by Hannah Ford
“Trust me,” Colt said. “Our customers are not kids. They’re men looking for a certain kind of service. Do you know what that means?”
“It means they want me to have sex with them?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Well, yes, maybe. But most of all they want you to make them feel special.”
There was a knock on the door, and the bartender, the one who had answered the phone when I’d called about the audition, came walking into the room holding a plastic dry cleaner bag.
“Jessa,” Colt said. “Have you met Olivia?”
“Yes,” I said at the same time Jessa said, “No.”
“We met earlier,” I reminded her. “Remember?”
She shrugged. “Colt,” she said. “Are you going to have time later to go over the vendor orders with me?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll catch you on the way out.”
She gave him a smile, and I saw a flash of something in her blue eyes before she turned and walked out the door. He’s mine. She wanted me to know that Colt was off-limits. Were Colt and Jessa together? Was that why she had been so rude to me earlier?
“Here you go, Princess,” Colt held the bag out to me. “Try it on.”
I took it. “Where should I change?”
“Here.”
“In front of you?”
He shrugged, like it was no big deal.
I hesitated, and he rolled his eyes. “You can change over there, behind the screen.” He pointed to the corner of the room, where there was a room divider set up. It was cream-colored, with a red and blue abstract design printed on it.
I took a deep breath and slid behind it, then pulled the plastic bag off the uniform and studied it. It was a short pleated black skirt with a black push-up bustier with spaghetti straps. There was a tiny black thong to wear underneath it. It was revealing, but not anything worse than you’d see out in a club.
I slid out of the clothes Colt had given me and into the uniform. Even without a mirror, I could tell it was way too small. The waist was fine, but the skirt was so short that bottom of my ass was hanging out. My breasts were pushed together and practically falling out of the top. There was a cut out in the top of the bustier, and it tied in the middle, holding your breasts together.
“Colt?” I called. “My uniform is too small.”
“Let me see.”
“No.”
“Let. Me. See.”
“No.”
But he appeared a second later, sticking his head around the side of the partition, taking me in. I tried to cross my arms over my chest, but that only served to push my breasts together more.
“Jesus,” he said when he saw me.
“I told you it was too small.”
“No,” he said. “It’s perfect.”
“It’s not. My chest can’t fit in the top and the skirt is way too short.”
Colt reached out and slowly, deliberately, grabbed my arms and pulled my hands down from where I was covering my breasts so that he could see me. My breath hitched as he stood there, so tall he was almost towering over me, staring down at my tits.
I saw the desire searing in his eyes.
“You’re not wearing it right,” he said. “You need to tie it tight in the middle.” He reached up to undo the strips of material, but I grabbed his hands and stopped him.
“Don’t,” I said. “I can do it.”
But he just gave me that cocky grin again, then moved my hands from where they were grasping his and pulled them back down to my sides. “Don’t argue with your boss, Princess,” he said.
He let go of my hands and his fingers slid up my bare arms, leaving goose bumps all over me and sending a shiver up my spine. He caressed me all the way up to my shoulders, then slid his hands down over my chest and untied my uniform. For a terrifying, amazing, exhilarating moment I thought he was going to take the top off completely, untie the whole thing, giving him a full view of my breasts. But he didn’t.
Instead, he just untied the strips of fabric, then pulled them tight before tying them back together.
“Turn around,” he demanded.
I turned around, and felt his hands on my hips, adjusting my skirt, pulling it down just a tiny bit on my hip bones. With it pulled down like that, the skirt covered my ass cheeks a bit more, but I still felt exposed, especially in the tiny thong. And with the way he’d tied my shirt, it hitched up a bit, leaving a strip of my stomach bare.
“I can’t wear this,” I said. “I can’t… I mean, I wouldn’t…” I wanted to tell him there was no way I could ever be seen in public in something like this. I was stupid to ever think I could be a stripper, stupid to think I could ever be sexy. I thought it would be easy, that I could just disconnect from my body and not have to worry about the men staring at me. What I didn’t stop to think about was how I would feel about myself, how I would feel about showing my body, about being arrogant enough to think that anyone would want to see it.
“Come here,” Colt said, taking me by the shoulders. He marched me over to the door and shut it. There was a mirror hanging to the back, one of those full-length ones, and he positioned me in front of it.
“No,” I said, turning away from my reflection. “Please, I don’t want to.”
But he put his hands on my shoulders and turned me back around. “Look,” he said.
“I’m not sexy, Colt, “ I said. “It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s not even a bad thing. It’s just… it is what it is.” I didn’t feel bad saying the words out loud. I wasn’t sexy. It wasn’t a matter of opinion, and I wasn’t just being hard on my self. I wasn’t saying I was ugly. I didn’t think I was ugly. I could be cute, maybe, on a good day, but I wasn’t sexy.
“You are so sexy,” Colt said, and I locked eyes with him in the mirror. He reached up and grabbed my hair tie, sliding it down my ponytail until my hair was loose, brushing against my bare shoulders. He slid his hands through the strands, and I shivered.
