Which is why he’d spent the last three days watching the school and its dancers. Watching Purkiss bark at the ballerinas for every sin imaginable—bad turnout, weak legs, shallow arches, lazy, lazy, lazy. The dancers hated him. They never challenged him, never defended themselves, never acted sullen or sulky or hurt when he humiliated them, but they hated him, Cal knew. After his divorce, Cal had become something of an expert in the subtle art of hatred, and it was fairly easy to diagnose once you knew the signs. A glance over the shoulder when a back was turned. A flex of the fingers. A hard stare out the window.
It didn’t matter how prestigious Purkiss’s small school was or how many dancers found jobs in Washington or Boston or New York afterward, these girls were miserable. No wonder they were thoughtless with their pointe shoes. No wonder they snuck out of the dancers’ house at night.
“They’re going somewhere,” Purkiss had told him that first day. “They come in the next morning haggard and slouching and not ready to dance…and their shoes!” His nostrils had flared then, anger shaking his short, slender frame. “Their shoes get ruined, absolutely ruined. It’s a disgrace.”
Cal had sat in the chair in front of Purkiss’s desk, staring at the small white man in front of him. It was a trick he learned in Iraq—you stare long and hard and silent enough, and the other person cracks like glaze on an antique vase. Deeply and into a network of thousands of other cracks.
Purkiss had finally admitted his real worry. “Tamsin, the oldest. She’s my daughter.”
“Do you care what the other girls do? Or only her?”
Purkiss had scowled, but a scowl from an aging male dancer didn’t frighten Cal in the least.
“She’s an amazing dancer,” Purkiss had said. “The best I’ve ever taught. She’s auditioning for the ABT in two months. I can’t afford for her to slip now.”
Tamsin. Cal learned over the next few days that she was the one with pale hair and even paler skin. Gold and ivory. And when she danced, she closed her eyes, as if she could shut out the world around her. Like a music-box girl, twirling alone forever.
1
Night One
Cal
Louisa, Lael, Ling.
Daneice, Devorah, Nanami, Nina.
Ellie and Yasmine. Isabella and Mary Grace.
Tamsin.
Twelve girls. Twelve pairs of pointe shoes knotted and slung carelessly over shoulders as the dancers crawled one by one out of the second story window and onto a nearby tree branch. Cal had to respect their ability to sneak out undetected—even with his car windows rolled all the way down, the only noise that came from the dark house was the rustle of the tree branches as the girls crept along and dropped like silent fruit onto the grass below. They walked out past the school property and piled into two different cars, hybrids that made no engine noise until they turned off their street.
Cal put his car into drive and followed.
He had a plan, like he always did. He’d follow, get pictures, go home and sleep off this latest run of work. And then tomorrow he’d hand Purkiss the evidence, get his six hundred dollars, and move on to the next job. It wasn’t much of a life, but it was about what a divorced ex-soldier could expect. He was lucky to have stable work, however lonely it was.
And it was lonely. In the Army, you were never alone, not really. There was always someone to keep watch with you, always someone else who couldn’t sleep, always someone else squinting at the road alongside you looking for disturbed earth and foxholes. But there was some loneliness still. You missed your family, your friends, cold beer. You missed your own horizon, trees, snow, the Science Channel, 24-hour drugstores crammed with bright bags of junk food.
He’d stupidly thought coming home to his wife after his last tour would mean being cured of all kinds of lonely. How wrong he’d been; he’d never guessed that peculiar isolation of laying in bed next to a woman while remembering the pops and booms of desert guns, the scatter of bullets and the smell of gunpowder singed in the sun. The blood, the fear, the blood, the blood, the blood.
They’d told people they’d grown apart. But the truth had been that it was hard to keep a wife when Fallujah was your mistress. So his last tour hadn’t been his last tour after all, and he signed up to go to Afghanistan instead.
Some kinds of loneliness were better than others.
The girls drove far out of Richmond, out into Goochland County where the horses and the rich people lived. Country roads were shit for tailing, so Cal had to stay farther behind than he’d like, following the unblinking red eyes of taillights through the bends and warps of the road, wondering where the fuck these ballerinas were headed. And then suddenly there were no taillights, just the trees in the dark, and Cal had to reverse to see what he’d missed: a narrow road turning sharply off the small highway, disappearing into the dark like a path into fairyland.
He killed his headlights, rolled down the windows again, and crept up the road. His eyes adjusted to the dark fast enough, to where he could see the individual trees and the black glint of the James River between their branches. The twist and rise of the road—
Awareness prickled on the back of his neck, and with a cold feeling in his gut, he realized he knew this place. It was different in the dark, different with the war ghosts in his mind, but the minute he cleared the rise and saw the sprawling, elegant profile of it, he knew.
Persepolis.
Shit.
He parked the car at the edge of the lot, killing the engine after confirming the two hybrids were indeed there. And sure enough, he could see the slender shadows of the girls down by the entrance of the building, gliding like swans into the door, the moonlight catching the shine of slipper-silk as they moved. And the idea of all those lithe bodies wearing their pointe shoes into Persepolis stirred up an uncomfortable amount of heat in his blood. The idea of Tamsin, long legs wrapped in ribbons, up on her toes and bent over a bench with her pussy exposed—shit. Shit.
