But not like this. Never like this.
“Gio,” I said quietly, and he stilled, his blue-black eyes wild. I’d seen tigers at the zoo with less leashed power simmering under their skin. “Do it.”
I don’t know what made me say those particular words, or how I could even speak when fear rode me hard enough to make my legs shake. They were spread open, putting me on display thanks to the insubstantial thong I wore and hairband-sized skirt that had been raised to bare my ass. And even as I trembled, some part of me reveled in being the center of focus for all these powerful men.
For Gio.
Something had twisted inside me, gone wrong at a point I couldn’t identify. Maybe it was when my sister was kidnapped on her way home from school that sunny September day, shortly after the new school year had begun, or maybe it was when I’d seen all the people looking for her and wondering when she would return home. If she would. I’d wondered too, and I’d cried so many tears that I could’ve drowned in them. But when she came back, and they printed the pictures of the beautiful, horrifying man who’d held her hostage, a sick, shameful part of me had yearned.
For what, I hadn’t even known. I was only eleven. But now I had an inkling. I yearned to be coveted to the point of madness. Beyond it.
Like the way Giovanni was looking at me right now.
He was trying to hide his desire. I sensed his revulsion at it, and there was no denying his fury and rage at the whole situation. But from my prone position, it was easy enough to see the outline in his pants. He would never act on it. Never take advantage. Even if it meant our lives hung in the balance, he would stay firmly on the other side of the moral line.
I both admired and hated him for that.
It would be easier, simpler, if he took my choice away. Then I wouldn’t have to acknowledge the dark, humiliating side of myself I fed every week when I eagerly participated in something that all the other dancers I worked with hated. I was broken, and I was about to admit it.
At least in that, I had no choice.
“I want it to be you,” I whispered, and he swore ripely in Italian. His eyes pleaded with me to refuse to be part of this, to say no and doom both of us to a painful death.
I wouldn’t do it.
“Please.” Though it pained me, I kept my eyes on his as I rose up on my bare toes. Presenting myself like an offering, as if this was our choice. As if our first time being witnessed by five men who were already going slack-jawed and glazed-eyed at the prospect wouldn’t traumatize me in ways I couldn’t begin to enumerate now.
Maybe I needed to slake this dark curiosity to finally kill it forever. Or maybe I would kill myself—not my body, but my soul. My spirit. I didn’t know.
I had to find out who I would be on the other side. Who he would be, and if we would be anything together.
“Why are you dressed like that?” The question seemed ripped from Gio’s chest. “You aren’t supposed to be here, and you shouldn’t be wearing—”
“Are you going to tell him, Carlotta, or shall I?” Marco interrupted smoothly.
Now I really did have to shut my eyes. Being spread out like this in front of these men hadn’t made my face heat with shame, but imagining the expression on Gio’s face as he found out about my deception did in an instant. “I work here.”
“You what?” When I didn’t reply to Gio’s thunderous question, a hand came down hard on my ass. It took me a full thirty second to realize it was his.
And then I began to heat with something else.
“How could you?” he asked roughly, hauling me to the edge of the table. Against him. “I didn’t want this for you.”
Blindly, I stared at the wall opposite me, and fought not to offer a million apologies. I didn’t owe him one—or anything else.
But I wanted to give him what he was pressed against so tightly now, because something was wrong with me. I wanted to revel in the hedonistic desire beginning to spiral through me, tight and full in my lower belly. I didn’t care about those other men. They were there but not. There was only Gio and me.
Finally.
“Oh, she did, and she did it well.” Marco’s smooth voice interrupted the litany in my head as another set of photographs was smacked down on the table beside my shoulder.
Even without shifting fully to look at them, I glimpsed my cage—and me inside of it, with my ass in a thong pressed to the thinner-than-normal bars. So someone could touch. Lots of someones, if it came to that.
It usually didn’t, because I knew how to play the crowd. But it had a few times. And it could any night I didn’t dodge and weave fast enough.
Like tonight.
Gio grabbed the stack of photos and sifted through them silently, before slapping them back down again. He said nothing, and didn’t so much as breathe against the back of my neck as he loomed over me. “Why?” he whispered, sounding tortured. “Tell me why.”