Back at the fish tank, she walks with them as they swim about in their world, one side of the tank to the other, trapped in a never ending circuit of unhappiness, broken only by the inability to remember it for more than fifteen seconds at a time.
Clown fish, butterfly betta, loaches and swordtails, every single one of them beautiful and unique.
After another thirty minutes has ambled by, at which point Sash is about to give up completely and leave, Alex finally tells her he's ready.
Suddenly, after all that time waiting, Sash realizes that even though he might be, she's not ready at all. She wants to back out, but now, obviously, she can't. He's expecting her and she's here. The time to leave has already gone. The decision has already been made.
Approaching the huge wooden doors that stand in the way of her and her past, she feels her heart beating frenetically in her chest. Alex nods encouragingly. Sash swallows hard. Finally, with little other choice left, she pushes her way through, ready to face her destiny.
He's stood to greet her, arms out passively, the offer of an embrace. His tousled hair a little bit longer than she remembers it, his chest even more robust, his eyes magnetic and debilitating, a universe and more inside each one.
"Sash", he says.
The word familiar on his lips, but rusty, as though too much time has passed since he's had reason to say it out loud.
Sash lets herself be taken, pressing herself close to her stepbrother for as long as she feels is acceptable, long enough anyway to breath in his familiar scent.
"You've got bigger", she says coyly, pulling herself away from him to stand a foot away, her arms by her side now, but his still around her protectively.
"I've got older", he says modestly.
"It doesn't look like it."
Sash steals a look into his eyes that lasts longer than she knows it should.
Dante smiles his contagious smile, and Sash can't help but smile too. She looks to her feet and then back up to her gorgeous stepbrother. Three years and the feelings still haven't gone away. She knew it too. She knew they wouldn't.
'What?" he asks flirtatiously, knowing exactly what Sash will be thinking.
"Nothing."
Sash shakes the moment away in a playful push to gain distance, desperate to show her stepbrother the meaning of their relationship now, desperate to show herself really, how much she has matured over the last three years, and how capable she has become of controlling her own emotions, even if the opposite is true.
"So, this is it, the beating heart of the Dante Hix empire."
She brushes past her brother, their shoulders rubbing together slightly, enough to make her skin buzz, and her heart skip a significant beat.
Dante watches her glide around. He watches the careful way she moves her feet, and the sensual way she touches everything. She has her back to him intentionally, keen to have him observe her, and not the other way round.
Like this, she has the illusion of being in control. Dante knows his stepsister well, but more than that, he knows about control and how best to achieve it.
Sash turns to face him.
The measured spin of a seasoned professional. Several meters split them, but even from here Sash can feel herself being pulled back towards him. Never underestimate how dangerous the game is you're playing. The words an internal memo, Sash takes a moment to tell herself.
The silence is palpable, almost alive. Like gunslingers locked in a wild west duel at high noon, they face each other down, each one looking for a sign to pick up their weapon and shoot. Three years in the wilderness and suddenly back in the same room.
Nothing has changed.
"It's been a while, Sash."
"Has it been long enough?"
Sash is unsure who the question is really meant for, and immediately embarrassed, she looks away.
"You tell me", Dante begins. "You were the one that couldn't-."
He can't finish the sentence, partly because he knows he doesn't need to.
Sash shrugs her shoulders, the skin there exposed by the cut of her dress. Her bone structure light, poised, elegant.
"It could have been different." Lost in the memory, her voice is almost too lightly for Dante to hear. "If you'd-. It doesn't matter anyway, that's not why I came here." She brushes it off and looks at him again. "There isn't any point going back over-."
Now she's the one who can't finish her sentence. Lost in his beautiful, stormy blue eyes, that familiar look that turns somersaults in her stomach, her heart can't help but yearn.
"You look good", Dante says, quick to take advantage. "I've missed you."
"Don't Dante", she warns him, at the very edge of letting herself go. "I didn't come for that. You know I didn't."
She turns away, making for the leather sofas in the corner of the room. Climbing into the single armchair, she kicks off her shoes and folds her bare feet up to the side of her.
"Do I?"
Dante turns to watch her. He wants to reach for his stepsister again. He wants to go back to that earlier embrace, to that buried time, much further in the past, and pull her out of it. He will, even if she doesn't know it yet.
"Please. I came here to ask for your help."
Dante takes the half a dozen or so paces across the room to join her, and as Sash watches her stepbrother advance, unable to take her eyes off him, she can't help but find herself spellbound by the natural sexiness he effortlessly exudes, in an action so unquestionably simple. In the few seconds in takes him to get to his chair, he knows he's already won her over.
As he leans back into the sofa, it gathers him like an old friend. He stretches his legs, smooths down the pleat of his bespoke suit trousers and steals a brief but necessary moment to admire his beautiful stepsister.
He shifts his gaze across her face, lingering just long enough to remind himself of her huge, chocolate brown eyes, the cute button nose that she's always hated, and the plump, perfectly proportioned lips that bring repressed memories floating back to the surface of his mind.
