But I wasn’t sure I could.
The red haze didn’t fade.
Other women came and went—legs spread, breasts bouncing, glitter dusted over dead eyes. I didn’t even see them. Nothing pulled me in.
Until she stepped out again.
This time, she looked like a dream some dirty bastard might’ve had in high school detention.
She wore a short, pleated pink plaid skirt, white knee-high socks, and a buttoned-up cardigan with a candy-red heart patch stitched above her left breast. Glasses. Pigtails. Glossed lips.
Sweet. Naïve.
Bait.
The music started—a pop remix with a wicked pulse—and she strutted across the stage with a lollipop in one hand and a shy little bounce in her step. She spun once, then kneeled at the edge of the stage in front of a man holding a whiskey glass and clamping a cigar between his teeth.
The crowd screamed for him to touch her.
And he did.
She leaned in, shimmying her tits just inches from his face. A lecherous stagehand who was standing off to the side grinned widely and gestured for the man to go for it, nodding with shameless approval.
The man reached up, his hand trembling with drunk anticipation, and grabbed Lyla’s tits over the soft pink fabric of the cardigan.
My body lunged forward, and my hands gripped the table. Rage detonated through my chest.
Then—
She laughed.
A sultry sound that made half the men choke on their drinks.
All at once, she yanked back hard. The cardigan and skirt were ripped away, left in the man’s hands as she fell backward and executed a perfect back walkover, rising to stand like a devil’s ballerina.
Underneath, she wore a hot pink bikini so tiny it could hardly be called clothing—just a few thin straps riding her hips and some barely-there cups that curved over her breasts. Her schoolgirl act had turned feral. Pure sin. Playful, provocative, devastating.
My blood pounded.
She started climbing again, wrapping those perfect legs around the silver pole and lifting into a flip so clean, so sensual, I could already feel her wrapped around me.
I wanted her like that—up high, out of reach, only mine to touch.
But more than that, I wanted her gasping my name as I slammed into her, my hands gripping her thighs, my mouth claiming that pretty pink pussy she teased every man with.
And then—
“I heard she’s the next sacrifice,” someone slurred from the table next to mine.
My full attention snapped to him.
He was a bloated prick, all sweat and gold rings, leering around like he owned the fucking place.
“Yeah,” his friend grunted. “They told me she’s getting auctioned soon. Real sweet. I’ve been saving up. They say she may go for a half-mil.”
I went still.
Every cell in my body thrummed with bloodlust.
