MG FF: Forbidden Stranger Updated Part 20 pg 130 - Page 10

Originally posted by: Shravya.M

Awesome update... loved it

Originally posted by: -Nilam-

Excellent update...loved it...
geet's character is really very interesting...a very different one...
loved the convo between Geet and NT...
like the concept...want to know more about Geet's past...
missing maaneet conco😛
eagerly waiting for the next part...please update soon...
.

thank u so much

geets past will be revealed in coming parts

maaneet in next update 😊

Originally posted by: zahra15

i loved it...geet n naintara's convo was just great...continue soon n thnxxx for the pm...

Originally posted by: sonali_N

_ Loved it 👍🏼

Eagerly waiting for the next ...😊

__

Chapter Four

Maan stood behind the bar, damp cloth in hand, toothpick between his teeth. He glanced at his watch. It was eight-thirty. Geet had finished her first set fifteen minutes ago and was now seated at a stage-side table with some of her regulars. Four men, early fifties to sixties, varying shades of gray except for one bald guy, always dressed in suits and ties. They looked just like the businessmen that made up about half the clientele, but he knew from the records checks that their business was education. Baldly was the president of a small liberal arts college nearby, and the other three were deans. Tuesday nights were their regular budget committee meetings, or so they told their wives.

Maan hadn't talked to Geet since he'd left her house that morning, but he'd spoken to Naintara on the phone. She'd been pretty closed mouthed about her first lesson, saying nothing besides it had gone well. Now she was in the process of moving into his apartment, half way between Geet's house and their club. She didn't like the idea, but she damn sure didn't want to give out her real address when she came to work here. If she came to work here.

Geet's laughter separated from the background noise, drawing Maan's attention her way. She was standing now, one hand on the back of baldy's chair. Tonight the thong and bra were black 'and-gold tiger stripes. Points of see-through black fabric fluttered over her middle and a length of shiny gold coiled around her upper left arm. The whole outfit was sexy, but just that bracelet wrapped around her bicep was enough to turn a man on.

She patted baldy on the shoulder, then headed towards the bar. Maan watched her, idly noting that the temperature seemed to be rising. Great for the girls in their skimpy costumes. In jeans and a T-shirt, he was liable to break out in a sweat.

Geet stopped at the end of the bar. "Three vodka Collins, one cosmopolitan and a bottle of water."

He got the water first, sliding it across the bar to her. it was tempting to stand there and watch her drink it'twist of plastic cap, lift the bottle to her mouth, take a drink so long and so cold that it raised goose bumps on her skin. Instead, he turned his attention to the drinks. His only qualification for this job he'd started was that he'd drink his share of liquor over the years. A crash course in bartending, along with a tattered copy of The Moron's Guide to Mixology tucked under the bar, had gotten him through.

"Those men are old enough to be your grandfather." he remarked as he poured vodka into all four glasses.

"Father actually. I'm not that young."

She looked way too young to be working in a place like this.

"Aren't you ever tempted to tell them to go home to their wives?"

She held the water bottle to her throat, close enough to feel its chill but not to touch her makeup. She had the makeup application down to an art'enough to look good under the stage light, but not too much that it looked overdone offstage.

"Their wives don't miss them. The men have their budget committee meetings and the women have their garden club."

"Do they ever try to buy more than drinks?" none of his business, Maan silently acknowledged. Some dancers worked the prostitution angle; plenty didn't. When the case was over, he'd put everything he had found out in his report and if anyone on the job to pursue it, fine.

"Not these guys. Coming here is a little wild and risqu for them. Their lives are pretty tame."

Maan finished off the Collinses with club soda, then added triple sec, cranberry and lime juice to the Cosmo. Not these guys, she'd said, which implied that others did. He wanted to ask which ones and whether they'd been successful. "How did it go with Naintara?"

"Fine. We went shopping."

"I'm paying you to shop?"

The remark made her uneasy. Her gaze shifted away and it took a moment for her smile to form. "Great job isn't it?" then she shrugged, her tiger stripes rippling. "You can't dance without the right clothes and shoes."

He doubted most men would agree with her. The flashy colours and see-through fabrics were nice, but they weren't necessary. Every man he knew would be just turned on by a woman wearing a white cotton bra and panties. In fact, Geet, with her creamy golden skin, would look incredible in her underwear. There was something more intimate about imagining her in the lingerie's she wore for herself, not for tips. Wishing Romeo would turn the AC to frigid; Maan set the last drink on her tray. "We never settled on an amount? How about one night's house fee per lesson?"

Her eyes widen slightly. One night on stage cost each dancer seventy five dollars. Anything over that, they got to keep it. Some girls actually went into the hole on slow nights, but weekends always made up for it.

"All right," she agreed. She picked up the tray and started away, then turned back. "You should have asked first. I would have settled for twenty-five, thirty bucks." She gracefully strolled away, tray balanced on one delicate hand. When she was out of earshot, he murmured, "You would have sold yourself cheap, darling."

She was a beautiful woman, smart, capable. She could do anything she wanted, yet for twelve years she'd settled for this. Why?

He had learned early in his career that asking why people did things they did was an exercise in futility. For most part, Maan had lost interest in the why. His focus these days was on delivering the consequences to people who broke the law.

But he couldn't help but wonder about Geet's why. Why was she a stripper? Why hadn't she pursued a more respectable career? Why wasn't she married and raising kids? Why was she spending her nights in a place like this with people like him?

The club had about two customer too many to rank as a slow night. Maan made drinks whose recipes he could now recite in his sleep, watched the customers and talked for a minute here or there with the dancers. It was casual conversation'drink orders, a little flirting. You have any plans when you get off? Want to join me for dessert? Unless he made an effort to see the girls outside the club'too risky'he had no real chance to get information from them. It was tough to subtly say, "A margarita on the rocks, a whiskey sour and, say, do you remember a girl named Samira who used to work here?"

