The Hunting Town (Brothers Book 1)

by Elizabeth Stephens

  The next guy that enters the booth looks to be in his thirties. He sprawls out across the seat, legs spread wide as she mounts the short stage. I can’t hear sound through the speakers, but I know when the music turns on by her body’s immediate reaction. The kid can dance and my stomach pitches as her robe falls first, and then her shirt, and then her bra and panties. Private booths are full nude.

  Pushing my computer away, I turn to my desktop and power it up. I try to focus on anything but the images playing on the laptop beside it but half an hour later, I’ve still got a blank Excel spreadsheet in front of me and I’m staring directly between the two monitors so that I can see the laptop in my peripheries.

  Two more hours pass by. It’s ten thirty and I should have left a long time ago. I shouldn’t even be here now. I seem to be relentlessly compelled by women to do what I wouldn’t otherwise. I think I’ve gotten ten minutes of work done cumulatively and as I power down my desktop, I turn my full attention to the laptop. I rub my face roughly and simply…give in.

  I watch her twist around the pole without seeming to tire though I’m exhausted enough for us both. She dances for this new customer for about twenty minutes before all at once, she stops. The man’s lips are moving, but she’s standing still, unresponsive. It’s the first time all day I haven’t seen her smile.

  Slowly, she lies down on the platform and the man shifts so he’s watching her at pussy-level. He whispers a few more words, nothing happens, then her knees peel apart and she exposes herself to this stranger fully. I’ve seen girls do this – and more – before, but never wearing an expression like that. She’s biting her lips together and her eyes are shut and even through the screen, I can feel the tension of her body. Against the stage, her palms are bearing down.

  My knees crick loudly and the door slams loudly and the music is loud and so is the pulse in my ears. I see the world through a tunnel and though Mindy and Marilyn and other customers try to stop me, I yield to nothing. A gold number three hangs against a black door and as I throw it open, it cracks shut behind me. I shrug out of my jacket first, before anything, and fan it over her body. She inhales quickly and tries to sit up, but I hold her down by laying my palm gently against her chest. Through the supple leather of my coat, I can feel her heart pounding.

  “Don’t get up.” My voice is calm though I’m not sure how. Her eyelids flutter and she nods.

  I nod back at her once, then turn my attention to the man in the booth with his fly down and his hand covered in semen. I don’t want her seeing that. I grab the man by the back of his coat and throw him out of the room. He crashes through the nearest table and the group of guys standing there rise angrily.

  “Free drinks for the rest of the night if you take the bastard outside and beat the shit out of him.”

  The older men cheer and don’t hesitate to carry out my request, which I’m grateful for, because I can feel her presence like a blast of sand behind me, peeling my skin clean off. I step back into room number three and close the door. She doesn’t try to rise again, but merely clutches my coat to her chest and clenches her knees together. For the first time, she manages to look vulnerable. Standing over her with my hand again on her chest, I decide that I don’t like that. It makes me anxious enough to want to book it back to my office, but that would require leaving her behind, which I cannot.

  “Are you alright?”

  She nods quickly and clenches her knees together so hard it makes mine ache. “I’m fine,” she says, though the words sound automatic. She blinks a lot and very quickly. “Did I…” She clears her throat and tries to sit up again, but I don’t let her. Not because of anything she’s done, but because I can’t move my arms. They’re rock solid, just like my legs, just like my neck, just like my cock. “Was that wrong?”

  Word vomit coats my tongue and I can barely speak through it. “You did nothing wrong.”

  She smiles at me weakly and turns her face to the side so that I can’t see it fully. “I didn’t know when he asked me if I was supposed to…is that umm…is it…” She just leaves it at that and I can feel her heartbeat work its way through her body and into my own. It drives me insane. Makes me want to hurt something – a compulsion I began to know only when she and I met.

  “It’s up to every girl to decide what requests she’s willing to accommodate. You don’t have to do anything you aren’t comfortable with.”

