by Marata Eros
We stare at each other, our ragged breathing the only noise that fills the hall.
Mick grins. “Now that's the only look I want you to wear, Faren. Naked would be better, but I'll take this too.”
His deep voice vibrates against my body, and I shiver from that subtle vibration, from his scandalous words and the images they provoke. I swim to the surface of my mind. I'm in the hall of my apartment building making out with Mick in my lap-dancing outfit.
Mick scrutinizes my morphing emotions as they blaze across my face. His brows pull together. The dip of dark red hair at his forehead is near-black in the shadowed hallway. “Tell me where you're really going, Faren.”
Mick demands, not with his words but with the gentle kisses he lays between my breasts and I shudder, sinking my fingers into his hair.
He groans.
“No.” My face turns, and his fingers tighten into my hips as he drags me deeper into the stiffness that presses between my legs. “You don't own me, Mr. McKenna,” I say in a voice low with need.
“God, I love your defiance,” he says, his tongue against my flesh. “It's such a turn on.”
My eyes seek his. “Only because it's true.”
He raises his eyes to meet mine. I can feel each of his fingers blazing like spots of heat through the slinky material of my dress as he cinches those fingers tighter.
“I could find out,” Mick says. His words are light, but his eyes are dark with intent.
I nod. “You could,” I challenge.
Mick cages me with his arms, the heat from those hands beside my face, and sighs. “It's not good enough. I want you to want me.”
I laugh, and his brows jump above those dark eyes. His expression makes my heart race. I want him to dominate me, control me because I don't want the control I have to own. In this one thing, he is the antidote to my situation. The perfect opposition to my decisions.
“I do,” I answer. The truth is almost painful.
He surprises me by cupping his large hand over my sex, his thumb pressing against my clit. I buck against his hand, sucking in a breath that he captures with his mouth.
“I know that you want me.” He lifts his mouth and meets my eyes.
Mine are half-closed with lust. Mick moves his thumb, and moisture surges down against where he touches. I whimper at the swirl of that soft pad against my most intimate of areas. I can't argue because what he says is true but...
“Okay,” I gasp as that dexterous thumb swirls faster, harder. “Then what are you saying?”
His hand leaves me, and I slap my door, my bad hand steady as a rock. My core throbs for a finish he doesn't provide. It's not blue balls; it's blue clit.
His finger moves to my jaw, running the length of it. “I don't know.” His stare never drops as his finger slides a trail of heat between my breasts.
I sigh, moving my face away from him. He steps back, and my body is cold without his. “You do know, or you wouldn't have said anything. You've made yourself into a billionaire.” I glare at him with uncertainty and sexual frustration. “You're not going to let one woman get under your skin, screw up your agenda, your easy life.”
Mick's expression darkens. He slams his hand next to my face, and the door rattles as my eyes widen.
“You're scaring me, Mick,” I whisper.
“Good,” he says, an inch from my face. “You don't seem like you know what you want or how to protect yourself. Keeping me at arm's length because you're scared of what's here between us isn't working.” His eyes move to my mouth. “It isn't going to work.”
I move into his body, and his hands drop, clenching to keep from touching me. His body leans toward me, a physical tell of his desire and forced restraint.
But I keep pressing. “It is working.” I plead for neutrality because I know what I can reasonably give. And there isn't one speck of reason within our entire relationship. A casual meeting was lost the second he took my hand in the middle of the street. Neither one of us would admit it. We still won't.
He loosens a hand and touches a tendril of my hair, spreading it to thinness between his fingers then tucks it behind my ear. “It's not going to work for me.” He drops his hand.
“I don't know what to tell you.” I want to tell him everything.
Mick is telling me that he wants sex, that he wants more. But he wants the Faren he thinks he knows. The martyr who has been through hell and survived, who takes care of her mother. A woman who is an enigma. A fixer.
Not the Faren who performs illicit dances at his clubs. Who is a dead girl walking. No, he doesn't want her.
