Ringside (5 page)

Angel

I got home as fast
as I could, pushing through traffic, running lights if I had to. I didn’t care.

Whatever tickets I
got I’d pay for, and the cops probably had more important things to worry about
than my driving.

All I could think
about was Sloane in her bedroom somewhere out there in this big, hungry city.
She’d be scared, but too desperate for money to let herself off the hook.

I could see why
she was doing it. The bar must have been a good deal for her, and now that she
wasn’t pouring drinks there was probably a chance that her landlord would throw
her out on her ass at the end of the month.

After all, how
much could a student of ballet really make? Not anywhere near as much as it
cost to live near the University, that was for sure.

Right now, she
could be gritting her teeth and spreading her legs for some jerk on the
Internet.

And it was my
fault! I’d tried to avoid that fact all day, but there was really no getting
away from it.

She’d had a decent
thing going and I’d ruined it by hitting on her.

Shit. I wasn’t any
different than whatever scumbag she was chatting to online right now.

I’d made her
retreat from her duties pouring beers, and her boss Frank had tried to take
advantage of the position I’d put her in. If I ever found her again, I swore to
myself that I’d make it up to her. Maybe she didn’t feel the same way about me
that I felt about her, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me.

If I tracked her
down and she still didn’t want to give me the time of day, fine.
 
Understandable, even, given the fact that I’d
been too drunk to even say goodbye to her properly last night.

Hell, she was
probably halfway to convincing herself that whoever she was currently disrobing
for was a better option than the alcoholic asshole from the bar.

And would she be
right?

I tried not to
answer that. I was supposed to be in training, which meant that binges like the
one I’d been in the middle of when I’d first met Sloane were a no-no.

I wasn’t far from
the hotel. I gunned the engine and zoomed through another red light. It was
late enough that the traffic had all gone away, at least. The Jaguar purred as
I gave it the gas, and by the time I rolled up to the valet and tossed the guy
my keys I was feeling pretty good about being able to get to Sloane in time.

The elevator ride
was slow, though, which gave me time to think. How does one sign up for these
things? I looked at my phone. Cole had sent me the address.

“How hard can it
possibly be?” I asked myself out loud. I mean, these things had to be simple
enough that just about anyone could work out how to log on and put their credit
card numbers in, right?

After all, I
couldn’t imagine the owners of the site getting in the way of its users
spending money any more than they had to.

The elevator
dinged and I stepped out into my suite, hurrying to the computer desk and
typing in the web address.

When the site came
up, I caught myself making a face. Girls I’d have considered hot up until now
were splashed across the screen, caught in the act of lifting up their shirt or
stepping out of a dress or sliding their hand into their panties.

Even though I was
in a hurry, I caught myself just sitting there, staring at these women.

Sloane had already
changed me. I looked at these wanton creatures now with no lust in my heart.

If a bartender I’d
seen across a crowded nightclub in a haze of alcohol fueled blurriness had
somehow had somehow already had this kind of effect on me, I knew I was in
trouble.

I made a user name
and plugged in my credit card numbers.

Now, how was I
going to find her? There were hundreds of girls on there, each of them with
silly names like Roxxxy and Starr and Miss_Double_D.

I scanned the
list, hoping to find something that jumped out at me.

Frustrated, I
realized exactly how little I knew about her. I was sure she’d want to conceal
her identity, but I also knew that when people did things they thought of as
‘wrong’, they usually left a little clue, a hidden arrow that points at
themselves.

It was human
nature, the desire to show off ever so slightly, to say ‘look at me, I did
this, I was here and if you were as smart as me you’d have worked it out!’

But I couldn’t
find her…

Sloane

I sat there like
an idiot, both waiting and dreading the time when someone would log into my
room for an hour before I started to lose hope.

Thinking about
giving up brought a strange sort of joy to me. I didn’t
want
to be doing this. I felt like I had to, like if I didn’t try
every option I was physically or mentally able to I’d be nothing more than a
quitter.

At least I had my
mask. It was the one thing that made me able to do this, not that I was turning
out to be any good at it…

Finally, I decided
I had to get a little bit more daring. Instead of sitting on my bed like I was
watching TV, I copied what I’d seen some of the other girls do when I’d
previewed their rooms.

Even though I felt
like a fool, I lay down on the bed, pulled the hem of my slinky teddy up my
long legs until they revealed just a hint of the pink lace underwear I had on,
and gave the invisible world beyond my web came my best come hither stare.

