I try not to squeal. This has been an unpaid internship so far. If I get paid, I can quit stripping.
“Thank you, sir! I won’t let you down, I promise. ” I can’t help grinning.
“I know you won’t, Grey. ” He leans back and slides his phone from his blazer pocket, tapping a message. “I believe Leslie has some paperwork for you to file, and then you may go. ”
The paperwork for the assignment only takes a few minutes, which is good, since I have to get back to my dorm, finish a paper for my lit class, and then change for work tonight. This internship is a godsend, but it’s kept me busier than ever. I work four nights a week on top of five classes every semester and thirty hours per week at the internship. I barely eat, barely sleep, and haven’t had time to dance for my own enjoyment in weeks.
It’ll be worth it all if I can get hired full-time by the studio.
I get back to my dorm and finish the paper as quickly as possible. I start going over the files Kaz emailed me. Fourth Dimension is the primary production studio for the project, along with Orbit Sky Films and Long Acre Productions. Jeremy Allan Erskine is directing, and I spend the rest of my study time going over Kaz’s notes on Mr. Erskine’s body of work and his overall ideas for the project. He’s best known for Red Sky, a post-apocalypse drama that won six Oscars, including Best Picture. He worked with Fourth Dimension and my boss Kaz on The Sun Also Rises, so a film adaptation isn’t new to him. The intent with this remake—according to Mr. Erskine’s notes in my file—is to stay true to the novel and pay homage to the 1939 film, while rejuvenating it with a more modern aesthetic.
Kaz isn’t just treating me as an assistant because I know it’s not normal for a lowly intern-assistant to a lead actor to have this kind of project file. He genuinely understands my passion for film and hopefully is grooming me to work with him on future projects. Still, he has to answer to the spirit of the internship, which means a low-level assistant assignment to complete the grade.
I don’t have time to get to the cast list before I have to leave. I peel out of my skirt and blouse, put on a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt, and head out to catch the bus to the club. Once there, I change into my costume, the booty shorts and flannel shirt. I cake on the makeup, tease out my hair into glossy honey-colored waves, and then check myself in the mirror.
As always, I barely recognize myself. My hair is huge, hanging down past the middle of my back and brushed out for maximum volume. Makeup turns my gray eyes stormy and, if I’m admitting it, hypnotic. Bright red lipstick, rouge, thick foundation, mascara…
I’d have expected to lose weight, seeing how infrequently I eat and how much I’m running around, but I’m still me. I’m still thick through the hips and bust. I see my body differently now. I’m not just a woman with clothes on. I see the body beneath the clothes, which I never looked at before. Not really. I’m not just a person, just like anyone else. I’m an object, a thing to be desired. I’m aware of my br**sts and backside and of the fact that men enjoy those parts of me.
I sigh as I loosen the knot in the shirt a bit, adjust my br**sts and retie the knot so my cle**age is more accentuated. I brush some foundation over my hip where I bumped into the desk in my dorm room. Guys don’t want to see bruises.
I’m delaying. I always delay. I never want to go out there. I thought I would get used to it, but I never have. My heart still hammers and I still feel ashamed, still feel nauseated. When the moment comes that I have to peel my shirt off and bare my br**sts, I always want to crawl into a hole and pull dirt over me. I hate the lewd gazes and the pawing hands and the whistles and the suggestions.
I’m about to reach out to open the dressing room door when Timothy barges in. “Grey. Glad you’re here early. ” Excitement gleams in his eyes, which worries me. “Tonight’s your lucky night, Grey. Some bigwig actor rented out the whole club! And guess what? He wants a private dance in the VIP room with just you and him. I told him you don’t do nothing extra, so you don’t have to worry about that. But this is big, Grey. Big, big money. ”
I nod and try to calm my nerves. It’s just another night. I’ve done celebrity VIP rooms before. We’re a tiny little club way off the beaten path, and most of our clientele are lower-middle-class working men, and sometimes a few Hollywood types out to “slum it up. ” But every once in a while, an actor or sports star will show up, hoping to get a night out away from the paparazzi. One thing Timothy is adamant about is no photographers and no journalists, ever.
