by Raven Dark
Surprise registers on Monica’s pretty face. “Dee must really like you. The last woman who crossed her was fired. She left in tears.”
My brows go up, unease pricking at me. Lucky that Dee likes me, even if I don’t know why.
“Well, come on, slowpoke. Better get to work on your section.” Monica thanks a customer as she puts his tip into the tip jar behind the bar. It’s already half-filled with bills. She sets an assortment of drinks on a tray for me. “You’re filling in for Vicky in the left section.”
At least I’m not in the section closest to the stage. That section always seems to have the creepiest guys.
I set to work, weaving my way through the tables, dropping off drinks and avoiding wandering hands as I go.
Apparently, there’s a rule that none of the customers are allowed to touch the strippers, but it doesn’t seem to apply to the hostesses. The leering stares of men make me feel as if surrounded by hungry predators. I’m working a nine-hour shift. I need a shower.
A week into the job, and it still surprises me how huge this place is. There are doors to private rooms everywhere, and halls that lead to more of them, plus a whole second floor with another stage. It’s a maze you could easily get lost in if you aren’t careful.
Now and again, I still get the feeling I’m being watched, but when I glance around, I don’t notice anyone who’s watching me any more than usual.
The next few hours crawl by and my feet are killing me in these heels. How I haven’t broken my ankle, I have no idea, but I’m starting to understand what Monica meant when she once told me that she thought high heels must have been invented by a man with a sick sense of humor.
My break finally comes, so I serve up the last drink, setting a whiskey down for a man in a suit, my eyes on the table. He thanks me.
“You’re welcome, sir,” I mumble, without lifting my head. “Enjoy the show.”
I return to the bar with a fifty dollar tip from him and have to keep myself from whistling in surprise.
That’s more money than anyone’s ever given me at one time. In the Colony, we don’t get paid. Everything goes to the church, and the leaders decide where to spend it, supplying everyone with what they need.
I put the tip in the jar. The club has things set up so that, at the end of the night, the tips everyone receives are divided up between us.
“That man just tipped a fifty,” I whisper to Monica.
She shakes her head at me with a smile.
“What? Oh, no, what did I do now? Did I get the orders mixed up?”
“No. Why do you do that, though?”
“Do what?” Great. I’ve done something stupid again, haven’t I?
“When you serve a woman customer, no problem, but when it’s a guy, you get all weird with him. You won’t look him in the face and you get all mousy. It’s…interesting.”
Oh my Lord. Am I still that bad? I’ve been trying not to do that. There’s no good answer I can give. I’m not about to tell her I’ve spent almost my entire eighteen years in a Colony where women are forbidden to raise their eyes to or speak to a male without permission.
When I left the Colony, I’d promised myself I wouldn’t be a doormat. I’d speak up, not stay silent and just let things happen. Not speaking up, made things worse and got people I cared about hurt. Never again.
So why am I still doing it?
Cheeks hot, I take a leaf out of Dee’s book and do what I’ve seen her do when she doesn’t want to answer someone—shrug and give that little shake of my head.
“Okay,” Monica says as she wipes down the bar. “Keep your secrets, mystery girl. I’ll get it out of you eventually.”
Heavens, I hope not.
“The little subbie act works for you, but you need to show more skin. Come here.”
“Er…subbie act?” I join her behind the bar.
“Yeah. The whole submissive, ‘Yes sir,’ thing. It suits you, but you’d make better tips if you throw in a smile now and again.” She undoes two of the buttons on my shirt. “That’s better.”
I look down at myself. My cleavage is almost falling out.
Only two buttons on the shirt are still done up, preventing my boobs from being exposed to the world. I cover myself with my arms, my face heating from my neck to my hairline. “Monica, that’s too much.”
“No such thing, honey. The more skin you show, the better the guys like it.”
I swear I’ll never get used to this. I’m not in a position to leave money sitting on the table, though.
Sighing, I make my way back around the bar and order a bag of overpriced pretzels and a drink.
“What’s your pleasure?” Monica grabs a glass for me.
“I’ll have a soda. The brown kind.”
She snorts. “You mean a Coke?”
My stomach tightens at her teasing look. I nod and pull open the pretzels with my teeth.
“Seriously? You’ve never had a Coke? What are you, a Martian?”
My insides churn. I take a deep calming breath. My lack of knowledge of the outside world isn’t going to expose me. No one is going to figure out I’m an escapee from a secret society because I’ve never had a soda.
Again, there’s no good response, so I shrug.
Monica just laughs it off. Then she looks at her watch.
“Oh, shit.” She grabs a couple of trays for drinks and signals for Sylvia, the other bartender, to cover for her. “Time to get the boys their drinks.”
“Boys?” I get the feeling it’s an expression; no way is she talking about kids.
“Yep.” She grabs a couple of bottles of liquor, each containing enough strong booze to put down a pachyderm. “The bikers. They’re in a meeting in their private rooms.”
I stare at my pretzel, trying to work out what she means, but not daring to ask. The word bikers makes me think of men on those fancy racing bicycles I’ve seen people ride in the street, but somehow I know that’s not what she’s talking about. There’s a flush to her cheeks and a huge grin on her face. Until she looks at me, and then she cocks her head.