And it worked. Not
even five minutes later, I heard the computer give me a cheery little door knock
as a name appeared in the chat window on my screen.

Ready4U has entered your room.

My heart sank. I
should have been happy, I supposed, but the only thing worse than having no one
interested was to have someone come and check me out.

At least if the
room had stayed empty for another half hour I could have shut the computer down
and gone to bed, chalking the night up as one of those stupid ideas that were
never going to work anyway, If I’d been honest.

Now, though, I had
a spectator. Now I had to perform.

What would he
expect me to do?

Turns out, I
didn’t have to wait very long to find out. I hadn’t thought to really plan out
what I was willing to do on camera, thinking I could just take it slow and see
where things went. When I got uncomfortable, I’d told myself I could stop.

But I was
already
uncomfortable.

Show me your tits,
READY4U
typed into
the chat window.

Really? Was this
how it was going to go, with a lone, pushy voice urging me on to do one sexual
act after another?

Still, this was
what it was all about, right? Have to keep your audience happy, and all of
that.

I licked my lips
slowly, sensually and then slid my teddy up even further, exposing more of my
underwear. I cupped my breast with my other hand, trying my best to make my
movements seductive.

Take it off!!!
was all I got out of READY4U.

Inwardly, I
cringed. This was it. This was that moment where my life went one way or the
other. I knew that if I gave in and did what my lone visitor demanded, it would
only make him happy for a minute or so.

Maybe he’d tip me
and maybe he wouldn’t, but regardless, in a way I’d be
his
.

But did it matter?
I mean, did it really
matter
? Like,
would the world change if I took off my lingerie and then my underwear and
proceeded to do to myself what he inevitably asked of me?

In a way, it was
so much worse that there was only one guy watching. It felt like whoever he
was, this faceless person sitting wherever he was in the big, wide world had
her on a string, and like a puppet master he could yank them as hard as he wanted
and make her dance, all for the promise of a tip that may or may not happen.

But what other
options did she have? If she wanted to dance, she had to stay close to the
University, which meant living in one of the most expensive parts of one of the
most costly cities of the world.

If she failed,
she’d have to go crawling back home, and everyone would know that she’d failed.

That’d be absolutely awful
, she told
herself.
All of those people you told off
for doubting you would love to see you break down and come back in tears. You
think you hated pouring beers honey, just wait and see how much you despise
waiting tables for the rest of your life.

And that single
thought decided it for me. I wasn’t going to give up on my dream until I’d
tried everything I could.

I wasn’t a loser.

I wasn’t a
quitter.

But as I reached
down and grabbed the hem of the teddy and started to take it off, I bit my lip
and realized I was something so much worse.

A sellout.

A
knock, knock, knock
rattled out of my
laptop’s speakers, and I stopped what I was doing to look down at the screen.

Angel has entered your room.

Angel

She was right
there. I knew right away it was here. In the past ten minutes I’d skipped in
and out of dozens of cam girls’ rooms looking for Sloane.

The ability to preview
the ‘show’ was a godsend, but even so there were enough girls with their face
off camera or their body completely off screen that I had to go in and be sure.

But when I saw her
laying on the bed in the mask, I knew right away I was in the right room.

I looked at the
chat window. There was only one other guy here, but right before my eyes that
changed.

LongDong1998 has entered the room.

69er_Watcher has entered the room.

It looked like I’d
showed up just in time. Sloane was just about ready to strip for these dudes,
and I didn’t want her to have to.

At least I knew
how to bring this shit to a halt.

That is, if she
was willing. I clicked on the SUGGEST PRIVATE ROOM button and typed in $1,000
before pressing enter.

She made me wait,
I’ll give her that. I knew right now on her screen there was a message saying
‘Angel has offered you $1,000 to make the chat private. Accept?’

If she got over
her damn stubbornness and clicked yes, she’d kicked all these jokers out and
she and I could have some alone time.

But she was taking
a long time. I watched her study her laptop, clearly uncertain.

“It’s me,” I typed
into the chat in an attempt to reassure her. “From last night.

I saw her lean
forward and read the screen, the tap out a message on her keyboard.

“What do you
want?” came her reply.

“For you to never
have to do this sort of shit again.”

