Page 66 of The Good Girl Effect

“I’ve never…” I stammer.

I didn’t even feel him pull his hand out of my panties, but the absence of his touch is cold and aching.

I can’t drag air into my lungs fast enough. Everything hits me so hard, and I start to tremble again.

Once the thrumming in my ears subsides, I hear people speaking, but my mind doesn’t comprehend their words, just their presence.

“Focus on me, Camille,” Jack says, his fingers deftly working to release my knots. “You’re doing so good.”

Somehow, Jack feels closer to me now, like what we have is more significant than lust. Maintaining these boundaries between physical and emotional has made us stronger somehow. That’s when it hits me—he touched me. He walked right over that line and listened to what I said today. We can be sexual and intimate with each other and still stick to our rules of never letting it affect my position or his daughter.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, pulling the blindfold from my face.

To my surprise, my eyelashes are wet when I blink them. I give him a solemn nod.

He leans in, nearly touching his forehead to mine as he says, “Use your words, little bird. Let me hear you.”

I have to swallow down the rising emotion in my throat. My chest is still heaving, and goose bumps cascade across my entire body. “Good,” I say, although it doesn’t feel like enough. Gazing up into his eyes, my mouth cracks into a smile as I add, “I feel great.”

Then Jack aims that brilliant, beaming crooked grin of his on me, and I begin to melt. “Good,” he replies. “Now sit down. I want to massage your shoulders because I know they’re sore.”

I can’t help but bite my bottom lip as I sit down on the bench with my back to him. He covers his hands in warm oil and slips my bra straps to the side before kneading his fingers gently into my shoulders. I let my head hang forward and savor his touch and how good it feels as his fingers loosen the tight muscles.

“The club isn’t normally like this,” he says as he works. “We’re going to be making some changes around here, and I wanted to bring you in before we shut down.”

My eyes pop open. “Shut down?”

“Temporarily,” he adds gruffly.

Jack continues massaging my shoulders and down my back, and the temptation to push the boundaries of our relationship is prominent. Surely, if he can get me off in front of a crowd, I can ask more about his work now.

“How did you end up owning a sex club in the first place?” I ask.

He doesn’t show any hesitation as he lets out a huff. “It belonged to my godfather, who passed it down to me. In fact…my mother runs one back home.”

I giggle to myself. “The family business?”

“I guess so,” he replies with a chuckle. “I know it sounds strange to others, but it’s not strange to us.”

“I don’t think it’s strange,” I reply. “I assume you’ve been learning this stuff for a long time then.”

“Bondage? Yes, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that I started practicing it. It was…a coping mechanism.” He adds that last part, and I know that it’s a struggle for him to be so vulnerable and speak about his wife’s death. Not wanting him to close me out again, I change the subject.

“So why are you shutting the club down?”

“Well, my godfather didn’t just pass it down to me. He passed it down to six of us to see if we could run it together,the six children of the original owners of another club back in California. A club that did superbly better than this one is.”

“It’s not going so well?” I ask.

“Not at all. Everyone has different ideas about what this place should be. And the worst of all is my godfather’s self-indulgent son. So I’m going to let him run this place into the ground so we can start fresh.”

My brows furrow.

When I don’t respond, he pauses, his hands on my back. “You think I’m wrong for doing that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know anything about running a business, but to me, that decision sounds like it’s coming from a place of spite. If your godfather gave you this club to run it together, I don’t think he’d want to hear that you let it fail just to prove a point.”

I bite my lip, hoping my first time truly speaking to Jack about his work didn’t just end in failure from my outspoken, arrogant mouth.