by Skye Warren
I’d be able to feel his erection pressing into my belly. I’d be able to rub against it.
“Can’t what?” he asks, only faintly curious. He isn’t even breathing hard.
“Can’t do it anymore,” I manage between sobs.
I think he knows what’s coming. That’s why he rains down blows on my already aching ass. Much more and I’ll have bruises tomorrow. I won’t be able to go onstage, but then maybe that’s the point. He’s never wanted me to dance.
He hits me until I’m crying even harder, until I’m begging him to stop. No, please, it’s too much, it’s too hard, please stop, I’ll be good, I’ll be good, I’ll be good.
Then he does stop. “What?”
“I’ll be good,” I say again, the words too garbled to understand. He understands anyway.
When he speaks, his voice is deeper, breath coming faster. He could beat me all day, but this is what he wants. This gentleness, this surrender. He has to break me down to get it.
God, he’d be so hard right now.
“I’ll be good, Daddy. I’m so sorry. I’ll be your good girl now.” The words keep pouring out of me, promises and pleas. And prayers.
That’s what he is to me, a new Leader Allen. My personal god.
Ivan replaced everything that came before. I could leave Harmony Hills, but I couldn’t change who I was. I still needed to worship. I still need to obey.
“Shh,” he tells me. “That’s right. You’re my good girl.”
I slide off the desk, my ass still burning from the sting of his palm. The floor is unyielding against my knees, but I don’t care. I cling to his pant leg, feeling him through the wool. I press my face against his thigh, turning the fabric damp. “Please. Let me serve you. Let me, let me…”
“Shh,” he says again, brushing the hair back from my forehead. “Enough of that. You’re forgiven.”
He’s absolved me, but that isn’t enough. I need him to touch me, to feel what I see bulging his suit pants. I need to be more than a servant or a thing to save. I need to be a woman.
Is this how my mother felt?
I never understood why she went to Harmony Hills, why she let Leader Allen use her like a whore. Wasn’t it a sin? He punished her every day. Only now do I understand, when I crave the same thing from a man far less holy and a lot more dangerous.
Ivan’s thumb brushes my tears from my cheeks. “Don’t cry, little one.”
And then I can’t hold back the truth. I have to tell him what I couldn’t say before. This can’t go on. I want him to hurt me, to discipline me. I want him to touch me, even if that will only ever happen in the form of his palm on my ass. But I can’t go on like this. I can’t keep drinking and partying. I’m not even sure I can keep dancing. “I can’t keep being bad,” I whisper, looking up into his gray eyes. “I have to be good now.”
If I’m good, he can’t bend me over the desk anymore. He can’t punish me.
This would never happen. Regret flickers in his eyes. It’s immediately replaced by the cold detachment that all the other girls get. This is why they’re scared to talk to him. This is who they see.
“I don’t believe you,” he says, as dark as the shadows around us. “Now go, little one. Run away.”
Chapter Eight
I do leave, but I come back again the next night. This is our dance, this attack and retreat—with one exception. Each time I left, I would do something wrong. Something so he would touch me.
Something so he would punish me.
When I show up at the Grand in late afternoon, shadows stretch over the cobblestone. The sun has left a sticky sweetness in the air, not quite evaporated by the night’s chill. I haven’t taken a sip of alcohol or a hit of anything. I haven’t even given myself an orgasm. I haven’t done a single thing to take the edge off, so I’m wired. I blink against blinding sideways light, feeling every bead of sweat on my skin. The world is too sharp like this, the very air made of blades.
I’m panting by the time I make it inside the double doors. They swing shut behind me, blocking out most of the light. I suck in the stale air like it’s a lifeline.
West is sitting at the bar. He works security here, one of the bouncers. Luckily he’s too busy brooding into his glass to notice me practically panting from panic. His dark skin looks even darker under the bar’s tinny overhead lights.
“Drinking on the job?” I ask, leaning against the bar. “I didn’t know a Boy Scout like you had it in you.”
