Four Degrees of Heat

by Rochelle Alers, ReShonda Tate Billingsley, Brenda L. Thomas; Crystal Lacey Winslow

  After seeing Lynn off in the morning, I needed to make another trip to the bank. I also had to return a call to my Realtor because I’d made up my mind to make an offer on the house in Wyndmoor. I was about two blocks from my apartment when my Jeep over-heated. Another driver pulled over to help me, and once it cooled off I drove to the Infiniti dealer in Willow Grove. I’d had my Jeep Cherokee for four years and had wanted to get another car, but I’d been saving to purchase a house. But with the extra money I’d made, it was now possible to do both.

  I was looking at vehicles on the showroom floor when one of the salesmen introduced me to the owner of the dealership. My face must’ve looked familiar to him, as his did to me. When we went into his office, I realized he was one of the men that had been at Preston’s party. Once he was comfortable that I wasn’t there to spill the beans on what he did for fun, he allowed me to purchase the 2004 Infiniti SUV with no money down.

  I phoned Belinda and told her what had been happening. She told me she knew Mason and that he was single, rich, and some kind of currency trader. She also told me she’d danced for him in the past, but he was so stone-faced that she figured she wasn’t his type.

  “You taking care of yourself, right? Not sleeping with any clients, are you?”

  “Of course not. I’m just going to do a few more shows, and then I’m finished.”

  “Good, because I have a job for you. It’s at a private club called Columbus in West Fairmount, and the owner says they need a breath of fresh air.”

  I was glad Lynn was out of town so I wouldn’t have to lie. I’d yet to hear from Mason about the job he’d wanted me to do, so this would give me something to do in the meantime. Columbus was an exclusive men’s club that most people probably didn’t know existed. I watched the other women who danced before me, and they were good, but they used the pole too much, and Belinda had taught me to use the crowd instead.

  I waited for my turn, and when I stepped in front of the curtain, the lights came up, bringing a glow around the room. This was my stage.

  “Here, all the way from Charlotte, North Carolina, is our special guest, Maxie. So bring out the big bills and put those dollars back in your pockets.”

  I moved onto the stage, closed my eyes, and began my dance. When I opened them, the first person I saw was Mason. Rather than give him the satisfaction of looking his way, I danced around every man except him, allowing the fantasy of watching and not touching me eat at his loins. When the dance was over, I walked through the club, giving lap dances. I could see him longing for me, but I had to make him suffer. When I saw him making his way to me, I headed out the back door where my driver was waiting.

  I watched him ring my cell phone for the next two hours. When I was finally home in bed, I answered his call.

  “Why’d you do that to me tonight, Max?”

  “I’m sorry. Did you want a lap dance? I didn’t see you waving any money in my direction.”

  “Belinda has already told me what you won’t do. But if it’s money you want, then I have plenty.”

  “You’re right. But for the right amount you could get a private dance.”

  “What if I told you I like watching you dance for others even more?”

  “Is that why you had me dance for those women?”

  “I could care less about those women. It’s you I want.”

  This conversation was definitely going in the wrong direction, but I liked it.

  “Max, if you’d just let me have you, just once, I’d do anything to satisfy you.”

  “And what would you do with me, Mason? If you had me, let’s say for a few hours.”

  He didn’t say anything at first, and I knew his imagination was taking over.

  “Would you just want to watch me dance?” I wanted to hear his answer, see just how bad he wanted me.

  “Ohhh, Maxie. Maxie, I’d allow you to be the nasty bit—I’m sorry, I’m way out of line.”

  “Yeah, I think so. Why don’t you call me when you have a job for me.”

  Two days later Mason phoned me on my cell while I was having breakfast with Lynn.

  “Hello, this is Max,” I said into the phone without checking the ID.

  “I need you to perform for me.”

  I jumped off Lynn’s lap and went into the kitchen. “Can you hold on a minute, please? I need to get a pen so I can take down your information.”

