Page 13 of Autumn's Coming

Chapter Five

Autumn

I still didn’t really know what was supposed to be happening.

People started to clear out as I danced. I couldn’t help being disappointed; I knew I wasn’t a dancer, but part of me had hoped that I’d just be a natural.

Instead, I was just shaking my hips. Trying to make faces that I hoped were sexy.

Wishing I had taken up yoga, like every single New Year’s resolution I forgot by the middle of January. Then, I could have been flexible enough to move on stage.

But instead I just kept shaking my hips, trying to keep on the rhythm of the song.

A group of guys came closer. I watched them sit down at the front.

One of them was hot. Tall and distinguished-looking, his eyes bright green in the light from the stage. He was well-dressed, too. He looked rich, or at least very upper middle-class.

I couldn’t help myself. I licked my lower lip as I looked down at him.

He looked back at me, his eyes sweeping over my body.

He didn’t look repulsed—if anything, he leaned forward in his seat.

Maybe he liked curvy girls.

Behind me, Jessie said something. I glanced back; she was upside-down on the pole, her legs in a V above her head. “Get on your knees! Take your skirt off!”

Right, my skirt.

It was all I had to take off. Blue laws were a real bitch—I’d heard Jessie complain about them plenty, angry that she couldn’t take her bra off in the club without getting arrested. It seemed silly to me, that men would go to a strip club where they couldn’t actually see any boobs.

But still—the skirt could go.

I slowly dropped to my knees in front of the handsome man, glad the skirt zipped all the way down one side. I locked eyes with him as I pulled the zipper down, slowly, revealing my underwear.

He looked me over, then reached into his pocket.

He removed his wallet, pulled out a twenty, and laid it on the stage in front of me.

I looked over my shoulder for Jessie.

“Put it in your bra!”

Right, okay.

I lowered myself toward him, almost laying on the stage. I grabbed the twenty with one hand and tucked it into the cup of my bra. “Thanks, handsome.”

He smiled.

I felt a sudden burst of inspiration, or maybe it was just the shots kicking in. I pushed myself back up to my knees and rose up on them, then dropped back down, moving like I was riding a man.

He watched my every move.

It was turning me on.

I couldn’t remember a man ever looking at me like that. Even men I’d slept with hadn’t been so obviously interested in what I was doing.

I couldn’t help but wish that he was under me, inside me.

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