That was why Naintara was coming on board. Dancers talked to each other. Hopefully they would talk to her about Shasha Gupta, Tasha Sharma and Samira Kapur.

Three dancers, all having appeared on the main stage at Almost Heaven, all disappeared over three-month period pretty much without a trace until parts from Tasha's and Samira's cars had turned up in a chop shop on the northern side of Atlanta. The chop shop happened to belong to Rahul Agarwal, who also owned Almost Heaven and its four sisters clubs.

Rahul stood six-six, weighed three hundred pounds and didn't give a damn about anyone but himself. He'd started with petty theft when he was ten and worked his way up the food chain. The strip club was the most legitimate of his businesses. He said he liked his girls, claimed he kept the bad stuff away from them.

Would Samira, Tasha and Shasha agree?

"Hey, Khurana, time for a break."

He glanced up to find Arjun, bouncer and relief bartender, standing at the other end of the bar, flirting with a little blonde named Lisa. Maan had walked in on them in the storeroom his first night. He had seen enough to make a point always knock first.

There were dancers on all three stages, the budget committee were having a good time and there was no sign of Geet. On her own break? Where Maan would have normally headed straight out back, this time he detoured past the dressing room. The door was always open; there was no false modesty among the dancers.

The room looked like an explosion of colours, leathers and metals. Bright light circled the makeup mirrors and cosmetic spilled across the counters. Lockers lined one wall, holding the mundane jeans, T-shirts and running shoes that turned exotic dancers back into everyday young women.

Only one of the chairs in front of the mirror was occupied, by a gorgeous Jamaican woman who was adding a coat of something to already-thick lashes.

"Hey sweetie," she greeted him. "You looking for someone in particular, sugar? Or will Annie do?"

She could ask that question of a thousand guys and get nothing but affirmation from everyone of them. He grinned apologetically. "I wanted to ask Geet something."

Her dark gaze narrowed. "Geet, huh. I was betting Pari would be more your type. If Geet's not out front, she's in the study hall."

"Study hall?"

"That empty little room near the back door that no one ever uses."

"Thanks." he took a step out the door, then stopped. "Which one is Pari?"

"Brunette. Short hair. Triple D's."

Oh yeah. There was a time when she would have been his type. A time all of them would have suited. "I have a girlfriend." It was a lie, but it sounded good. Better to him then to Annie, if her look was anything to judge by. "You think all the guys out there don't chico?" She murmured as she turned back to her makeup.

Maan's jaw tightened as he followed the narrow hall to the rear of the building, he knew better then to equate a relationship with fidelity. His father had had a girlfriend or three, along with a wife. The only good thing Maan could say about the b****** was that he'd been discreet in his affairs. His mother hadn't had a clue until a heart attack had dropped the old man in his tracks and she'd found out that her sons had a half brother living down in Mississippi.

Pammi had been a better woman than anyone had expected'then Tej had deserved. She had welcomed Manish into the family and made a place for him in her own home. She loved him like one of her own sons. Too bad she's loved Tej, too.

Maan had been eleven when his father died and his mother's heart had been broken. He hadn't felt anything decent for Tej since.

Reaching the closed door just ten feet from the rear exit, Maan knocked.

A moment later, the door swung open. "Getting formal, aren't we, Annie? You always just barge' oh. Sorry. No one usually bothers me back here besides '" hugging her arms across her middle, Geet finished with a grimace.

He would have invited himself inside if the space hadn't been so small or the idea hadn't seemed so bad. Instead, he leaned against the doorjamb and gave the room a quick scan. The walls were painted the same shade as her living room and the one armed sofa looked a match to the one he'd seen at her place. There was an oval mirror on one wall, a floor lamp and a small table that held a bottle of water, a clock, a book, a pair of reading glasses and the empty wrapper from a trick-or-treat-size candy bar.

"Study hall?" he asked, bringing his gaze back to her.

She glanced at the table too. "When I was in school, I studied in here on breaks."

"Getting your GED?"

A pained look slid across her face. "About eleven years ago. This summer I finished my bachelor's degree."

"congratulations." He said, then added, "Sorry, I didn't mean..."

She shrugged. "A lot of us didn't get to finish high school."

But that was no reason to automatically assume she hadn't.

She had traded tiger stripes for a filmy gold Grecian goddess thing that left one shoulder bare. She'd kept the gold coil around her arm. Her hair was piled on top of her head, curls spilling down, with gold patterned band circling her forehead. Fabric draped loosely over her breasts, then gathered at her waist, belted by a thin gold chain. The skirt was barely deserving of the name, short, insubstantial, revealing peeks of the black thong underneath. The leather laces of a pair of platform sandals crisscrossed her calves.

And just about finished him.

What the hell was wrong with him? He'd been watching the girls dance for weeks now, first at Rahul's Marietta club, then here. He'd seen them fully dressed, damn near naked and everything else in between. It had become commonplace that he hardly noticed anymore.

So why had he suddenly started noticing Geet?

Precap 1: She loosened the chain around her waist, letting its length trickle between her fingers into a small mound at the base of the pole. The hook that secured her dress was next to go. With a shimmy, the gold lame puddle at her feet, leaving her in a strapless black bra and thong. The act brought the usual reaction, still muted in her music-dazed brain... then her muscles went taut. A shiver rippled along her skin, making her feel exposed, and heat followed in its wake. Opening her eyes, she searched for the gaze that could create such awareness, knowing that it was Maan's. He stood off to the side, leaning against the jamb, arms crossed over his chest. He looked formidable enough to be a bouncer and drop dead sexy enough to be any woman's fantasy. And he was watching her with enough intensity to make her feel like his fantasy.