He was out of his chair and standing in front of me, against me, in a flash. His hard body was against my skin, and I could feel the solid curves of his pecs, the firmness of his abdomen, the... er... large, solid outline of his cock against my thigh.
Somehow, just like that, he pulled my wrists behind me and transferred them to one hand. His lips were right next to my forehead, and I could feel his breath snaking over me like a caress. I had this completely insane idea that I would give anything—anything—to feel his lips on my forehead.
This is what I was thinking right before I was murdered?
His other hand moved up my back, and I shivered. Embarrassed that goosebumps had washed over my skin, I felt myself flush.
Then he grabbed my hair and pulled my head back.
Okay, I thought. The honeymoon is over.
I struggled to get my hands out his grasp, but they weren’t going anywhere. He had me pinned to the stage floor, pressed against it on my front side, and his hand had such a strong, firm grip in my hair that I couldn’t do anything but look up at his face.
“You can’t do that!” I hissed, but even as I did, I realized how futile it was. He could do it; he could do whatever he wanted. “It’s against the—”
“No one is here,” he repeated.
His voice and his expression were strangely—disturbingly—calm, not the way you’d expect a man who had you by the hair on a strip club stage, alone, locked in a room, to sound. He sounded like he was making toast for someone and telling them he was putting butter on it.
I struggled again. I didn’twantto, but instinct was taking over. I was blabbing, yelling, sassing, and I wanted myself to shut up, but the words just came out of my mouth. “Listen, you freak, fuck you!” I heard myself saying.
This guy was likely to get mad, and he seemed like a real bastard. The quiet ones always are. I forced myself to close my mouth, and I rolled my eyes around, looking for a weapon of some kind. As if I could get my hands free to use it, I thought miserably.
“Ow,” I said, as he pulled a little harder on my hair.
Maybe, I thought, I could sweet-talk him long enough to get him to let his guard down.
“Look, Al, listen. I’m not really a stripper, okay? You have the wrong gal. I know a lot of girls downstairs who can—”
Somehow, my body was getting turned around. I was disoriented as he stretched my hands up to the pole and wrapped something around them, fixing them above my head. I was still thinking aboutthatwhile he pulled my panties down.
Then I thought,oh, shit.
Back to fighting, I decided.
“You fucking bastard! Fuck you!” I tried to kick backwards at him, but he very calmly pressed against my body and pushed my legs apart and against the table. One hand came around my face and covered my mouth, a thumb sliding the length of my neck in warning: shut up.
“Natalia, I want you to listen to me very closely,” he said, his stubble scraping my cheek, his lips right against my ear. A shiver of delight rolled down my spine, but it was followed directly by a wave of cold fear. I thought about biting his hand, but that seemed like a very bad idea.
I felt his left hand travel from my hands, which I was just starting to realize were bound by leather to the pole, down my left arm, over my shoulder, and along my ribcage, before stroking me right across my bare bottom.
“Hey!” I exclaimed into his hand, but it came out “mmmuuuh.”
“If you want to be a stripper and a little slut,” he continued, as though he were talking about the weather, while his hand traveled all over the back of my body. I felt his cock against my right buttock, and I looked down at that moment to see what his right hand was doing. “That’s your business.”
His right hand was flat against the table, strength coiled inside of it.
His voice was a whisper against my neck. “But working for men like Andrej Sulov is very,verydangerous.”
As he made this pronouncement, he moved his hand along my right buttock, along my hip, and up my torso, then back down. I had to close my eyes, overwhelmed by the deadly mixture of lust and fear twisting inside of me.
His warm body left me, and I felt his left hand seize me at my lower back, pushing me against the stage and holding me in place with large, strong fingers that allowed me to make no mistake: I wasn’t squirming away anywhere.
The first stroke landed right across my ass, in the center, and at first I was so surprised I didn’t even know what had happened. I thought it was ice water. The slap reached my ears after the icy sting, and that’s when I realized what it was.
He had justspanked me.
The burn of the swat welled up from deep inside me, spreading out across all of my skin, and a glow was crawling across my face. The next two slaps came before I could get my thoughts together.
