“Shh,” he tells me. “That’s right. You’re my good girl.”

I slide off the desk, my ass still burning from the sting of his palm. The floor is unyielding against my knees, but I don’t care. I cling to his pant leg, feeling him through the wool. I press my face against his thigh, turning the fabric damp. “Please. Let me serve you. Let me, let me…”

“Shh,” he says again, brushing the hair back from my forehead. “Enough of that. You’re forgiven.”

He’s absolved me, but that isn’t enough. I need him to touch me, to feel what I see bulging his suit pants. I need to be more than a servant or a thing to save. I need to be a woman.

Is this how my mother felt?

I never understood why she went to Harmony Hills, why she let Leader Allen use her like a whore. Wasn’t it a sin? He punished her every day. Only now do I understand, when I crave the same thing from a man far less holy and a lot more dangerous.

Ivan’s thumb brushes my tears from my cheeks. “Don’t cry, little one.”

And then I can’t hold back the truth. I have to tell him what I couldn’t say before. This can’t go on. I want him to hurt me, to discipline me. I want him to touch me, even if that will only ever happen in the form of his palm on my ass. But I can’t go on like this. I can’t keep drinking and partying. I’m not even sure I can keep dancing. “I can’t keep being bad,” I whisper, looking up into his gray eyes. “I have to be good now.”

If I’m good, he can’t bend me over the desk anymore. He can’t punish me.

This would never happen. Regret flickers in his eyes. It’s immediately replaced by the cold detachment that all the other girls get. This is why they’re scared to talk to him. This is who they see.

“I don’t believe you,” he says, as dark as the shadows around us. “Now go, little one. Run away.”

Chapter Eight

I do leave, but I come back again the next night. This is our dance, this attack and retreat—with one exception. Each time I left, I would do something wrong. Something so he would touch me.

Something so he would punish me.

When I show up at the Grand in late afternoon, shadows stretch over the cobblestone. The sun has left a sticky sweetness in the air, not quite evaporated by the night’s chill. I haven’t taken a sip of alcohol or a hit of anything. I haven’t even given myself an orgasm. I haven’t done a single thing to take the edge off, so I’m wired. I blink against blinding sideways light, feeling every bead of sweat on my skin. The world is too sharp like this, the very air made of blades.

I’m panting by the time I make it inside the double doors. They swing shut behind me, blocking out most of the light. I suck in the stale air like it’s a lifeline.

West is sitting at the bar. He works security here, one of the bouncers. Luckily he’s too busy brooding into his glass to notice me practically panting from panic. His dark skin looks even darker under the bar’s tinny overhead lights.

“Drinking on the job?” I ask, leaning against the bar. “I didn’t know a Boy Scout like you had it in you.”

He looks up, expression wry. “It’s water.”

I hop onto the stool next to him and peer into the glass he’s been staring at. “Water is never that interesting. There something bothering you?”

“Are you going to tell Ivan if there is?” His voice is mild, almost teasing, but I detect the warning there as well. I’m an outsider, even here, in this place. The girls look up to me just as much as they look down on me. They want my help, but they hold me at arm’s length. That’s what I get for fucking the boss.

Or not fucking the boss, in our twisted little game.

“Well, I don’t think you’re stealing the silver. So no, I don’t think I’d have to run and tattle on you.”

Besides, in a very short amount of time, it won’t even matter. I won’t be here anymore, and I doubt Ivan will even want to see me again.

“Not stealing the silver, no. But…” He grimaces. “Looking at it.”

“And the silver in this case being…girls.”

“Shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

He looks miserable, and I have to laugh. It’s not every day I meet a man who even cares that he might have offended me, much less one who avoids objectifying us. “Don’t worry about it. I mean, looking is free. And kind of a job requirement for you, since if you didn’t look at us, you couldn’t protect us. So I’m guessing you mean one girl in particular.”

“On my first day here I met with Ivan. He told me don’t fuck—” He clears his throat. “Don’t mess with the girls. I didn’t think it would be a problem for me. Hell, it shouldn’t be a problem for me.”

“This is one Ivan problem I can’t help you with. You want a day off or a free hour in the VIP room? Come talk to me. This is one area where Ivan can’t be moved.”

“Then why—” West stops speaking abruptly, and I have a feeling he’s blushing, even though it’s too dark to see. He stands, unfolding to his six-foot height. He towers over me, but he’s sheepish. Worried he disrespected me. With another man, I’d think he didn’t want to offend Ivan. In this case West doesn’t want to offend me. He’s that kind of guy, old-world manners. He fits in well with the Grand, with the crumbling building and its faded damask wallpaper. Even if it is a strip club.

“Why does he fuck me?” I fill in for him. “He doesn’t. That’s the short answer.”

West blinks in surprise. I know what everyone thinks. And with what Ivan does to me in that basement, they’re not completely wrong. He hurts me and uses me in depraved ways. But he doesn’t fuck me. He doesn’t even touch my pussy. I’ve never seen his cock.

“It’s none of my business,” West says softly. “You don’t have to explain yourself. Or him.”

“Good thing, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you. But don’t let Ivan catch you fucking around with one of the girls. He’s protective of them.”

He gives me a faint smile. “That’s one of the reasons I like working here. And why I’d like to keep working here.”

I tell myself it’s concern for the girls that has me asking and not prurient curiosity, but that’s a lie. It’s both. “So who is the lucky girl?”

“Lucky isn’t the word I’d use to describe her,” West says darkly.

And I know exactly what he means even if that doesn’t clear it up any. Every girl here has a story. No one grew up wanting to take their clothes off for men. Even if the ideal sounds sexy, the reality doesn’t live up to it. Panting men and grasping hands. Lots of money, but never enough to feel clean.

That’s what I didn’t know when I wanted to work here. I feel powerful onstage, flaunting my nakedness, using my sexuality to lead men around. But at the end of the day the power is only an illusion.

West takes a long drink from his glass of water, emptying it. “Anyway, I’m not trying to mess around with her. It’s not like that. I just want to…”

He trails off, but I know the answer. Ironically it’s the same thing Ivan wanted when he saw me. It’s the reason we’re trapped in this perverted standoff, spanking and mouthing off, ever circling. “You want to save her,” I say sadly. “But that’s the thing about girls. We can only save ourselves.”

Chapter Nine

Ruffles and lace are my armor. Lipstick and glitter, my war paint. Going to the basement without any of it makes me feel vulnerable. I’m wearing a baby-blue tank top and a low-riding pair of jeans, but I may as well be in a dirty white shift.

I told West that girls have to save themselves, and that’s what I’m doing. It won’t feel powerful, like I do when I’m onstage, in my armor and war paint, but it will be real.

All I can do is nod to Luca on the way down.

Ivan doesn’t look up when I reach the bottom. He knows it’s me, but I have to wait. And I’ll give him this much, one last time.