Then he turned and grabbed a bag that Jessa had left on the desk, opened it and pulled out a pair of sparkly black high heels.
He dropped them on the floor and gestured for me to put them on.
I slid my feet into the shoes, and the high heel instantly made my legs look longer, my body slimmer. But just because the heels made me look a little better, the outfit was still extremely skimpy. I was self-conscious, and I instinctively began pulling at the uniform again, trying to pull the skirt down to cover my ass.
“No,” Colt said, shaking his head. He grabbed my hands again. “That’s how you wear it.” He was standing behind me, so close that I could feel his chest pushed up against my back. His grip on my wrists was strong and controlling, and I remembered him catching me back at his house, in the bathroom with the razor in my hand. What had he said?
You want to forget? I can make you forget.
I thought about what it would be like to kiss him, to let him do whatever he wanted to me. The thought made my skin tingle and I felt myself start to get wet.
His eyes were still locked on mine in the mirror, and then his gaze slid down my reflection, making no effort to hide the fact that he was ogling me, that he was looking at my body, at my breasts, my hips, my legs. He pushed himself into me harder, and I could feel the tautness of his stomach and how broad his chest was.
“Can you handle it?” he breathed into my ear, his breath tickling the back of my neck.
“Handle it?’ I repeated.
“Wearing this. Helping me. Either you’re in or you’re out.”
“I’m in,” I said, before I could change my mind.
“Good,” he said. And then he gave me that smile. That cocky little smile. The smile that made me think I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
“You can start tonight.”
“Tonight?” I asked. “Oh, um, well… I mean, won’t there be like a training period or something?”
He shrugged. “Jessa can tell you what to do. It’s not that hard. You take orders an
d offer drinks. Not that complicated.” He looked at his watch. “The club will be opening in a couple hours.”
“Okay. Should I… I mean, is it okay to change?”
“What?”
“I can’t wear this around for two hours.”
“Yes, you can,” he said. “You have to.”
“Why?”
“Because I like looking at you in it. And because I’m the boss.”
And then he turned around and walked out of the room.
***
I followed him, practically chasing him down the hall, struggling to keep up with him in my high heels.
“Hey,” I said as we passed by the door where I’d seen that girl crying. “What was the deal with that girl?”
“What girl?” Colt asked.
“The girl who was crying in there.”
He stopped dead in his tracks and looked at me. “What are you talking about?”
“There was this girl in there.” I gestured to the room. “She had a big welt on her face, and her hair was chopped off. She was crying.”
Colt’s face darkened, his jaw twitching. And then he laughed. “Nice,” he said. “You had me going there for minute.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you almost had me believing you.”
“It’s true,” I said. “I saw her. She was crying and there was a man comforting her. She looked like she’d been beaten up.”
Colt stared at me for a long moment and then finally he said, “I don’t know anything about that. And this is my club. If something like that had happened, I would know about it. I’m not sure what you think you saw, but I’d be careful about spreading rumors.”
“Are you saying I’m lying?”
“I’m saying it didn’t happen.”
“So you think I’m making it up.” But even as I was saying the words, I didn’t get the sense that he thought I was lying at all. I had the feeling he knew I was telling the truth, and yet he didn’t want to admit it for some reason. Was that what he was fighting with Mick about?
“I think maybe you’re confused about what you saw,” Colt said.
I started to protest, but something told me to keep my mouth shut. Part of it was that I didn’t want to piss him off. But part of it was something else, something I’d learned over the years. If someone was acting like they didn’t want to talk about something, there was a reason. And if you pushed them to talk about it, you became the enemy. The person began to blame you for whatever horrible thing they were avoiding, just because you wouldn’t shut up abut it.
So I stayed quiet as I followed Colt through a door and into a huge open room. The walls were painted a dark red, and the perimeter was lined with mirrors and vanities. The carpet was a black and white zebra print, and two huge wardrobes stood at the far end.
“This is the dressing room,” he said. “It’s where you’ll get ready.”
I nodded, and kept following him as he moved into another hallway that led out into the main part of the club, the part I’d been in earlier when I came in for my audition.
Jessa was behind the bar, drying glasses, and she looked up when she saw us.
“Oh, good,” she said, giving Colt a huge smile. “You’re here.” She didn’t even acknowledge my presence.
“I’m here,” Colt said. He motioned for me to sit down at the bar and so I did. There was a picture hanging on the wall in a black wooden frame, of a man and a woman. They were sitting at the bar in Loose Cannons, but the bar looked shiny and new, not like it looked now, with the wood scratched up and the paint fading.
“Who’s that?” I asked Colt.
His jaw twitched. “My dad.” His voice was low, gravelly, almost threatening.
“And that’s your mom?” I asked.
He ignored me, instead walking behind the bar and over to where Jessa had pulled out an iPad, with what looked like an excel spreadsheet open on the screen. When he got to her, she wrapped her arms around his waist and slid her body against his. “I missed you,” she said, kissing him on his neck.
