Big Brother Billionaire (Part Two) (4 page)

“Jake’s a good guy, sure,” she would say, telling me about the man who owned the club, the man who had hired me to dance here. “But he has a coke problem. You can’t trust him when he’s high, you hear? You just nod and smile—or, you never smile, I know—nod and scowl. But don’t believe him. And don’t stick around, either. He’s no good when he’s on the coke.”

It seemed like there were a lot of rules I needed to learn in order to achieve the level of success my new friends wanted me to, but I did just fine embracing the collected Parker, ice queen of the pole, all slick latex, hard leather, and sharp corners.

I showed customers my ass, showed them my breasts, danced and whirled and twirled—and swam in cash. That first night I danced on the pole for real—for money, officially—I earned back everything I’d spent on my look and then some. I was flushed with my own success and cheered on by Jake, Sally, Mary, and Babs.

However, I’d already decided what the one thing I’d never show the customers would be.

“You’d be so much prettier if you just smiled, honey,” a customer complained, already pretty well soused by the time he’d requested me to give him a private dance.

“And you’d be much prettier if you didn’t talk,” I told him, wagging a glove-clad finger in his face.

You had to give up some things if you were going to be dancing in front of an audience, I was finding out. You had to be hard on the outside, impervious to whistles, gawks, shouts, and the rare attempt at groping. The bouncer would put a stop to that last behavior as soon as he could muscles the offending party out of the way and march him outside, but you couldn’t let it affect you.

You couldn’t let anyone see it affect you.

And so it made sense that Babs had advised me to always keep one thing out of sight. It was going to be my smile, and with that, the true Parker, the Parker I was deep down. That Parker had let the world nearly defeat her, so the world wasn’t going to see the person I used to be anymore. It was the era of the new Parker, the Parker who made everyone turn their heads, no matter if she was swinging around the pole at the club or walking down the aisles of a grocery store.

Of course, the new Parker did nothing to protect me from my own success, and she did nothing to protect me from Ron.

Parker,

How could you write that to me? There isn’t any kind of “moving on” that I could ever do from you. It’s just not possible for me. I hate even the thought of it.

No, there was never anyone else for me, not at the academy and not here at college. I only love you, and I’ll always wait for you. We were meant to be together. I could tell that from the moment I laid eyes on you, and I know you could, too.

Everything I’ve done has been for you. I hope you understand that. If I do well at school and get a good job, you’ll want for nothing. I can provide everything for you, and you’ll never have to work again—unless you want to.

If you’re lonely—physically lonely—then do what you have to do, Parker. I won’t judge you for it. But I could never betray the feelings I have for you just for some momentary release. It would never be worth it, and it would never be enough.

Some people who spend enough time apart grow apart, but that’s not the case for us. Ours is the real deal. No one can take this away from us, no matter how hard they try. Don’t you remember the lengths the parents went through to keep us from being together?

We’ll be together soon. Time is nothing.

I love you.

By the time I met Ron, I’d settled into the relative groove of professional dancing. I was enjoying earning more money than I’d ever seen in my life, thriving in the spotlight, and the Parker persona I’d worked to cultivate kept the glare from blinding me. I didn’t expect anything out of the world around me, and in return, I was never disappointed. I grew accustomed to netting lots of cash when I worked a shift at the club, but I never expected it. The weight and girth of my wallet each night, straining to remain shut in my purse, was its own delight, each and every close to my shift.

I enjoyed working, embracing the totality of the Parker who existed at the club. I listened to and observed the mentors I’d chosen for myself closely, analyzing what they did and didn’t do, and modified the successful behaviors to suit my own act. I was always learning.

Babs, for example, made sure that everything appeared effortless. I knew how much her girdles and corsets pained her, squeezing all of her organs together, just for a trimmer waistline. I saw the livid marks they made along her skin when we finally helped her out of the torture devices at the end of the night. However, that was part of the show, really, not letting the customers see all the pulleys and levers behind the magic tricks happening before their eyes. With her girdles and corsets, she looked svelte and voluptuous at the same time, the best of both worlds. She floated when she walked down the stage, twirling around the pole and popping out on both sides of it as coquettishly, as if it could hide her ample form.

