Chapter Eight: Striptease
Naomi
Friday night was always busy at the strip club, even more so than Saturday. I’d been told it was because men that worked all week liked to kick off the weekend right by enjoying themselves. Also, a lot of people got paid on Fridays.
I was in the dressing room, caking heavy makeup onto my face. In my day-to-day life, I liked to keep my face natural, usually just sticking to some eyeliner and maybe lip gloss. The feeling of thick gunk on my face was off-putting, but on the stage, it was important to meet expectations. There was a certain look strippers needed to have.
My hair was curled and let down so I could flip it around, and the red dress I wore was tight and short, but easy to remove. By the time I was done with my make-up, I had blood-red lips and dark eye shadow. Fake lashes and black eyeliner provided a dark framing for my bright blue eyes, and a shimmer powder made my skin look mesmerizing.
I was pretty, but I didn’t feel like myself. It was a necessary evil to get through my routine. I pretended to be someone else so it didn’t bother me.
Some women, like Angel, found this job empowering. But I didn’t feel that way.
At first, I’d felt ashamed, like I was doing something wrong, but over the last few months, I’d come to think of stripping as something that just had to be done. I hadn’t been able to find another job that would work with my class schedule and still pay enough to live on. Stripping wasn’t exactly a noble profession, but I’d been able to pay my rent and buy food for my son with the money I made. That made what I did worth it.
Still, when Smoke asked about my job last night, I didn’t want to tell him the truth. I had come to accept that this was my profession for now, but I wasn’t delusional enough to think that others wouldn’t judge me for it. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing disdain on Smoke’s face if I told him what I did to earn money. I could brush off any other criticisms, but I just knew that harsh judgement from Smoke would be harder to take. We might still be getting to know each other after all these years, but I found that I already cared what he thought of me.
I could hear the music from the main stage, so I knew Cinnamon was on stage. She always danced to the same song, and she was very popular. After her routine, Angel would take the main stage, and I would be on one of the other, smaller platforms.
Leaving the dressing room, I adjusted my black bra lined with silver studs. It would be the last thing to come off, right at the end of my act. We didn’t go fully nude in this club, but even if that wasn’t the rule, I wouldn’t have bared all. I had to draw the line somewhere.
As I stepped out of the dressing room, I saw Angel standing near Duane’s office, her barely dressed body wrapped around a broad man with a black leather jacket. She was kissing him, and I couldn’t see the guy’s face around all her big, red hair, but I assumed it was someone she’d met at the bar last night. But as I walked by, they stopped kissing and he lifted his head.
I flinched as I recognized him as one of the scary bikers I’d seen in Duane’s office at the beginning of the week. He wasn’t a Rebel Saint that was for sure. What was Angel doing with him?
I decided not to say a word about it. It wasn’t any of my business how many guys she slept with, and it wasn’t like I had always been big on serious relationships. Gavin’s conception was proof of that.
I’d left that kind of thing behind when I became a mom, and these days I wanted to find a meaningful connection with someone, to settle down. Of course, that wasn’t always easy for a single mom. As I headed for the stage, my mind drifted to the kiss Smoke and I almost shared last night.
I had wanted to follow through so badly, to lose myself in Smoke the same way I had twelve years ago and forget about everything except the way he made me feel, but I couldn’t do that. A parent could never let themselves go completely, not when someone depended on them, and the fact that Smoke was Gavin’s father meant there was great potential for things to go badly with our little family.
But it was so hard to remember all of that when he looked at me with his heated gaze, not bothering to even try to hide how much he wanted me.
As I reached the platform, pausing behind the curtain while I waited for my song to start up, I pushed aside all thoughts of Smoke. I didn’t want him on my mind when I went out there. In fact, the only thing I thought about as my song started up and I slipped out from the gap in the curtains was the dance routine. I had to admit it was a little fun coming up with the dance, using YouTube video tutorials and watching the movie Striptease for inspiration.
I could see Angel out of the corner of my eye on the main stage, already gyrating at the edge of the stage. Her dress would be off in seconds.
I went for the pole in the middle of the platform, holding onto it as I spun around once...twice...three times. Then, with a surge of strength, I lifted my leg, wrapping it around the pole above my head as I inverted my body, so I was hanging upside down. It had taken hours of practice to learn this move, and I had been so sore the next day that I’d been tempted to remove it from my routine altogether, but I decided it was a good workout and stuck with it.
My eyes were only focused on the stage around me and the colorful lights pulsating on time to the music overhead. I didn’t need to see the men watching me. Angel fed off the attention she got from them, but I tried not to think too much about them. It would make me self-conscious if I focused on it too much. Instead, I kept my attention on the music, the driving beat as familiar as the back of my hand. There wasn’t a lot of changing things up here at Sweet Spot, so I had been doing the same routine to this song for a couple of weeks now.
Halfway through the song, my dress came off. Pulling it over my head, I tossed the skimpy piece of fabric to the back of the stage, to be scooped up as I left the stage at the end of the song. I didn’t react to the cheers as I was left in just my lingerie. I just kept a sexy smirk on my face as I started thrusting my hips in time with the music. I was working up to a big finish, so I made my way to the edge of the stage on my knees, arching my back and letting my hair tumble behind me as I tilted my face up toward the ceiling with my eyes closed.
I could sense people moving closer, most likely with bills in their hands. Some would try to tuck the money into my panties, but I didn’t like to allow them to get that close. So, I finally looked toward my crowd of admirers, accepting the cash they held out for me with a lip smack and wink. I had seen all types of men here, from handsy perverts that ended up being thrown out by security to college guys that were harmless but immature about the whole thing. To men who seemed genuinely nice and friendly, just looking to have a little fun adventure in a place like this. It was a mixed bag of customers at a place like this.
I reached down with my free hand, finding the front clasp of my bra. I was ready to pop it open, which would probably earn me the most money of the night, but then my eyes landed on a table ten feet away.
I completely froze as I took in the sight of Smoke sitting there, staring at me with an utterly unreadable expression on his face.
Shit.