“You don’t know what a biker is, do you?”
I avoid her eyes and sip my Coke. I love the sweet taste, and it’s neat the way the fizz dances across my tongue and down my throat. I’ve never had anything like it.
Monica shakes her head. “Girl, you don’t know what you’re missing. I swear, being hot must be a requirement for getting patched in.”
“Patched in?”
She nods as she finishes loading up her trays. “They’re members of the Devil’s Outlaws MC. Dee’s husband Snake is one, too. Even he’s hot, and he’s like fifty.”
Okay, I’m this close to asking her to let me serve them so I can get a look at these gorgeous bikers for myself. Guilt stabs at me for my lustful thoughts. To the isolation chamber for me.
Besides, I know I’d only end up acting stupid around them.
Monica works as she talks, moving so fast I wonder if she has some of that super-speed I’ve heard about.
“Fast,” I compliment her.
“Yeah, well, that’s the thing with those guys. You don’t make them wait if you know what’s good for you.”
“What?” I reach over the bar and touch her shoulder. “Monica, if it’s not safe—”
She giggles and waves her hand airily. “I’ll be fine. Although, if one of them wants to tie me down, I won’t complain.” I gape, and her eyes dance. She comes around the bar and picks up one of the trays. “I should make you do this.”
“What!” I squeak. “No. Monica, no!”
“Oh, come on.” She holds the tray out. “I would love to see what those guys would do with you when you pull that mousy shit on them.”
I bite my lip, giving her a pleading look. Imploring her to understand. The way she’s described those guys, I get the sense of something dangerous and forbidden. Something I have no idea how to handle, like getting too close to a flame.
As if taking pity on me, she
grins and picks up the second tray, balancing one on each palm. “Relax. You can’t go in there anyway. You aren’t a club girl.”
I push out a breath. She was messing with me. “I’ll pay you back for that.”
She sticks her tongue out. “See you in a few minutes. Unless I’m having fun.” She winks.
My cheeks go very hot. I’ll never get used to girls being so forward. It’s awesome, the way she can talk like that without missing a beat. I feel a little envious of her as she disappears, head high, around the corner in the direction of the rooms reserved for private parties and lap dances.
Monica comes back a few minutes later and loads up a tray with more booze for the “bikers”.
“Oh, Steph, could you take those empties out for me while I take these to the boys?” She grabs a couple of boxes of cigars and puts them on her tray, then nods to the boxes of empty beer bottles over by the wall. “Harold was supposed to take those out before he finished his shift. He didn’t, and I almost tripped over them.”
“Sure.”
I load up the boxes on a trolley while she disappears down the hall again. Then I grab the key card and the keys to the storage shed off the wall behind the bar and wheel the trolley down the hall toward the back of the club.
At the end of the hall to the left of Dee’s stairs, I swipe my key card through the security scanner on the door there. Then I make my way down the long hall that leads to the alley.
To the left and right of me, doors lead to other rooms. Ahead of me, Monica slips into one of the rooms and rowdy catcalls and male laughter drifts into the hall before the door closes.
Shutting down my worry for her, I push open the steel door at the end of the hall and step out into the balmy night air.
Outside, I gasp at what I see sitting in the alleyway.
To the left of the doors, a row of five motorcycles sits along the wall. They look huge and heavy, leaning on kickstands.
I’ve only seen a motorcycle once. It was in a photo shown to the congregation by Deacon Harman. He’d stood up as a guest speaker during a sermon, telling us all about his life before he joined His Holy Peace. He’d showed us a photo of him sitting astride the motorcycle he used to ride before he mended his ways, cast off his wild life of sin, and became the clean-living man he is today. We’d all been shocked to see this reserved, soft-spoken, usually proper man sitting on one of those things with a big smile on his face.
A realization hits and I slap my forehead. “Bikers. Wow. Duh.”
Except I have a feeling there’s more to the term than just owning or riding a motorcycle like Deacon Harman did.
Inching closer, one motorcycle in particular catches my eye. Thin silver lines that look like the threads of a spider’s web stretch across the dark, electric blue metal of what must be the gas tank. A spider sits in the middle of the web.
I ogle the motorcycle with wonder. The beast reaches past my waist. There’s something about it that screams of danger, something wild and a little frightening. My fingers itch to caress the well-worn leather seat to see if it’s as soft and supple as it looks.
What kind of man drives a vehicle with no protection against the elements or other vehicles? If he was hit, he’d be a splatter on the pavement. He’d have to be incredibly brave.
Or insane.
When Deacon Harman did his speech, Pastor Seth had called motorcycles chariots of the Devil. Seth is a pompous, creepy jerk who serves the higher leaders of the church, but even so, I’m not sure I want to meet the rider of that thing.
Feeling as though I’m standing at the gateway to temptation itself, I tear my eyes away from the mechanical monstrosity and glance around the deserted alley for the storage shed.
A living room-sized rectangular structure sitting at the dead end of the alley, it’s in a part of the lot that isn’t well lit, out of reach of the security light above the door to the club. I’ve never been out here before. This is usually a job done by the male staff. Now I see why.