He looks up, expression wry. “It’s water.”
I hop onto the stool next to him and peer into the glass he’s been staring at. “Water is never that interesting. There something bothering you?”
“Are you going to tell Ivan if there is?” His voice is mild, almost teasing, but I detect the warning there as well. I’m an outsider, even here, in this place. The girls look up to me just as much as they look down on me. They want my help, but they hold me at arm’s length. That’s what I get for fucking the boss.
Or not fucking the boss, in our twisted little game.
“Well, I don’t think you’re stealing the silver. So no, I don’t think I’d have to run and tattle on you.”
Besides, in a very short amount of time, it won’t even matter. I won’t be here anymore, and I doubt Ivan will even want to see me again.
“Not stealing the silver, no. But…” He grimaces. “Looking at it.”
“And the silver in this case being…girls.”
“Shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
He looks miserable, and I have to laugh. It’s not every day I meet a man who even cares that he might have offended me, much less one who avoids objectifying us. “Don’t worry about it. I mean, looking is free. And kind of a job requirement for you, since if you didn’t look at us, you couldn’t protect us. So I’m guessing you mean one girl in particular.”
“On my first day here I met with Ivan. He told me don’t fuck—” He clears his throat. “Don’t mess with the girls. I didn’t think it would be a problem for me. Hell, it shouldn’t be a problem for me.”
“This is one Ivan problem I can’t help you with. You want a day off or a free hour in the VIP room? Come talk to me. This is one area where Ivan can’t be moved.”
“Then why—” West stops speaking abruptly, and I have a feeling he’s blushing, even though it’s too dark to see. He stands, unfolding to his six-foot height. He towers over me, but he’s sheepish. Worried he disrespected me. With another man, I’d think he didn’t want to offend Ivan. In this case West doesn’t want to offend me. He’s that kind of guy, old-world manners. He fits in well with the Grand, with the crumbling building and its faded damask wallpaper. Even if it is a strip club.
“Why does he fuck me?” I fill in for him. “He doesn’t. That’s the short answer.”
West blinks in surprise. I know what everyone thinks. And with what Ivan does to me in that basement, they’re not completely wrong. He hurts me and uses me in depraved ways. But he doesn’t fuck me. He doesn’t even touch my pussy. I’ve never seen his cock.
“It’s none of my business,” West says softly. “You don’t have to explain yourself. Or him.”
“Good thing, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you. But don’t let Ivan catch you fucking around with one of the girls. He’s protective of them.”
He gives me a faint smile. “That’s one of the reasons I like working here. And why I’d like to keep working here.”
I tell myself it’s concern for the girls that has me asking and not prurient curiosity, but that’s a lie. It’s both. “So who is the lucky girl?”
“Lucky isn’t the word I’d use to describe her,” West says darkly.
And I know exactly what he means even if that doesn’t clear it up any. Every girl here has a story. No one grew up wanting to take their clothes off for men. Even if the ideal sounds sexy, the reality doesn’t live up to it. Panting men and grasping hands. Lots of money, but never enough to feel clean.
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That’s what I didn’t know when I wanted to work here. I feel powerful onstage, flaunting my nakedness, using my sexuality to lead men around. But at the end of the day the power is only an illusion.
West takes a long drink from his glass of water, emptying it. “Anyway, I’m not trying to mess around with her. It’s not like that. I just want to…”
He trails off, but I know the answer. Ironically it’s the same thing Ivan wanted when he saw me. It’s the reason we’re trapped in this perverted standoff, spanking and mouthing off, ever circling. “You want to save her,” I say sadly. “But that’s the thing about girls. We can only save ourselves.”
Chapter Nine
Ruffles and lace are my armor. Lipstick and glitter, my war paint. Going to the basement without any of it makes me feel vulnerable. I’m wearing a baby-blue tank top and a low-riding pair of jeans, but I may as well be in a dirty white shift.
I told West that girls have to save themselves, and that’s what I’m doing. It won’t feel powerful, like I do when I’m onstage, in my armor and war paint, but it will be real.
