Dancing for the Minotaur (The Monstrum Kindred #11)

Terra

The month after the divorce was final, he came to the door to see the kids and she noticed he was driving a brand-new lifted truck—the same kind he’d wanted to buy when they were married and she had vetoed because it cost too damn much.

Jackson had gone on the defensive at once.

“Woman, why are you always on my ass?” he snarled. “I’ll pay you when I’m good and ready—not before.”

“So? You’re their mom—take care of them,” he’d snapped. “Now are they coming out with me and Shannon or not?”

“Not,” Terra said. “You can come in and visit with them if you want to—I’m sure they’d like that. But you can’t bring strangers into the mix.”

Jackson’s face turned red with anger.

“Shannon’s not a stranger—we’re going to get married! How are they supposed to meet their new Mama if you won’t let me introduce them to her?”

“Their new Mama?” Terra’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously? You’ve been dating her for less than two months! And she’s only nine years older than Cody.”

Cody was their son who had just turned ten on his last birthday.

“Bullshit—Shannon’s twenty-one,” Jackson protested.

“And you’re forty-five,” Terra reminded him. “She’s still young enough to be your daughter. But it’s not her age I’m objecting to—it’s the fact that she’s a stranger and the judge said neither of us can bring new people to visitation for at least six months!”

“Aw, that’s bullshit, and you know it,” Jackson snarled. “If you don’t want to let the kids meet Shannon, then I guess you don’t want them to see me, either.”

“Don’t be like that,” Terra had pleaded. “You can at least come in and spend some time with them.”

“And leave Shannon out in the truck? No fucking way!” he exclaimed. “She’s excited to meet the kids!”

“Yeah, she looks really excited,” Terra remarked, shooting a glance at the bored looking girl in the cab of the enormous, shiny truck.

In the end, Jackson had refused to see the kids without his new girlfriend and so Terra had called off the visit.

Since then, she’d only seen him twice—both times driving around town in his shiny new truck.

He hadn’t paid a single dime of either alimony or child-support and as a result, she’d lost the house, which had been part of the divorce settlement.

Terra and her kids had been forced to move back in with her mom—who lived in a tiny little bungalow in a part of town which used to be good…but was rapidly becoming more dangerous. Once Terra had hoped to move her mom out of there for good—now that dream was dead.

Her part time job at the library didn’t pay nearly as much as she needed to live and support her kids, but she still made too much to get any support from the government. In desperation, she’d gone to The Doll House, a local strip club.

She hadn’t been looking for work as a stripper—honestly she hadn’t. She’d heard from a friend that they were hiring waitresses and that you could make good money in tips if you were willing to wear a skimpy outfit and put up with men grabbing your ass from time to time.

Terra didn’t love the ass grabbing part, but she didn’t mind wearing sexy outfits. What she hadn’t expected during the interview was that the club manager would ask her if she wanted to strip instead of waiting tables.

“Me?” Terra had pointed to herself in disbelief. “But I’m not some twenty-year old—who’s going to want to see me take my clothes off?”

“Lots of guys—you have what we call a ‘mature figure,’” the manager told her. “Big ass, thick thighs—and most important, big tits. You’re not skinny but you’re not exactly fat either. Lots of guys like that shape.” And he’d described an overfull hourglass in the air with his hands.

“I don’t know…” Terra had hesitated. “I mean, I’ve taken a pole-dancing class but—”

“That’s perfect. Get up there and show me your stuff!”

And that was how her job interview for a waitress position had turned into an audition for stripping. Apparently the manager liked what he saw, because Terra got the job.

She’d taken the job out of desperation, but she didn’t hate it—the dancing part, anyway.

She found it strangely empowering, the idea that men still found her attractive.

Jackson had been older than her, but he was always putting her down and acting like she was the one who was “over the hill” and past her sexual prime. Terra had learned that she was neither.

The part of the job she didn’t like was having to do lap dances and VIP dances. Because while she didn’t mind taking off her clothes in front of strangers, she didn’t especially want them touching her while she did it.

But again, desperation drove her. The girls who didn’t do lap dances missed out on a lot of tips.

And the ones who refused to work the VIP rooms got less and less stage time—the manager saw to that.