  “Hard to know what I’m comfortable with these days…” She sighs shakily. “I better get back to it, though.”

  I slip my hand behind her head, shocked by the softness of her hair, and cup her neck. I help her up into a seat and pass her her robe. As she begins to lower my coat, I show her my back, giving her the privacy to change. At the same time, my phone begins vibrating in my pocket.

  “You should take a few minutes,” I tell her as Charlie’s name flashes across my cell’s screen. “You haven’t had a break yet tonight.”

  She doesn’t respond and that irks me, but not enough not to answer my brother’s call. He doesn’t call me much for pleasure these days.

  “Hey,” Charlie says the moment I answer. “You got a minute? Maybe sixty?”

  I don’t respond right away. When I do, I say, “Yeah. What do you need?”

  “We might have found something at Mer’s old place. Thought you’d want to come and check it out.”

  “Anything good?”

  “Good may be too strong a word. Let’s try interesting. Something best seen in person.”

  “I’ll be there in forty minutes.” I glance at my watch. It’s eleven and the bar closes at midnight. If I leave now, I’ll be leaving for the evening.

  “Cool. See you soon.”

  “See you soon.” I hang up and when I turn around she’s sitting on the edge of the stage, so damn close to me I could reach out and touch her knee and I’m overwhelmed by the desire to do just that – not to abuse my position with her but to comfort her because she watches me without smiling and though I hate the forced way she usually grins, this is so much worse. It fills me with the desire to stay.

  I clear my throat into my fist and look for answers in the concrete floor, stained black. Her feet swing gently, the tips of her toes visible in those ugly shoes that complete her salacious wardrobe.

  “I have to leave. Let Marcel know if you have any other issues during your shift. I’m sure I’ll see you sometime later in the week,” I lie, because I’m going to plan my days to avoid her at all costs. There’s something wrong with me. Something wrong with her for drawing out this reaction.

  I turn to leave her, but her quiet voice calls, “Thank you, Dixon.”

  My stomach pitches and I feel hungover as I stalk down the hall and out of the back door. The air is hard and cold so I slip my arms through the sleeves of my coat, hating the way it smells faintly like her. My car is the first in the lot and I get behind the wheel and drive ten, twenty, thirty minutes… Then I pull over. I’m in the middle of nowhere, one of the only cars on the road. My dashboard lit in blue fights against the darkness of the world outside, which is impregnable with no moon.

  I’m staring at my phone. I’ve never accessed the monitors from it before though I’ve always had the app. I open it now and tab through until I find her. Still in room three, she’s dancing for a college boy. Meaty, I’m sure I’ve seen him fighting in the pits on amateur days out at my barn once or twice. The sickness in my stomach grows more intense as I watch the way he shifts around on the couch, not even trying to conceal his hard-on, but rather thrusting it towards her as she dances off of the stage and on the ground directly in front of him. Then it happens all at once: the kid reaches out and grabs her.

  He wrenches her small body onto his lap, grabs her breast in one hand and with the other, covers her mouth. I slam my phone down onto the dash and rev the engine. Before I know what I’ve done, I’ve swung a wide U-turn into the center of the street and am racing in the wrong direction.

 
; The seconds it takes for Marcel to come into the room make me want to murder the bastard. He’s supposed to be watching out for the girls. Out for her. I’d call him to rip him a new one or text Charlie to let him know I won’t make it, but both would require me closing out of the app and right now I’m focused on it more than I am on the road. Marcel breaks into room three and when he escorts the girl out and spends a few minutes hammering both fists into the college kid, I feel slightly vindicated.

  It takes me far longer than I’d like to get back to Camelot. The bar’s closed by the time I do and the lot has mostly cleared out. Her car is still there and I feel the strangest wash of relief. Marilyn is the first person I come across when I blow through the back door. She’s carrying money from the till to the safe in my office – the only other person in the whole establishment who has a key – and wears a brilliant grin.