The other guys in
the chat didn’t like that. It only took a couple of seconds for the part of the
screen where their words appeared to fill up with ‘Fuck you’ and ‘eat shite’
and ‘go to hell motherfucker’.

Whatever. If the
worst thing that ever happened to me was that some anonymous person on the
internet got pissed off that I was trying to stop the girl I couldn’t get out
my head from showing them her tits.

YOUR PRIVATE CHAT
HAS BEGUN.

Sloane

“How did you find
me?” I typed.

The private chat
had made the other guys vanish, and I knew from the stuff I’d read on the site
that it was just he and I until I ended the session.

In the upper right
corner a big green dollar sign flashed, and when I put my mouse over it I saw
that funds had been added to my account.

The site took its
cut, of course, but I was now eight hundred dollars richer than I had been five
minutes ago.

“You don’t have to
use the keyboard to type out your words,” came Angel’s reply. “You’re on a web
cam, remember? I can hear you through my speakers.”

Right. Of course.

As if it wasn’t
bad enough that I was sitting here in my underwear in front of this guy, now he
was telling me how to be a web cam girl.

Well
, I told myself,
he was right, wasn’t he?

“Sorry,” I said
out loud. “I’m new at this.

‘I’m glad,’ he
typed.

I couldn’t help
but smile as I reached up and pulled off the mask. It was getting hot
underneath the weight of it, and Angel already knew what I looked like.

‘I didn’t want you
to have to do this sort of shit,’ he typed out.

Then, ‘Unless you
really wanted to, of course.’

I shook my head.
“I know a few dancers who are always talking about the money they make
stripping. Taking my clothes off in front of a web cam was hardly my first
choice. I just thought it might be a way to make some money without having to
watch a bunch of men leer at me.”

He didn’t type out
an answer, so I pointed at the mask I’d laid on the bed beside me. “That was my
security blanket.”

‘I like it,’ he
answered. ‘Is it the same on in the ballet I’m watching you in right now?’

“Huh?” I asked.

There was a big
long pause, which probably meant that he was typing out a wordy response. When
it finally came, my heart sunk as he confirmed my suspicions.

‘I found a bunch
of videos of you dancing on YouTube,’ he answered. ‘I’ve been watching them on
my other monitor while I ducked in and out of these damn web cam rooms, trying
to find which one was yours.’

I felt myself
blush, and when I glanced down at my reddening cleavage I remembered exactly
what I was wearing. Sure, I had on more than I’d have worn to a pool or the
beach, but it was still pretty skimpy nonetheless.

“I’m still
learning,” I told him. “Some of the stuff I’m trying to do takes years to
perfect.”

‘You look perfect
to me,’ he typed.

I shrugged, the
movement making the silky teddy I was wearing rub against my nipples and
sending a little jolt of pleasure through me.

Why could Angel do
that to me?

And how? Only a
couple of minutes ago I’d been in a panic, desperate with indecision concerning
my future.

And now?

Well, now I was
starting to feel like maybe Angel was meant to be more than just a guy I met in
a bar one time.

There could be
something between us, couldn’t there?

‘I’m sorry I got
you fired,’ he typed. ‘And I’m even sorrier I was so drunk last night that I
couldn’t thank you properly.’

I gave the camera
a knowing look. Talking to him like this was pretty easy, really. I could still
picture his sexy body and those piercing eyes, but the animal magnetism I’d
felt around him last night was absent.

It was like this
was the only way I could talk to him without being self-conscious, or having to
push away at him so hard because of how afraid I was that I’d find myself
running into his arms instead.

“It was a shitty
job anyway,” I said.

‘Yeah,’ he
responded. ‘But I bet it was paying the bills’.

There was no
denying
that,
so I didn’t even try.

‘Listen,’ he
typed. ‘I’ve got an idea. It may be a little crazy, but I really need you to
hear me out, okay?’

“Okay,” I said.
After all, I figured I had nothing left to lose. I felt bad about taking his
money, but that was easy enough to withdraw from my bank account and return to
him. Sure, the site’s cut meant that some of it was gone forever, but I didn’t
think the loss of a couple of hundred dollars would mean very much to a guy
like Angel.

‘Need to ask you
in person, so to speak. I’m going to give you my number. Call it? Please? I’m
so damn sick of typing.’

“Fair enough,” I
said.

But he had one more
thing to type. ‘And leave the laptop on? I don’t think I can live without
looking at you every chance I get.’