My cheeks went warm and I averted my gaze.
So that was why Jessa hated me so much. She was Colt’s girlfriend. Well, she didn’t have to worry about me being any kind of threat. I wasn’t interested in Colt, and even if I was, there was no way I was any competition. Jessa was beautiful – long blonde hair, icy blue eyes, her body tan and taut under the leather vest she was wearing. I wondered why she didn’t have to wear the outfit I was wearing. But maybe Colt wanted to keep her more covered up since she was his girlfriend, didn’t like the thought of all those skeezy guys staring at her.
I felt an irrational flash of annoyance and something else (jealousy?) move through my body. But it was silly to be jealous. Of what? The fact that Colt had a girlfriend? I’d just met him.
And just because he’d seemed to like looking at me in my tight little outfit didn’t mean anything. What man didn’t like looking at a girl in a tight outfit?
What about back in his bathroom? When he said he would help you forget? Had he just been messing with me, like when he almost kissed me back in the office? I swallowed my disappointment and grabbed a bottle of water that was sitting on the bar and took a sip.
I watched as Colt and Jessa leaned over the iPad. Her hand was on his back, and he wasn’t doing anything to encourage it, but he wasn’t pushing her away, either. It bothered me that I wanted to know what the deal was with them, and so when Colt said something I couldn’t hear and Jessa tipped her head back and laughed, I averted my eyes.
I looked out across the club, imagining what it was going to be like when it was filled with men (and women?), all of them drinking and watching naked women dancing on stage. Would the men be nice? Would they look at me in my skimpy outfit even though there were naked strippers for them to look it?
Well, Olivia, I thought, trying to calm my racing heart, you’re about to find out.
***
Once Colt and Jessa were done going over the orders, he left her in charge of me, instructing her to teach me what to do.
“You’re leaving?” I asked, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.
Which obviously didn’t work, since Jessa immediately picked up on it. “Aww, Colt,” she said. “How cute. She has a crush on you.”
“You’ll be fine,” Colt said to me. “I’ll come find you later, see how it’s going.” I waited for him to say something else, something comforting, to tell me where he’d be or what it exactly it was he expected of me. We hadn’t even talked about what he wanted from me, why he wanted me to waitress for him. Obviously there was more to it. But he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he turned and walked away, leaving me alone with Jessa.
My only consolation was that he hadn’t said goodbye to her, either.
“You look like shit,” Jessa said, shaking her head.
“Thanks,” I said, rolling my eyes. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”
“You need make up,” she said, ignoring my sarcasm. “And lots of it.”
She moved out from behind the bar and walked toward the back hallway, disappearing out of sight. I sat there for a second, not really sure what to do, and then finally, I got up and followed her.
“Anyway,” she said, when I found her in the dressing room, like we were in the middle of a conversation and she hadn’t just left me sitting out there like an asshole. “This is the dressing room.”
“Yeah,” I said, not able to resist getting a little dig in. “Colt told me.”
“Don’t,” she said, pushing her hair back from her face.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t act like you know Colt.”
“I wasn’t.”
She bit the inside of her cheek, almost like she wanted to say something else, but then she let out a little sigh, obviously deciding it wasn’t worth it.
“You can use anything you see here,” she said, opening a drawer filled with makeup in all different shades – lipst
icks, blush, eyeshadows, liners, and foundations. All of it was still in its packages, neatly arranged and separated. “When you’re done, you can keep it. Don’t put anything that’s been opened back in the drawer. No one wants your nasty used shit. Got it?”
I nodded.
“We pool our tips,” she said. “So don’t even try to think about pocketing anything. They go in a tip jar on the bar, and we split them up at the end of the night.”
“Fine.”
“And since you’re not going to make any money looking like that, I guess I’m going to have to help you.”
She led me over to a dressing room mirror and went to work on my face, smoothing foundation, layering eye shadow, slicking lip gloss onto my lips.
“Better,” she said, when she was done, her tone conveying that she still thought I was subpar.
I turned to look at myself. I did look better. She’d evened out my skin tone, made my lips looked plump and pouty and my eyes smoky and sexy.
“Thank you,” I said, meaning it, even though I knew she’d only done it because if I made more money, she was going to make more money.
She shrugged, like she could care less. About anything. She leaned over the vanity, studying her reflection in the mirror as she arranged her hair around her shoulders. I watched her, wondering what it would be like to be so beautiful. When you were beautiful, people wanted to be near you. They wanted to help you, they thought you were good, worthy of something, whether it was attention or love or money. People wanted to be near beauty, almost as if they thought it would rub off on them.
Of course, there was another side to beauty. It could bring so much power that some people didn’t know how to handle it.
Jessa flicked her hair behind her ear. “The job is easy. You ask the guys what they want. You write it down. You bring it to me. Then you bring the drinks back to the customers. Got it?”’
I nodded.
She pulled the bottom of her vest down a tiny bit, adjusting it where it hit her stomach. There was a dusting of something shimmery on her skin, giving her a glittery glow.