Page 22 of Stripped

I swung my head around to look at him, my stomach dropping. Darn. I'd hoped it was just a paranoid fear when I worried the girls wouldn't be dancing, but would be doing something much, much worse.

“She can come in, but you stay outside.”

I took a step forward, but Zane tightened his grip on my fingers. “Not happening.”

I sighed. I didn't appreciate a man taking charge of me, but I wasn't dumb enough to think going in there alone would be a good idea. “Let Leopold know Abigail White is at the front door,” I said. “I have a feeling he'll want me to see whatever is going on inside.” I just hoped I could stomach it and didn't get myself killed trying to rip his head from his shoulders.

One of the two men disappeared behind a curtain. He returned a moment later and nodded to the other guy. They both stepped to the side, allowing us just enough room to enter, but we had to do it single-file and we brushed against their chests and other parts as we walked in. “Leopold is on the second floor,” the guy closest to me said. “VIP lounge.”

I pushed through the curtain, Zane so close behind me I could feel the warmth of his body against mine. Which was good, because the cavernous room we stepped into was cold. Freezing cold. It was a round room, with a stage in the center and a pole that rose two stories to a second-floor stage with a see-through floor, so guys could look up and see the dancers above, every intimate bit of the dancers above. And there weren't just women on the stages. There were also women in aerial dances, hanging from ribbons suspended from the ceiling, and there were women working the crowd, some of them performing lap dances that had gone way beyond what was accepted at most strip clubs. I saw one woman sitting on a man's lap, his teeth in her neck while she rocked her hips against him. Another woman was on her knees, her face between a man's legs, her head bobbing.

My stomach roiled and I swayed, this was so much worse than I'd expected. Zane released my hand and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me tight to his side. “Do you recognize them?” he asked.

I looked closer and was relieved to see that the bitten woman wasn't an ex-employee of mine. Roxy and Lizzie were dancing on the stage, and I couldn't be sure about the women above, but I crossed my fingers that everyone who'd worked for me was just dancing.

“There's too many vamps here,” Zane said. “Double what they had before Leopold.”

I looked around at the crowd again and realized he was right. The room was packed and I only recognized about a third of the faces. “What's going on?”

“I don't know, but I doubt it's good.”

“Welcome,” Leopold said, stepping forward to block our view of the club. Alice was on his arm, two red dots of blood on her neck. She looked up at Leopold and smiled like he was everything she'd ever wanted and never thought she'd find. “I figured you'd be too chicken shit to come up and see me, so I brought the party to you.”

He reached back and pulled Carly forward, also with dots of blood on her neck, also looking at Leopold like he was the sun and the moon and every life-giving entity.

“Where'd all these vamps come from?” Zane asked.

Leopold's smile widened and he looked around the club. “Quite a crowd, isn't it? Bigger than either of you ever drew with your businesses.”

“Wasn't trying to attract bloodsuckers,” Zane said, his arm tensing around me.

“Maybe you should have been,” Leopold said. “Maybe your business would still be here if you'd paid attention to the population demographics here in Aspens Whiten.”

I looked around the full club. “You're saying all these vampires live in Aspens Whiten?”

“I'm saying I could use a manager for this new club I've opened, someone to look out for the girls. If you decided to ditch the wolf on your arm and hop into my bed, you could have the job.”

Leopold leered as he said it, the hand around Alice's waist dropping to fondle her ass. “If I was manager,” I said. “I'd have rules. No feeding on the girls in my club, no sexual activity of any kind in my club.”

Leopold frowned. “This is my club, Sissy.” He slid his hand under Carly's short skirt and she moaned. “But I imagine I could fuck that rule-following attitude out of you in a day or two.”

It was almost tempting. If I took the job as manager, I'd at least be able to keep an eye on the women I cared about, but I knew all I'd really be able to do was watch as they were turned into blood groupies. “Let them leave with me,” I said. “And I won't report you to the sheriff.”

His grin widened. “You mean sheriff Walpole? If you want to talk to him, he's right over there.” He pointed to our respected sheriff, a man with a wife and kids at home, sitting at a table in the middle of the crowd, his eyes glued to the stage. Sheriff Walpole had never frequented my club and I wondered exactly what Leopold had done to get him there. “I doubt he's in the mood to do much talking at the moment, seeing as his girlfriend is dancing right now.”

On stage, a third woman had just shown up and her eyes were on the sheriff. What the hell was going on?

“She's been keeping him real good company since his wife took the kids and left town. Rumor is she didn't appreciate the time he was spending with me.”

I shook my head and focused on what I needed to do. “I want to talk to my employees. Legally, they still work for me.” I really had no idea if it worked that way at all, it's not like any of them had signed a contract saying they wouldn't go work somewhere else, but they were on the schedule for my club. And Leopold seemed cowed by nothing else.

“Go ahead,” Leopold said. “But I doubt they'll want to talk to you.” He turned to the women on his arms. “Ladies, you want to talk to Sissy?”

“I'll call her tomorrow,” Alice said, her eyes on Leopold. Carly said nothing.

I looked to the stage, but Roxy and Lizzie were no longer there. I wasn't too keen on rushing into a crowd of vampires to try to find my employees, my friends. “I'll be in touch,” I said to both women. “Tell the others I want to see them.”

“'Kay, Abby,” Alice said, but her focus was on Leopold. She traced his bottom lip with her finger and smiled dopily. I had little faith she'd do what I'd asked.

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