Chapter 8: Baby you are so beautiful

My dick was begging to get out. I would have taken her right then and there with an entire group of touring prospective students walking by and not given a single fuck. I slid my leg between hers and she parted them freely. My heartbeat strummed in my chest like a drum and I kissed her like I wanted to devour her whole.

*This isn’t me*, I thought.

In my line of business, you couldn’t afford to give into your emotions. I

was a man of control, self-restraint, a man who never lost his cool…

…until now.

I was on fire for her and I didn’t even know her name (and she didn’t know mine…not really). My whole world began to orbit around her like she was the sun and I was nothing more than a tiny rock floating in space.

I wanted to claim her, make her mine, show her off to the entire world, but also make sure no one else ever had her or even got a glimpse of what I got to see. I was on fire.

But suddenly, all of that was over.

She pulled away and clasped a hand over her mouth like I’d just said something terrible. Her lips glistened and her eyes sparkled beneath the lamplight and she quickly shook her head as she got to her feet.

“I—I have to go!”

“No you don’t,” I said quickly, reaching out to her. But she pulled away. “Yes I do,” she replied. “I’m sorry…”

“Wait!” I called after her as she turned and ran. “At least tell me your name!”

But she was gone, her long dress trailing behind her like something out of a movie as she disappeared into the shadows of the trees.

I walked quickly after her, but she had a head start on me and I didn’t want to chase her down like some kind of creepy predator.

She reached one of the dorms, scanned her card, and vanished through the door, leaving me standing there alone, my mind reeling and my body aching for the full meal that I’d only just had a taste of.

She’d lit up my life like a solar flare and vanished like a ghost. But she was my angel, and I didn’t even know her name.

I didn’t care how long it took or how hard I had to look, but I would find her again. And this time, she wouldn’t get away. My heart leapt again and my stomach turned as the hammering on the front door continued. It was Juan, the absolutely repugnant owner and manager of Cherry Sweet’s Gentlemen’s Club in Dorchester. If there was an Academy Awards for World’s Biggest Asshole, he’d win every year.

And Juan wasn’t going anywhere—not without me.

“Let’s go!” he shouted, banging his fist again. “If I have to get Tyrel to kick the door in I will! And I’ll add the cost of the repairs onto what you already owe me!”

I grabbed my pillow, pressed it over my face, and screamed until all the breath in my lungs was gone and my throat felt like it had been scrubbed with sandpaper.

I owed Juan money.

Well, technically my parents owed him money, but now that they were dead, that debt had been passed to me. And how had Juan decided to collect? By forcing me to strip for him at the club until all the money my parents had borrowed had been paid back.

I had no idea why my parents borrowed money or why they chose to do so from a scumbag strip-club-owning loan shark, but it didn’t matter now.

They were both gone, killed while working at the restaurant they owned together, leaving me with a broken heart and a mountain of debt.

There was nothing I could do. “Let’s go, bitch!” he roared.

“I’m coming!” I screamed, throwing my pillow aside.

I got up off my bed—the same one I’d grown up in, that my dad had

tucked me in when I was a little girl—and looked at myself in the mirror.

I wanted to throw up.

I’d stood here for countless Halloweens and school mornings, making sure my outfit was cute and my hair was right, and now I was looking at my “tits and ass” trying to determine if I was sexy enough for the hungry men who would be ogling me in less than a half an hour.

And I had no idea what I was doing.

I got some black fishnets because guys like fish nets, right? I had a garter belt with straps, also black, and a black thong with a matching black bra and a crop top t-shirt so I could at least have *some* modesty until I had to dance.

*Dance…*

Just the thought of it made me sick. What would I have to do? Be up on the stage having dollar bills thrown at me? Give lap dances? Or worse!?

I was completely pretending. I had no idea how to be sexy, so I was just going off the stereotypes we all knew. One girl, clearly the queen bee, wearing nothing but a G-string and a curly pink wig, walked right up to me and for a second I thought she was going to hit me in the face. She stopped less than an inch from my face and stared.

“Look, *Natasha*,” she spat. “You just stay out of my, and the other girls’, way. Understand?”

“I—”

“You even *think* about stealing one of them high rollers from us, and I’ll beat that pretty little face of yours until you look like a blow up doll. *Comprende*?”

“Yes…” I said quickly.

“Mmhmm,” she nodded. “Nice fishnets, bitch.”

She turned away and was greeted by laughter and high fives from the other girls. I found a corner of the locker room and waited, doing my best not to stare (or throw up) at the rest of the girls as they got ready.

They chatted about guys, money, their boyfriends, and what songs they were going to dance to, and all I could think about was running away.

But where would I go? The police? What would I tell them? That Juan was forcing me to pay off an illegal debt my parents owed? As shady as

Juan was, he had even shadier guys working for him and I wanted nothing to do with them.