Welcome to the Dark Side (The Fallen Men 2)

On the next drop, I thrust my knees apart with my hands, trailing my fingers up from the insides of my knees to the edge of those girly panties. I imagined Zeus’s eyes mapping the path of my fingers, noting each valley and hill of my topography so that later he could explore it himself.

The pulse of the music was inside me now, at the center of my groin and the tips of my breasts. I stood again then spun away, my skirt rippling up to show a glimpse of my ass before I bent over with my legs straight and hands on the floor. The hem of my skirt tickled the bottom edge of my ass cheeks as I swayed my hips side to side and then sinuously took one leg off the ground and then the other. Standing on my hands for a moment, skirt flipped up, breasts precariously close to spilling out of my bra, I took a deep, steadying breath before bringing my legs down again on the other side. Right beside the pole.

I may not have been a stripper, but I’d been around long enough to pick up some tricks of the trade amid giggles and tequila shots with the girls after a slow night. So I knew how to plant my hands against the bottom of the pole, turn vertical to the ground and swing upside down again, this time off the ground, the pole and my body one long, unbroken line.

Sweat beaded on my brow as, achingly slowly, I let my legs fall apart into a horizontal split. With a quick, careful flick of my wrist, my skirt fluttered to the ground and I hung from the pole like a blasphemous Christmas ornament, rampant with corrupted symbolism, the virgin laying prostrate on an altar of sin in wicked offering.

With my heart pounding in my ears, I wrapped my legs around the pole tight enough to support my weight and flipped my torso up. It was an extremely uncomfortable position but I’d watched Ruby do it for months and knew how effective it could be when a woman thrust her chest forward and with an insignificant flick of her fingers, sent her bra parting down the middle.

I could feel the hot light and even hotter eyes of the men in my audience sear the tender skin of my breasts. The large, red sequined pasties I wore concealed my nipples but caught the light in a way that made my breasts look even more voluptuous, Pictionary definitions of sin.

My mind had stopped being the mind of a girl long ago, maybe when I woke up that morning in the hospital with a bullet hole in my bones and cancer in my blood. But my body had been a woman’s body for a few years now too, generously rounded curves all finished in a creamy satin that shone like fresh-water pearls in the pink light.

Abruptly, the music stopped and an indecipherable shout heralded the return of the main lights. I slid from the pole on muscle memory, eyes blinking against the sudden change from harsh spotlight to warm overhead glow.

“Fuckin’ out,” Zeus roared like a thunderclap from where he sat in his booth.

He didn’t have to repeat himself.

Mute held the side door open as Nova and Bat slid out of his booth, the former with a quick but uncharacteristically uneasy smile sent my way while Curtains, Boner and Priest appeared from the control room and hustled past the stage without casting even a flicker of a glance my way.

“Good fuckin’ luck, girl,” Boner muttered before he was out of earshot.

I crossed my arms over my mostly bare breasts and watched everyone depart.

“Get down here,” Zeus ordered.

“Fuck you,” I shot back, infuriated by his anger. “You can boss around your bikers but not me.”

He prowled forward quick and lethal as a great black panther as he came for me. I was distracted enough that I didn’t take the time to back away like I should have. When he hit the end of the stage and lashed out with one huge paw to snap me around the hip and tip me over the stage, free-falling onto his shoulder, I screamed.

He spanked me with one hand as the other kept me secured in the fireman’s carry. “Quiet.”

I slammed my fists against the iron wall of his back. “Let me down, you oaf!”

“Need to stay?” Mute asked in his stilted, rough voice.

“Yes!” I cried out at the same time Zeus growled, “No. Leave and lock the door behind you.”

A violent shudder tore across my skin at that threat.

“Be outside just in case,” Mute said after a few seconds, a slight warning in his voice.

It warmed me to know he was concerned about me just as it frightened me that he had reason to be concerned.