Fallen Angel (Club Burlesque)

by Logan Belle

  “You can paint on my other arm. I’m not taking off my skirt.”

  “I thought you said you were a burlesque dancer,” Celeste said. “Don’t be shy around us.”

  Thanks a lot, Mallory thought.

  “I’ve seen her backstage getting dressed a dozen times, so I don’t know what she’s so uptight about,” Violet said. Both women looked at her expectantly.

  “How long does the paint take to dry? I don’t want to spend the whole night sitting in this room in my underwear.”

  “I’m sure we can find a way to entertain you until it dries,” Violet said. “Now take your skirt off.”

  Something about the sharpness in her voice and the stone cold serious look in her bewitching eyes made Mallory want to do as she said. She imagined Violet must make her S&M clientele very happy.

  “Fine,” Mallory said. She was about to instruct Violet to make sure it was something small—that she didn’t want paint all over her. But she decided not to say anything. Protesting or trying to direct her would no doubt just provoke her into doing the opposite. If Mallory was going to take off her skirt, she might as well just enjoy the ride.

  Mallory stood, unzipped her skirt, and stepped out of it. She folded it and placed it on the shiny hardwood floor. She stood in front of Violet in her blouse, black lace underwear, and suede Tory Burch boots.

  “Sit back down,” Violet said.

  Mallory returned to the stool.

  “Spread your legs.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to paint something right there.” She poked Mallory’s inner thigh with the wood end of the brush.

  Mallory moved her legs apart, and Violet slid her stool closer. She selected a fine-tipped brush and, after dipping it into purple paint, began working on the highest, innermost section of Mallory’s thigh, inches from her pussy.

  Celeste walked to the door and closed it.

  “What if Penelope sends someone in for painting?” Mallory said.

  “They can wait. Besides, I’m surprised I got even one partier who doesn’t already have a tattoo. I don’t think they’ll be beating down the door.”

  She returned to stand behind Violet, who was intent on her handiwork between Mallory’s legs. Celeste leaned down, and at first Mallory thought she was getting a closer look at the image on her legs, but then she realized Celeste was reaching around to cup Violet’s breasts. Violet ignored the woman’s touch and kept painting. Celeste pulled down Violet’s bustier, baring her ample and—Mallory hated to admit—perfect breasts. She couldn’t help but watch Celeste’s fingers graze Violet’s hard nipples, and she felt a quiver between her legs.

  “Almost done,” Violet said calmly, as if a hot woman wasn’t feeling her up. Mallory looked at the image on her leg. Violet had painted wide open purple flower petals that looked like an engorged vulva.

  “What is that?” Mallory said.

  “It’s a violet, obviously,” she said.

  Violet leaned back to admire her handiwork.

  Mallory looked at Celeste, who winked at her.

  “Want me to blow on it so it dries faster?” Violet said, and before Mallory could reply, she leaned in and pulled aside her panties, blowing gently on her pussy.

  Mallory’s heart started to pound. She knew she should get up, that she should put a stop to whatever it was that was going on with Violet, but when Violet held Mallory’s underwear aside with one hand, and with the other brushed her thumb against her clit, Mallory just looked at her. They locked eyes, and Violet pressed a finger deep inside her. Mallory had to bite her lip not to moan.

  And that’s when the door opened. Alec.

  Violet let Mallory’s underwear snap back into place, but her own toplessness was a dead giveaway that more than body painting was happening in the room.

  “Took you long enough,” Violet said. “Maybe I should have drawn you a map.”

  He appraised the scene in front of him and looked at Mallory questioningly. She stayed silent, and he took a few steps toward them.

  “Sorry to interrupt.” He looked at Mallory reproachfully. “Just pretend I’m not here,” he said.

  “Well, that’s impossible. So if you’re going to stay, at least make yourself useful. See if that door locks,” Violet commanded. Alec examined the old-fashioned knob and turned something until a sharp click echoed in the high-ceiled room.