She’s nineteen, he thought angrily to himself. A child. Stop it.
But it was hard to stop. Especially with Persepolis in full view.
He rubbed at his forehead, trying to remember the plan, trying to ignore the blood flowing to his groin without his permission. The problem was that the plan had gotten a lot more complicated just now, because Persepolis wasn’t the bar or house party he’d been expecting. Persepolis was the kind of place where people with lots of money and specific interests went to play. Whips and chains, that kind of shit. Cal had done a fair amount of work for them over the last four years, mostly background checks for new members, and so he knew very well what went on inside.
Which meant that he was going to have to tell Purkiss that his daughter was sneaking off at night to get beaten and fucked by strangers. Or maybe she was doing the beating. Either way, he didn’t think Purkiss would take it well.
Still, he had a job to do and he could still follow the plan. Take a few pictures of the cars outside, go home and stroke himself in the shower thinking of how those pointe shoes would feel on his back as he buried his face in some young pussy.
Fuck.
Take those pictures and go home, Cal.
And yet he was getting out of the car. Walking down the winding path to the door without his camera. Nodding at the doorman who recognized him immediately. Stepping inside the wide windowed bar area where those not at play drank and laughed and talked.
Persepolis was too cautious to serve minors, which meant that the girls wouldn’t be here. No, they’d be downstairs in the public playroom. Although, since they were far too young to be members, they must be guests, and there was a chance that whoever they were a guest of, he or she would have them in a private playroom.
Cal tried to ignore the knot of disappointment the thought tied in him. It had nothing to do with wanting to see those ballerinas fucking en pointe, those sleek, young bodies at work. Nothing to do with wanting to see Tamsin’s pert tits or high, round ass.
Nothing to do with the thought o
f all twelve girls in one room, licking and twisting and rubbing.
Sure. Because he could lie to himself, but he couldn’t lie to his cock. And his cock remembered exactly how long it’d been since it’d been inside a woman. Too fucking long.
He walked down the floating staircase into the airy concrete and glass playroom, taking care to stay in the shadows as he did. It wasn’t hard—a woman was whipping a man on stage and the spotlights were on her, and darkness spilled in from outside like water. It was as he moved undetected around the back of the room that he saw them. Waiting by the stage in their shoes, literal dancers in the wings.
He took a seat.
The first show ended fast enough, applause and wolf whistles echoing through the room, and then a woman he recognized took the stage—Mistress Hell, a half-Persian Domme with an affinity for young women and riding crops. Cal had done her background check four years ago; in real life, she owned a pricey graphic design firm and volunteered twice a month at a food shelter. But at Persepolis she was Hell embodied, and God help the little submissives she took under her cruel wing.
And tonight, there appeared to be twelve of them.
The girls mounted the stage behind Mistress Hell. In the bright lights, a person could see every small curve and dip of their bodies underneath their thin leotards; Cal had to stifle a groan when he realized he could see the dark buttons of their nipples through the fabric. They’d added small tutus to their outfits, and when Mistress Hell snapped her fingers, they all dropped to their knees facing away from the crowd. She snapped again, and they dropped to their hands, on all fours now.
Another snap and they went down even farther, foreheads on the floor, tulle framing each perfect ass. It made for a spectacular sight, all those toned legs and asses in every shade of brown and black and beige, a rainbow of smooth skin raised over those delicately-laced pointe shoes, and Cal had to shift in his seat to allow for his thickening cock. He never thought he’d get off on this kind of shit, but as Mistress Hell began laying into them with a riding crop, he began to see the appeal. All that firm flesh, just offered up, getting flushed and angry under the crop. And—ah, fuck—the wet spots growing on the leotards as the girls got hot from it. They squealed and squirmed, wiggling at Mistress Hell until she’d give them the crop to rub against, and rub against it they would, like needy little kittens.
He wanted to be the one to rub them where they were wet, the one to make those tight asses glow with heat. He wanted to walk up and down the row of those ballerinas and take turns with each one of them. Lick them from clit to puckered hole. Fuck them, going from one to the other to the other, dipping inside every single cunt. He wanted to paint all their asses with his semen.
He ground the heel of his palm against his erection, desperate to relieve the ache there.
Shit, shit, shit. This was spinning out of control. He was not getting paid to jerk off to his employer’s teenage daughter and her friends. He needed to get out of there.
Just as he stood up, Mistress Hell’s show ended and the dancers rose gracefully and exited the stage. The lights to the playroom came on—the shows were over for the night. The rest of the playing would happen privately. And even though he hated himself for lingering to check, he couldn’t stop the urge to know. Would they play more? Was Mistress Hell going to take them back to her room and make them lick her pussy? Would they split up amongst themselves and go with other members?
That seemed to be the case. Two or three girls with a man, a girl with a mistress, another girl with a master, three with a genderqueer Dominant named Jackson. By ones and twos and threes, they were all claimed by hungry club members and taken away, tulle and pointe shoes and all.