There was nothing about my routine or persona that could qualify as coquettish, but I made sure to more or less float down the catwalk, belying the skill it took to remain upright in the boots, stilettos, and platforms I favored, the ones that Jake said make me look like I had legs a mile long. If the customers suspected that I was having a hard time getting around when I was unnaturally propelled six inches taller than my God-given height, it would diminish some of the illusion I was working hard to maintain for them—that I, Parker, was unlike any woman they had ever seen, and they could only see me if they kept coming back.

Ron was one of those men who kept coming back.

He’d always sit at the same table, always facing the stage, his back to the wall, always watching. A trick I’d learned from Mary was to make eye contact with customers—all of whom were potential contributors to the night’s paycheck—in order to make them feel special. I preferred to be the special one, to remain aloof and unattainable. I found it made the dollars pile up faster, as most men wanted to feel like they could tame or own a woman like me for just a little while. However, I did flick my gaze from one customer to the next, always assessing, not demurring, and making them at least believe they could have a chance with me, if only for a little while.

That’s how I noticed Ron, who first came once a week, then twice, then three times, until he was sitting at that same table each and every night, his pale blue eyes serious, intense, and unwavering from my own. It was disconcerting, at first, then somewhat empowering to realize I commanded that much attention from a single person. I found my gaze flickering toward his more and more, curious what about me captivated him so completely.

Besides his eyes, there wasn’t much else in the way of physical features that made Ron stand out from any other customer. If it wasn’t for that stare, I probably wouldn’t have even realized that he’d been coming to the club for a solid fourteen days in a row. He had shaggy brown hair that he sometimes pulled back and secured at the nape of his neck—not enough for a ponytail, but just a bump of wispy tendrils. I’d never seen anything like it before, a man wearing his hair like that, but it didn’t push me away. I was intrigued.

“That one over there has eyes only for you,” Sally informed me, as I was waiting in the wings near the dressing room, next up to dance.

“Who?” I asked coolly, even though I knew exactly whom she was talking about. My own eyes were boring holes into the back of his head, into that bit of hair gathered at the nape of his neck.

“That one, over there,” Sally said, jerking her head in Ron’s direction. “He doesn’t give a flying crap about the rest of us up there on that stage. He only pays attention to you. See? Look. He’s not even watching.”

She was right. He was studying the contents of his drink, swirling the ice cubes around in his cocktail, toying with the mixing straw, alternately mixing the concoction and placing the straw on the napkin. He was fidgeting, of all things. It was something I’d never noticed him doing. He always gave me his unwavering, undivided attention, but I was apparently the only dancer whom he cared enough about to watch.

“There’s a money-making opportunity there,” Sally continued, unprompted. “He looks like he has money to him. His pants are pressed; his fingernails aren’t dirty; and it seems he knows how to take care of himself. He’s obviously into you. You should see how far you can ride that money train.”

I studied the man who interested me, who showed so much interest in me. Was that a money train waiting to happen? For some reason, I didn’t think so. For some reason, he felt different to me. Under the expert tutelage of Sally, Mary, and Babs, I was becoming adept at picking out the men who would give me the most money after I was done advertising my goods up on the stage. Unlike my mentors, however, I would never approach them to try to coerce them into purchasing very expensive private dances from me. It was a puzzling business practice for my coworkers to observe—me squandering perfectly good opportunities to market my services. They would wheedle and flirt until they finally hooked a customer, tugging on the man’s hand as they led him back into the private area of the club. There, I knew just how quickly a private dance could escalate into a much more lucrative service, but I wasn’t at all interested in that, no matter how much money I was capable of making. There was something about the sex portion of the job that many of the dancers engaged in that turned my stomach. Maybe it was simple nostalgia. Even if I was in my late twenties already, I still hadn’t had sex with anyone but Marcus.

It just seemed like something that had been so special and so right—at the time, of course, before our parents had ripped us apart because of it, rendering my life to shreds—shouldn’t be centered on money. I wasn’t really saving myself for Marcus anymore, not like I had been when we were younger. Those days were over. I’d effectively ended the romance to that bourgeoning relationship. However, it just didn’t seem right to me that the most intimate parts of my body should take center stage in a business transaction.

That wasn’t to say that I didn’t forgo private dances. Private dances were where I earned the real money. I just wasn’t keen on begging for customers. I waited until they begged me for the privilege of my full attention beyond the prying eyes of jealous customers.

“Parker, everyone, we have Parker coming on stage right now, the dangerous Parker!” The DJ’s announcement jolted me forward, propelling me quickly past Sally until I remembered my modus operandi and slowed down, stalking toward the stairs to the stage, taking my own sweet time and refusing to be rushed by the DJ’s always-frantic pace of speaking. I operated on my own terms, in my own time.

