Chapter 2 #3
She ticks off one long manicured blue nail after the other.
“Mask stays on. What happens in the Hole stays in the Hole. Fuck up and you’re outta here.
Fuck with the customers and you’re outta here.
And fuck with one of my girls?” Her blue brow raises high as she uses the last finger, her thumb, to draw a line across her neck. “It’s off with your head, got it?”
My smile is just as fake as hers was as I point my drink at her. “I knew you’d be the one in charge.”
Her eyes flick up to the skybox behind me—so quick I wonder if I imagined it until she says, “Only a fool thinks they’re in charge in a place like this.”
“Mariposa!” A girl appears at the back of the bar, waving the bartender over. She reminds me of my brother’s fiancée, with crimson curls that brush the top of her blood-red corset. She smiles good-naturedly as she taps the counter near the service well with a silver chip.
The bartender pushes away from the counter, leaving me with the riddle unspooling like thread in my head.
The two women talk, and the crimson-haired woman hands Mariposa the silver chip with a smile.
Mariposa pockets it—sticking it in her cleavage—and opens the service counter, letting the other chick step behind the bar.
Crimson-hair smiles easily and pours drinks for the customers who brighten at the sight of her, while Mariposa preps a hookah with a semi-transparent black and gold glass base.
She packs the bowl, mixing the contents with a fork.
After setting that aside, she snaps gloves on and grabs tongs, then plucks something that looks like a sugar cube from a container and blends that in too.
“Shake that ass, Mira girl!”
I jolt at the nasally voice slurring over the music. The frog-masked man at the end of the bar has pushed his mask up to yell at the naked dancer on the center stage.
“I’ll make it worth your while!”
He downs his fruity martini and teeters off of his chair, stumbling and bumping into a flamingo-waiter rolling a hookah.
The waiter rushes to save the tipping cart, but Frog doesn’t notice.
He’s too busy bumbling his way to one of the few empty seats beside the stage, dollar bills held out like they’re hooked on a line and dragging him there.
“Give me them titties!”
“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter.
The tall woman continues to spin like a mirrored disco ball on the pole, not paying him one bit of attention.
Naturally, the asshole keeps jeering without parting with a single bill.
My hands tighten on my rocks glass until the dancer finishes on the final beats of the song and walks off stage behind a curtain, head held high.
A guy with a white-painted face and red vertical diamonds over his eyes and lips rushes out from backstage. He gathers the money before following her out, and the DJ rumbles over the music.
“Give a round of applause forrrrrr… Mira!”
People cheer and clap mildly, and with the stage empty, my nerves settle. But I still grimace when Frog whines for the next dancer to come out already.
The beat changes to a familiar song, and a new energy buzzes through the club.
Curious, I watch as anyone who doesn’t have a dancer entertaining them—and even some that do—jump into action, flocking to center stage like flies to honey.
The DJ—a guy with a huge, furry white rabbit head atop his large frame and a New York accent—booms over the speakers like an emcee before a WWE match.
“Now, for the girl you’ve all been waiting for… The Rabbit Hole’s very own Alice in Wander Isle!”
I snort. Alice in Wander Isle? Mariposa said cliché sells, but this takes the cake.
The first slow, dark, hypnotic notes of “Wonderland” by Neoni roll into the crowd like a sensual beast, wrapping long tendrils around my heartbeat and jerking my gaze to the stage, and my pulse quickens to a complete stop.
A short, gorgeous blonde spins out from behind the curtain on sky-high, red satin-covered heels made to look like pointe shoes.
The ribbons wrapping around her long legs stop at the apex of her thighs in thick bows right underneath her barely-there blue skirt with white tulle petticoat underneath.
The corset of the same color cinches an already hourglass figure.
I watch, entranced as she circles the stage, coming to a stop with her hand on the pole.
Her white, lace masquerade mask accentuates eyes that I know are more hazel than blue, and her cherry red lips quirk up in a smile I almost kissed once upon a time. The one and only night I ever touched her. The night that changed everything.
The men crowding the stage go absolutely fucking nuts, spilling cash onto the platform.
She gives every one of them a coy smile as she passes them by, as if the hundreds around her feet don’t mean a thing, and it’s their attention she’s getting off on.
Then she hooks one leg around the pole and begins.
She’s breathtaking, more confident than I’ve ever seen her. And every hair on my body stands on end. I found my fiancée alright.
Lucy McKennon. Kian’s shy, meek daughter—my fiancée—is wrapped around a pole in a goddamn strip club.