“I’m wondering, pretty lass, if you’d mind to give me a wee bit of information.” Sean slipped into his Scottish accent and smiled at the acne-prone waitress, who looked barely legal and totally dazzled. The fed flashing a bit of cash sealed the deal.

“I’ll tell you anything. My bra size is a thirty-six D. They’re real.”

They weren’t, but Thorpe wasn’t going to bother debating the girl’s assets.

“You’re right fetching, that’s for sure. But I’m inquiring about the new bit of fluff. For my friend here.” Sean gestured to him.

The waitress made a sour face and rolled her eyes. “All the customers are, like, totally insane over Juicy. It’s not as if she’s got a magical pussy.”

Juicy?

Thorpe cast a glance over to Sean, who looked ready to disagree with the waitress, but he managed to force another smile onto his face. “Juicy, you say? Tell me more. My friend is quite interested.”

“That one is antisocial. She’s pissed all the girls off. Whipped Cream and Sparkle Swallows both can’t stand her. Two days here, and she’s already got more fans than everyone else. Now if you two want nice . . .” She smiled, showing off slightly bucked teeth.

“What does she look like?” Sean asked.

“Blond, blue-eyed, stacked.” The girl sighed. “But she’s not special.”

“When does she come on?”

The waitress opened her mouth to answer, but the deejay’s voice over the speakers drowned her out. “She’s new. She’s exciting. She’s your wettest dream. Give it up for Juicy!”

Sean stiffened, looking like his fury had climbed ten notches. Since Thorpe felt like strangling the deejay and killing everyone who stood between them and the stage, that suited him just fine.

And if Juicy and Callie were one and the same, slipping away unseen with the girl in tow had just become impossible.

The music cued, and Britney came on with some damn suggestive lyrics. Then the curtain parted, and out strutted the next act. Despite the bright lights glaring, all the makeup, and the skimpy costume, Thorpe knew instantly it was Callie.

She definitely wasn’t waitressing.

Tingles zipped down his spine. He itched to wrap his fingers in her silky hair. Even being in the same room with her made him titanium hard, so if he hadn’t known in every other way that he’d found Callie, his reaction made it damn obvious.

As he watched her onstage, the waitress stomped her foot and huffed off. He barely glanced at the other girl. Callie held him rapt as she gyrated for the crowd wearing a schoolgirl uniform, complete with a plaid skirt. Her blond wig hung in long pigtails. The whistling and catcalls ramped up, and she pasted on a come-hither smile. But her eyes . . . they didn’t invite. Because he knew Callie, he could read that expression. She looked both unnerved and scared out of her mind.

Beside him, Sean cursed a blue streak and leaned forward, gaze drilling into her. Thorpe felt the man’s displeasure. It mirrored his own. Rage bubbled and turned, and he knew that Callie would feel every inch of their disapproval the second they got their hands on her.

“Her file doesn’t indicate that she’s ever stooped this low,” Sean snarled.

Thorpe didn’t take his eyes off her. “I don’t think she’s ever been this desperate.”

Sean nodded grimly, and they watched her slowly reach for the top button of her blouse.

Tensing before she even had it undone, Thorpe wondered if he’d survive the next three minutes. He fidgeted in his seat, eager to storm the stage, take her down, and let her feel the full measure of her consequences. “What’s the fucking plan?”

“It would be better if we didn’t make a scene,” Sean bit out, gritting his teeth. “But the minute this music is over . . .”

“We’re going to grab her ass and haul her out of here. I’m all over that.”

“I was counting on it.”

Callie slipped the top button free, then another, and a third. The seconds ticked by, one after the other, in a horrific show that slowly revealed her milky flesh and had all the men in the room shouting that they wanted something “Juicy.” Every muscle in Thorpe’s body screamed at him to stop this travesty, even as his head silenced his inner Neanderthal and told him to keep his ass in his seat. They couldn’t make a scene.

With a sexy little spin, Callie whirled away and let the white shirt slip off her shoulders. She looked back at the audience with an exaggerated wink. Even terrified, there was something unmistakably special about her. She had a sweet quality and a goodness that her difficult life hadn’t killed. But the girl still exuded sex from the sparkle of her eyes and the pout of her glossy lips, all the way down to her swaying hips and pink-tipped toes peeking out from black patent stilettos. Denying just how much he wanted her wasn’t possible anymore. He’d never met a woman he couldn’t resist—until Callie. Thorpe feared that walking away from her again would be like trying to swim against a raging tidal wave.

To the beat of the music, Callie flipped up her illegally short skirt and flashed the audience her sinfully small thong—and her ass cheeks—before the plaid fell softly over her backside again. The whooping and whistles revved up. A bouncer nearby stood mutely and watched.

“Show us your tits!” someone near the stage shouted.

“Gimme a piece of that luscious ass,” another demanded.

The idea that these dregs now had Callie in their spank bank made him feel somewhere between nauseated and homicidal.

“Damn it all.” Sean gripped the table, looking ready to combust. “This three minutes is taking for fucking ever.”

Thorpe couldn’t agree more. “It will end.” It had to.

But would it before they lost their minds? He wasn’t sure about that, especially when the shirt slipped from the crooks of her elbows and onto the buckled stage, leaving her top half clad in nothing but a nearly sheer lace bra. When she turned back to the audience, there was no mistaking the pinkish cast of her plump nipples.

Callie arched her back, running her palms down her breasts, over her flat belly, then pressed her fingers toward her pussy. The audience started whooping at decibels near frat-party levels. Thorpe began to sweat. Jesus, he knew what her sweet pussy tasted like, and his mouth watered for another chance to make a meal out of her. Of course, every man in this room wanted that opportunity. One started pounding on the stage. Others joined in, slamming the wooden surface to the beat of the music, demanding more of her.