All I can do is nod to Luca on the way down.
Ivan doesn’t look up when I reach the bottom. He knows it’s me, but I have to wait. And I’ll give him this much, one last time.
“Come,” he says finally, and I step forward.
Surprise flickers in his pale eyes only briefly. Then it’s gone. He doesn’t even wait for me to speak, like he usually does. He doesn’t ask why I’m here, hours earlier than I usually arrive. “Have you been a good girl?” he asks.
Maybe I should take comfort in that. He wants what we have, however dark and deviant, enough to try to keep it. He must sense something is changing, and he wants it to stay the same.
I can’t go back, though. The thing that’s changing is me. I came here as a scared, lost little girl. I rose out of those ashes and became someone beautiful, someone powerful. Someone who never really existed. I’ll leave this room the same way I came—scared and lost. A little girl, even if I’m no longer his.
“Yes,” I say softly. I’m good and I’m alone. Those are the same things. Aren’t they?
He stands, sudden and almost aggressive. He doesn’t move around the desk. He just narrows his eyes. “Why did you come, Candace? What do you need?”
I need so much more than he’ll give me. Touch, acceptance. Love. “I quit.”
Molten silver. That’s what fury looks like, streaking across his eyes. “Excuse me?”
“I quit.”
His laugh cuts me inside. “What do you want? More money? More pain? Should I start using a cane on you?”
Is this all I needed to do, threaten to leave? It’s too late for that. Maybe those things would have been enough. They might have kept me here for a few more months, at least. I’m dangling off a cliff, and I’ll keep scrabbling at loose rocks on the way down. That’s all he can offer me: loose rocks. I know it’s going to hurt at the bottom—God, it will hurt. But I can’t keep grasping for him. I have to fall.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
That was a mistake. He stalks around the desk, and I tense. I’m not afraid that he’ll hurt me. Not exactly. He’ll find something much worse than that. A way to punish me for leaving. I think what would hurt the worst is if he said nothing at all. If he could watch me go, just as casually as I’m acting, as if it’s not tearing him down inside.
“No,” he says, so softly it’s barely a sound.
I should have expected this. Not punishment. Denial. “I know you’re upset with me, but I’ve made up my mind.”
“Have you?” he asks, his voice strangely pleasant. “And what makes you think it’s up to you?”
My heart beats faster. “What do you mean?”
His smile is a baring of teeth. A threat. A promise. “You understand me, little one. You always have. What the fuck makes you think I’m going to let you walk up those stairs?”
Fight-or-flight. That’s my first reaction to his words. I want to run up those stairs, fast enough that he can’t catch me. I want to lash out at him for making me feel afraid. “What are you going to do, keep me chained up in a basement?” I laugh unsteadily. “Even if you don’t care that it’s illegal, it seems a little cliché for you.”
Bad move.
Three seconds later I’m slammed up against the wall, Ivan’s forearm at my throat, his face an inch away from mine. “You think I give a fuck about clichés? Or the fucking law? Do you?”
I can’t breathe, and the fear I’ve been pushing back claws its way up my throat. “Please.”
“You think you can just walk away, like these years mean nothing?”
They do mean nothing, because he’s never going to make it real.
I didn’t want to feel anything. I didn’t want to let myself feel anything. I was content to drink and smoke and rub my clit into oblivion. The ice has been cracking now, for months. Even when I walked down those steps, there was part of it still intact.
It cracks now, an actual shattering sensation in my chest.
“Ivan,” I whisper, and a tear tracks down my cheek.
He watches it fall. “Am I hurting you that much?”
Not with his arm against my throat. Not with his body holding mine. But he is hurting me. He’s breaking me into pieces. “I wanted us to be real. I want for you to—” For you to love me. “I tried so many times, and I just….I can’t. Not anymore.”
“Real,” he scoffs. “What the fuck is real?”
