Page 5 of Shameful Addictions

Wasn’t that the perfect analogy? The snake, luring the helpless rabbit and kitten and all the other little creatures down a bad path.

“What did he do?”

“He said he’d been watching me and would pay for my uniform.” Kat’s smile grew smaller, a little more natural. “At first, I was scared of him. He’s intimidating at first. But he said he saw talent in me and wanted me to be able to keep going. He even picked out the moves for the routine that won me the finals Senior year. He cultivated my talent.”

There was that phrase again, said in almost exactly the same way. Charlotte’s heart pounded against her ribs. “And when you graduated, he invited you to work here.”

“He told me to come work for him long before I graduated.” Kat shrugged one slim shoulder. She brightened, perking up. “And I’m glad I did. I love it here. It’s so freeing.”

To Charlotte, the only free thing here were the girls’ bodies. They might all be dressed so cutely and sweetly, but there wasn’t anything cute or sweet about the way their titties bounced. There was nothing nice about the way their bare asses hung out. By putting themselves on display and embracing whatever sick freedom they’d been influenced to believe in by Mamba, the girls were drastically devaluing themselves. Charlotte firmly believed that sex was not a thing that should come easily, or lightly. A man shouldn’t be able to get a woman as easily as he could pick up a mint on the way out of a restaurant.

Kat glanced over her shoulder. “I need to go.”

“Sure,” Charlotte said quickly. “I didn’t mean to keep you so long.”

Kat stood up straight and held her arms close to her sides, pushing her bosom forward. “It was all my pleasure.” The cat-girl jumped away from the table and scampered away, to a door near the back Charlotte hadn’t noticed until right then.

Charlotte got up and went over to the bar. Other than the bouncer, the bartender behind the counter was the only working male in the entire establishment. At least that toxic, venomous Mamba sensed his girls might need occasional protection from the stronger sex.

“Excuse me,” Charlotte said.

The bartender glanced in her direction. He was young, maybe in his mid-twenties, with long shaggy hair and a beard. His lack of a hairnet disgusted Charlotte almost as much as the length of his hair. Men might be more powerful than women, but they lacked sense. This guy had to be shedding hairs all over every item of food and every glass of drink he touched.

The bartender didn’t respond right away. He wandered his eyes down Charlotte’s body and then back up to her face, taking his time with it. She gasped softly with shock. She’d just been checked out, and with such uncouth casualness.

“Hey, pretty lady,” the guy said, his voice smooth, though a bit reedy. “What can I get for you?”

Charlotte sat down on a bar stool, gripping the edges of her seat. She had to fight hard to restrain the urge to look at him like he was shit on her shoe, a piece of garbage on an immaculate floor. Men like him were the stains of society. They weren’t real men, just the essence of them, composed of all the worst parts. But, she couldn’t show him that. She had to play nice. “I had a question. Could you help me?”

He grinned and leaned over her, leering down at her from above. “I can do whatever you want, lady. What’s up?”

“That’s exactly the question I wanted to ask. What’s up with this place? I’ve never known anywhere like it.”

“Yeah, I don’t doubt that.” The bartender tapped his finger emphatically on the counter. “Lollipop is crazy. It’s special. The owner, Mamba? The guy is like magic. He’s got his fingers in everything. He must be like, crazy rich. I never met the guy, myself. Unless the guy I talked to for my interview was him, but I doubt it. Guy like Mamba, he’d never stoop so low to do stuff like that himself.”

The poor guy had stars in his eyes as he talked. The enigmatic Mamba had him enchanted, entranced. The snake had turned the tide and charmed the charmers, manipulated them.

“Anyway, you look closely at anything that happens in this city and Mamba’s involved somehow. Especially when it’s about sex.”

“Why?”

“You’re kidding.” The bartender broke out of his trance to turn a confused expression her way. “Sex sells. Sex influences. Sex is everything. Mamba gets the girls here by appealing to them with sex. Their own sex. He shows up to tons of high school graduations to speak on women’s liberation. He says women should be able to do whatever they want. To hell with tradition! To hell with society!” He held out his arm, a sweeping gesture in the direction of the stage. “All those kittens and rabbits and little piglets come from pretty ordinary backgrounds. Then Mamba gets a hold of them and shows them how things can really be. They come here. They go on. And they never look back.”

She couldn’t listen any longer. Her mind hurt. Her soul hurt, being in this damn place. She pushed away from the bar and stumbled off blindly, not knowing where it was she was going.

Tradition? Society? Those were things she had valued her whole life. She’d been raised to believe women should marry and settle down when they were in the prime of their life. Their energy should go towards having children and raising the children, breastfeeding them and tending to their needs. A daycare center or a stay-at-home-dad wouldn’t do as replacement. Everything she’d seen and heard and read told her that the traditional family unit was the best for society as a whole.

And Mamba was spitting his venom all over her beliefs.

“Hey. You. Red blouse.”

Charlotte drew up short and looked around, knowing she was the only person in the vicinity wearing a blouse of any color. A man perhaps twice her age motioned her over to the stage. She looked over her shoulder at the exit, wanting nothing more than to leave.

“Psst,” the older man hissed.

She had gone through too much already to have any sort of patience. Her control snapped. She stormed over to the man and demanded, “What?”

He leaned in close to her, bringing with him a scent of cologne and sweat and something musky. “I’ve seen you going around, asking questions.”

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