Chapter 4 #2
“Sure about that?” She returned in front of him.
“I want you in a way nobody else gets you,” he said. “No—I don’t want that. I need it.”
She sighed, but not in a way that was anything other than amused. “Sit back on the couch,” she said. “All I can do is dance, but I’ll make you a promise. I’ll dance for you like I’ve never danced for anyone else.”
“How can you do that?” he asked.
“Because when I dance, no matter who’s watching, I dance for me. But I like you. So tonight, I’m going to dance for you. I’ve never done that before.”
Beau backed away and fell into the cushioned sofa.
It was less than he wanted, but it was something, and he’d take it for now.
She climbed the stage and began to move.
She was fluid, soft and liquid, but he could see her muscles working.
Did she fuck like she danced? If so, she could surely take everything he had to give—and the way it was building in him, that would be a lot.
She turned her back to him, swinging her firm, round ass side to side. It felt like an invitation, and he almost stood up. “Lola.”
She looked at him over her shoulder.
“Who are you?” he asked. “How did you get here?”
“I’m just a topless girl in a round room,” she said. “The rest is up to you.”
“I want the truth.”
“You’re not here for truth. That’s not why people come here.” She paused. “I promise, imagination is better.”
“In here, my imagination could kill me.”
She descended the stage. His knees fell open for her to stand between them. She looked down at him. “Such a romantic. What’s someone like you doing in here?”
“Looking for you.”
“You found me, so just try and relax, okay? This is supposed to be fun.” She turned around, bent her knees and brushed his crotch with the curve of her ass. He thought it was an accident, but she did it again, the fabric of his pants the only thing between them.
He wanted to grab her hips and pull her against him, sink himself into that little pussycat.
To have her in his hands, to have her mouth, her legs, the blush lips of her pussy open for him, open to him—as if to say, I am yours, come closer, just a little closer.
“Christ, I need you,” he said. “You don’t understand. ”
“You have me for another forty-five minutes. I’m right here.”
“It’s not enough. I need more. Come home with me.”
Her head was barely turned over her shoulder. He watched her pink lips quiver as she asked, “What?”
“My place isn’t much, but it will be soon. I’ll get a cab. Come with me.”
She licked her lips. “I…that’s not allowed.”
“Then I’ll pay you or them or whoever I have to pay. I have the money.”
The corners of her mouth curved down into a frown. That was what he’d worked for, what he’d been waiting to say his whole life—wasn’t it? I have money. Do what I say, and you can have it too.
She turned around, the quiver in her lips gone. He was gone—beyond gone, a solider for his cock, sent out to conquer, and don’t come back until you have her, the only thing I’ve asked you for in months.
“I’m not—I don’t…” She glanced at the door. “I mean, if that’s what you’re here for…I can probably find it for you.”
“I want it.”
“Then I’ll get someone else—”
“No,” he said quickly, almost angrily. “Did you hear anything I said? I want you. For the whole night.”
She had stopped dancing a moment, but she started again with a jerk, as if someone had pushed her ‘On’ button. “That’s not possible.”
“What do you want?” he asked. “I’ll give you anything. This is what women are to men. What you are to me.”
She turned back to the stage and pointed to the pole. “Is that where you want me?”
“No, come back.”
She walked to him again and moved around his lap, this time not even close to brushing him.
“A thousand dollars.”
She whipped her head up, her eyes wide. “Excuse me?”
“I would pay you that much to come home with me right now.”
She shook her head, hard and definite. “I—”
“You’re right. That’s nothing. Five thousand.” He’d studied, intricately, the art of negotiation. He’d just used it all that week to secure his entire future. All of that went out the door for her, though. He doubted she even realized she had his balls in her hand.
But she shook her head again. “No. You’re really not much of a romantic after all, are you?”
“Yes, I am. Take it. I just made myself a shitload of money, and I can tell you, it wasn’t easy. I lost years of my life for it. People don’t come around handing it out like I am now. I’m not exaggerating.”
Her smile was close-lipped and unreadable, her blue eyes narrowed fractionally. “I believe you. But my answer is no.”
“Jesus Christ. Fifty-fucking-thousand dollars. Whatever it takes. All of that, just to say yes to me for tonight, to let me have you inch by inch, every goddamn porcelain centimeter of you. Do you have any idea what I can do to you?”
Her lashes fluttered so beautifully, so softly. She was coy. She was playing hardball, but he didn’t care. All he wanted was his yes, however he got it. He could feel her words before she even spoke—“Okay, Beau, let’s go.”
Lola was smiling, but something was off. He remembered a little earlier, he’d wanted her to make him work for it. The way she was smiling now, though, he didn’t feel like he’d earned anything.
She stilled completely. “I’m not for sale.”
“What?” he asked, leaning forward.
“I said, there isn’t enough money in Hollywood to get me to go home with you or anyone else.
” She seemed to get farther away, even though she wasn’t moving.
He’d been wrong about her lashes—they didn’t flutter.
They beat, leaden butterfly wings, bullets from a gun.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you since it sounds like you worked hard for it,” she said, “but even money has limits.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Beau said. “Not the kind of money I have. Don’t deny me this.
I’m begging you against my every instinct—come home with me.
Let me make you feel good. I won’t hurt you.
I just want to bury myself inside you where I think I might belong, where I can worship you for tonight and fuck you with all the power it took me ten years to get. Can’t you give me that?”
Her face was passive. At some point, her eyes had glossed over, vacant. He doubted she’d even heard what he’d just said. “I’ll dance topless for you all night if you like,” she said. “That’s what I can give you.”
Everything in his body coiled around itself.
Did she not see the lines forming around his eyes from the stress, from staying up until three o’clock every night, his retinas burning, Brigitte sleeping peacefully in the next room, the words blurring on the screen, but only a few more minutes before he would shut everything down?
All that, night after night, building, destroying, adding, subtracting, fixing, rewriting, overwriting, burning, burning, burning—his eyes in his skull, his life before his eyes.
How could that mean nothing to her? What was one more small thing—just that slippery thong sliding a little lower over her hips?
Just her, a few inches closer, so his neglected cock could find home between her angelic legs?
Beau’s breath was coming too fast. He gripped his knees.
She continued to dance, slow, sexy, but her heart wasn’t in it.
“Stop,” Beau said. “Just stop.”
She stopped, looking at him. He stood up in one jerky movement.
“But you haven’t used your entire hour,” she said, turning sideways so he could pass.
He looked at her from under his eyebrows. What a fickle little kitten. His hands twitched. He was the one in charge—not her. Didn’t she know that? Did he need to show her how to bend to his will, how to be thankful for what he was offering?
Beau had the thing people fought over, dreamed of, salivated, killed and died for—and this young girl in cat ears, who was already nine-tenths naked—she didn’t give one fuck about this money that’d taken him over a third of his life to earn.
She couldn’t give him this one thing on the most important day of his life.
The buttons of his dress shirt pressed against his chest with each deep inhale.
Beau had to leave before he exploded. He yanked his wallet from his jacket and left his last hundred dollars on the seat.
He didn’t look back once on his way out, afraid she’d be there in the doorway—smug, superior, laughing at him.