  “New girl did incredible today. Record high for a Wednesday and she didn’t even get all the way through her private shows.” I follow her out onto the floor, searching for Sara, though the bar is mostly empty. Just Ollie and the bartenders toasting in the back and a cocktail waitress flirting with Marcel by the entrance.

  Marcel looks up and when he sees me, smiles. “What’s doing, Dixon? You forget something?”

  “Sara.” The word rips out of my mouth before my mind can form words and thoughts. “Where is she?”

  Marcel’s grin is that of a wolf – cunning and full of mischief – but I don’t have time to decipher that, or answer the phone buzzing in my pocket. I want to see her. Need to see her. I look to Marilyn and her eyes are wide and her lips are slack. Belatedly, she points to the back entrance.

  “She worked longer than the other girls because of all the interruptions in her schedule so she’s just now getting her stuff.”

  The world passes by in a blur until I reach the dressing room curtain and, in violation of my own rule, I throw it open and step inside. The narrow room is empty but for the body against the wall crouched by the ground. Resting on her ridiculous heels, she’s tucked into a tight ball and every impulse in my body fires.

  I see her playing with her kid in the parking lot, hear her speaking about Brant at the park, remember the desperation in her tone as she spoke to me after her audition. Now that desperation is on full display. She’s shaking ever so slightly, head bowed over her knees, but as the curtain falls she jerks up to standing.

  “I’m sorry, Marilyn, I just dropped something.” She lies and she lies poorly. From where I stand, I see the way she reaches up to wipe her face.

  “No you didn’t.”

  Sara lurches forward and catches herself on the wall. “Sh…” she begins. The closest she ever gets to cursing. My heart beats faster on a cause of it. She flips her hair over her shoulder as she struggles to look at me without turning around. All at once, a fistful of bills spring from her hand. She reaches for them, then covers herself instead because she’s still only wearing gold hot pants and nothing else.

  Sara staggers towards her locker but her hands are trembling too badly to manage the lock. I feel anger and poison and pure darkness sift through my veins like a serpent with no teeth or eyes or tongue. This is my bar and this dancer works for me and she’s a mom and a student and a good person and desperate and I am the gate keeper and I have so much and what do I give to those around me but hate and death and grief?

  She begins speaking before I do, which is fine, because I have nothing to say. “Aren’t only women allowed in here?” She sniffles and her left leg trembles. She reaches down to massage it as if it’s a question of sore muscles. She’s really not great at pretending. “And didn’t you have somewhere important to be? Did you forget something? I didn’t mean to be here this late. I just took an extra break during my shift that I shouldn’t have. It won’t happen again…”

  I take slow, even steps towards her until we’re less than a foot apart. She must sense me there because she crosses her arms over her chest and stops trying to open her locker. “Dixon, I…” She quiets when I settle my coat over her shoulders and push her gently to the side.

  I grab one of the vanity chairs and roll it against the wall, then guide her down onto it. She keeps her head bowed though this doesn’t hide the fact that she’s beet red from hairline to chest. I drape a robe over her thighs and when she slips her hands through the sleeves of my leather jacket, I reach for the zipper resting dangerously close to that pink slit I wish I’d never seen as my lust of it makes me no different than any of the other scumbags that come into this place.

  “May I?”

  She grips the edges of my coat together and nods. Carefully – without touching her skin – I zip the coat closed all the way up to her neck. “That’s three times now,” she whispers.

  “What?”

  “With the coat. Thank you.”

  “You’ve worn it so many times, maybe I should just let you keep it,” I say quietly as I back away from her and collect all the money she dropped.

  She smiles very slightly, though it’s not the same smile she wears normally. This is raw and tender and makes me want to pull out my intestines through my belly button. “Not quite the right size.”

  “Looks good on you anyways.”