I change the subject like a gutting. “I'm meeting Kiki later. We need a little dress-up girl time.”
I can see he doesn't believe me.
“Fine,” he says with a casual shoulder lift. “I don't offer this to most women.”
“I feel so special, Mick.” My sarcasm echoes in the hall where kisses did moments before.
Mick rakes a hand through his hair. “That's not what I meant and you know it.”
I shake my head. “No.” I press my finger into his chest, and his scent wafts between us, cinnamon, spice, and male. I suck it in greedily. “What I do know, is that you're used to getting what you go after.” I fight my instinct to fling myself in his arms and wrap my legs around him.
His face falls into grim lines. “True.”
“Then why are you telling me you want more? That my 'defiance' gets you off? We both know it's some kind of flame that'll burn bright only to snuff out. What's the point?”
I shouldn't say those things. I had planned to give Mick that precious part of myself, and now I think, worse than my approaching death, that I might have given more than I meant. Having sex with him might slowly kill who I am instead of being the easy experience I wanted to mark off before I'm gone.
Mick grabs me, his fingers desperate against my bare back. He breathes against my goose-pebbled flesh, and his steady words sink like talons of truth into my psyche. “What if it's not?”
What if the flame doesn't burn out but more brightly than before?
That's the question that presses between us, understood all too well.
Mick gently pushes away from me, and I look at his face, gorgeous and serious. He walks backward, his eyes pinning me as time stood still between us. So much unrequited.
“Midnight?” he asks, like confirmation.
I nod. I know what’s on the table. I know how it'll end. It's the journey that scares me.
~ 9 ~
I wait until my racing heart returns to normal and then slowly walk to the freight elevator. I slap the down button. After the elevator lumbers to its aggressive stop at ground floor, I push the metal door aside.
I look around the foyer. It has been recently cleaned, and I watch my footing on the hex tiles that gather like a sea of white puzzle pieces. I throw on my unattractive puffy coat and move through the dark, narrow sidewalk to the off-street parking, shivering as I fumble with my keys. I slide into my mom's rattrap VW.
I try not to cry because I have half a dozen dances to slink through. I tip my head back, and hot sadness leaks down the sides of my face, dampening my temples. I gulp and bear down on my emotions. It's unnerving how smooth I’ve gotten at that. How numbingly simple.
I drive to the new venue after tapping the address into my GPS. The arrow rotates as an iconic race car appears on the screen. I follow the directions given by the sexy British voice and park where it tells me.
My eyes take in the skyscraper as my hand clutches the gearshift. I can't count the stories. The building seems to disappear into a sky polluted by the light of the city.
In glittering silver neon, the name blinks at me: Rose Enterprises.
Of course, Thorn’s venue would be one of Mick's buildings, though I’m surprised he's so careless after the big raid. I thought he'd be more cautious. Embarrassment seizes me. What kind of woman wants a man who peddles what Jared McKenna does? He’s hiding behind being a self-mad
e billionaire when he gets a hefty kickback from young, desperate women.
It's sick, and I wait for the justifiable shame to strangle me. A wheezing exhale escapes my lips. My moral compass no longer points true north. It's guided by circumstance and fate, neither conferring with the other.
I sit inside my car, hands gripping the wheel. A second cell chime reminder sings in the silence of my car and I jump. Sighing, I slide out of the cold darkness of the car's interior that held me like a cocoon and walk toward the gigantic sleek glass doors. A bellman greets me with a secret smile I want to slap off his face. I brush past him as though it doesn't hurt that he knows what I do.
I wait until I get into the elevator before I slip on my back up mask, both hands trembling tonight. I can't remember where I left my original. The altercation with Mick, the surprise of him showing up. It's too much to hide. But somehow I must.
I walk through the elevator doors as they slide open.