Fuck, this was getting out of control, and it took everything Thorpe had to stay in his seat.

A man in a cheap suit with a pimp moustache and a shaved head crowded closer. He thought he was the shit, clearly. With a confident leer, he leaned across the corner of the stage, holding up a hundred-dollar bill. He said something to Callie that Thorpe couldn’t hear over the music. Her eyes widened. More disquiet filled her face, but she danced in the dude’s direction.

With a shimmy, she lifted her skirt in front of him and circled her hips, spinning around until she backed up to him. Then she crouched, wiggling her ass seductively in his face. Her eyes slid shut. To anyone who didn’t know her, she might look as if she were in the midst of passion, but Thorpe saw differently. He had no doubt her skin was crawling and she was barely resisting the urge to run like hell.

Just because she wasn’t enjoying herself, however, didn’t mean she was going to escape punishment. She had a protector and a Dom, both of whom would do anything to help her. Had she trusted either of them? No. She’d just left. Sean, he sort of understood. Hell, Thorpe hadn’t trusted the man himself until . . . what? Maybe yesterday. Or the day before. His days were running together. But Callie had known him for four fucking years. In all that time, she hadn’t learned that he cared, that he would do anything to help her?

She was damn well going to learn now.

Obviously, she had panicked. He understood that—to a point. But he refused to accept excuses from Callie. She was going to learn to rely on the men who loved her. Whatever happened next, whether he never got to lay another hand on her after her punishment tonight, he would teach her once and for all to look to him if she ever found herself in trouble again.

The slime ball with the skinny black tie and the C-note in his hand shoved the bill into the back of her thong—then copped a long caress of her ass. With the other hand, he brushed his way up her thigh, looking at her like she was a particularly prime cut of filet.

Thorpe felt steam coming from his ears and fucking lost it.

As he jumped to his feet, Sean was right beside him, fists clenched. Thorpe kicked his chair out of the way and prowled toward Callie, shoulder to shoulder with the other man.

Callie leaned away from the letch feeling her up, cringing back. Trying to cover her reaction, she sent the man a little smile over her shoulder, then danced away. Thorpe felt his fists tighten with the need to beat the fucker to death.

Sean was faster, grabbing the son of a bitch by the back of the neck and snarling something in his ear. The thug tried to fight back, but the fed proved himself all kind of badass, blocking the guy’s every move, then slamming the creep face-first onto a nearby post. Thorpe raced over, more than happy to help. He was gratified when Sean yanked the skunk back to reveal a broken, bleeding nose. In fact, he hoped Sean had done permanent damage to the asshole for daring to touch Callie.

Frantically Thorpe looked for her again. And he found her, damn it. Her trim back and undulating spine told him she now courted the men on the other side of the room, still holding her skirt up and wriggling her hips until a few more men shoved more bills in the string of her thong. They howled as she enticed them, and more guys approached the stage with money in fists, just wanting the chance to get close to Callie.

While Thorpe had been distracted by her, Sean and the letch got into a scuffle. Apparently, the fed had been busier watching Callie than the greaseball’s elbow to his gut. As Sean grunted and dodged the guy’s flailing fists, Thorpe approached. So did the bouncer.

“No fighting,” he shouted over the music. “Take it outside.”

“Yeah, get your fucking hands off me, prick!” said cheap suit. “I gave the pretty slut some money. So what?”

Oh, that was it. Doms sometimes called their submissives “slut,” but as a form of endearment, however odd that seemed to others. Not everyone understood, but that was true of the whole lifestyle. Even if he would never call Callie his slut, no other random dick was going to malign the girl when he didn’t know her at all and had no idea how far from the truth that was.

“Don’t touch her again.” Sean looked ready to kill.

“Get over it,” the lowlife ranted on. “You don’t own her.

“Actually,” Sean tossed back, “I do.”

Thorpe threw a punch, hitting the fuckwad square in the jaw and sending him reeling to the ground with the force of the blow, out cold. The bouncer turned to him with a menacing glare and reached to throw him out the door.

Fuck, he should have held his temper. He couldn’t afford to get tossed out.

Thorpe turned back to Callie. She whipped her gaze in his direction to decipher the commotion. Their gazes connected, and electricity fired his veins. Shock widened her eyes and bleached the color from her cheeks. Then her gaze zipped over to Sean. She gasped as if she’d seen a ghost.

Despite the fact that she hadn’t finished her number and the music still played, she turned and darted for the curtain and the back of the club.

The bouncer rightly put keeping the talent working above restraining a few guys from fighting, so he ran after Callie, catching her in his beefy grip just before she could slip backstage.

She struggled and cursed, demanding to be let free as the crowd collectively booed her retreat.

“Show us your tits!” repeated a man in the front row with a one-track mind.

The bouncer dragged Callie back toward mid-stage, then stood between her and the curtain. “Finish your damn number or Marty is gonna fire your ass.”

Predictably, the moment the big beefcake released her, she made another run for it, this time darting for the stairs that led to the club floor. She valued her freedom way more than this piss-ass job.

But Thorpe was one step ahead of her. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, blocking her exit off the stage. And in those shoes, jumping down five feet to the ground would be impossible.

They had her surrounded.

Sean quickly assessed the situation, then leapt onto the stage and reached into his pocket to flash his badge to the hunk of beefcake. “FBI. Unless you want trouble, give the girl to me.”

The big guy stiffened as the music screeched to a stop, his eyes narrowing as he took in Sean, then his badge. He stepped back and tossed his hands in the air. “We just hired her, man. We don’t want any trouble. Take her.”

Callie tossed Sean a defiant glower and over the din of the crowd, she warned, “You stay away from me.”