Free Stripping Her Defenses by Jessie Lane

out from down the hall before I could open my mouth.
    “Yo! Sullivan! Bring your ass down here and stop checking the girls out.”
    I turned my head in Lucas’s direction as I flipped him the bird, but I was again cut off by a voice before I could tell him he could shove it up his ass. Only, this time, the voice that interrupted me was soft, feminine, and one I heard every night in my dreams.
    “Riley?”
    Motherfucker.
    That scantily clad stripper was my goddamn wife!

Chapter
    8
    Kara
    It couldn’t be.
    There was no way.
    Karma couldn’t be that cruel, right?
    There was no way Riley Sullivan was standing in front of me.
    Yet, as I looked into those burning green eyes of his, full of shock and rage, I knew that’s exactly who it was. My ex-husband, in the flesh. Only he didn’t look like my Riley. My Riley had military-short buzzed hair, a clean shaven face, and practically lived in his Navy uniform. This man was the complete opposite with his five o’clock shadow, shaggy brown hair, jeans and black leather cut.
    Wait.
    Cut?
    Why was Riley wearing a Regulators’ cut?
    I didn’t get a chance to ask him about that, though. In one blink of an eye, he was standing outside of my dressing room door. In the next, he was standing in front of me, reaching towards my face with his hand and then ripping my mask clean off. His trembling hands cradled my face, and I stared into the countenance of the only man I’d ever loved, watching as a raw sense of sorrow washed over his features while he croaked out my name.
    “What are you doing here, Riley?”
    The sorrow melted away, his lips becoming a grim, determined slash of a line as he snapped, “What the fuck am I doing here? How about what the fuck are you doing here, Kara? You do not belong in a fucking strip club!” The last words ended on a shout. At least something about Riley hadn’t changed. Piss the man off and he started dropping more F-bombs than a whole platoon of soldiers.
    I shook my head as he slid his hands from my face into my hair, gripping the strands so tightly I could no longer move my head. He lowered his face towards mine and growled, “My fucking wife does not belong in a fucking place like this. You’re coming with me right now, goddamn it, and you’re going to tell me how the fuck you ended up here. If this is about money, you should know all you had to do was cal—”
    “Motherfucker!” Ice roared as Riley’s hands were pulled from my body. He now had Ice’s arms wrapped around his throat in a headlock that had him bent awkwardly backwards and away from me. “Get your damn hands off her! Hammer, get her the fuck out of here!”
    Hammer grabbed my hand, pulling me towards the door of the dressing room, away from Ice and Riley who were now in a struggling match. As soon as we passed through the doorway, I saw Big Jim holding off both Declan, and some other man I didn’t know, from getting inside the room where I could hear my ex-husband fighting with the Regulators’ President. My head started to spin as Hammer dragged me down the hallway in a state of shock before he shoved me into a different room, slamming the door behind me and locking it.
    Unable to move from where I woodenly stood, my hands shook uncontrollably and my breath raced in and out of my chest as if I’d just run a damn marathon.
    The first time I come back to After Midnight for an act, in four years, because Ice begged me to, and Riley shows up? What were the chances? Feeling the shock start to drain away and worry taking over, I paced back and forth in the office Ice had shoved me into and listened to the raised voices outside of the door.
    Shit, shit, shit!
    How in the hell had this night gone bad so quickly? One minute, I was getting ready to dance my ass off in front of a packed house, and the next, I was reacquainted with a man I hadn’t laid eyes on in eight years. What was he doing here? And why in the world was Riley wearing a Regulators’ cut?
    I’d known the