I touch up my makeup a bit, recheck the knot in my shirt, and make sure my cle**age looks right, and then I go out there. Lydia is on the stage at the moment, dancing to a Ludacris song. She is a short, big-breasted Iraqi girl working her way through nursing school. Lydia’s sweet and a good dancer, and like me she refuses to do private parties outside the club, and never does extras of any kind. I walk the club floor, assessing the guys. They’re all Hollywood, sleek and attractive and polished and oozing faux-charm. Most are already drunk, and I do half a dozen lap dances before I’ve even gotten from one side of the club to the other. I haven’t seen the actor who rented the place out yet, but he’s in a VIP room. This is just the hangers-on, the sycophants and the assistants. I do a few tables, then do my turn on stage. Part of my draw is that the only time I’m actually topless is during dances. I do the tables and work the floor in costume. Guys are into it, I guess. They like the mystery. Of course, the flannel shirt is opened far enough that I’m basically topless, so it makes the guys nuts.
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I do my basic routine, spinning and twisting around the pole, teasing by unbuttoning the shirt but not letting them see anything, then re-buttoning and popping the buttons. The topless part I’ve nearly gotten desensitized to. Nearly. Meaning, I don’t actually start to cry until I have to take off the shorts and they’re next. Since they’re tight, it’s actually quite a feat to get them off gracefully.
Then I’m dancing in nothing but a skimpy thong. I’m close to tears the whole time. They can see my bottom, all of it. The thong is little more than a minuscule triangle over my privates, and barely covers that much. When I dance and move around the stage, they can see everything.
I finish my stage set and retreat to the backstage area to re-gather my nerves. The guys in the club are hammered, and they’re tipping like crazy. I pull a hundred and fifty from the first set on stage, and I had another eighty from the lap and table dances. And I haven’t even been to the VIP rooms yet. But the stage number…oh, god. The catcalls and the suggestions were worse than they’ve ever been. The reaching hands, which is technically against the club rules, but really up to the individual dancers to discourage…they grab me and touch me and try to peel the thong off. They ask me to go home with them. They shout in crude detail what they’d do to me. I blush when they shout those things. I can’t help it. I don’t think they can see the blush underneath my makeup, but it’s there. I blush and I cringe and I swat away the hands playfully but firmly, and I avoid their eyes.
When I’m backstage and Inez is up for her set, I feel my stomach revolting. I hurry into the dressing room and barely make it to the little toilet, where I heave my stomach empty. Tears mingle freely with the sweat on my face. When I’m done heaving, I slump to the cold floor and rest my face against the cool porcelain, and I let myself sob for a moment. I let myself wish I was back home in Macon. I can’t help but picture Mama’s face if she could see what I’m doing to survive.
A fist pounds on the door, and then it opens. “Grey, goddammit, you don’t have time for this!” Timothy is pulling me away from the toilet and dabbing at my mouth with a paper towel. “They want you in the VIP room. Right now. Room three. Brush your teeth and then go!” He doesn’t cop a feel this time, just shoves me toward the sink and then once I’m done, out of the dressing room and through the doorway leading to the VIP rooms.
I catch my balance and my breath, and then shoo Timothy away.
My hea
rt is pounding and my skin is crawling, tingling. I stand outside room three with my hand on the knob, but I hesitate. Something inside me is rebelling, telling me to run, to go back, to leave. But I can’t. I’ll lose the job, and I’m not guaranteed the full-time spot at Fourth Dimension, not yet.
I twist the knob and push the door open. A scarlet leather couch runs in a semicircle around the room, which is lit by a pair of lamps with shades to match the couch. The walls are matte black, and side tables endcap the couch. A bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label sits on one end table, surrounded by bottles of Coors and Bud Light, some empty, some full. The room is hazy with cigarette smoke, and beneath that is the acrid scent of marijuana. One of the end tables has a pile of white powder on it, with some divided into thick lines.
There are four men in the room. Three of them are stunningly gorgeous. The fourth?
He’s a god of the big screen.
The three men are off to one side, near the pile of cocaine. I recognize them all. One is Armand Larochelle, who won Best Actor for his role in Name of Heaven. Armand is tall and slim, with shoulder-length blond hair and sculpted features. The second is Adam Trenton, a character actor and supporting actor in action movies. He recently did a role in a sci-fi action adventure that landed him his first leading role. The third is Nate Breckner, mostly known as a romantic comedy lead, but he’s been doing roles to get him out of that typecasting.
