Page 24 of Shameful Addictions

The same color as the girls in Club Lollipop. The same color as all these women rimming his office. Whore hair. Stripper hair.

Anger rose in her throat. “You can’t be serious.”

“You’re angry. That’s very funny to me, that you still have the audacity to be mad after all this.” Mamba laughed aloud. “You must know that dying your hair will cost far less than what you owe me for this month. Even if you went to the best stylist in town.”

He stopped laughing rather abruptly and leaned back in his chair, as if bored with her. “That is my offer. Take it or leave it. I, of course, don’t need the money you owe me, but you do need this break. Are you going to be such an uppity bitch that you won’t do it? Then go to jail. That would amuse me, to see you behind bars. I might have to visit you and see how you’re faring. You will have to introduce me to whatever butch woman decides to use you as her bitch.”

She absolutely couldn’t believe this. But hadn’t she said she’d do anything? This was her only way out. Damn the insufferable man for making sense. Damn him.

“Get out of my office.” Mamba swiveled in his chair, ignoring her, gazing out at his view of the city.

“Yes, sir,” Charlotte murmured. She turned and got out of there as fast as her legs could carry her.

Chapter ten

Gush

“Areyousureyouwant to do this?” the hairstylist asked, holding strands of Charlotte’s dark coffee hair in either hand. “Your hair is so beautiful. It compliments your skin and your eyes so nicely.”

Charlotte stared at herself in the huge mirror, hardly able to recognize the woman reflected back. She had lost weight and her face was thinner, making her eyes look bigger–though the bags underneath them kept her new skinniness from being attractive.

No, she didn’t want to do this, but she had no choice in the matter.

“I’m sure,” she lied.

The stylist, Wendy, a nice and matronly woman with huge breasts and an equally large bottom, lifted her heavy shoulders in a shrug. “It’s your money and your time, honey. You know this will damage your hair no matter how carefully we do this.”

Maybe it will all fall off.

“I trust you. I’m safe in your skilled hands,” Charlotte deadpanned.

Wendy gave another shrug. “Well, okay. Let me go ahead and get the first round of bleach ready.”

“I can’t wait.”

Wendy seemed not to pick up on the sarcasm and smiled before wandering away, disappearing into a sort of supply area in the back. Laughter came from the room as she talked with another stylist, though their voices were too indistinct for Charlotte to eavesdrop on the conversation.

Charlotte tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair and looked around the beauty parlor. She visited a similar place every couple of months to get her hair trimmed and her hands softened with a wax treatment. She never spent more than an hour in the place, and therefore didn’t really know anyone there beyond a few names and the occasional face. That suited her fine, since she didn’t believe in vanity. Simply taking care of one’s appearance wasn’t the same.

Now she was here for the sake of someone else’s vanity and that felt twice as wrong.

She had come early in the morning, as soon as the place opened, though she wound up waiting half an hour for Wendy to arrive, since none of the other girls wanted to risk doing her hair themselves. There was only one other person in the shop, an elderly woman with hair that specific shade of orange that had never been naturally found on a human head. She was chattering away to her stylist while getting her hair shampooed, curls and ripples of foam building over her dyed locks.

“Here we are,” Wendy announced, approaching with a bowl in her hands. The harsh chemical scent of bleach flooded Charlotte’s nose. She tried not to gag and switched to breathing through her mouth.

Wendy set the bowl down and grabbed a cape to wrap around Charlotte’s neck, “So,” she said, “Charlotte, what made you want to go for such a drastic color change?”

Charlotte almost gagged again, though it was from the question this time and not the foul stench of bleach. She very well couldn’t tell this woman the truth, which meant she was going to have to lie.

“I just thought it was time for a change,” Charlotte responded. Wendy began to paint her head with the cold bleach, one layer of hair at a time.

“Platinum blonde is a very exciting color,” Wendy responded, her voice a soft hum as she worked. “And growing very popular. Even for men.”

I should have told Mamba to dye his hair. It would have been worth it.

He would never alter his appearance in a million years, especially not at the request of a lowly female. That was the woman’s job, to conform to his desires.

“What made you want to come to us?” Wendy asked, doing what hairstylists did best: chatter. “I always like to know what brings new customers in.”

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