There’s no one else out here, and deep shadows leave plenty of places to hide in dark corners. With the door shut, the pounding music from inside is cut off, leaving behind a heavy silence.
I take a deep breath and push the trolley up to the front of the shed. At the door, I freeze, staring at the padlock.
In the Colony, when we went against the rules set out by the church, we were punished. Sometimes sinners were lashed, but the worst violations earned offenders time in isolation—which was a wooden shed near the back of the property shared by the elders. A shed that looked remarkably like this one. It even had a padlock on the door, and like this shed, it had no windows.
Tamping down the memories that flood back, I close my eyes, reminding myself that this isn’t the Colony, and that part of my life is dead and buried.
It doesn’t work. My hands shake as I open the padlock. The door gives a loud squeak of its hinges when I open it, making me cringe.
As soon as I step inside, the door swings shut, and darkness swallows me whole. Panic seizes me.
I was in isolation a few weeks before I escaped. It was for three days, and that was long enough. When I was in there, the lights were turned off most of the time, plunging me into blackness. Silent, dead blackness, deprived of any sound or human contact, except when the pastors pushed food through a slot in the door.
I swallow hard, feeling along the wall for the handle on the door. When I can’t find it, I feel for the light switch. There isn’t one. My breathing sounds loud in my ears.
Those days in isolation were terrifying. It wasn’t just that the pastors could turn the lights on and off from outside whenever they chose. There was no sound in there. It was total sensory deprivation. The rest of the world disappears, and there’s the constant fear that you’ll be forgotten, that the door will never open.
That same familiar fear of being left in the dark for eternity claws at me now.
Get a grip, Emma. It’s just a shed, not an isolation chamber. Get it together.
Shuffling forward in the black, I feel around with my hands. Nothing but air.
Something long and thin brushes my face. I almost cry out, swatting it away with my hands. Until it brushes my shoulder and I realize what it is. It’s a metallic chain, the kind that hangs from light bulbs.
I growl at my own stupidity and yank on the chain.
There’s a click, and a single bulb above me floods the shed with light.
“Wow, Emma. You are so stupid.”
Now that there’s light in here, the room doesn’t look anything like the isolation shed in the Colony. In that shed, there was nothing but four empty walls. Here, shelves line every wall, each stacked with boxes of empty beer and liquor bottles and kegs. It’s not much, but the sight dozens of brand name beers is enough to ground me in the here and now.
If I listen carefully, I can hear the distant sound of vehicles on the road outside. The sounds of the real world anchor me.
I sigh and go back to the door. Open it and pull the trolley in front of the door to keep it from closing again. I’m not going to risk letting that door shut on me, even if it can’t lock.
As soon as I’m finished unloading the empties, I rush out with the trolley and push the door shut. The tension drains out of me as I lock the door.
And here I’d thought I’d finally started to live in the now, that my past was starting to feel like another life. I’d thought I was safe, but no. The Colony still haunts me.
Will it ever stop?
Approaching the door to the strip club, I already feel a lot safer. Who’d have thought this place would ever make me feel safe?
I go back inside and let the door close.
When I reach the counter, Monica still hasn’t returned. I wonder if she’s having too much fun with the bikers. My face burns with the thought.
Returning to serving up drinks, the boredom of the night sets in, but it’s better than being out in that shed.
I’m setting down drinks for a group o
f men when I freeze, eyes on the customer sitting at a table across the room. His eyes are on the stage, riveted to the girls dancing there, and shadows obscure his face, but not enough that I don’t recognize him.
My heart gives a frantic leap. I’d know those red curls anywhere.
Deacon Jacob!
Panic wells up, huge, stealing my breath away.
What on earth is he doing here?
He must know I’m here. There are hundreds of strip clubs in Las Vegas. What are the chances that a deacon from a church colony in New Mexico would end up in the same place as me at one in the morning unless he knew where to find me?
My breathing fills my ears. I hurriedly pass out the rest of the drinks and rush to the bar, hoping that with the low lighting and the crowd, he doesn’t notice me.
If Deacon Jacob sees me in here, I know what he’ll do. A few other girls have tried to escape the Colony before, and we’ve all heard stories about what was done to them.
Jacob might try to politely talk me into returning to the fold, if he thinks he can get me to go by guilting me into it. And when he can’t, he’ll resort to less Godly ways of bringing me back, justifying his actions by reminding me that I am too important to lose.
And when I’m back in the Colony, if all I receive is a month of isolation, I’ll be lucky. Being a pastor’s daughter has kept me safe from most of the harsher, more painful punishments, but then I’ve never tried to escape before, either.
I shiver. I need to get out of here, and out of Vegas now. How, with no money?
My gaze veers to the tip jar sitting behind the bar. There has to be a few hundred dollars in there.
Monica still hasn’t returned. Sylvia disappears around the left side of the bar, serving customers there. Every eye is on the girls. No one is paying any attention to me. My eyes go back to the jar.
Horror turns my blood cold. Lord help me, am I actually thinking about stealing? Monica has been nothing but a sweetheart. And Dee. After everything she’s given me…
There has to be another way.