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The whole room is transfixed by Nia.

“Are you going to beat me up?” He glances around him. “Are you going to beat every other man up?”

I grit my teeth and try to hold in an explosive fury I can’t explain. It isn’t logical. First, she’s choosing to be here, exposing her body to whoever walks through the door. I don’t understand why, and I’ll demand to. Except…I have no right. She’s not my wife or my girlfriend. She doesn’t owe me any explanation about what she does when she’s not working for me.

I hate that.

Fists clenched, I stew and watch the son of a bitch dancing with her toss her dress across the stage and trail his palm down her body from her neck, over her cleavage and abdomen…then lower. I don’t want to know what part of her he’s touching now. I simply want to throttle him.

“You going to tell me again there’s nothing between you two?” Bas baits me.

“I’ve never touched her.”

“But you want to.”

I ignore the knowing smirk on his face. “Drop it.”

“You wanted to leave earlier.” He pushes away from the table. “If you’re still ready to get out, I’ll go, too.”

“Stay where you are.”

Bas has made his point, and I can’t fail to understand. Somehow, Nia has become more to me than an assistant.

What the fuck am I going to do about it?

As the slide of a trombone turns more suggestive and a sax further heats the mood, Nia faces the audience and lures the man on stage with a flirtatious roll of her body, even as her palms trace her curves from breast to thigh. She thrusts forward and arches back to the beat of the music in a smooth rocking of her hips, simulating sex. Ecstasy seemingly transforms her.

I want to put that expression on her face for real. I’m compelled to. I don’t think I’ll be complete until I know at least once what she looks like, sounds like, feels like as she’s coming for me.

This is stupid for so many reasons. Completely illogical. And I right now, I can’t bring myself to care.

Her partner sidles up behind her, takes her hips in his grasp, and rolls his body with hers. Jesus, they’re simulating sex so realistically. If they were naked, I’d believe he was actually palming her ass and sliding deep inside her.

I’m about to burst. I grab the arms of my chair and try to keep my shit together. I remind myself this is an act. None of it is real. But their bodies are so in synch, so fluid together that I can’t help the nasty suspicion Nia and this guy have fucked before.

The thought burns. I seethe. She isn’t mine. But I goddamn want to be the one inside her now.

Then the man reaches around her, knuckles brushing her collarbones before he spins her to face him again. He seems to cup her breasts in his big hands. Seconds later, he pulls her bra away and tosses it aside. Then he reaches farther south and removes a layer of embellishment from her briefs, shrinking her thong and exposing even more of that luscious ass.

With her back to the audience, Nia flares out both of her big white fans to cover the front of her body and turns to the small crowd once more. She seemingly looks right through me as she smiles, purses her lips, and teases everyone with what we can’t see.

I’m torn. On the one hand, I feel as if I’m going to explode if I don’t feast my eyes on what’s behind those feathery shields right now. On the other hand, if she flashes me, she flashes every other man with a stiff dick in the room. The thought makes me homicidal.

But Nia doesn’t know or care what I want, she merely goes on with her act, sliding her hips from side to side in a slow, sensual rhythm while her partner gyrates behind her, his lips all over her bare shoulders, as he takes hold of her wrist and slowly pulls the fan away from her breasts. They are ripe and real, symmetrical and smooth—and covered only by a pair of red pasties with matching dangling tassels.

She shimmies, gives the crowd a seductive brush across the swells with her fingertips, and closes her eyes in pure pleasure as her partner wrests the fan from her grip, then reaches for its twin in her other hand, which still sways over the mystery between her legs. The music ramps up. He seemingly thrusts into her from behind again, then yanks the frond of feathers away from her body and chucks it to the other side of the stage.

I gasp. Hold my breath. Stare. The tiny thong she’s wearing leaves her close to exposed. It’s antagonizing me. It’s arousing me. Shit, the elaborate mask on her face covers more than her pasties and her thong put together.

Something shifts inside me. I already know I’m never going to be the same. And Nia keeps dancing, taunting me as if she has no idea she’s utterly ruining me.

Holy fuck, how did I have absolutely no inkling for the last three years how sexy she is? I already understand I can’t unknow that now. And I’m beginning to suspect that tonight, I’m going to cross a line I may regret.

But I can’t stop myself, not when Nia’s every move seemingly goads me toward her.

As the music comes to a bumping, grinding halt, she turns one last time, hips rolling as she spins slowly, treating me to a final glimpse of her world-class ass before she strikes a pose. The music stops. The theater falls dark.

The entire place erupts in applause.