  “Borgata Hotel, Atlantic City. And the date is whenever you can make it.”

  Week Three

  After counting my money three times, I had to talk to my mother. I needed her to agree that she’d given me the money as a gift so I wouldn’t have any problems with the large down payment I wanted to put on the house. All the papers had been approved, and all I had to do was bring the deposit by the end of the week. The money I’d make in Atlantic City would be just enough for me to use as a nest egg once I moved into the house.

  I arrived at the Borgata, where Mason had left a key for me at the front desk. When I got into the room, there was no sign of him. I’d almost wished he’d been waiting for me. Usually I didn’t drink when I was working, but this night I fixed myself a drink from the bar and waited to hear from him. When the doorbell rang, I looked through the peephole. It was Mason.

  “Are you ready for work?”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “A private dance for a very rich client of mine whose business I’m trying to secure. Room 1722.”

  If I’d had any thoughts that this dance was for Mason, his cocky attitude completely washed that away. He was all business.

  After I was dressed in a red satin gown that had slits up to my waist and red rhinestone heels, I slipped on my robe and went to the room. The door was open, and smooth sounds of slow music filled the room. When I walked inside the suite, Mason was alone. I knew this was what I’d been waiting for.

  He sat in a chair at the table, sipping on his drink. Before I even began to dance, I could see he was hungering for me.

  “I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”

  His hesitation made me anxious to begin, but he was paying, so I waited. As the song he wanted me to dance to began to play, he nodded that I could begin. I moved my body to the sultry voice of Kem and as he crooned out “Love Calls,” I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t beg Mason to take me.

  “Open your eyes. I want to see what you need.”

  I let the straps slide off my arms, and when the gown hit my waist, he stood up and placed the straps back on my shoulders. Rather than sit back down, he allowed me to move my body against his. Then, with his arms behind his back, he placed kisses across my shoulders, then used his fingertips to remove the straps of the gown until my body was exposed. My eyes were closed. This time I was too afraid of what he might see in mine. I let the music run deep into me like I’d never done before. Kem’s words took over my emotions as he sang, “nowhere to hide…nowhere to run…when love’s on its way.” And Mason took over my body, devouring my breasts with his eyes before he took them in his mouth. I continued to dance slow, slower than the music that continued to play.

  I stepped out of my dress, and his mouth moved over my entire body, leaving no part of my skin untouched. When his mouth made its way between my legs, he opened the lips of my pussy and kissed me there, passionately, bringing with it a rush of liquids. And then he licked my sensitive clit, bringing sounds from me that neither of us understood.

  A tingling sensation went up the center of my spine, and when I couldn’t stand up any longer, he carried me to the bed. All the time my mind raced. Was I now a prostitute, no better than Belinda and the women that had been at her party? Would Mason pay me afterward? Did I want him to? If I let him have me, would he think I did this all the time?

  I helped him undress while he talked to me like I’d never been talked to before.

  “You…like…being…nasty…don’t you, Max?” His fingers pushed inside me, searching for that special place. “I wanted to see you fuck that woman, M
ax. I wanted to see you come in her face. You wanted it, didn’t you, Max?”

  I told him yes, not knowing what I wanted except for him to fuck me. When he’d gotten me to the point where I was begging for him, he began pushing his wide dick deep inside me, inching it farther into my body. And when it was as far as it could go, he just lay there, letting it grow. I was afraid that if it grew too much, he would never be able to pull it out of me. But he knew what to do as he fucked me hard, slowly, passionately, fiercely.

  “Tonight, Max. Tonight you’re my nasty bitch. You hear me?”

  “Yes, whatever you want. Just please don’t stop.”

  “Don’t talk. I’m taking the lead on this dance. You hear me, bitch? I’m fucking you tonight.”

  We had sex from the bed to the floor and multiple orgasms from both of us. But he still wasn’t finished with me. As I lay spent from his loving, he opened my legs and lapped me, and the juices that had come from both of us.

  “Mase…un, Mase…un, what…don’t.”

