Page 20 of Gilded Fake

My thighs quiver, and I quickly pull my hand away. I’d die of humiliation if I made a wet spot on my panties in front of him.

“Like a queen,” he says flatly.

“Hm,” I say, going onto all fours. I lean over the edge of the stage, so my face is close to his. “And you’re going to?”

“Maybe,” he says. “If you tell me why you’re doing this.”

“I told you.”

“Alright,” he says, pulling out his wallet. “How much money do you need?”

I laugh. “I’m not taking charity from you.”

“It’s not charity,” he says. “It’s paying you for the work you’re doing. Here. This is to get you on your feet until you can find another job.”

He counts out a thousand dollars onto the edge of the stage, one hundred-dollar bill at a time.

“You don’t have to tip me in a private session,” I point out. “You paid for the room.”

“How much to make you stop?”

“I’m not taking your money,” I say. The song ends, and I brush it off the stage onto his lap. “Now tell me what you want.”

“I want you to walk out of this place and never come back.”

“Why?” I ask, cocking my head.

“Because,” he growls. “It’s not where a queen belongs.”

“Maybe I’m not a queen,” I say. “Maybe I’m a whore.”

“You’re not.”

“You don’t get to decide that,” I say lightly. “Maybe I want to be a whore.”

He leans forward, his fingers wrapping gently around the front of my throat, his nose an inch from mine. “Then be my whore.”

I’m pretty sure my soul leaves my body.

When my mind comes back to itself, Colt is still there, staring into my eyes like he’s trying to see into the soul that just departed. I can tell by his slightly unfocused gaze that he’s fucked up, either drunk or on those pills he takes. But even though he’s not sober, and he has his hand around my throat, and he has every reason in the world to hurt me, and he’s done it before, I don’t pull away. I’m sure he won’t hurt me. Not physically, anyway.

I was scared of that last year, when it all went down. Scared that he’d treat me like the Dolces did. This time, I’m not scared. I don’t know if it’s because I’m fearless now, or because I’m as crazy as everyone says, or because he’s shown me that he’s not that kind of person.

Slowly, I lift my hand and wrap it around his wrist, stroking the skin over his pulse point, where a heartbeat line is inked. When I feel the hard thrum of his heart, I smirk at him. “That’s not allowed here.”

“Am I allowed to touch you?” he asks.

“Depends,” I say, since we’re allowed to set our boundaries in these rooms, and since I don’t yet know what I want. I’ve never given a lap dance, and the thought of doing that for Colt has my heart pounding for entirely different reasons. “Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” he says, sliding his hand from my neck, over my shoulder, and gripping my upper arm. His other hand does the same on my other arm, and then, he waits.

“You have me for another forty-five minutes,” I murmur. “What do you want to do to me, Colt?”

“You know what I want to do to you,” he says. “Now show me what you want to do to me.”

Gripping my upper arms, he drags me forward off the stage. It’s not how I pictured, not the tease Scarlet told me to be. I don’t get to stroll to the edge of the stage and take my time strutting down the steps, swinging my hips as I walk toward him before floating gracefully into his lap.

It’s rough and urgent, animal and messy.

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