LITMIR.BIZ

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can do this,” she declared, as if she were trying to convince herself as well as him.

      “Even with no pole, huh?” He couldn’t resist teasing her a little bit.

      “Oh. I forgot about the pole,” she said, looking distressed.

      “Don’t worry about it. You can use a chair or something, right?” Adam pulled a chair out from under the room’s desk and set it in the middle of the floor. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and held the ice pack to his nose.

      Nikki took a deep breath, approached the chair and grasped the back. Then she began.

      She gyrated her hips to the beat of the music and pressed her pink lips into a pout. After a few moments, she took the bottom of her shirt into both hands and began easing it up, teasing him with the sight of her breasts in a red push-up bra. She whipped the shirt over her head and spun around.

      When she turned to face him again, she ran a hand down her smooth, flat stomach, sort of slithering it around. She played with the button at the waistband of her skirt.

      The bra was the second article of clothing to go, leaving her breasts bare except for a pair of strategically placed pasties with tiny tassels that shook in every direction and betrayed her total lack of rhythm, but who cared.

      She was all enticing skin and curves.

      A minute or so later, she ditched the skirt, letting it drop to the floor. She stepped out of it, gyrating her hips, and kicked it to the side.

      Adam’s woody made a return appearance when she plunged her hand into the front of the G-string.

      Adam stopped breathing at the sight.

      She rotated her hips as if they were mounted on ball bearings, then leaned forward and squeezed her breasts between her arms so that they thrust forward. Then she worked her shoulders, shimmying them, too.

      A cold trickle of water, followed by another one, rolled down Adam’s throbbing nose and dropped onto his now equally throbbing denim-clad crotch. He was half-afraid it would start to steam.

      Nikki put her hands up to her hair and pushed it on top of her head as she gyrated, letting it tumble down over her shoulders as she turned her back to him. Hot! Hot!

      But then his gaze dropped again to her ass and the mosquito bites, now shiny with cortisone cream…not to mention the tufts of mud and grass on her heels. Worse, the twin mosquito bites now stared out at him from each cheek like a couple of angry red eyes.

      Her thong formed two frowning eyebrows as it dipped horizontally from each hip, and the vertical part in this context looked like a nose. The cheeks were, well, cheeks. And that sweet, sweet underside as her bottom met her thighs—well, it grimaced at him.

      Adam couldn’t help himself—he guffawed, knowing as he did so that it was probably the worst offense he could commit.

      Nikki stopped dead, her whole body stiffening in outrage.

      He winced and ducked reflexively, thinking that she’d throw something at him. But it wasn’t anger on her face as she turned—it was something much worse: shame. Complete and utter humiliation. And shock. And deep, deep hurt.

      “Nikki—”

      Shaking, she ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.

      Nice, Adam. You’ve sure gone and done it now, haven’t you? His bedside manner needed work. He groaned and walked to the door, then knocked softly. “Nikki, I wasn’t laughing at you—”

      “Yes, you were!” Her voice was thick with shame.

      “No, not the way you think.”

      “I know I have no rhythm or talent and I know I’m fat,” she wailed.

      “Fat? Are you crazy? No, Nikki, you’re not. And you do have talent…” Okay, not much, but enough to get a guy’s motor running, that was for sure.

      “It was the M&M’s,” she blurted.

      “Huh?”

      “Oh, God…why don’t you have something in here that I can just kill myself with?”

      Alarmed, Adam tried the knob, but she’d locked herself in. “Nikki, you can’t be serious. Please, please, let me explain.”

      “There’s nothing to explain,” she wailed. “I danced and you laughed.”

      “It’s not that simple.”

      “Yes, it is.”

      “No, no, no. Look, just give me a chance—”

      “You would have to have an electric shaver,” she said bitterly. “I can’t slit my wrists with that.”

      “Nikki!”

      “And no sleeping pills. Not even any freaking dental floss that I could strangle myself with.”

      “Nikki, don’t you think you’re blowing this out of proportion? I mean, even if I had laughed at your dancing—”

      “You did!” This time she bellowed it.

      “No, I didn’t. Not the way you think.” Adam ran his hands over his face, which was a mistake, since he aggravated his nose all over again. “Look. Nikki, do you have a sense of humor?”

      “What?”

      “I asked if you have a sense of humor.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “If you have to ask,” Adam said patiently, “then you probably don’t have one.”

      “I do, too.”

      O-kay. “Then turn around and look at your, uh, bottom in the mirror.”

      Silence. Then, she said, “You want me to check out my own butt?”

      “Yes. Just do it.”

      More silence. “Whatever,” she said, in tones that indicated she was only humoring a lunatic.

      Adam waited.

      “Oh, my God!” she shrieked. “It looks like there’s a whole face back there!”

      “Exactly.”

      Now a definite giggle emerged from behind the bathroom door. Almost faint with relief, Adam made another suggestion. “Okay, now look at your heels.”

      This time she whooped.

      More progress.

      “I ask you,” Adam appealed to her, “if you would not have laughed yourself.”

      Silence.

      Then Nikki unlocked and opened the door, her eyes brimming with mischief and streaky makeup behind the wet washcloth she held to her flushed face. She’d pulled on the hotel’s terry bathrobe.

      Adam held up his hands, palms out. “Funny?”

      “Funny,” she confirmed, nodding.

      He nodded, having absolutely no clue what to do or say next. “Listen, I feel really bad that you thought I was laughing at your dancing.”

      “It’s okay.” She scrubbed at her eyes with the cloth, only succeeding in smearing around all the black and purple goop she had on.

      “Can I fix you a drink from the minibar while you take that stuff off your face? It’s the least I can do to make things up to you.”

      She hesitated, then nodded. “A bourbon and Coke, please.”

      He made two of them and handed one to her when she came out. “Cheers.”

      “Thanks.” She took a deep gulp. “How’s your nose?”

      “Fine. How are your mosquito bites?” He grinned.

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