It wouldn’t be until a week later when I would see the part of my father that I’d been sheltered from, the man who had left Ireland under a cloud of suspicion and was welcomed into the club with open arms for a reason that only the old president had known.

When I got done with my fifteen minutes of fame that turned into an hour of beating Harry’s drums with everything in me, Dragon was waiting. He stood at the edge of the stage, and my feet didn’t touch the grass before he hoisted my legs around his waist, and he was kissing me hard. Our breath was ragged when he lifted his head to the catcalls and whistles filling the air around us. The smile on his face was wide and bright, crinkling the corners of his eyes, and his dimple was just barely visible underneath his close-cropped beard.

“That was one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen. Why didn’t you tell me you could do that?” he asked while kneading the cheeks of my ass with his hands.

I just shrugged my shoulders. “It’s not a big deal. I’ve been playing since I was six.”

“No wonder you and Trix dance like you do. You’re fucking drumming with your feet!” He laughed in my face.

“What do you mean?” I asked him, confused.

“When I watched you guys dancing in the kitchen, your feet were fuckin’ pounding the floor with the beat of the music!”

My face got hot.

“You didn’t know you did that?” He laughed again at my embarrassment.

“Ah, no. I don’t do it on purpose. I’ve never noticed,” I told him.

“Well, it’s cute as fuck, and Trix does it, too. That girl can keep a beat like no kid I’ve ever seen,” he replied with a proud smile on his face.

He started walking through the crowd where shouts of vulgar suggestions were made to our retreating backs, but Dragon never put me down. When we made our way around the corner, he pressed me up against the wall of the building and kissed me again, his hands roaming my body.

“You’re gonna keep a beat for me tonight, yeah?” he whispered in my ear, biting the lobe gently.

I wasn’t sure exactly what he was talking about, but it didn’t matter. Anything he asked of me in that tone of voice, I’d give him.

We walked home after the sky had grown dark, and Trix had finally fallen asleep, sticky and covered in dirt, sitting on Dragon’s lap. Neither of us were drunk, but we were feeling the effects of the whiskey and beer we’d drunk. I hadn’t had more than a glass of wine since the night Trix was conceived, and I was giddy with it.

When we got into the house, Dragon turned to me, “Get undressed, Brenna. Gonna put Trix in bed. Want you naked when I get to you.”

Then, he walked quietly down the hallway toward Trix’s room as I locked up the house. I raced into the room, flinging clothes off, with a desperation that bordered on ridiculousness. When I was finally naked, I lay down on the bed and waited as I heard him walk toward the front of the house. He came back, carrying a kitchen chair and my iPod dock, causing me to sit up in surprise.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my face creased in confusion.

He didn’t answer me, but he went around the side of the bed and plugged in the dock. Then, he set the chair at the end of the bed and locked the door before sitting down and grabbing the neck of his shirt to drag it off.

“Only set up two songs, but I figure I won’t make it much longer than that.” He looked at me, his nostrils flaring, and he finally told me what was going on. “Get down here and dance for me, Brenna.”

“Uh, dance for you?” I asked nervously.

I wasn’t a stripper. I didn’t know any sexy dance moves. I could just envision myself trying to be sexy and ending up looking like the kid from Napoleon Dynamite.

“Baby, you’ll do fine,” he told me, correctly interpreting the look on my face. “Come ’ere.”

I climbed off the bed and went to stand in front of him as the beginning strains of Awolnation’s “Sail” filled the room. I felt my breathing grow heavy as I remembered the song’s thumping rhythm. He grabbed my waist gently and pulled me so that my thighs were straddling his.

“Not much to it, baby. I want a lap dance. All you need to do is move with the beat and use your imagination. You know what I like.”

I stood there awkwardly until he pulled me down, grinding his jean-clad hips into my bare ones.

“Come on, baby. Don’t you wanna show off for your man?” he asked me on a thrust. “Give it to me.”

It didn’t take long for the beat of the music to release my inhibitions. I was using my hips with the rhythm of the song, his hands roaming my body, touching anything he could reach. I ran my fingers through his hair and then dragged my nails lightly down his chest, bending my head down once to take a nipple into my mouth. He made a sound low in his throat and dragged my head up to meet his, so he could kiss me deep, but my hips never lost rhythm. The kiss was enough to have him unbuttoning and unzipping his jeans as I writhed above him.

When the song transitioned from “Sail” to “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons, he was already inside me. I moved with the beat of the music, my eyes never leaving his, as I ran my hands over my breasts and up into my hair. When my hands rose above my head and my back bowed, I thought he was going to have a heart attack. We didn’t last long after that.

We lay in the bed hours later, neither of us ready for sleep.

“We’ll get this shit taken care of, Brenna. Don’t worry. If I’m not here, Poet and Vera will help you take care of things. Our lawyer’s a douche, but he knows what the fuck he’s doing,” he told me quietly.