My teeth gnashed. I was on edge, but I needed to keep it together. After all, we were just getting started.
Looking at the tablet, I sighed and chose a song. After all, it didn’t matter. This guy clearly didn’t care about the music selection. I didn’t understand why he even requested me. He didn’t seem interested at all.
“Should I turn the lights up?” I asked as the music started thumping through the speakers. I felt silly standing there as the music played.
“Come here,” the man said. Once more his tone had a command to it, and while I wanted to tell him to go screw himself, I found myself walking towards him.
Giving a lap dance was new to me. I’d only stripped once. But with so much on the line, I couldn’t fail. I closed my eyes and walked closer to the man on the couch. I tried to walk sexy, but I felt as though I looked like a doe trying to take its first steps. As my thigh brushed his knee, my eyes opened slowly, praying that the man wasn’t gross.
“You are a much better swinger than you are a dancer,” the man said. He leaned forward finally showing his face in the light. My stomach dropped. The man sitting on the couch before me was the man from the alleyway, and he was very much alive.
My body turned so quickly that my heel caught in the fabric of the rug, and my ankle twisted causing me to tumble to the ground and cry out. I tried to get to my feet as quickly as possible, but the man was faster. His large hand reached out and grabbed my long hair jerking me back towards him.
“You aren’t going anywhere,” he breathed out. His voice was low and dangerous, and it made my stomach tense up in knots, and the little bit of moisture in my mouth evaporate.
He hauled me to my feet with such force that the pain of his actions didn’t even register until I was pressed up against his body, mine trembling as his breath played against my ears.
“Please,” I begged. I felt tears welling up in my eyes. “I swear that I won’t say anything.”
He chuckled, and the sound made my insides clench together. There was something nefarious in his tone. Even if I hadn’t witnessed this man kill someone else in cold blood, I would have known that he was dangerous.
“I might have believed you if you hadn’t smashed a bottle to the side of my head.”
I swallowed deeply at his words. I would never pray for someone to be dead. I’d spent the last few years watching as death slowly came for someone I loved. But I had hoped and prayed that this man would have been too hurt to come for me.
“I’m sorry,” I whimpered. His hand pulled slightly on my hair until I felt like my neck would snap from the tension. One of his hands was around my throat, a threat of the harm he could inflict on me.
His thumb brushed against my neck, and I shivered. I knew I was going to die. This wasn’t the type of man who would think twice about ending my life to save his own skin. The thought made me close my eyes and send up a silent prayer that Mikey and my mother would be able to make it without me.
For a few minutes, the man did nothing. He simply pressed his fingers against my throat massaging my pulse point.
“How old are you?” he asked.
The question wasn’t one that I was expecting. “Twenty-one,” I stuttered out. My tongue felt heavy as I spoke.
The man’s lips caressed my ear slightly, and I felt myself tense so much that I was sure that my bones would snap with the smallest pressure. “So young.”
I gulped. I didn’t know what to say. I worried that if I said the wrong thing my life would be over. And while I thought that I had accepted my death, I hadn’t. I’d come back to the club knowing that this was a possibility, but I hadn’t really thought about the consequences of my actions.
“I swear that I won’t say anything,” I breathed out once more. “There’s no need for me to say anything.”
“How do I know that you haven’t gone to the cops already?” he asked me.
I felt the tears that had welled up in my eyes beginning to fall. I hated my weakness. Nikki would have been smart enough to get herself out of this, and she wouldn’t have been dumb enough to put herself in it in the first place.
“I’m a stripper,” I reminded him. “Do you really think they would give a shit about anything I had to say?” I grew up in a neighborhood where people didn’t go to the cops. Most of us were too poor for them to care what happened.
“Besides,” at this point I was grasping for anything, “there hasn’t even been a single report of a dead body at the club.”
The pressure on my neck tightened. “No one knows what happened!” I gasped out.
“And we are going to keep it that way.”
The pressure on my neck continued until the edges of my vision darkened. Instinct took over, and instead of being a pliant body against this, I began thrashing around. My nails scratched at his hand, as I tried to pry him off of my neck.
“It’ll be easier if you don’t fight it,” he told me.
His words made me all the more desperate. I flailed around as I tried to get away. I knew that my body was beginning to shut down. Not only was my vision getting blurrier as he kept the pressure on my neck, but I was losing energy.