AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As if he sees something that no one else in here can, or does.
Get a grip, I snap at myself, spinning away from the man so that I can’t be pinned by his gaze any longer, like a butterfly to a corkboard.It’s not unusual for men here to fixate. It means nothing.Hemeans nothing.
The letter wasn’t from him. Not a man like that.
I can still feel his eyes boring into my back, cutting through me, and I grit my teeth, forcing a smile as I throw myself into the performance. The music picks up, the beat shuddering through the stage, vibrating in my bones, and I let it wash over me again and carry me away. I let it washhimaway, the lingering stickiness of his eyes on me, and I tell myself to forget about it.
He’s hardly the first customer to develop an obsession, and he’ll hardly be the last.
Every man who comes in here has a type. I, unsurprisingly, tend to appeal to the ones who have a “princess” fetish, who like women who seem unobtainable, aloof, even disparaging of them. I’ve never been able to fawn over the men here or pretend to love and adore them the way some of the women do. Still, it’s drawn my own little group of loyal customers over the brief time I’ve worked here.
Some of them have moved on, but they’re always replaced by others.This man is just a new one,I tell myself, arching against the pole as I raise my hands over my head, undulating for the eyes on the opposite side of the stage.A new admirer. A new source of tips. He’ll be fascinated for a while, and then he’ll move on, too.
That shiver runs down my spine again as I think of the letter. One of them hasn’t moved on. One of them is going too far.
I see you, bitch.
A bullet is too quick for you.
You’ll pay.
All in cutout, tacked-on words. A caricature of a threat.
The music rises and falls, and I go with it. I’ve danced so many times to this track that it’s second nature by now, and this is my favorite part of it. I change up the routine a little every time, keeping it fresh, and the regulars fucking love it. They love to think it’s a special show all for them, that I’m so into it that I’m giving them something new and different out of the pure, unadulterated lust flowing through me.
They’d be horrified if they knew the truth–that while I often throw myself into the music, I know this dance and thevariations I’ve spun on it so well that I could write a grocery list in my head and still not miss a mark. I don’t normally, not wanting to risk fucking up when Ineedthis job, but I do it now, trying to calm my racing heart with the most mundane things as I hook my leg around the slender pole.
Peanut butter. Eggs. Cheap bread. Noodles. Sauce.I visualize a piece of paper, my hand on a stubby pencil, scratching it all down. Writing by hand, since what I have now could barely be called a phone. Just a flip burner to satisfy the club's requirement that they have a way to reach me. No touchscreen, no apps, no quick access to anything.
There was a time when I would have been utterly horrified by the idea of being unchained from my iPhone. When I was raised on caviar and crustless sandwiches and wagyu, I couldn’t have told you what a peanut butter sandwich tasted like. When the thought ofneedinga job would have been something so foreign I couldn’t have comprehended it.
I never thought of dancing for the ballet as a job. It was a passion, an accomplishment, anescape.It was everything I wanted, and clung to, to keep me from disappearing into the life my father had planned for me.
“Athena!” A short, stocky man waves a fistful of bills in my direction, his face pleading as I dance toward the edge of the stage. “Oh god, I–”
He’s red-faced, sweating, staring at my tits. His hand holding the bills shakes. As I bend down, hair falling forward, shaking those tits for him, his eyes widen until I’m worried they might bug out of his head. When I gracefully fall to my knees, hips arched and thrusting as I throw my head back and undulate in front of him,giving him a chance to stuff those bills into the thin rhinestone-encrusted strap of my g-string, he looks as if he might pass out.
For a moment, I forget about the letter. I forget about the man with piercing blue eyes. For a moment, I forget that this isn’t me, that this place is somewhere to hide, to pretend, and I let the music sweep over me.
My first few nights at the club, I was disgusted by all of it–the smells, the cheap lingerie, the ludicrously high and shiny heels, the pounding music, the cheap liquor masquerading as top-shelf booze, purchased at wholesale and poured into bottles that don’t reflect the actual contents. I was disgusted by the men and the sex pervading everything, the game that every dancer played in their own way to eke tips out of desperate customers. It had felt like hell.
I, quite dramatically, declared to myself on my way home that first night that I’d rather die than go back.
But my decision was that. Risk trying for something better, something less unlike my former self, and risk my life in the bargain–or stick with the plan and the shitty apartment and the bottom-of-the-barrel club. It had felt like a fall from grace, like having my wings clipped, and in many ways, it had been.
After a few weeks, I discovered something.
The dancers that I pitied held power over these men. They doled out attention and favors as they pleased, dangling their fruits over the open mouths of men who wanted to be their begging and willing slaves. Not every girl wanted to be here, but the majority of them didn’t seem to hate it. They weren’t forced or trafficked into it like I suspected–although I’mverycertain that isn’t true for every club on the street. The owner, Igor Vaslev,turned out to be a lewd and leering man, but a fair one, and one who didn’t force his dancers to do anything they didn’t want to. He also didn’t stand in the way of them breaking laws to do more than the club rules allowed–as long as he got a cut.
It was a two-way street, and I was traveling down it. I had a choice to go along for the ride or get off on the next exit, and I made it.
Though men like the red-faced one shoving bills in my panties still revolt me, there’s an inevitable rush to it that I would have never thought I’d feel. As I slide forward on my knees, the money securely in the thin strap, and crawl close to his face as I arch my back and bounce on the stage again, I feel that thrill of power.
I could tell this man to doanythingin exchange for a small sexual favor, a glimpse of flesh, and he would.
I rock back on my heels, sensually rising back up on my feet as I twist in front of him, turning back towards the other side of the stage. As I do, I immediately seehimagain.
The sharp face. The piercing ice-blue eyes. The small smirk at the corner of his full mouth as his eyes rake down me, assessing me. He takes his time doing it as I gyrate - his eyes pausing at my throat, my small breasts, my flat, firm belly, and my long legs. A dancer’s body, every inch of it, toned and trained, and I see the appreciation in his eyes.