The fourth man is Dawson Kellor. My heart stops, my breath catches. I’ve seen pictures of him, I’ve seen him in his latest films. But none of that does him justice. Not even close. Onscreen he’s breathtaking. Sharp features, penetrating hazel eyes, dark hair somewhere between brown and black. Tall and ridiculously ripped, with sculpted arms and a broad, hard chest. He’s Brad Pitt and Henry Cavill and Josh Duhamel and so much more. That’s just how he seems on screen.
In person…he’s beyond perfection. I can’t look away from him, but his beauty burns me, like staring into the sun.
And now he’s in my club, and he’s staring at me expectantly, and I can’t move. His eyes are quicksilver, a changeable hazel. He’s too beautiful for words, and I’m not sure what to do. My body won’t work.
Music thumps from the speakers, a Jay-Z song. Armand is watching me, a small tube in his fingers, head bobbing to the music. The other two men have beers in their hands and are staring at their phones. They look drunk. They glance at me and then dismiss me by looking away.
“Are you gonna dance or what?” Dawson asks. His voice is darkness, deep and enveloping.
The song ends, and a techno dance beat comes on. I can’t take my eyes off Dawson, but I force my hips to move. I let the music take over and flow through me. I lose myself in his eyes, which seem to darken as I sway closer to him. I know there are other men in the room, but all I can do is focus on Dawson Kellor and hope to get through this night.
I’m in front of him now, nearing him. His knees spread apart, and his hands come to rest on my hips, his palms brushing the bare skin above the denim of my shorts. I’ve never let a client touch me before, but I can’t seem to find the strength push his hands away. My skin burns where he touches me. His eyes are on mine, despite my cle**age in his face.
I’m shimmying to the music, slight, small shakes of my hips, enough to set my br**sts bouncing. My arms are over my head in that awkward pose men seem to love. His gaze flickers down to my jiggling br**sts and then back up to my eyes. I can’t read his expression. Men always wear their desire on their faces, in their eyes. Dawson doesn’t. But his hands are curled around my waist, possessive. I should make him let go of me, but I don’t.
I’ve never been touched like this, never had a man’s hands on my body, anywhere. Not like this. It’s always been stolen touches, brushes across my backside or pawing fingers at my br**sts as I dance on stage.
This…it’s a connection. His hands touch me and I’m sucked in, and I’m not a stripper, for a moment. I’m clothed, and he’s looking at me. At me. Almost as if he’s seeing Grey, instead of Gracie, even though he couldn’t possibly know the difference.
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The song shifts to “Just Give Me a Reason” by Pink and Nate Ruess. I’m not sure why the song filters through my awareness. I force myself out of his grasp and into the center of the room. I dance, and I find myself dancing more like a dancer than a stripper. I know I have to take my clothes off. I can’t get away with just dancing. That’s not my job. But now, more than ever, I don’t want to do that. I want to talk to this man. Not because he’s a celebrity. Not because he was People’s Sexiest Man Alive last year. Not because he’s a phenomenal actor, although he is. There’s something in his eyes that’s drawing me in.
I make my fingers unbutton the top button of my shirt, and I see Armand and the others shift on the couch. I ignore them and spin in place, bend at the waist facing away from them, straighten, turn again, untie the knot and unbutton my shorts. Dawson never looks away from my eyes.
I wonder what he sees in my gaze.
Nausea blasts through me as I slip another shirt button free. I hate this part. My heart pounds with the familiar sense of shame. Now the shirt is open, and my moves are sinuous, silky and serpentine. I roll my shoulder, and the flannel slips, dipping low on one side. Another shimmy and shake of my shoulders, and the shirt falls down around my back. My arms pin the shirt in place, but the tops of my br**sts are bared, my crossed arms covering my ni**les. My hips sway and rock to the music.
I’m caught in his gaze again, and everything fades away except his eyes.