So though she hated letting a sweaty stranger paw her while she was mostly naked, Terra forced herself to grit her teeth and do it at least once a night every time she worked.

Tonight was no exception. She was in the groove and enjoying herself on stage, but she knew, in the back of her mind, that she was going to have to do either a lap dance or take some customer to the VIP room as soon as her set was over.

Don’t think about it, she told herself as she tossed her long blond hair over one shoulder and rolled her hips. The long, straight waterfall of blonde hair was a wig—one of the props she’d bought herself to help differentiate her stage persona—Bunny Canyon, from her true self.

Terra had bought herself some stripper outfits as well—you couldn’t just wear regular lingerie—and some sky-high heels, of course.

But other than that, all the money she made went into raising her kids and trying to save a little money to get all of them into a better living situation.

That and the college courses she was taking on her nights off to learn to be an accountant.

Terra had always been good with numbers—in fact, she’d been planning to get a degree in accounting way back before she’d met Jackson and he’d knocked her up in the back seat of his car a few days after graduation.

By the time college started that fall, Terra was already beginning to show, and her mom had insisted that the two of them get married, despite their age gap.

She had never approved of Jackson, but she approved of being pregnant “out of wedlock” even less.

So instead of taking classes, Terra had been changing diapers. She still had a sharp mind for numbers though and now that so many college courses had moved on-line, she was able to pick up at least one or two courses a semester.

Her mom still thought she was a waitress, thank goodness.

It would break her Southern Baptist heart if she knew that Terra was stripping.

She also didn’t want her kids to know. But since Cody was ten and Lisa was seven, they didn’t ask a lot of questions.

Her mom watched them on the nights that Terra worked, and the money was slowly adding up in her bank account.

But every time she got some saved, it seemed like something happened.

The washing machine quit, or her ancient Honda broke down and needed a new alternator.

She just couldn’t seem to get ahead, Terra thought as she swung around the pole again.

And at the slow rate she was able to take classes, it was going to be some time before she could qualify as a CPA.

Might need to do more than one lap dance tonight, she told herself. Might need to go to the VIP room too.

She hated the idea of some sweaty stranger pawing her mostly naked body, but she knew there was no way around it.

She wasn’t young like a lot of her fellow strippers—she had to make bank while she could.

Eventually no one would want to see her take off her clothes and then what would she do?

She had to have enough for her little family to live on until she got her accounting degree and got a job. She—

Her thoughts were interrupted by a new group entering the club. They looked like a regular, rowdy bunch of guys except for one in the back who clearly wasn’t human. He was huge and muscular and…dear God—did he have horns?

Terra didn’t have time to get a good look. She finished her set and got her tips. Scooping her discarded bra off the stage, she made her way down into the dressing area where the other girls were already gossiping about the strange guy she’d glimpsed from the stage.

“He’s some kind of Kindred,” Candy was saying as Terra changed her outfit and freshened her make up. “Not the regular kind though—I think he’s one of those Monstrum! You know—the kind that look like animals?”

Terra knew what she was talking about—everyone had seen the Monstrum Kindred all over the news when they had first saved the Earth from the Darkling Invasion. The huge alien warriors were from another universe and, by some strange twist of fate, many of them looked kind of like Earth animals.

“He’s got horns and those eyes—did you see them? So freaky!” Crystal agreed. She and Candy were both fresh out of high school. Terra had a motherly feeling for the two of them—they were sweet, just not very bright.

Not that she’d been very smart at that age, she reminded herself.

Otherwise she wouldn’t be stripping—she would have ignored Jackson’s invitation to go to the movies that night and gone to college instead of having babies.

She loved her kids, of course, but she couldn’t help thinking how different her life might have been if she’d only turned her ex-husband down on the night in question.

“I saw him out there in the crowd,” she said to Candy. “So what if he’s a Monstrum?”

“So what? He’s huge!” Candy’s blue eyes got huge.

“And you know all those Monstrum have those freaky dicks!” Crystal put in with a giggle. “Like, how could they even fit that in you? You know?”

“I know!” Candy giggled too. “Plus, at least the regular Kindred look mostly human—they just look like animals.”