The venue is the nicest I've attended, if I think on those terms. Hand-cut glass chandeliers drip their elegance like an upside-down wedding cake, five tiers tall in a triangle formation. The table is dead center underneath them and holds a group of ten men.
I approach, thinking the “clients” are in short supply tonight. My eyes seek every corner for who else might be here, what other anomalies are present.
Thorn rises like a Poseidon in a deadly sea, reaching out to me. I want to run from that outstretched palm.
Instead I move nearer and slid my damp palm into his dry one.
“Faren,” Thorn says, giving me a smile that doesn't reach his eyes.
He draws me behind him, and every male's eyes are glued to my ass. I whisper by them. A hand passes through the fringe of beads that make a faint noise as I walk.
“No touching,” Thorn reprimands him playfully.
Tension sings in a taut line through my center.
The man from my first dance slaps a paddle on the table. “Enough of this showmanship, Thorn.” Jay shoots Thorn an angry glare, and Thorn smirks.
He has all the power. I am merely the puppet whose strings he manipulates.
I want to speak, and Thorn sees it in my expression.
“What is it Faren?”
I hate his face.
“I...” I feel the intensity of my blush and know it's bad. “Why am I the only girl?”
“That's an interesting question,” Thorn says.
Jay rolls his eyes, twirling his finger.
“Get on with it. Your attempt at foreplay grows tiresome.”
My eyes flick to Jay's then back to Thorn. I'm not sure what's going on. It can't be good. My gaze lands on each man, and I feel my shoulders drop. Ronnie Bunce isn’t among them. The laps are old. Jay is maybe thirty-ish, but the rest are over fifty.
The old pervs. I keep the revulsion off my face, but the effort's not pretty.
“Faren,” Thorn begins, running his eyes down my body like he knows it intimately.
I loathe his show. Jay narrows his eyes on Thorn, his assessing gaze moving between the two of us.
Thorn lowers his voice. “You've been selected for a bidding lap dance.”
His words are a sucker punch to my gut. The last auction had been won by my stepfather. I had escaped by a hairsbreadth. This one has all the trappings of some new violation.
An older man dressed as a butler flows out of a corner. His silver tray is ready and waiting with a single card on it.
Thorn said, “A predetermined figure has been selected for this dancer based on popular demand.”
I cringe at his words, my eyes hopping from one face to the next.
I watch the card pass to each man. Whatever they see causes them to look at me then each other. No one speaks. A silent acquiescence flows between the bidders. An excited but invisible buzz begins, and I cringe. What's on the card?
I realize they've all been my laps. That's the common denominator. I’ve tried to expunge the memory of dancing for them only to have their physical presence serve as a grim refresher.
“The winner of this auction gets all the extras as part of the cost and can pay an extra five thousand for a maskless dance.”
Maskless.
My head whips in his direction, my hair skating across my bare shoulders in a flurry from my response. “No!” I say, backing away. “Thorn, you promised.” I know it's pointless... like that man owns a shred of integrity.
I've never wanted to kill anyone but Ronnie. However, Thorn might be the exception.
He sees it and throws his head back, laughing.
“No one is going to want to pay that much to see my face anyway,” I say. I cross my arms, unconsciously putting my breasts on sharp display. All eyes follow the movement, and I fling my arms to my sides.
“You can always say no, Faren. No one here is about force.” Thorn looks around at the men's lascivious eyes. “Right, gentleman?”
They murmur their agreement, but their gazes reveal their lies. They want more than they have a right to.
It's laughable. Thorn hides behind his position, his criminal coercion. I look at the one client who might show me mercy. My eyes lock with Jay's, and I beg a silent plea.
Our stare is broken when one of the men stands, tossing his cloth napkin on the table. “This is absurd. No woman is worth that!”
The room falls instantly silent.
Only money has the ability to suffocate noise so completely.
Thorn inclines his head. His cufflinks are a parody of Mick’s. Thorn’s like a one-dimensional copy. He tries so hard that all a person sees is artifice, not the result he covets.