And then I force my arms away, let the flannel fall to the floor. Armand sucks in a deep breath, and I hear one of the other men groan in appreciation. Dawson doesn’t move, and his expression doesn’t shift except for a widening of his eyes. His gaze rakes over me then, from head to toe and back. I go back to dancing, accentuating the bounce of my br**sts, running my hands over them, lifting them and posing, all the things I’ve learned get me tips.
This is harder than stage dances, harder than lap dances or other VIP room work. This is personal. Other men look at me and they clearly want me, but something in Dawson’s gaze speaks of more than desire. There’s possession in his eyes.
I toy with the zipper of my shorts, glancing down at my front and back to Dawson, the calculated coy glance that I don’t feel. I lower the zipper and pull the edges away, showing the triangle of red fabric and the pale skin beneath.
I’m struck then, apropos of nothing, by the memory of Candy, on my first day, telling me I had to get my privates waxed. It hurt, and I nearly died of shame.
The song shifts again, to another nameless dance beat, and I begin the swaying shimmy that leads to my shorts sliding off. Before I can push the denim over my backside, however, Dawson voice fills the room.
“All right, boys. Out. ”
“Aw, come on, Dawson. It’s just getting good,” Nate says.
Dawson doesn’t answer; he just casts a long, hard stare at Nate, who sighs in frustration. “Fuck. Fine. ” He gets up, and the other two men go with him.
When the door closes behind them, Dawson stands up slowly. It’s like watching a lion rise from the grass, all coiled power and silky grace. He moves toward me, eyes hot and dark, almost the same stormy color as my own somehow. He grabs my wrists in huge, powerful hands.
“Leave them on. ”
I don’t struggle in his grip, and I’m not dancing. Any time I’m at work, I’m dancing. Every move is a dance. From table to table, booth to booth, onstage to offstage, it’s a dance. Even if it’s just the exaggerated sway of my hips and the bounce in my gait, it’s a dance. I’m never still.
But now I’m frozen by the heat in Dawson’s eyes as he stares down at me. I’m in the high-heeled boots that make me six feet tall, but Dawson stands easily four inches above me.
“Why?” I ask.
Men always want me to take it off. And I’m a st
ripper, so I do. But this man is stopping me, and I don’t get it. I don’t dare think of the raw power in his eyes, the easy strength in his hands, the possessiveness in his touch.
Dawson doesn’t answer. He just puts his hands on my hips and gets me moving to the beat. He moves with me. He’s dancing with me, swaying with the beat. I let him. I shouldn’t, but I do. Something in the vibrancy of his presence erases my capacity to resist him.
Then his hands push at the denim, and fear hits me like a ton of bricks. “No, you can’t—” I stammer. In my nerves, the Georgia accent is thick.
“Yes, I can. You want me to. ” His voice wraps around me, slides over me like blood-warm water.
I shake my head. We’re still dancing together, moving to the music. I’m staring up at him, lost. “I don’t—I don’t do extras. You can’t touch me. ”
“Yet here I am, touching you. ” His palms slide up to my waist, spanning the space between br**sts and denim. His hands are enormous, powerful, yet impossibly gentle.
His touch is fire. I’m trembling, shivering. I gasp when his palms slide down again, and then his fingers hook into the belt loops and tug down. He tugs the denim, tugs again, and then they’re off and collapsing around my ankles. I step out of them and try to breathe.
His palms slide like lava over my waist to my naked hips, and I’m trembling, frightened, terrified. Consumed. He’s touching me. No one has ever touched me like this. Seeing desire in a man’s eyes one thing. Feeling his desire in the raw strength of his grip on my skin—that’s something else. Dawson’s touch is hypnotism made flesh. I can’t resist it. I don’t know what’s happening to me, but it’s terrifying me. I don’t want to want this, but he’s right. I do want him to. I’m devoured by his hands on my hips. He hasn’t touched my bottom, hasn’t touched my br**sts. Just my waist and my hips. And Lord help me, it’s like something is eating away inside me, pushing some kind of desperate need through me.
I don’t know what it is I need, except it has something to do with this man in front of me, who has stripped away my clothing and my strength and my confidence in one smooth move. I’m naked in front of him. The thong is no cover. Not for the way his eyes see through me.
“Don’t be scared. ” His voice is warm. Almost kind.
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