  Violet sat back on her heels, and Mallory closed her legs, careful not to press her thighs together and smudge the flower.

  “Why don’t you sit on the couch and watch. If you’re a good boy, maybe we’ll invite you to join in.”

  Mallory could tell Alec was about to say something—maybe tell her to fuck off. But Celeste was now kneeling beside Violet and tonguing her breast, and Alec kept his mouth shut and took a seat on the couch.

  Violet turned back to Mallory and tugged off her underwear. Mallory didn’t want to look at Alec—she was uncomfortable with her desire for Violet and uncomfortable knowing how much Alec probably wanted Violet, too.

  The issue of whether or not to look at Alec was solved when Violet blindfolded her with her panties. Mallory reached up to adjust the fabric so it wasn’t so tight, and Violet pushed her hand away.

  “Spread your legs,” she said. Mallory complied, but still Violet pressed her knees apart further. She felt warm wetness as Violet licked the outside of her pussy as she slid her finger back inside slowly. Mallory’s mind couldn’t process the pleasure because she was too busy imagining Alec watching and also wondering what Celeste was doing.

  Violet’s tongue stopped, and all Mallory felt was the slow pulse of her fingers—one inside, one massaging her clit. If she had been more relaxed, she would have come, but it was impossible. She reached up and pulled down the makeshift blindfold. Violet was watching her intently.

  “Don’t make me tie you up,” she said, her voice throaty with desire.

  But Mallory was looking at Alec—more specifically, at where Alec had been sitting two minutes ago. He was gone.

  Mallory felt her stomach tilt.

  “I have to go,” she said, scrambling to pull on her clothes.

  “Forget about him. Let me fuck you,” Violet said.

  “I think you just did,” said Mallory.

  Mallory was shaking when she walked out of the Plaza and ignored the white-gloved doorman’s offer to hail her a cab. It was a painfully perfect October night—the kind of evening that would usually send her and Alec to the East River to sit on a bench, hold hands, and look at the moon. Alec always said that even when they were old and not running around the city doing exciting things or having crazy sex, they would always have that—long walks, holding hands, and the moon.

  But now she wasn’t so sure.

  “Damn it, Alec. Pick up your phone.” It went straight to voice mail for the third time.

  She sobbed out loud, almost stumbling on the cobblestoned walkway alongside Central Park. A couple turned to look at her.

  Mallory sat on a bench and told herself to pull it together. Okay, he had to pick up his phone eventually. Or not.

  She pulled herself up from the bench and hailed a cab. He didn’t have to pick up his phone, but he had to show up at the apartment eventually.

  During the cab ride, she continued to call and text him but got no response. At Eighty-third Street, she handed the cab driver a twenty, didn’t pause for change, and, once inside her building, took the stairs to the eighth floor instead of waiting for the elevator.

  Out of breath, she pushed the door open and found Alec sitting on the couch, tapping on his iPhone.

  “I’ve been calling you!” she said, closing the door behind her. Her heart was pounding.

  “I know,” he said calmly and without looking at her.

  “Why did you run off like that?” she said, taking off her coat, tossing it on a chair, and sitting next to him. He didn’t move his eyes from his phone, and a quick glance at it told her he was reading his LA flight itinerary. H
er stomach tightened.

  “Is that a rhetorical question?” he said.

  Okay, so he wasn’t going to make this easy for her.

  “Alec,” she said, putting her hand on his arm. He shook it off. She forced herself to stay calm, and she took a deep breath. “Remember when Bette took us to the Slit last year, and you told me you wanted to have a three-way with her, and that I should just see where the night took us? And it didn’t happen that night, but that was a major turning point in our relationship where you were asking me to be open to adventure. And then we decided the openness was making our relationship too complicated, and we agreed to keep things just between us. But I thought the other night, when you invited Violet to dinner, that it was a sign you were getting restless again. I was trying to be a good sport—to not be threatened by your interest in Violet and not to go back to the way things were when I first moved to New York. When you were the adventurous one and I was intimidated by everything.”

