A Dance for Him
Authors: Lara Richard
PART I
CHAPTER ONE
“Hey, college girl. I just got here, how’s the crowd out there tonight?” Brandi asks me as I make my way to my dressing-table, plonk myself in front of it, and finally get to take off those crazy six-inch stripper platforms that I’ve had on for much of the last three hours.
Brandi’s another dancer at the Royale, which, despite its rather pompous name, is basically just the local strip club. At least, Brandi’s the name she goes by here - her real name’s something else, I assume, because we don’t generally go by our real names at the club. My club name is Tiffany, but Brandi usually just calls me “college girl” and “darling”, which I actually kind of prefer. It’s only been a couple of months since I started, and I only work here once a week, which is probably why it sometimes still takes me a moment to respond when someone calls me Tiffany …
Anyway, I really like her. When I was a clueless newbie she was kind enough to advise me on stuff like how to spot and avoid the creeps as far as possible, so now we look out for each other, tipping each other off about sketchy or stingy clients. She’s become a friend in many ways, even though we only see each other at the club and don’t know each other’s real names.
In fact, all I know about her is that she’s a single mom of about thirty with a seven-year-old son, and that she’s in beauty school part-time, whereas all she knows about me, for the most part, is that I’m twenty and in college.
And yet, though we don’t know all that much about each other, I feel more comfortable with her than with a lot of my classmates. She’s
real
, which is to say not at all pretentious.
I get enough of
that
at school as it is! …
“Oh, the usual,” I say casually. “Not too bad. The creepy guy isn’t here today, thank heavens. Just a bunch of dudes here on their own, though there are a few groups, you know how rowdy they can get sometimes.”
She shrugs, as though to say “yeah, well, what can you do?”, then pats me on the head as she sails past me to the next dressing-table to touch up her makeup.
I reach for my phone to check my email, which makes her chuckle slightly as she sees me out of the corner of her eye.
“Sexting your dreamboat professor again, college girl?”
I blush. “No, Brandi, of course not! We don’t do that sort of thing. He’s my teacher, I don’t want to get him into trouble! I don’t even know for sure if he’s interested.”
She rolls her eyes at what she probably thinks is my overwhelming naïveté.
“Of course he is,” she snorts. “A pretty little thing like you, an A+ student … I bet he’s already got you in his spank bank, it probably doesn’t matter if you actually sext him or not. Especially if you occasionally flash him a bit of boob or thigh … and I bet you have.”
“He’s not the type,” I protest feebly. “He’s very proper.”
“He’s a man, darling, just like the rest of them. Which means that ultimately he’s not that different from the guys we see out here.”
“Oh Brandi, he’s
sooo
not like them.”
It’s true - I really can’t see Dr. Morland in this place, leering and whistling along with the rest of them. He’s so gallant, so correct, so elegant and lofty of manner … It would be completely unlike him.
She laughs knowingly. “Darling, seriously, you want him to be at least a bit like them. I mean, you’d like him to actually want you, right? You don’t
really
want your Mr. Dreamboat to be pure and above it all, you want him to be a dirty boy. Even if it’s only for you. Maybe you want him to be a bit more polite than the average frat boy who shows up here, but I suspect that’s about it.”
I smile and roll my eyes but I can feel my cheeks flushing … because she’s right.
Once, in an indiscreet moment, I’d told her about my crush on Dr. Morland. Maybe it was silly of me, but I guess I just needed to talk about him to someone that day, and for obvious reasons I couldn’t really talk about him to any of my classmates.
Besides, it wasn’t like I mentioned him by name or anything. I would never do that - he’s a public figure, plus I wouldn’t want to get him into trouble for something which might exist only in my overheated imagination.
Because he’s actually
famous
. He’s not just some guy with a joint appointment in both English and Creative Writing - he’s
Sebastian Morland
, way,
way
better known as the author of a bestselling and critically acclaimed epic historical novel that he’d published five years ago, when he was just thirty.
But that’s not why I have a crush on him, though there’s no question that it’s a beautifully written book, and I’d just about die to write prose that melodious and richly laden with metaphor.
Rather, it’s because he’s the most handsome man I’ve ever met - tall, dark-haired, well-built, with perfectly sculpted features and dark soulful eyes.
Eyes that have a habit of glistening and turning ever so wistful whenever he looks at me with one of those hypnotic, lingering glances that never fail to make my heart beat faster and my panties get wetter …
I always thought he was completely out of my league. Implausibly good-looking, successful, from a patrician, old-money background, known to be quite popular with the ladies (well he
is
smoking hot), why would he be interested in me?
Then I caught him staring at me from a distance with an odd smile on his face. A smile that seemed unusually glowy, and which couldn’t seem to quit.
And then it happened again … and again … and again.
I tell myself all the time it can’t be, that he’s just being very sweet and kind, that he just likes talking to me because he thinks I write well. After all, he never actually
does
anything, just stares and smiles for the most part.
It’s true that on occasion when I’ve shown up in a short skirt he’s looked at me like he could just about devour me, but that’s about it, and for all I know he doesn’t just do that with me.
Although it’s also true that I’ve never seen him do that with anyone else, and it’s not exactly like there’s any shortage of pretty girls out to impress Sebastian Morland with short skirts and cleavage.
Of course, for all I know, it’s pure silliness on my part. Which is probably why I secretly like it when Brandi teases me about him, about my being in his spank bank, just because, for that brief moment, it’s kind of like:
hmm, if she thinks he likes me, and she knows a lot more about these things than I do, maybe he actually does! …
Well, whatever the truth of it, it’s nice to have a guy like him to secretly lust after.
Convenient
, even, given this job.
Because it isn’t always easy to go out there and try and embody the fantasies of the men in the audience. The real pros can just turn it on like that, but I can’t say I’ve figured out how to do that.
To be honest I sometimes feel like a bit of a fraud considering that I’ve never even had sex ever. A virgin stripper, ha! I’d probably be laughed off the stage if anybody knew. It pays well, though, and leaves me lots of time to study and write, since I just have to do a five-hour shift each week to pay for rent and groceries with a bit to put aside for law school in the future (thank goodness for the full scholarship I have at the moment!).
And so I think about him when I go out on stage, when I have to do private dances. It’s so strange, I even walk differently when I think about him, it’s like I can be sexual only when I think about him …
“Well, I’m getting out there, college girl,” says Brandi, shaking me out of my reverie. “You doing another shift tonight?”
I blink as I walk onto the stage, the glare from the spotlights blinding me briefly before my eyes get used to it.
It’s always a bit of sensory overload in the club proper - the light, the noise, the overpowering smell of body spray and sweat and loneliness …
The DJ’s playing
Hot for Teacher
to match my naughty schoolgirl costume - the one reference to my real life I’m willing to make here, maybe because it’s the one place I can practically announce my crush on Dr. Morland to the world at large and yet keep it secret at the same time …
I stride on in my black Mary Jane-style stilettos, and I get into my routine, toying with the hem of my barely-there skirt as I swivel my hips provocatively, in a parody of coy faux-bashfulness, then lean against a pole with my back arched and head thrown back in pinup mode.