“I don’t know.” And that’s the honest-to-God truth. I don’t know what a real relationship is like. I don’t think he does either. “But I know it’s not this.”
He presses even harder, and black spots dance in front of my eyes. He’s really going to do it. My brain is going soft and foggy, the edges drawing in, but that’s the thought that stands out—a kind of gentle amazement that he’s really going to do it. Make me black out. Maybe even kill me.
I stare into his eyes. I’m not even fighting him. However this ends, it will be over.
My lungs burn from the lack of oxygen, my whole body folding in on itself. The world seems light, insubstantial. I’m floating…
A loud crack jerks me from my reverie. Ivan pulls back in surprise, and my body sucks in a breath all on its own, bringing me back to life and making me choke. Footsteps ring out on the metal steps, fast and heavy.
Luca appears at the entrance, his expression grim. There’s an unholy light in his eyes, violence and blood reflected back. He doesn’t seem surprised to find me in a choke hold. “You’d better come upstairs,” he says. “Both of you.”
* * *
Luca’s timing is so lucky I might have thought he’d done it on purpose to save me. But I know the truth. The basement is truly soundproof. Ivan could keep me down here for the rest of my life—and no one would hear my screams. And besides, Luca would never go against Ivan. Not even for me.
Ivan studies his bodyguard for a moment. Then his gaze slides to me. I can see him deliberating whether he wants to let me go to the surface. Whether he thinks I’ll make a run for it.
“Sir,” Luca says, and I hear something in that voice. Something I’ve never heard from the street-hardened man—a sliver of fear.
Ivan must hear it too. “Show me.”
He doesn’t exactly let me go upstairs. Nothing as gentlemanly as allowing me to walk ahead of him. No, he heads upstairs. And I’m free to follow, even though I’m still shuddering. The air feels like glass, and I’m sucking it in by the lungful. My body doesn’t believe that I’ll be able to take another breath, so it’s hoarding them, making me pant even when I’ve had enough.
We reach the top, and the hallway is empty. That’s not that strange considering how early it is, but my skin pricks. The hair on the back of my neck rises, and I don’t think it’s only because of Luca’s strange behavior. There’s something in the air, a metal tang. Blood.
That’s the first thing I see when we push into the alley
way. Buckets of blood. A goddamn river of it, coating the ground and mingling in the ever-present puddles. Some of it’s clotted. I clap my hand over my mouth, smothering my cry and keeping myself from throwing up. I want to cry. I want to scream. But all I can do is stand there, frozen.
“Where’s the body?” Ivan asks, his voice cold. He sounds almost unaffected. God, maybe he is unaffected. What’s a little blood to clean up? Or a lot of blood…
I don’t know how he even noticed there wasn’t a body, but now that I look—there isn’t one. Only blood. It’s actually creepier this way, without a source.
“We’re pulling the tapes,” Luca says. “We’ll find out what happened.”
West is there, looking serious.
So is Oscar, the head of security. “I already called Blue,” he says. “And the cops.”
Ivan’s face is a stone mask. “We’ll handle this in-house. Heads will roll.”
Heads will roll. Violence and more violence. Blood and more blood. A hysterical laugh bubbles out of me. Only then do they look over at me.
West seems concerned, Oscar angry.
Luca seems disgusted.
And Ivan…he seems like he always does. Calm. Calculating.
“Get back inside,” he says, somehow cool in the face of this gore.
I’m rooted to the spot, unnaturally drawn to the gruesome scene, straight out of my nightmares. The Grand has always been my safe place. And now that I’ve decided to leave, the dreams have found me here.
“Inside,” he repeats.
“I’m done listening to you,” I say, and even I can hear the panic in my voice, the high-pitched thread of fear. “You don’t get to order me around. You don’t even get to talk to me.”
Ivan stares at me, and I imagine him slapping me. I imagine him pushing me against the bloodstained brick and choking the life out of me. I imagine him turning me over the trash can and spanking me.
His expression softens. “It’s okay, Candy. Look at me. Focus on me. You’re okay.”