Page 5 of Room One Hundred and Four: Shock and Awe

The way a hush falls over the men in front of me tells me just how mesmerizing and effective the effect is. I’m not normally able to look out past the stage and see the audience, but this is a small party and there’s barely any space between the stage and the chairs.

Honestly, I almost didn’t take this job because I wasn’t sure about dancing for a motorcycle club. But when I found out that it was the DSMC, I knew I needed to say yes. You can’t avoid hearing whispers about the DSMC when you live in Seattle.

Not only do they organize charity runs throughout the year, but there have been murmurings about the work they do against trafficking. If that’s not something to be respected, I don’t know what is.

I turn slowly, flicking my wrist out and flashing my body for a second to the men in front of me. They all seem to lean forward a little bit, but my eyes snag on the man in the middle of the front row. He’s huge and menacing, an air of authority and power wafting off him.

His blue eyes look like glittering crystals even in the low lighting in the room. The heat I see in his eyes takes me by surprise for a moment. It’s like looking past the veil and seeing the truth of something when I’ve never allowed myself to look before.

My eyes slide to either side of him to see two more men, one is even larger than the first, with the other leaner, but still with an air of ‘don’t fuck with me’ coming from him. They’re wearing jeans that are straining around their thick thighs and their torsos are wrapped in leather.

I’ve never seen a trio of sexier men and there is not a single one in the audience that is unattractive. My breath hitches and I’m thankful when the steps have me turning away from them. They’re a distraction that I can’t allow to seep in any deeper.

I like the lights on the stage and the distance between me and the people in the audience. It creates a separation, one I need. I’m not here to be anything more than a fantasy.

I’ve worked through a lot of the doctrine I was raised in. Hell, I’ve even dated and had sex, but performing is my job and that is a line I don’t cross. I’ve never even considered it before.

As my body moves to the music and my eyes continue to stray back to the men, I consider if that’s a rule that needs to stay in place. I don’t even know who I would choose.

When some women who are dressed even more scantily than me slide into the men’s laps my heart sinks. I’m reminded, again, why that distance is important.

This is just a job. Nothing more.

And when I walk off the stage tonight, they’ll be just some men who sat in the halo of the lights that illuminated my sequins and made them sparkle.

CHAPTER 3

RITES

Fuck, the blond bombshell on stage is a fucking stunner. I haven’t been able to look away from the moment the lights came back up on the stage. Honestly, I could almost pat myself on the back because the whole burlesque show was my idea.

Could I have gotten one of the angels to put on a show? Sure, but that wouldn’t have been very special. That shit could happen any night of the week.

And I wanted to do something a little bit different for my brother and one of my oldest friends.

There hasn’t been a time in my life when I haven’t known Spark. Sure, back when I first knew him he was just Waylon. But, then again, I was Chance when we were friends back then. When we met Nico in school, we brought him into the fold.

He needed a family, and we had one to share. That was before he became Crucify.

That’s not entirely accurate. Crucify has a younger sister, but their parents were shit who didn’t care about their kids at all. They expected Crucify to take care of his sister when he was only a child himself. But then once we graduated, he didn’t have a lot of resources available to him and he wanted to be able to still help his sister.

There was no way his parents were going to provide shit for Lake. He started working for the club and became a Prospect at the same time that Spark and I did as well. He’d already spent time at the clubhouse by then.

It’s not like he could have taken Lake away from their parents. They might have been shit, but I doubt that they would have allowed that shit. And it’s not like Crucify had a legal leg to stand on. They weren’t abusive, they were just…absent.

I have no idea how people like that can have kids.

Hell, I grew up with my dad as a patched member of the DSMC, something far too many people look down on, but I was never fucking once abandoned or neglected. Fuck, sometimes it felt like I had too many eyes on me and too much fucking support.

It was harder to get into trouble, the kind of trouble we were looking for back then, with so many people looking out for us.

But, then again, some types of trouble we had readily available at the clubhouse already.

Like pussy was never a fucking problem.

And our parents drummed it into us that drugs weren’t something they were on board with. Now, having a drink? Sure. And smoking some green was fine too. Anything harder than that would have earned us an ass kicking.

One we would have deserved.

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