By the time I mounted the stairs and made it up into the spotlight, the song had already started, but I didn’t care. I was the star of this particular show, not the music. People were here to see me, not listen to a tune.

I breezed down the stage, my eyes flicking from one customer’s face to the next, never lingering too long in one place until I locked eyes with Ron. His gaze smoldered and made me shudder so violently I had to work it into a dance move. Those eyes shimmered with desire, making me flush and grateful for the spotlight that bathed me in a red filter. I’d never seen someone so unabashedly lustful. This was different from the way Marcus had looked at me growing up, even from how he’d ravished me at my mom’s house. There had been something different in Marcus’ eyes in those days, something deeper.

The thing that poured from Ron’s eyes was sexual fire, and it stirred me in a way I hadn’t felt toward anyone for a very long time.

I reached the end of the routine, the music clashing to its steamy finale, and locked eyes once more with Ron, who hadn’t looked away since I’d started dancing. He was smiling lightly—more of a smirk, really—and he jerked his chin toward me. The gesture was a greeting, an acknowledgement that we were seeing each other clearly for the first time. Sure, I’d noticed him before this moment, but this was him saying that he knew I saw him watching me. It was as much an admission as it was an invitation to pursue something more—maybe that private dance that Sally had mentioned.

I toweled myself off in the dressing room and reapplied my makeup—a common practice among dancers after performing on the stage—and studied my appearance in the mirror. How was I going to approach him? Would he even still be out there? Should I try to soften my look to welcome him in? Should I maintain my hardness? Was that the thing about me he was interested in?

“Go knock them dead, kiddo,” Sally said, surprising me with a smack on my rear. “You look great. Time is money.”

She was right. I was only stalling because I was nervous about what it meant to be so nervous about a customer. I dealt with them all the time, doling out private dances and table dances alike. This wasn’t anything new…except that it was. All those other dances I’d learned to give were professional, almost clinical with how I didn’t feel anything toward the customers. Now, though, there was clearly something between me and the man with the startlingly blue eyes. He’d been coming for days, just to see me, and now I was going to go show him that I saw him, too.

He was still there, sitting at that same old table. Hadn’t the view bored him yet? He was tapping his fingers against the table and fiddling with his drink—quirks I’d noticed before in my own observations. To see him unguarded and unaware of me, gave me the power I needed to draw up my mantle of Parker and approach him.

With my regular persona, the act I put on to earn money here at the club, I’d usually walk right past tables of customers I knew for a fact would throw any amount of cash at me just to get me to pay attention to them for a little while. They’d be the ones begging and pleading, hands reaching out but stopping just short of making contact with me because of the burly, scowling bouncer approaching to tell them off for touching me.

But here, standing now in front of Ron’s table, I stilled, stopped, and waited to see what he would do, letting his actions determine my own. It was a vast departure from my Parker persona, one she would never put up with, but I found it was the only way I wanted to interact with this man. I was curious about him. Why had he been studying me so closely all these days in a row? What had he seen that kept him coming back? And just what was he interested in doing?

“The beautiful Parker,” he said, grinning at me so vibrantly that I thought for a silly moment that his teeth glowed in the dark. His smile was wide and inviting, an achievement that was either hereditary or won through years of pain and thousands of dollars. It was magnetic, and it drew me in instantly.

“I haven’t been able to help noticing your patronage,” I said, happy for an invitation to keep things formal, to use the persona to maintain space between us.

“You finally noticed me today,” he said, raising a thick, shapely eyebrow. “I’ve been coming here for quite a while.”

“I’ve noticed you before,” I corrected him. “I’m acknowledging you today. There’s a difference.”

He chuckled. “That’s some sass you have,” he said. “I do like my women feisty.”

I could’ve kept up with the witty repartee, dancing around the real issues of us being here together, but I wasn’t willing to waste the time on it. There was something here, and I was going to figure out what it was—now.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips. “What do you want?”

It gave me strength to lean on my persona’s no-frills approach to the world. I could ask whatever I wanted, no matter how forward, and expect an answer.

What I didn’t expect, however, was Ron’s answer.

“I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind,” he said simply, turning his palms upward on the table in a pose of supplication. “Not since the first time I happened to go to this club and saw you dance, saw the way you moved, the way you looked at men as you stalked by them.”