Chapter 23
LUCY
“Ssooo yeah, it’sss like… cutting edge, ya know? Think about that while I’m gone.”
From her seat on top of the table, Dee shoots a skeptical glance down at me over the thick rims of her black glasses.
She’s wearing them for her costume tonight, still the same mime outfit that she and her twin share, but she’s gone for “nerdy Tweedle Dee,” her persona reserved for the “overworked” businessmen who stay past their allotted lunch hours to blow off some steam.
“Yeah, cutting edge,” she mutters. “Tell us more about this… cutting edge ‘insane asylum.’”
She leans down to where I am perched on the guy’s armchair and whispers in my ear, “Insane asylum? What are we? The nineteenth century?”
I bite my lip to keep from laughing, but it’s not like he notices.
All he wants is company it seems, from both of us, which rightfully irritates Dee.
She’s the one he initially called over to entertain him, but around ten minutes ago, she motioned me in for an assist. Apparently, the guy wants a threesome and for us all to fuck like rabbits—something I’m sure he thought was hilarious since I’m in my bunny costume tonight.
Fortunately, he’s running to the bathroom and given us a moment to wait for him.
Even sitting, he’d angled his chair to face me instead of Dee before he left, his knees spread wide enough that I had to tuck my legs sideways to keep them from touching his. He didn’t move. Didn’t even seem to notice. Though, I wonder if that was the point.
Now, as he crosses the room, I can feel his eyes tracking us through the crowd. The catfish mask doesn’t hide much below the nose, and the cruel twist of his lips when he realizes I’ve clocked him doing it makes my skin prickle.
Like the Alice outfit, it pushes my breasts nearly up to my chin, but the skirt is even shorter, flouncier in the back to make it look like a bunny tail, and I’ve chosen a thicker white lace mask and applied white eyeline over my cheeks to look like whiskers.
My white thigh highs have fur at the top, and they’ll be the only things beside my furry lingerie under my costume that I’ll be wearing when I’m on for my first set.
Alice has only one set a night or the regulars get mad that they miss the others, so I have a repertoire of other Alice in Wonderland themed costumes to wear.
This one, though, I’m finding this one is my second favorite, since Hatter hasn’t been able to take his eyes off me.
I glance over to him now, finding him looking away as he scratches his arm underneath the cuff link of a similar outfit to the one he wore last night—off-white button-down, black and gold vest with a pocket watch, black suspenders, top hat with cards sticking out, and the steampunk mask.
He sneezes into his elbow, then holds his hand to his ear and seems to listen before Tweetie finds him.
They speak, then she nods and leads him to the Sugar VIP room.
He glances around as he opens it up, then they both go inside.
Wait, where’s her client? Is it just the two of them?
My heart thunders, and I can’t move my eyes away as the door closes behind them, until Dee’s voice interrupts my spiral.
“I served him last night you know.”
Dee’s announcement makes my heart clench, and I turn to her, asking breathlessly. “What?”
Her eyes widen and she barks a laugh. “Oh God, not serve-serve. Jesus, I meant I was the dealer during Castle’s Blackjack game.”
I sigh. “Oh, right. Of course.”
She purses her lips then swirls a long red tipped, checker-painted fingernail at me. “But whatever that just was? Sort it out.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“Jealousy doesn’t look cute on you.” She tsks. “No boyfriends in the Hole, girl. You know that.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I hiss, working very hard not to see if he went in the room with Tweetie or not. “He’s just…”
“Hot, sexy, smart, and dangerously obvious about how solely focused he is on you?”
“You think he’s hot?” My eyes widen and my cheeks burn, but I don’t want to address the last. “But I thought you didn’t like men.”
She snorts. “Men shouldn’t even like men.
They all suck. But just because I don’t have to want to have sex with someone, doesn’t mean I don’t know whether someone has been overly blessed by the deities.
He’s over six feet, strong, and looks like he’d fuck every guy in here up just for touching one of us wrong, let alone you.
” She peers over her shoulder where the Sugar Room door is closed, then shrugs. “I can see the appeal.”
Don’t look to see if you can find him. Don’t look to see if you can find Tweetie.
I swallow, keeping my eyes carefully on her. “Well, what was he like?”
She smirks. “He seems different than our usual clientele and the guys that usually come in for a job. Like he’s unaffected by all this.” She waves her hand to the club idly, and I frown.