For me, everything circles back to Mick. Mental, physical—all of it.
The irate client stalks toward the door. Thorn makes no move to capture, wheedle, cajole or beg. He just lets one of the birds walk.
He turns back to the others. “One less man to take away this lovely, young... dancer.” Thorn says dancer like whore and winks at me.
My head dips and tears sting. They are not tears of sadness but pure, unadulterated rage. I hide it, casting my eyes to the floor like lures.
“Faren.”
I inhale deeply in an attempt to calm myself and lift my hate-filled gaze to Thorn.
He nods at my expression, his indifference to my feelings profound. “Let's begin, gentlemen.”
They wouldn't know gentle if it bit them on the ass.
They begin at the atrocious figure that should make me gag and feel like a prostitute. Instead, it makes me greedy for what it can do for my mom. Twenty thousand dollars could pay off half her debt tomorrow.
I'm game, I decide.
I feel as if I'm watching myself from a distance. This is happening to someone else.
Then the bidding stops. A final twitch of a finger rises then falls with the softest tap on the circular table.
The ticket slides across the smooth wood to Jay.
He's won. I'm so thankful.
So resigned.
~ 10 ~
Jay leads me by the hand to a new room. We're encased in a modern swath of chrome, metal, and glass. It’s so unlike the seedy, once-glamorous confines of the carousel of past venues.
The door is still marked with the number one, like the other doors before it. The number hangs slightly askew and I can't help but think Thorn has a sense of humor. He must run around with numbers in bulk. I put the fist of my free hand against my mouth to stifle the giggle. I know it's an insane stress reliever and take what I can get.
Inside the room, the bright city lights stretch below us. The acres of glass reflect the artificial lights like chips of brilliance embedded like diamonds. The dark velvet of the cityscape appears vast and untouched. We move to a chair that anchors the center of the room.
Ten chairs stand in a half moon around the one I know will hold Jay and me.
I whip around, my hand still clasped in Jay's warm, large one.
Thorn is there, the evil smile of accomplishment a natural break in
a face that should be handsome but just looks chiseled apathy.
I can't believe I didn't anticipate this eventuality.
Thorn has met someone who presents a challenge. Someone he instinctively knows does not fit. Thorn doesn't know why, but his masochistic edge hones in on my innocence and desperation like a tuning fork, and I am helpless before him.
The old laps file in. Toward me, surrounding me. Their eyes tell the story of their intent.
They're the audience for my performance.
My eyes narrow on Thorn.
“This isn't a problem, Faren... right?” That empty gaze challenges me to deny him, to quit.
But like any predator who senses a weakness in his prey, he's got me by the short hairs. Thorn doesn't know the reason; he just knows he does. The soft underbelly of my desperation is present for slicing and dicing. Thorn jumps in with both feet to crush my hope.
I turn away from him as the men settle in. Jay squeezes my hand gently, and my eyes rise to his. Jay's gaze tells me it's still just him and me. We can do this. I don't know when I went from being a girl giving him release to a girl he wants to save, but it happened fast, like a switch being flipped.
We move toward the chair, and it looms large at our approach. Jay drops my hand, and the fringe of beads sways at my rear as quiet music fills the space. Not a murmur, mutter, or voice can be heard.
Jay begins a silent striptease, removing his suit. The tie pulls through his collar, a flag of silk floating to the armrest as he unzips his pants.
My hand shakes when I pick up the towel. I can't stop my eyes from making a downward shift to his giant erection. I swallow, brave as I've ever been, and stand before him, ignoring Thorn's presence at my back.
Jay reclines in the wide chair, a copy of every chair I've done a lap dance in. The cushion is wide enough to accommodate my knees on either side of his muscular thighs. I slide my knees in place, straddling him.
“Faren.” Jay threads his fingers through my hair. His grip tightens, and he pulls me toward his mouth.
