“By what?” Again, her damn honest and childlike questions are all I need to know she wasn’t born from this world and should probably never be here.
I shake my head as I look away, but her persistence in not moving, just looking at me, spurs me into explaining more as I turn my eyes back to her.
“Never had someone call me out like that before. It’s the second time in one night that I’ve been unable to come up with a quick comeback. Doesn’t happen much.” I shrug it off, playing my role like I’m meant to. The playboy who’s just here to party. A pretty face. Nothing more. Even if she can’t see me. Even if she’s clearly not from the same world I grew up in and live in daily.
“When was the first?”
I study her closely as I reply, trying to see if she’s as pure as she appears or if there’s something that will tell me she’s just a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Wouldn’t be the first time a chick tried to be something they weren’t. “My brother told me he wouldn’t fuck me even if I paid him.”
“Did you want him to?” Her response is quick, and I doubt she thought it through based on her eyes going wide and now both hands covering her mouth and hanging on tight.
A surprised laugh floats out of my mouth.
“Sorry,” she mumbles behind her hands.
I shake my head, a small smile breaking out across my lips. “You’re….”
I leave the unknown out there too long for her, and she lowers her hands to speak. “Awkward?”
“Refreshing.”
Her eyes pop open more as I stare openly at her. She doesn’t smile. Doesn’t act coy. Just holds my stare as her body moves again. This time there’s no stiffness. No holding herself away from me. Her hands crawl to my lower stomach but don’t go farther up or down as she moves her hips. This time she follows the music, listening to the beat and feeling it in her body.
I should put distance between us; she is an employee, after all. Tell her to go back to the stage. To do another dance for me. Anything but what she’s doing.
When my phone rings, I don’t answer it. She notices. Or at least looks at the pocket where the buzzing is coming from. But my eyes don’t wander around the room. The truth is, I can’t look away.
I’m held captive.
Till the lock disengages and the spell is broken. The sound is loud enough for both of us to know our time is done. The relief on her face is obvious, and I’m starting to understand that it’s not me she feared but being in the private room. One where anything could happen to her.
She climbs off me and doesn’t even look back as she exits, though I watch her the entire time. The quickness in her steps to escape me and this room only adds fuel to the hellfire I want to rain down on Carl.
Chapter 6—Payton
Ihate being late. Something that was drilled into me not only by my parents but my dance teachers too. Late meant being memorable. Outside of dance, that might be okay. For dance practice? That meant you were the teacher’s example for the day. You were called on to show every move, even if you didn’t know it. And even if you did and were flawless, they still found something to criticize.
It took a while, but I understood why my teachers did it. They were teaching me to be tough. That someone would always find fault in your performance, and that was their opinion. But if you did your best, held your head high, you wouldn’t see them. You would look above them.
At least that’s what I thought they meant. I was never told. I dropped out before the explanation for why it was okay to bully a student who was paying their salary.
Not that it did me any good. Look at me now. A non-stripper in a strip club, showing up late to a meeting—and wet at that.
When I got home last night, sleep didn’t come easily. Not that I’ve had a decent night’s sleep since everything changed for me. But I got even less last night.
I tried fooling myself into thinking it was the dread of having to perform in the private room that kept me up. But it wasn’t. Well, not all of it. The fear and the nightmares had me in that room, but it was because of the person in them. Theone I saw last night in the darkness. I never caught full glimpses of him, but I saw enough to know him in my dream. Him anda cuff link with a lion’s head on it. An absurd thing to remember, but once I saw it, it took up more space in my brain last night than anything else did. It was something to focus on when I couldn’t look at him.
No name, no clue, but that lion’s head—that was the fear. The man I was dancing for in my nightmares had the lion’s head that snarled and snapped at me.
But when I got close enough to touch, the body I felt under it made my own react with anything but fear. It was confusing to wake up screaming while other parts were begging for release.
I would have slept more, but I promised a neighbor I would babysit while she went job hunting. I was fine with it until the subway stalled on her way home, which had me leaving late as well.
I sigh at my own bad luck, still unable to believe it. I couldn’t even catch a cab or Uber because of the downpour. Every car service seemed to have a thirty-minute wait in the city. Too long for someone who was already late, so I did the next best thing available. I ran.
It was several blocks, but there wasn’t any other option. I missed the bus I usually take. I don’t have a bike, which might be something to invest in if I ever get enough money to buy anything besides food.
All that work just to arrive late. And wet.