  I tried to move away from him, but he gripped my hips and brought me into his mouth. And then he found a part of me I never knew existed. He ran his tongue along the left side of my clit unmercifully. I held onto his shoulders for support, and he continued to tantalize that spot until my body could give no more.

  Who was this man, this Mason Turner, who knew my body better than I knew it myself? The dance for Mason didn’t end until two days later.

  Week Four

  Tuesday was closing day for my new house, and things went without a hitch. When it was over, I rounded my driveway and sat there looking at my little dream house. So many things had happened to get me to this place, and now was not the time to sort them out. Lynn would be home tomorrow, and I had to leave Mason behind. Somehow I’d manage to tell Mason that I could no longer be his private dancer. He’d paid me five thousand dollars for that dance, and a part of me didn’t want to accept his money. If I never danced for him again, that weekend at the Borgata would be all the memory I’d ever need.

  I heard a car pulling up behind me, and when I looked in the rearview mirror, I saw that it was Lynn. Somehow he’d gotten in a day early.

  “Max, I don’t know how you did it, but I’m proud of you.”

  “Come on. I want to show you the inside. How long are you home for? Will you be able to help me move?”

  “Whatever you want,” he said, slapping me on my ass.

  Lynn and I walked through the house, with me babbling about everything I wanted to do and buy.

  “Listen, baby, I can pull together some of the brothers to help move your stuff, but it’ll have to be during the week. Can you get some time off next week?”

  “I can’t, because school will be starting, and there are a ton of meetings before classes start. Why don’t you just take the extra key, and you can handle the move.”

  While I prepared for work, Lynn moved most of the furniture I was taking with me into my house. I’d had several conversations with Mason, and neither of us could figure out where to go from here. Had it been business or pleasure? When he tried to make it one, I made it the other. If nothing else, he was good for phone sex on the nights when Lynn was on the road.

  I had one night left in my apartment, and Lynn was on his way home. I’d picked out a one-piece red corset to wear for the occasion. I was upstairs dabbing on perfume when I heard him come through the door, shouting my name.

  “Maxine, where the fuck are you?”

  He didn’t sound like a man who was happy to see me.

  “Lynn, I’m upstairs,” I answered, making my way down the steps.

  I was about to give him a kiss, but his twisted-up face told me to step back.

  “What the fuck is this shit?” he asked, throwing a DVD across the room.

  I didn’t have to ask what it was. “Where’d you get that? Lynn, I can explain. I was in Charlotte, I mean Atlanta. It’s not really me. I mean, it’s not what you think.”

  “Max, I been fucking you for almost a year, and you think I don’t know your every move? Why’d you do some shit like that?”

  “It was supposed to be private.”

  “Private my ass—this shit is sold at every truck stop up and down the road. Did you think you were that good that you could cover yourself up and I not know who you were? All this time you shaving your pussy and dancing all the fuck around the house talking about you been taking dance classes. What are you now, some damn two-dollar ho?”

  “You don’t understand. Just listen to me, Lynn. Please.”

  “Please shut the fuck up, Max, ’cause there’s no understanding why my fuckin’ woman is dancing in some stinking-ass porno. How many niggas did you fuck down there, Max?”

  “Lynn, please just hear me out. I only did it that one time.” But I was talking to his back.

  “Now I know where you got the money to buy that fuckin’ house and the new truck you got. And just think I wanted to marry you,” he said, reaching into his pocket and throwing a black box across the kitchen floor. Then he walked out, slamming the door behind him.

  I walked downstairs and picked up the black box. I didn’t even want to open it. Instead, I squeezed it in my hands and sat there on the floor, crying alone in the dark.

  In the distance I heard my cell phone ringing. I ran upstairs to answer it, hoping it was Lynn.

  “Hello. Hello?”

  “Hey, lady, what’s wrong?”

  “Mason, I’m sorry. I just—”

  “Just thought it was someone else?”