All except for Tamsin.
Tamsin stayed in the playroom until all of her friends were squired away to be fucked, and then she began to head for the staircase. Cal stepped into the shadows, cock still throbbing, and waited for her to pass by.
And then he followed her.
Up the stairs she went, through the bar, not pausing to say hello or glance at the river or anything. And then she walked through the front door. Cal gave it a moment and then followed.
Outside in the warm night air, Tamsin walked slowly down the path to the riverside, her head tilted back, as if she expected to catch raindrops on her tongue, only it wasn’t raining. If Cal could have seen her, he knew her eyes would have been closed. It was the same way she danced, chin up, eyes closed, moving inside of a dream. It pulled at something inside him, that habit of hers. Empathy maybe. Nostalgia for the kind of loneliness the young feel, still so free of the jaded anger of the old.
She moved nearly as silently as him, but even in her pointe shoes he could hear the whisper of her tread. He’d learned to walk quietly in Fallujah, in heavy boots walking through rubble. It was easy to be quiet on a flat river path.
Finally, she stopped and sat on a bench and began to untie the ribbons around her legs.
A fucking shame.
He should go now, he knew that. But he also knew that he should have been gone forty minutes ago and yet he was still here, still unable to detach himself, still having dangerous kinds of thoughts.
She’s nineteen. She’s your client’s daughter. You’re a stranger to her.
It was her sigh that undid him, finally, and the way she slipped off her ballet shoes and cradled a foot in her hands. Even from the safe distance of several yards, he could see the tape and bandages holding her poor feet together. Jesus Christ. Was that what all their feet looked like under those sweet shoes?
Why he did it, he couldn’t later recall, but he knew that sigh and the sight of that bruised and bloodied foot was part of it. But only part. The other part was submerged somewhere deep inside of him, a loneliness and a lust that had been denied for too fucking long.
“Tamsin,” he said, stepping out of the shadows.
To her credit, she didn’t jump at the sound of her name. She didn’t act frightened. Cal had to wonder how many older men approached her in the dark if she was this casual about him being here. It was just the two of them on the riverside, and Persepolis was the only light and safety for miles. She should feel all kinds of unsafe and it worried him a little that she didn’t. He kept his distance from her bench, kept his hands open and outward facing to show her that he meant no harm. That he wouldn’t advance any closer.
“Who are you?” she asked curiously. Her voice was as dreamy as he’d thought it might be from watching her. Floaty and a little reserved, like she was in her own world. Like she was lost inside it with no one to show her the way out.
“Cal Dugan. Your father hired me.”
She didn’t seem surprised by that at all. “Of course he did,” she murmured, looking back down at the river. “What for?”
“To follow you. To find out why you and your shoes look like shit in the morning.”
She smiled at that, but only a little. “I should have guessed.”
That surprised him. “Really? You should have?”
“My father only wants one thing from me—to see me become a principal dancer—and he’d do anything to see it happen. Have me followed. Threaten me. Take away things I love. I’m used to it.”
She hugged her legs up to her chest, propping her battered feet on the seat of the bench. She leaned her head on her knees and looked at him, golden bun shimmering in the moonlight. She looked like a Degas painting, unreal and gauzily elegant. There was no approaching her, no reaching her dreamy soul through the paint. Forever untouchable.
“What will happen if he finds out about Persepolis?” Cal asked, even though he shouldn’t. It was none of his business, and worse, the more he knew, the harder it would be to do his job. And he wasn’t in a place where he could walk away from six hundred dollars and feel good about his month.
Tamsin lifted her shoulder in a gesture like a shrug, keeping her head on her knees. “He’ll be angry,” she said, voice blank.
It’s none of your business, Cal, none o
f your business. Don’t go there, don’t even ask—
“Does he beat you?”
Cal didn’t consent to the question leaving his mouth, it just did. But he suddenly needed to know, with gut-twisting urgency, whether Purkiss was hurting Tamsin. He couldn’t afford to lose the money…but he didn’t know if his conscience could afford six hundred dollars subsidized by this girl getting the shit kicked out of her by her teacher-dad.
Tamsin didn’t answer the question, just unfolded her long limbs and stood, grabbing for her pointe shoes. “Don’t worry about me,” she said shortly. “I’ll survive.”
“Tamsin.”
Her eyes flared in the dark and she stepped closer to him. In the daylight they were a soft gray, but now they were shimmering pools of silver. “Why are you so worried about it?”
Cal didn’t have a ready answer for that. Only the truth. “I don’t know.”
She studied him for a moment longer, silver eyes scorching across his face and down his neck to his body and back up again. He was fit, he knew that much, but it had been a while since he cared what a woman thought of the way he looked. And so it was like a gift when she met his eyes again and her face was flushed.
“Goodbye, Cal,” she said and left.
Cal watched her go with a clench in his chest that he hadn’t felt in years. He would be back tomorrow night, he knew that much for certain, but what he didn’t know was whether it was to do his fucking job or whether it was to screw this job altogether.
He only knew he couldn’t wait to find out.
Once Upon a Dream Page 5