  She meets my gaze a little longer then, before letting her eyes settle on the money I hold out to her. It takes her too long to take it from me. Her lips flare a bright cherry when she licks them. There’s something going on in her head that I want to understand, but whatever it is, she doesn’t voice it.

  “You made good money today.”

  She nods and rubs her nose and it turns a deep pink, like the rest of her. “Yeah, it looks like it. Made almost four hundred in tips alone. That almost pays for half of Brant’s daycare.”

  I whistle. “Must be some daycare.”

  “Lemon Crest,” she says, voice turned up as if a question. “It’s the best.” She shrugs and as she inhales deeply she sits up a little straighter. Her eyes close and she licks her lips again as she folds the money in half once. “The best for baby Brant,” she whispers. “It’s what my sister would have wanted.”

  “Your sister?”

  Sara shoots me a hesitant glance, then stares at her locker as if willing herself to move towards it. I breach the distance for her and open it up myself. “Sorry,” I grunt, “I know all the combinations.” It’s a lie. The first I’ve ever told her. Because I don’t know all of the combinations. Just this one. “Can I put your things together for you?”

  She looks at me like I’ve just slapped her in the face and for a moment I wonder if she’ll say no. Eventually, she gulps, then gulps again at the same time her carmine cheeks pale. Is she thirsty? Is she cold? “That would be…fine. Would you please hand me my jeans?” I do. I hand her a pair of flat boots along with the socks that are stuffed inside of them. Scuffed, but practical. Everything of hers is a bit like that. Worn, but well cared for. Loved.

  I don’t ask her any more questions or speak to her at all, so I’m surprised when she offers, “Brant isn’t my biological baby. He’s my sister’s.”

  “And you take care of him now.”

  She nods and I focus on the floor as I hear her legs sliding into her pants. “My sister was a junkie. So was Brant’s father. He OD-ed and then she killed herself and our parents died a long time ago so she left Brant to me.”

  The whole patchwork portrait stitches itself together seamlessly before my eyes and I feel criminal for the thoughts I’d had about her initially, and the resentment I’d harbored towards her. I say nothing this time because any words out of my mouth would be coated in an anger I don’t want her to think is directed towards her. It’s mine and mine alone.

  “I’ve always been really good at saving and stuff, but it all happened so quickly.” She inhales and when she breathes out, the treble is shaky enough to let me know that she’s crying. I freeze because I can’t bear to turn around and see it. “I just thought this would be easier.�
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  “Being a mother?”

  She laughs at that, but it’s hateful and cutting. “No, being a stripper. Being a mother is the easiest thing in the world.”

  My stomach dips and dives and through the tumult, I struggle to speak through it. “What about your job as an EMT?”

  “It pays fifteen an hour,” she says quietly. “It’s what I love doing, but it’s not enough to cover basic expenses anymore.”

  “And your loans? Welfare?” I throw the words at her like bullets that she dodges.

  “My school won’t recalculate my financial aid award until next year now that I have a dependent and welfare gives me six hundred dollars a month. That’s just enough to cover rent.” Rent in a poor neighborhood. One far from here.

  My eyes close and I feel my fist curl around some bit of fabric but I don’t open my eyes until she whispers, “I think your phone is ringing again.”

  I curse silently, like she would, and reach into my pocket. “What?”

  “Woah, no need for the third degree. Just checking to see if you were coming. Aiden mighta just found something big.”

  “Shit.” I glance down at Sara and see her watching me with wide eyes, so I quickly step out into the hall. “Can you tell me over the phone?”

  “I’d rather not.”

  I curse again. Uncharacteristic. So is the tension of a thousand steel cables in my stomach. I want to go back in there and shred through everything – burn the whole goddamn bar to the ground – and take her and her kid to a hotel somewhere nice, buy them a wait staff to just make sure they stay fat and comfortable and I want to go back to not caring about them because they’re fat and comfortable and then maybe I’ll be able to go back to a time before – a world in which Sara Sweetheart doesn’t exist.