He stops before I can, and I bump into him, the front of my body flush against his hard, unyielding back. I gasp and jump away. “Sorry.”

Beyond a raised eyebrow, he ignores that. “There are clothes in the dresser,” he says, gesturing to an open door. “And toiletries in the bathroom. Don’t—”

I stand there, waiting to hear what I can’t do. Don’t think sinful thoughts. Don’t talk back.

Don’t run away and take a bus to a strange city.

I’m used to being told what not to do, and for most of my life, I obeyed.

“Don’t wander,” he says finally. “It might not be safe.”

Might not be safe from what?

“I won’t,” I say softly. I’m too tired to wander. Too lost to even try. There’s nowhere else to go.

“Get ready for bed,” he says.

His words ring in my head while I go into the room and shut the door. They ring while I find the clothes in the dresser, a random assortment of feminine things, soft T-shirts and dresses, different sizes and colors. Who do they belong to? They ring while I shower under the hot spray, water burning away the smell of the city.

Get ready for bed.

Almost as if I’m to wait for him. As if he’ll be joining me.

The bed is the largest one I’ve ever seen, but somehow too small for two people. Too small if one of the people is Ivan. He’s physically large and, more than that, terrifying. What will he do to me? I can’t fight him. God, I’m not sure I want to try. Home.

In the end I push back the heavy blankets, almost as thick as my sleeping pallet in Harmony Hills, and climb onto the bed. The pillow is perfectly soft, so clean, and I let myself drift away. I’m floating on a cloud, plush and high up.

I dream in those moments. I dream about color and light. I dream about the sky.

There is a deep voice from above and all around me, telling me to get on my knees. Commanding me to pray. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever skipped bedtime prayers. The first time I haven’t begged for salvation. I’m not going to beg, not ever again.

The hand on my face doesn’t feel angry. It isn’t a slap for my insolence. It strokes down my temple and cups my cheek. My eyes flutter open. Ivan.

His hand falls away.

“Candace,” he says in the same deep voice of my dream.

And there’s a look in his eyes, the same look Leader Allen gives Mama. The same look he started giving me. That look is the reason Mama sent me away.

“You’ll stay here,” he says softly. “I don’t want you to dance, but you can stay.”

The allure of it beats through me, a heart of its own, thumping away to a dream that isn’t mine. Safety. Home. I want those things, but I want freedom more. I want the flash of lights and of skin. I want the power those women had onstage.

Ivan wants to put me in a cage, but what I really want is to fly.

“Okay,” I lie, because one sin becomes many. Leader Allen taught me that, and he was right. I’ll convince Ivan, though. One day I’ll dance on that stage, and Ivan will watch me.

One day he’ll teach me everything there is to know.

“Good girl.”

The praise washes over me, undeserved and darkly pleasurable, a stroke along my spine. It feels good, but I know what it is. A trap. A chain around my ankle to keep me on the ground. In this moment, it locks me so tight that I’d accept anything he did to me. If he were to touch me the way the woman with the kind eyes meant. The way Leader Allen touches Mama during prayer.

Ivan leans down, and I hold my breath. Large hands take hold of the blanket, lift slightly. I feel everything between us—anticipation and denial, lust and fear corded together. We feel them together, breathe them in through the air, pulse them with each beat of our hearts. It’s a kind of knowledge, this feeling, connecting a thousand nerve points to the core of my body. This is what he meant by teaching me. This and so much more.

Then he pulls the blanket higher, tucking it around me. “Good night,” he says, eyes glittering in the dark.

He is silver and light, made even brighter by the shadows behind him. It’s strange, the disappointment I feel that he isn’t going to touch me. He isn’t going to teach me. Not tonight. “Good night,” I whisper back.

Then he’s gone, shutting the door against the dark, locking me in. And I slide away into sleep, without dreams, without color, with only the shameless black of contentedness, knowing I am safe for the night.

Chapter Six

Three years later

Walking through the Grand is like walking through a dream. A sweet dream, most nights. Flashing lights and bright colors. And sex. It coats these dreams with honey, thick and burnished gold.

There are bad dreams too, on nights when a new asshole walks through the doors and puts his hand on me. Security is quick to throw them out, when they see, and Ivan swift and merciless with retribution, when he finds out. And for those few minutes when nobody knows, when I’m alone with some new monster…well, everyone gets nightmares sometimes.

“You going onstage?” Bianca asks. She’s relatively new to the club, an ice queen, her gait more of a glide. She surveys me from a few inches higher, her plastic glass slippers raising her above me.

Of course I know her aloofness is an act. She’s actually a scaredy cat when it comes to Ivan, or most men actually, which is why she’s here.

“I’m done for the night,” I tell her. “Heading back now.”

“Oh.” She examines her nails, a shimmery opal. “Do you think you could check about that time off?”

“And the reason you can’t ask him yourself is because…” We put our schedules together at the beginning of every two weeks. Now she needs tomorrow off for some unspecified reason.

The mask cracks, just for a moment. “I need this. I really need this time off, and he’s more likely to say yes to you. Please. It’s…personal.”

She says personal like it’s a dirty word, and in here, it is. We don’t pass around a sharing stick in the dressing room. This isn’t a goddamn therapy session. No, we bury our issues deep, where it can turn our souls black, numb us from the inside out, like any other self-respecting stripper.

“I’ll talk to him,” I say, because it seems like the fastest way to make her stop.

“Thank you,” she says, relief evident. “I’ll owe you one.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, stalking past her. I hadn’t planned on talking to Ivan tonight. He will definitely notice my shaky hands. And with his bruisers reporting my every move, he’ll know why.

The crowd is decent tonight, a teeming mass I have to fight my way through, pushing and shoving just to stay upright. I get off on this—the noise, the people. The looks men give me as I pass them by. It’s why I loved this place the moment I stumbled into the club, wide-eyed and terrified. It’s why I begged and pleaded to be allowed onstage, back before I was quite legal—the lone nameless, underage girl in his otherwise legitimate enterprise.

And it’s why I put up with what happens in the basement. Not sex. God, nothing as pedestrian as that. Ivan could get sex from any of the girls in Tanglewood. For all I know, he does. It’s something different he wants from me, though.

Luca stands watch at the stairwell, face impassive. “Evening,” he says.

I smile, enjoying the challenge. I’ve gotten to know Luca Almanzar pretty well since we first met. And he can be pretty fun, except when he’s on duty. He’s like one of those guards outside the palace, a tall hat and an unbreakable stare.

Pressing myself close, I run my hand down his chest. I’m an inch away from him when I whisper, “Good evening to you too, handsome.”

He stiffens at my touch, at my words, but he doesn’t break formation. “Do you want to get me killed?”