  “This always happens: You suspect that I’m interested in someone else; I admit that I fantasize about a three-way or something—just being honest with you because most guys would never admit that to their girlfriends but trust me they all think it—and then while I’m all talk, you are the one who goes out and actually hooks up with people! It happened with Bette, and it happened again tonight. How do you explain that? How do you expect me to feel about it?”

  Mallory didn’t know what to say. He had a point. Was this all her fault? Or was Allison right—the burlesque world, with its focus on the body as art, as a means of expression, where public nudity was no big deal, was skewing their perception of normal. Once Mallory accepted that anything was possible, was anything impossible? And was she using Alec’s curiosity or mild attractions and flirtations with other women as an excuse to explore her own fantasies? She really didn’t know.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, combing back his hair with her fingers. She wanted to lean in and kiss his temple, but she was afraid he would push her away. And she was afraid that the feel of her lips against his skin, or the smell of him, would be her undoing. “I love you. I wish I could take it back. You know I don’t want anyone else—any more than you do.”

  “How can I know that?” he said. And she could tell by the look in his eyes that he was in pain—that he wasn’t just arguing with her as a power play or out of ego. He truly doubted her.

  “Alec, please don’t say that. I love you. I’ve never loved anyone but you. I think this is all just growing pains. We’ve been together a long time.”

  “Maybe too long,” he said.

  She gasped.“What does that mean?”

  “It seems like this trip to LA is good timing. We need to be apart. Let’s not talk until I get back in a week. I need to think, and if you’re honest with yourself, you probably do, too.”

  “You don’t want to talk the entire time you’re away?”

  He shook his head.

  The last thing she needed or wanted was a week of not speaking with him—especially knowing he would be running around LA with Kendall James. This was a disaster. She had tried to make things better and look at what she’d done!

  “I don’t need to think!” she said. “I know how I feel about you. I know I want this relationship.” She reached for his hand, but he stood and walked into the bedroom. She followed him and watched him pull the blanket and a pillow off of their bed.

  “I’m going to sleep on the couch tonight,” he said.

  “Please don’t,” she said, knowing it was useless to try to change his mind. Alec was very stubborn, and she could tell by the coldness in the way he looked at her that this was beyond anything she could say in the moment. Now she was more than upset: she was scared.

  And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

  9

  “Hey there,” Gavin said, walking into her office with his overcoat thrown over his arm.

  Mallory had spent the past two hours burying herself in the mountain of paperwork piled on her desk at the office. It was the only thing to keep her from checking the time, from obsessing, Alec is boarding the plane now. Alec is halfway to LA now. Alec will land in two hours… . The thought of going home that night was dreadful. She had packed her ballet clothes so she could go straight from the office to BAE and avoid the empty apartment for as long as possible.

  “Do you have court this morning?” Mallory said.

  Gavin was dressed in a navy blue, pin-striped suit. He looked good in suits, and she thought for the umpteenth time how handsome he was—in a preppy, magazine-ad sort of way. She wondered what his relationship was like with his girlfriend. She was sure that Connecticut-born, horse-loving Susan Moreland had never infuriated him by letting another woman finger her.

  “Yes, unfortunately. I could use the morning to go through paperwork, but that is not going to happen. Everything under control here?” he said.

  “Yes, fine,” she said brightly, surprised to find her mood had surged at the sight of him. “I’m going through the Marchand depositions.”

  “Great. I have Fiona going through some of those, too. I need that by the end of the day tomorrow. “

  “No problem,” she said. “Good luck with Klein.”

  “Thanks. And thanks for all your help on that one. You never know with Judge Hager, but I think we’re going to get good results.” He glanced over her shoulder to something behind her. “You’re a ballet dancer?” he said.

  “What?” she said, turning around to see what he was looking at. She spotted her BAE bag on top of a filing cabinet. “Oh. No, I’m not a ballet dancer. I just do it for exercise. I hate the gym.”

