Page 3 of Twisted Cage

It’s just a performance. I’m conveying a feeling, evoking emotion with the music, with my movements. It’s like every other dance performance I’ve done. Jazz, lyrical, tap—performing is a part of me. This is no different.

Conveying innocence and shyness, I eye the pole curiously. Between the glow from the wall behind me framed with retro bulbs and the spotlight on the pole, the audience is swallowed by almost complete darkness. They’re nothing more than flickering tea lights in the inky depths of the crowd.

I’m all careful movements as I sell the tantalizing image of a sheltered young woman in a risqué place, drawn to scandalous things. I use the picture of naivety to tap into their primal urges, their ego, and taste for control.

Curling my fingers around the cool metal, I tug as though I’m testing its durability in this new playground I’ve stumbled upon. I carefully swing in a circle, letting a discreet giggle break free when I come to a stop with my back to the crowd. My curtain of waves swish over my shoulder to settle to one side, over my breast. Peeking over my bare shoulder, I dart my tongue over my bottom lip, tug it into my mouth carefully, and let it slowly slide back out.

These women think selling sex is how much skin you show. How dirty you’re willing to get. They’re in your face and brash in a cutthroat world where everyone wants their due, with only so much to go around. Brazenness to the point of recklessness is a short game with high stakes.

It’s not where the promise of monumental reward is found.

Whetting their appetite and tapping into their hidden desires starts with deliberate, accentuated moves. My body merging with the sultry beat until they’re one. A virgin discovering her power to entice.

Someone covers their grunt with a cough and that’s when I know I’m on the right track.

One finger at a time, I tug at my gloves, slash them through the air, and snap them down along my hip before letting them drop to my stilettoed feet. I let my mind slip away into another time, another life, to a forbidden fantasy—of him. The only man who has ever evoked lustful cravings inside me.

No crushes.

No other desires.

All I wanted then, all I want now, is him.

What if this was all for him? What if it were just the two of us here and every fantasy I scrawled in my journal late at night had the chance to come to life? If I could just tell him here and now with every movement of my body?

I drop low and swing my bent knees out, leaving me wide open. I sensually roll my hips, giving the crowd a seductive glimpse of my legs as the slits of my dress give way and reveal skin clean to the tops of my thighs.

Still rolling my hips, I rise slowly, dragging my hands along my every curve, dipping into the narrow fabric nipping at my waist, and to the swell of my breasts barely covered by the thin black bodice held by nothing more than delicate strings tied in a bow at the nape of my neck.

I’ll have to show them skin. That’s how this works, but first, I’ll make them helpless to do anything but take in my every dip and valley, one excruciating part of me at a time.

What if he was the one in the crowd, unable to escape, desperately trying to mask his forbidden reaction to me? I’d make him burn with the agony of wanting me. Giving him scandalous glimpses of the parts of me he’s forbidden to see.

Every time I close my eyes at night, I will myself to slip back into the fantasy, the only place I have him now. Because to get near him again means surrendering to my father, and I’ll die before I let that happen. But in my dreams… he’s there and I’m free to touch, taste, and savor every last part of him.

And there, in that faraway part of my mind I escape to in order to rewrite my reality, he lets me.

2

KONSTANTIN

When I get my hands on her, I’m going to spank her ass raw.

She’s fucking grounded.

Not enough. Exile.

Exile is good.

After I make sure I’ve reddened her ass so thoroughly she’ll never bare it to another set of eyes again.

Nikoletta Maksimova Romanoff will live to regret every second she spends prancing her lithe body in maddening circles around that fucking pole. I’ll make sure of it.

Years of dance lessons, private teachers, the best dance schools, and traveling the world with top-tier dance troupes and she’s here. Inch after inch of her honey-kissed legs clean up to her waist on display with every movement.

Her dress hides nothing. Not one thing. When the light catches her just right—fuck—it only highlights her tight nipples.

It’s too late to call off the meeting. The minute I entered this room, the plan went into motion. Tonight I sink the knife of betrayal in my best friend’s chest.

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