“Unaffected by… what?”
“Well what The Rabbit Hole does to people. Castle was doing his normal thing and he wasn’t giving an inch, didn’t even give his real name, which is the first to go around here.
” She nods to Gerald, aka Fishy, for emphasis.
“And he kept his head about him during the game. Gave the rest of them a run for their money. Frog wasn’t there, of course, and he’s actually pretty good at it.
But I imagine he’ll be there next time to see since he’s here tonight. ”
“Frog’s here tonight?” I gasp and look around.
She nods. “Yeah pretty sure I saw Mira take him back to a booth when you did your first set, poor girl. But maybe the pain meds will make him less of a dick.”
I wince. “Yeah, maybe.”
She shakes her head. “What happened with you the last time he was here was inexcusable. He’s annoying—and smells like asparagus, never forget the asparagus—”
“How can you forget the asparagus?” I laugh.
“Right?” Dee scoffs. “But he’s not any more annoying than most of our clients.” She grimaces. “I’m sorry you went through that, though.”
“It’s fine,” I lie, and I think she knows it, because she just moves on.
She pats my shoulder. “Stay clear of him for now.”
“But what about you guys? I don’t want to pawn him off on you.”
She shrugs. “Eh, we can take it for now, at least until whatever fixation he has over you gets out of his system. Then you’re back in rotation.” She winks at me and I snort. Then she continues.
“I kinda can’t wait to see what Hatter does against Frog on the card table. He completely owned Dorman. That guy’s a joke at Blackjack anyway, but Hatter even fooled me into thinking he didn’t know how to play.” She whistles. “The guy definitely does, though. Pretty sure he cheated at least once.”
“He cheated?”
She slides an amused look my way. “God you really are a na?ve little thing aren’t you?
That’s part of the game around here. I’m not sure if Castle noticed it or not, but I did.
” She lifts a shoulder. “My fault really, I was sloppy shuffling cards into the shoe. But he used it and made Dorman look stupid, so I’m tempted to do it again—so long as I can make sure Castle doesn’t find out. ”
“I’m surprised Castle is okay with cheating.”
She shakes her head. “He’s not—not really.
But to him, everything is information. He reads everyone else even more than we do.
It’s all part of the game, Alice. The sooner you realize that, the more…
“ she seems to think. “Jaded? Fucked over? Blasé? I don’t know, pick the negative word. I didn’t take my meds this morning, so this Smoke shit is getting to me tonight. ”
She waves idly to the fog in the air and my heart hammers, and my mouth opens to ask—
“You sure you don’t wanna fuck?” The client ambles back to his seat before leveling us with a pointed look, or tries to through his scaly catfish mask that covers the top of his head.
All that I can see are his piercing blue eyes, and they haven’t blinked once since he sat back down.
Something about the way he looks at me makes my stomach churn.
Dee rolls her eyes, and I’m grateful she’s seemingly not as bothered by him as I am and is taking control.
“I told you we’d be down for it, but as I said, it’ll be fifty grand for the two of us to fuck,” she points between me and her, then does a circle between the three of us.
“And one hundred for a menage. We don’t come cheap here at The Rabbit Hole. ”
He growls, “But Piglet said Duchess fucked him—”
“Piglet was wrong,” Dee snaps. “Castle would have our heads if he knew we were running a straight-up brothel on his watch.”
To be honest, I don’t think Castle cares too much, so long as everything is consensual, but neither Dee nor I have ever taken it that far, and if we don’t want to start now, we don’t have to. He’s already asked twice and the price keeps going up.
“Fine. Y’all can dance for me then.” Then his eyes drag from my thighs up to where my costume pushes my breasts together and stay there.
“Make it worth my while.” Despite his odd smile, his voice hardens when he says it, casual enough to miss if you weren’t paying attention.
Dee doesn’t seem to notice, but I do. There’s an impatience there that feels way too calculated to match the sloppy drunk act.
Dee tilts her head. “But you didn’t want us to dance anymore, remember?”
The lie is so convincing for the drunk man, his mouth parts and closes in confusion, making him look like he actually has fish lips.
I piggy-back off her claim, since my feet are killing me.
Since Hatter and I almost went a little too far the other night, I’ve come into The Rabbit Hole, volunteered for multiple dances on the stage when a dancer wanted to bow out, and I’ve been on my Pleasers constantly.
The less I have to be on my feet, the better.