Page 3 of Room One Hundred and Four: Shock and Awe

Crucify smirks, “Come on, Prez. This is a good surprise,” his words become weighted, “a birthday surprise.”

“Fuck,” I growl, “fine.”

I slam my glass down on the bar and Huxton is quick to fill it up before my brothers lead me to the other side of the large common room. I notice that the stage, which isn’t used often and usually has a few tables set up on it, has been cleared and there are rows of chairs in front of it.

How the fuck did I not notice this earlier? I wasn’t all that engrossed by Brianna’s tits.

Fuck, maybe I’m losing my touch.

I sit down in the middle of the front row with my Rites and Crucify sitting on either side of me. The stage is right next to the hallway that leads toward my office along with a few other rooms before it takes you to where the brothers all have rooms. On the opposite side of the building are the angel’s rooms.

The rest of my brothers are rowdy as fuck as the file into the seats surrounding me and I hear bits of their conversations asking about what’s going on. I guess this isn’t just a surprise for me.

I hope like hell they haven’t talked one of the angels into stripping for us. That could happen any night of the week and would not be a surprise at all.

When the lights dim, I see a figure slip out of the hallway and onto the stage, but it’s hard to make out anything more than the curves of a woman’s body. As she sets some things down around the stage, my breath catches, and I have no idea why.

The stage is set up for entertainment and we’ve had a few live bands play for parties over the years. It has its own lighting rig and as a dark orange light bathes the stage, I get my first glimpse at the woman standing there with a cape covering her while clinging to her body.

A feeling buzzes along my skin, one I’m not at all ready to acknowledge. And I don’t know if I ever will, but that doesn’t mean I can look away from the siren on stage as the music starts to pump through the speakers and she starts to move.

I’m completely entranced by her, barely even noticing when someone sits on my lap. Why would I care anyway? The angels will never hold a candle to the woman on stage before me. There’s not a woman on earth who could hold my attention. Not anymore.

Who is she? How can I get my hands on her? Will she even want a rough biker like me?

Does my life have room in it for her? Or will I have to stay away for her own protection?

The last thought feels like a spike through my heart, probably because that’s the reality I’m going to be facing now. The DSMC is no place for a woman like her and I can’t change who I am.

CHAPTER 2

NAVY

I feel the beat of the music from the soles of my feet up to the top of my head as I grip the inside of the cape I’m wearing, using it as a shield and a tease as I start to move. Every time I get on the stage, adrenaline flows through me. When I’m performing, I find peace that I’ve never known before.

It’s not just the silence in the chaos, like standing in the eye of the storm as thunder booms around me, that I seek. It’s so much more than that.

When I’m dancing, I have confidence in my body and myself. I know who I am when I’m dancing. I feel powerful when I’m dancing that has nothing to do with the way I tease the men—and women—who enjoy watching me.

If I hadn’t found burlesque, I have no idea who I would be. I would probably be a shell of myself. I would have been married off by my parents to some man in the church that they deemed to be nice enough for me. Hell, I’d probably have a few kids too.

But I’d be miserable.

The only reason I was allowed to go to college was because my parents thought that the husband they would find for me would rather I have an education than not. Not because my education could have real value to him or to me. No, it was so I wouldn’t embarrass him.

And, yes, they told me that very explicitly.

Just like they told me how a woman’s body is made of sin and that I should find shame in my every curve. Don’t even get me started on the shaming of desire, passion, and pleasure. That was hardly talked about except from the pulpit and then it was always in terms of Mary Magdalene, Jezebel and Sodom and Gomorrah.

For most of my life, I believed their words. I took those lessons to heart, and I had a deep sense of shame and hatred for the urges I could hardly suppress and the curves that had grown on my body throughout puberty.

College changed my life because it gave me a little bit of freedom since I chose a school that required all freshman to live in a dorm, even though it was local. I became friends with women who had totally different backgrounds from me.

Seeing them not have the same kind of shame in their bodies that I did, the same body I tried to cover up as much as possible, made me want to be like them. I wanted their confidence. I wanted to feel secure in my own skin. I didn’t like the way hating my body made my skin feel like it was too tight.

It was hard to stop hearing the voices of my parents in my head who constantly pummeled me with how women’s bodies were the root of all sin. How we seduced just by existing. How we couldn’t be trusted to walk God’s path because we knew nothing but spiritual destruction with every breath in our lungs.

I had to unlearn so much. And I did. Quickly.

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