  “That’s so great!” he said, with a boyish enthusiasm she had never seen him exhibit. “Cynthia Hobbs is on the board of the New York City Ballet, you know.”

  Cynthia Hobbs was one of the plaintiffs in one of Gavin’s most successful recent litigations. Thanks to his strategy in the courtroom, she had been awarded millions in alimony.

  “No, I didn’t know that.” It was strange to talk to Gavin about personal stuff—if ballet could be considered personal. Which it was, compared to their usual discussions that were all work, work, work.

  Mallory was aware of her desire to prolong the conversation, but she didn’t want to hold him up by forcing him to make polite conversation with her.

  “Great. Well, see you later,” she said. Was it her imagination, or did he linger in her doorway an extra beat?

  She turned back to the depositions on her desk. She wished she hadn’t told Julie and Allison about her plans with Violet and Alec, because they’d each called twice to find out how it went, and she couldn’t bring herself to tell them. It was much easier to be the good friend who confided everything when it was the boyfriend who was screwing up, not herself. She couldn’t imagine what Allison and Julie would say if she told them about last night. Actually, she could; they would tell her that she finally had Alec behaving somewhat decently, and she had gone ahead and behaved more irresponsibly than he ever had. And they would be right. They would tell her she deserved for him to want some time apart.

  With a sigh, Mallory picked up the file marked Klein v. Klein. Gavin was going to trial for one of his clients, Marcy Gold Klein. The Kleins’ case was a perfect example of money not buying happiness; Marcy was a successful producer of fashion shows and her soon-to-be ex-husband was a major Wall Street rainmaker. They had the town house, the Hamptons house, the parties with Rachel Zoe on the West Coast and Donald Trump on the East. And they had beautiful twin girls. Yet theirs was one of the nastiest divorces Mallory had seen or read about in her seven months at the firm. And that was saying a lot; it amazed her that people who at one time had pledged their lives to loving each other and making each other happy could go to such lengths to destroy each other sometimes as little as a few years later. When she expressed her reaction to Gavin, he said that he had ceased to be surprised or particularly affected by anything, but conceded that the burnout rate for matrim
onial attorneys was especially high.

  “Does this ever affect the way you think about the future with Susan?” she asked one day across the conference room table. She had no idea what gave her the idea that it was okay to ask such a personal, audacious question, except that she truly was just wondering. Susan Moreland was a pretty blonde, a competitive horseback rider, and someone Gavin had known since his days at Horace Mann, though they hadn’t started dating until a year ago.

  Gavin did not seem put off by the question, and in fact answered it in the careful, thoughtful way he answered her questions about choices he was making in his casework.

  “It would be easy to become cynical, doing this job. But I am trying to remain an optimist. A romantic, even.” He smiled as though he were half joking, but she didn’t think he was.

  Now, after a decidedly unromantic night, she couldn’t help but think about that conversation.

  Her cell rang, and her heart soared. She allowed herself to hope that it was Alec, saying he was willing to talk some more. That he wasn’t leaving for LA with things like this. But it wasn’t.

  “Bette?” she said.

  “Hey, gorgeous. Where am I catching you?’

  “I’m at work—the law firm I told you about.”

  “Ugh. I thought I’d rescued you from the clutches of corporate America.”

  “Yeah, well, living la vida loca doesn’t exactly pay the rent.”

  “It does for me.”

  “That is why you are my idol,” she said, only half joking. “How is life in the fast lane?”

  “Um … okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

  “Does that mean you’re in town?”

  “I will be tomorrow.”

  “Perfect timing! We’re doing the Halloween show tomorrow night. Want to come by for old time’s sake?”

  “Aren’t I still banished from the kingdom?”

  When Bette had unceremoniously quit the Blue Angel after falling into a relationship with the beautiful, androgynous pop star, Zebra, Agnes banned her from the club and quickly hired Mallory to fill the vacant slot in the show, thus launching her career as a burlesque performer.