  I started crying. “Mason, I can’t talk right now. It’s not a good time.”

  “What is it, Max? What’s wrong? I’m coming to get you.”

  I gave him my address. Twenty minutes later he was ringing the doorbell.

  “Mason, I shouldn’t have told you to come here…you’re one of my clients…I was just going through something.”

  “Max, we both know I’m more than a client. Why don’t you let me come inside so we can talk? Tell me what’s wrong.”

  But I couldn’t let him inside. There was so much he didn’t know about me that my apartment might reveal.

  “I’ll be okay. I just got some bad news,” I said, squeezing the black box in my hand.

  “Why don’t you get dressed? We can go somewhere and have some coffee, a drink maybe.”

  That’s when I realized I was standing there talking to him in my corset. He probably thought I was a prostitute for sure. This was not working out right. Everybody was getting the wrong message.

  “Wait in the car. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  I pulled a pair of jeans and a T-shirt over my corset and went outside to his car. I noticed that the lights were out in Lynn’s apartment, which meant he’d left. I was glad for that, because the last thing I wanted was for him to see me with another man.

  We rode over to Broad Street to the Stenton diner, and he ordered coffee for both of us. I wasn’t in the mood for talking. Instead he talked about himself, and I learned that Mason was divorced, had no children, and was an only child. He lived in a house in Villanova and had an office on City Avenue, where he was an investment banker.

  By the time we’d finished, I didn’t want to go back home, so he suggested we go to a hotel. He took me to the Rittenhouse, and rather than talk, I got drunk and gave myself to him.

  Afterward, when he was asleep, I regretted knowing him, regretted North Carolina, and most of all regretted having lost Lynn.

  September

  Week One

  Ihadn’t spoken to Lynn or Mason before I flew off to Charlotte to spend Labor Day with Belinda. There were so many things I wanted to forget, and dancing helped me do just that. We stayed in Charlotte for one night before we flew down to Miami, where Belinda had booked the two of us to dance at a few strip clubs.

  By now I’d made my own contacts in Philly’s stripping community. One afternoon while I was at Crate and Barrel buying some new things for the house, I ran into a woman who invite
d me to dance at an exclusive gentleman’s club that had recently opened in Bala Cynwyd. Had I not been so disenchanted with my personal life and my big empty house, I probably would’ve known to say no. But after assessing my situation, I found myself anxious to do it. I craved this dancing thing now; it was like a drug. One more dance and one more dollar. I enjoyed the fantasy of being seen and touched by men and women who would never be able to take me home.

  On Sunday afternoon I found myself walking through the back door of the very upscale Gestures gentleman’s club. It wasn’t just a strip club, it was a full-service five-star restaurant. It was luxury at its finest. Its ambience was unmatched by any club I’d ever performed at.

  When it was time for me to go onstage, I realized that some of my enthusiasm was gone. All I could hear was Lynn’s voice, and I imagined him being on the other side of that curtain. When they called my name, I swallowed my pride and did my thing. With my eyes closed, I was oblivious to the dark eyes that watched me from the fringes of the dance floor. As my routine ended, I turned and noticed Mason standing at the bar.

  He tried to call me the rest of the day, but I kept my cell phone off. That was still the only number he had. I was sitting in the teacher’s lounge the next day, listening to the boring banter of the other teachers recalling their summer vacations, when my cell phone vibrated. I saw Mason’s number come up and realized that maybe my summer wasn’t yet over. I moved to a corner of the room for some privacy and answered the call.

  “Max, I need to see you. Let me talk to you, please.”

  “I’m not that girl, Mason. I’m not who you want.”

  “Tell me you don’t miss me. That you haven’t been thinking about me.”

  I couldn’t lie. He was all I’d thought about in between my regrets at losing Lynn. When I didn’t answer, he continued.

  “Max, I miss you. Please, can’t you at least have lunch with me?”

  “I don’t know. Our relationship was supposed to be business, and now you want to keep fucking me like I’m some prostitute.”