1
DANCE FOR ME RED
SAM
“What is your name?” he asked, lazily reaching for my hand.
My lips tilted upward slowly as I tried to act like my confidence had not faltered just mere seconds ago. I leaned into him, catching a whiff of his cologne, before my eyes briefly flickered to full lips. “You can call me Red.”
“Red,” he repeated and that was my only warning before in a fluid movement, he encircled my waist with his arms and pulled me onto his lap effortlessly, drawing a startled gasp from me.
His cold, gray eyes never left mine as cold hands caressed my red curls, lovingly, tenderly almost like a lover. And for a second, I forgot that I was just a performer and he was just an audience. Everything disappeared except the glacier stare of a stranger. “Dance for me, Red.”
AN HOUR AGO
My life was one big performance. Soon, I’d be sultry, bold and confident Red on stage.
Right now, I was applying red nail polish to the underside of my red heels on the balcony of the dressing room, trying not to think of my overdue rent.
I heard the dressing room door open, accompanied by heel tapping across the floor and laughter.
I frowned. That meant Skylar and Chelsea were getting ready for their set and soon, it’d be my turn and I was barely done with covering my worn-out, peeling stilettos with the polish.
“...800 dollars…”
Skylar might have said something before that amount or even after, yet it was the figure she mentioned that snagged and kept my attention.
“Even for ten thousand dollars, I’d not risk that public humiliation twice. He had not even told me no, just carried on drinking like he had not heard a word I said–” I didn’t catch her remaining words as they were swallowed up by the hiss of hairspray.
“I just cannot accept that none of us can thaw the Ice Prince.” Chelsea, a ridiculously attractive blonde and one of the top three earners in the club said. “I mean who comes to a strip club just to drink rum, doesn’t look at any performance happening on the stage even once and leaves immediately after thirty minutes?”
“Perhaps he is gay? I mean with such cheekbones, he falls into the pretty boy type that is yet to accept his sexuality so he comes in everyday hoping to feel something.”
“I’d do it.”
The two girls paused for a second as they took me in.
I was standing by the door of the dressing room, my shoe forgotten, my chin in the air as I tried to pretend that them assessing me and, judging from the tiny wrinkle of Skylar’s nose, finding me unworthy didn’t bother me.
Her voice was mocking and her expression spiteful when she asked. “You think redhead jailbaits are his type?”
As the manager’s off and on girlfriend, I understood why she found me intolerable after he had made an exception with me and recruited an eighteen year old stripper even though his normal minimum age was twenty-one, just because of the messy curls of my natural red hair. But that didn’t mean I would entertain her cattiness.
Like she didn’t say anything, my attention remained on Chelesa, who was fixing her lashes as I stepped into the costume cluttered room. “You’d give the person 800 dollars, is that correct?”
She shrugged. “Yes. I’d give you 800 dollars if you get him to accept a lap dance from you.”
“I’d do it.” I said. Just thinking of what that amount of extra income could do for me was already making my heart race against my chest. I don’t know how I’d get this mystery, obviously impossible man to accept, but it would not be the first time I was faced with impossible odds stacked against me yet I’d manage to come out ahead.
“Are you not quite the little overachiever?” Skylar laughed. “You really think you, a newbie, can give a lap dance to the Ice Prince? A man who turned down even Iris?”
I found my confidence faltering. Iris was beautiful. To be a stripper, being conventionally attractive was not just a norm, it was expected.
But Iris’s beauty was not in any way conventional. She was breathtaking and the highest earning stripper in the club. She made more money in tips in one night than I made in a year at my second job.
But that also made me wonder, what if he was broke? What if he couldn’t afford a lap dance? We only stocked two types of rum in the club, bottom shelf and top shelf reserved for VIPs. He could belong in the former category.
He had to.
Chelsea snapped her compact mirror shut. “And if you fail?”
I was silent. I was armed with resilience that can wear down a rock, how much more ice? There was my strategy. I'd have a brief talk with him, tell him about the bet and we’d share the money, 50:50, and if that too failed, I’d have to do whatever beautiful, sexy, Red will do in such a situation and treat it like it was just another performance that needed a compelling entertainer.
But one thing was certain, failure would not be accepted tonight.
With my mind made up, my eyes held hers, a little smile on my face. “We’d never find out. Just don’t change your mind, because before the end of the night, I’d be in the Ice Prince’s lap and you’d have to pay me 800 dollars.”
Skylar chuckled, looking beyond delighted, no doubt envisaging my humiliation. “You know what?” She asked. “Get him to follow you to a VIP room and I’d throw in 200 dollars making it a thousand dollars.”
“Deal.”
➼➼➼
Air tickled my ear as he leaned into me, so I could hear him despite the bass-heavy music vibrating in the room. “What is this business idea you wanted to talk to me about?” He rasped, and even though this was just a bet, my heart skipped a beat as a result of the accent lingering underneath his words.
I was straddling him, my hips swaying to the beat of Ariana Grande’s Dangerous Woman, before I slid a hand down his sternum, my eyes falling on his lips.
Twice now, my subconscious taunted me.
In my defense I’d not been given enough warning about the physical appearance of my mark. The unnatural silver of his hair, blonde slashes of his brows, the straight line of his nose and those eyes.
It was not just that he was younger and handsome than I expected, it was the ethereal quality and uniqueness of it and how he was so unlike any younger and handsome man that I have met.
He was not arrogant or loved the sound of his own voice more than anyone else’s. He was not an asshole, in fact his hands stayed at his sides after he had planted me on his body and he was not trying to be broody and mysterious.
He made me uneasy.
Not being able to figure him out, because his expression looked like it had been chiseled from ice made me nervous. Because how could I anticipate his needs and provide it if I could not get a tell on him?
“Forget it.” I said. The leather watch on his wrist was a Patek Philippe. I had been way off with my earlier analysis. Yet somehow, I had lucked out.
Now a reasonable girl wouldn’t push her luck, but a reasonable girl would not be in the laps of a man calculating what the extra 200 dollars Skylar had promised if I could get him to book a VIP session with me could do for me.
“I could make your night even better,” I purred, scraping my teeth on his earlobe.
“You can?” he asked and for a beat, he let down his guard, and I watched his eyes coast over my body in the little black dress I had on, his lips parting.
It was a calculated move with an intent to intimidate and it did. I felt a chill run down my entire body.
A chill I disguised with a smirk, assuring myself that I was the one doing the hunting and the need in his eyes only meant that I had him in my clutches.
Wanting to get back the upper hand, I moved one of his hands to my waist, then grinned sweetly at him, before whispering against his lips. “I never lie.”
He seemed like a man enthralled when he stood up and followed me.
I heard the hush in the air at the spot where the other dancers who were yet to perform were seated when I snatched a key from one of the girls. Skylar silently picked up a glass and raised it at me before taking a sip.
I was on cloud nine. That thousand dollars would not only cover one of Hazel’s dialysis sessions, it could also put food on the table for a day, and keep the electricity on for a week if we save on hot water.
My rough calculation was interrupted as the door closed with a loud click, the muffled thump of music that had accompanied us even in the hallways vanished.
Was this place soundproof?
“So what happens now?”
I looked up at the man in front of me, who was now looking at me expectantly after closing the door.
Now my heart was beating for two entirely different reasons and none of it was excitement.
Christ, has he always been this tall? And what exactly do I do?