He continues, across the petiteness of her frame, the awkward fragility of her collarbones, that stick out to make dimples across her upper torso in which he fought at one time to leave secret kisses, past an ample bosom she always complained was never enough, and onwards, deep into the crevices of a dress tucked neatly between her legs, that follows the shape of the perfect, athletic body she hides below it.
"I was surprised when you called me. I thought you didn't ever want to see me again."
Sash is about to contradict him, but she thinks better of it. Again she reminds herself that digging up the past and playing the blame game is not the reason she's come here.
"I'm in trouble." Sash levels her eyes at his. "I wouldn't have come at all if I wasn't desperate. You know I wouldn't. The last thing I want to do is open up the past."
Dante regards her, aware he'll need to select his words carefully.
"I'm done with that", she continues. "Done, completely. As far as I'm concerned it's over."
"How can I help?"
Dante reaches forwards to pour them both a glass of water from the jug that sits permanently on the hand crafted cherry wood coffee table. Sat forwards like this, their knees are almost touching. Sash shifts in her seat, suddenly feeling vulnerable.
"I need money." She gathers up her glass and pausing to drink. "My rent. I've got no food. Then there's University. I've got bills, Dante. The fucking door won't open properly."
Dante sits back again. He sips his water and contemplates his stepsister, his mind turning over.
"Can you help me?"
"How much do you need?"
"A lot. I don't know how much, but a lot. I'm looking for work, but no one wants to hire me. This city fucking sucks."
Dante places his glass back on the coffee table, trying to match it as perfectly as possible to the semi-circular water mark that indicates where he lifted it from. Once satisfied, he turns it a quarter turn to the right and leans back i
nto the sofa again.
"What kind of work?"
His hands come together to rest under his chin.
"Anything. It doesn't matter, they won't hire me anyway. I'm too young or too eager or too shy, or who knows? Just not what they're looking for. There are a million excuses and I feel like I've been given every single one of them. I'm sick of looking.
"I'm going to get kicked out of my apartment, Dante. If I don't find a way to pay my landlord he's going to get the police to evict me. I haven't got anywhere else to go. I kept turning it over and over in my mind and even this morning I wasn't going to come. Is there anything that you can do? I know we haven't seen each other for a long time, and I know-."
She pauses, the reality of what she is about to say almost too difficult for her to continue with it.
"-We both know what happened, but that's in the past now. I'm over it. I need you, Dante. I need your help."
A long moment passes while Dante lets the reality of the situation sink in. Her phone call in the first place was a pleasant surprise, her desperation now, unexpected.
She's come back to him finally and she needs his help. Not only that, she needs him too.
"I may have something that I can offer you", he says finally, his furtive mind already rich with possibilities. "Something that might suit us both perfectly."
Chapter 3
It takes her a while to find it. A door hidden in shadow, at the bottom of a wide but shallow staircase, in an almost-too-narrow alleyway between two forgotten hotels.
Outside, perched on a plastic chair chained to an iron railing, a well dressed guard with a lazy eye smokes the stub of what was once a large cigar, smoke climbing in thick pulses from his lips, either disappearing against the brick work of the hotel opposite, or escaping plainly into the night.
Broken by his foot, a puddle attempts to reflect the neon lights from the small sign above, so most of the word 'Wonder' runs across it in bright, backwards green lettering, trapped and wobbling as though caught in a dream.
While she waits for the door to open, he eyes her greedily from the shadow cast by the peak of his hat, careful not to be spotted. Sash hugs herself against the cold, pulling her winter coat tight around her fragile frame, her lips curled into a thin, ironic smile.
Inside, deep shades of burgundy red throb out across the fixtures and fittings. On stage, a young woman sings against a light piano backdrop, the hem of her skirt sweeping the floor as she sashays around it. A bright eyed girl with pigtails takes her coat, and Isabella, who will be responsible for managing her, takes her arm. Her smile is comforting, her touch familiar, her eyelids awash with glitter.
"So you're Dante's little sister." She holds Sash out at arms length as though to check the girl herself more closely. "He always told us you were beautiful."
The girl with the pigtails nods "beautiful", and a chipped front tooth digs into her lower lip when she closes her mouth.
Sash touches her hair self-consciously. "Thanks." Beautiful is far from what she feels.
Isabella disappears through a plush red curtain to the left of the reception desk, into the nervous system of 'Wonderland', one of several members only clubs that Dante owns, motioning for Sash to come with her.
Here, a collection of internal pipes cling to the white walls like veins and arteries, humming and clicking with vibrant life as they pass. As she walks, deeper into the beast that she is here to offer herself to, Sash can hear the audience clap and cheer, as though delighted by her progress.
They pass through the inner workings of the club, past dressing rooms and technical hubs, security and system maintenance. Isabella moves rapidly, gliding along as if connected to the floor by wheels, and more than once, something that is nothing more than a shadow in the darkness catches her eye and smiles, as though the building itself were greeting her, complicit in her role.
