she appeared confident in what she saw. “All right, bitches! It’s almost midnight, and you know what that means?”

  “Lap dance time!” Star, along with ten or so other strippers, shouted back in response.

  “Let’s make some money!” Chastity cheered just before she strutted her bare, tight ass toward the inside of the club.

  On Friday and Saturday nights, sometime around midnight, Skins would clear the stages and put all its focus on encouraging patrons to spend their cash in a much more up close and personal manner.

  They called it lap dance hour, but in all actuality, it generally was more like two to three hours, depending on the crowd.

  The click-clack of stilettos followed Chastity’s lead toward the front of the club, and I took a moment to glance once more at my reflection in the mirror.

  It was times like these that I almost didn’t recognize the sexy, made-up, scantily clad woman staring back at me.

  But I guessed that was the hazard of my occupation.

  It’s go time, Trixie.

  My hips swayed to the music much like they did every night, and my mind blanked to the obvious task.

  It had only taken one lap dance for my body to fall mindlessly into the exotic dancing routine. And by the fourth lap dance, I felt completely numb, just going through the motions and being the woman each of my clients wanted me to be.

  Sexy and seductive. Shy and innocent. Sometimes, a little of both.

  I paid attention to their reactions, their sharp intakes of breath, the way the pulse at their neck would speed up when their arousal was evident. I took careful note of their body’s physical responses and exploited them for my monetary gain, just like any stripper worth her weight in body glitter and stilettos would do.

  Shaking my shit for creepy guys who leered and licked at their lips like salamanders wasn’t exactly how I’d envisioned my life. In fact, if I was honest, it wasn’t even close.

  For one, I preferred to wear more clothes, and for two… I mean, do I really have to explain?

  Nevertheless, this was my life, and this was my job—at least, for the past four or so months it had been. Strange guys were more of a staple than a random occurrence, and I was getting really good at executing a home Brazilian wax.

  Can I get a round of applause for mastering an important and nearly impossible life skill?

  I let my body fall into the rhythm of the music while my current client looked on from his spot on the leather sofa inside the VIP area. I kept my distance at first, merely teasing and taunting him with my hips.

  A mumbling rumble tugged at my consciousness as one song bled into another, and I shook my head to clear it. It wasn’t like I had to be on top of my every move during one of these lap dances, but I definitely needed to be a little more aware of my surroundings.

  I looked back at the guy sitting comfortably on the black leather sofa, a coy curl of my lips bleeding up into the corners of my eyes with practiced ease, to find his lips moving. Not in the usual come-hither motion or drooling quiver, but in the kind of way that seemed like he was actually trying to say something. Form actual words, that sort of thing.

  Of course, this gentleman’s club of scantily clad delight wasn’t exactly the quiet corner booth in a conversationally conducive restaurant, and “chats” weren’t exactly what I got paid for. Most guys didn’t spend their lap dance time talking.

  Turning my body to face him completely and swaying to the music gracefully, I leaned in—my heavily exposed breasts taking the lead—and offered a prompt to repeat what I hadn’t had a snowball’s chance in hell of hearing the first time.

  “What was that, sugar?”

  A wave of surprisingly inviting scent—mint, fresh linen, and a soft wisp of cologne—curled around me as he moved minutely closer.

  My body swayed.

  Good God almighty.

  Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t as though all the guys who came in here were unwashed miscreants. There was the occasional bachelor party like this one, and a random outlier every now and then, but by and large, this wasn’t the kind of crowd you’d expect to find at the Sunday sermon with your Grandma Ruth.

  This guy, though—his smell went way past tolerable and straight to appealing.

  “I asked what your name was,” he elucidated clearly this time. His voice was warm and deep, and any roughness felt like the good kind.

  Without thought, I started paying attention.

  To his looks—roguishly handsome—and to the annoyingly rampant feeling in my stomach—butterflies.

  Oh shit.

  For the love of God, stop this line of thought right now, I ordered myself.

  With a mesmerizing dark gaze, firm jaw, and defined muscles popping out beneath his baby-blue collared shirt, my current lap dance patron was what most women would describe as a certified babe.

  But I never allowed myself to get too wrapped up in distractions like man candy, and I was definitely too focused on my job to even fantasize about taking a taste.

  Definitely too focused, I repeated for my own benefit. Definitely.

  “Trixie,” I replied by rote, knowing that any other name I had wasn’t one I had the desire to give.

  I could feel the power of his laugh as his smile transformed his face from friendly guy to heartbreaker. Curved and large and wholly pulse pounding. There was a female weakness born somewhere in the middle of that smile, I was sure of it.

  “I meant your real name.”

  My real name? Yeah. Right.

  “What’s your name?” I fired back with a flirtatious raise of my brow as I turned to face him. I straddled his hips and gently placed my hands on his shoulders.

  “Cam,” he said, a gruff, sexy tone cradling the single vowel in his name.

  “Are you enjoying your
lap dance, Cam?” I asked and rotated my hips in a seductive circle, just barely brushing the material of my G-string against the rough material of his jeans. Bodily distraction was a surefire technique I’d relied on more than once. Anytime they got fired up to do anything other than sit there and gawk, I upped my game. One or two close encounters of our crotches usually did the trick.

  “Yes,” he said and locked his eyes with mine. “And I know what you’re doing.”

  “Dancing?” I responded coyly, and he shook his head on a grin.

  “Distracting me from my actual question,” he replied assuredly, and his gaze never drifted away from mine.

  Fucking hell, this guy was tougher than usual.

  I didn’t much appreciate the intense focus of his eyes and shifted techniques. Leaning forward and pushing my breasts mere inches from his face, I employed the help of another body part. As a bonus, the new positioning made it impossible for his eyes to maintain their strong hold.

  Unfortunately, that little move only made his determination falter for a second or two.

  God, what’s with this guy?

  “What’s your name?” he asked again, his voice a soft whisper into my ear.

  I shook my head, and with my hands still gently touching his shoulders, I backed up enough off of his lap to give him my widest, most innocent eyes. Most men loved the doe-eyed look, salivated for it, and would forget quite quickly there was any other answer to be had than the one I’d given.

  But as was the theme of the night—not this guy.

  “Come on,” he cajoled, actually moving away from me a little rather than taking liberties in coaxing by putting a hand to my skin. He leaned back against the leather of the couch and rested his outspread arms on the top of the cushions. “I know Trixie isn’t your real name.”

  He had a point. I mean, what parent would actually name their little girl Trixie? It sure as hell didn’t convey future CEO or head pediatrician at a children’s hospital. Pretty sure if you filed that moniker at the Social Security office, your official documents actually came with a G-string and coupon for free pole-dancing lessons.