"Have you ever done anything like this before?" Isabella asks as they arrive at their destination, her slender fingers smoothing the ringlets of Sash's hair. She asks the question in a way that makes Sash wonder if she already knows the answer to it.
"Never."
Sash shakes her head and smiles nervously.
The booth is smaller than she expects. There is a pole, a chair and very little else. It is one of several in a corridor that look out on private rooms through floor to ceiling mirrors, one side of which allows the client to see the dancer, but not the other way round.
This wasn't exactly what she was hoping would be the solution to her problems, but she has been left with little other choice.
'An opening in entertainment', was the way that Dante had sarcastically described it, knowing full well his stepsister knew exactly what she was being offered, and that she wouldn't be able to refuse.
Ass-hole.
She was on the verge of saying no too, turning around and heading back out of his life as quickly as she came back into it, but what else could she do?
She hated the fact she had to go to him, but there was nowhere else she could turn. She needed the money and this was the only thing she could do to get it. This was the only thing he was offering her. At least it was only dancing. At least there was a God-damn piece of glass protecting her from the groping hands of the perverts that paid to watch her.
"Each dance lasts for as long as the customer pays for. If someone wants to book you for the night, they can do. I guess Dante would have told you that though."
"He didn't say much."
Sash looks around the booth as though trying to divine what kind of thing might await her. What kind of person. She holds onto the pole and leans out from it, pressing her nose close up to the mirror to try and see through it.
Isabella admires her curiosity.
"I can take you to the other side. You know, just to show you what it's like. You won't be able to see the clients of course."
"Ok", Sash says. "I'd like that."
"You rent the space for the night, so we charge you for that. Anything you make on top of that is yours to keep. You work for as long and as often as you like, as long as the booths aren't booked out. The more customers you have, the more money you take home, it's as simple as that. We've got almost twenty girls on our books, all making good money."
Isabella takes her back out into the corridor, to an apex and off to the left. Above, black paint makes the height of the ceiling impossible to determine. Sash reaches up anyway, keen to touch the nothingness. They pass through another red curtain, a large set of double doors protected on the other side by a guard whose ass Isabella pinches, and into a carpeted corridor. Isabella counts the doors carefully. When she reaches what she believes to be the right one, she pauses, her hand on the dented metal door knob.
"This is a dance club, not a brothel. That is the first and most important thing to learn. If a client offers you money for sex, or any other service outside of the ones we offer here, and you accept, you will be asked to leave. This isn't a place for pimping yourself, honey, there is good money on offer here and no need to do anything else for it, do you understand?"
Sash nods.
"If you want to pimp yourself, there are plenty of places in the city where you can do just that."
"Dancing is enough, believe me."
Isabella opens the door.
Inside, the room is a little larger than the booth on the other side, so the window is framed at the edges by a small part of the wall and looks just like an enormous TV screen.
There is a green leather chair with a chesterfield back, a drinks cabinet to the side, a table with a banker's lamp, and a mahogany trim bookshelf. On the wall, a Salvador Dali print hangs, of a woman looking out of a window to the distant sea beyond. The decor is modern, but a little outdated. The red carpet looks worn at the foot of the chair and the books don't look like they are real. Much of the room is cast in shadow, and what little light there is, seems to filter in through the booth next door.
"So this is it, how the other half live. Just to give
you an idea."
Sash walks around the room as though inspecting it for imperfections. She fingers the wallpaper and runs her hand along the line of books, before perching on the softened edge of the leather chair, picturing herself on the other side of the glass.
"Do they-?" Sash asks innocently, dancing her fingers along the arm of the chair. "-You know?"
Isabella tilts her head, like a dog that's just heard a noise too high pitched for a human ear.
"Dante said he wanted to start you off slowly."
"What does that mean?"
Isabella extends her arm and Sash takes it, pulling herself out of the chair. Still holding hands, the two girls head back out into the corridor and retrace their steps back to the booth. Another dancer passes them on the way, her tight ass shimmying in the soft fabric of her panties. From the look of weary resignation on her face, Sash can't work out whether she's just finished a dance or about to begin one.
"It means that tonight you only dance once. If the customer likes you, you get to come back."
"And if he doesn't?"
"He will."
Isabella smiles confidently.
They are back at the booth. Isabella holds the door open for Sash to enter. "Don't look so worried. You know how to dance, don't you?"
"Yes."
"And you know how to take your clothes off?"
"Yes", Sash says again, this time with a nervous smile.
"Then you'll be fine. Look-", she lifts Sash's chin with her index finger, "-you're a beautiful girl, the customers are going to love you. If you do what they ask, you'll be making millions in no time."
"Do what they ask?" There is worry in Sash's voice. "I thought this was just dancing."
"This is a bespoke service, and part of that service is dancing. The rest is what you do after you've undressed yourself. I thought you knew that, honey. I thought that's why you were here."
Isabella holds onto the pole, one leg wrapped around the other. She is elegant and beautifully poised, the lines of her dress framing her perfectly.
Max: A Stepbrother Romance Page 6
