Page 110 of Going for Gold (Sweet Cravings 3)

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. Despite what they had seen me do, I still didn't want them to see me naked again.

The judge laughed. "At first I thought that everything that just happened was an accident. But you're clearly a modest girl when you're not performing. So sweet and innocent." He gave me a sly smile. "Oh, I guess I'm supposed to score you? That's easy. Ten for both categories. I've seen countless strip dances on my show over the past eight years, but none of them even come close to that."

Yes!

"Wow, that's quite the difference of opinions between the first two judges," said Owen. "Alina can't get higher or lower scores in either category, so those will be dropped and every score from the final three judges will count. Dean Smith, what'd you think of Alina's dance?"

The third judge leaned into his mic, which happened to be the same mic I had used to pronounce my love of big black cock. Oh God. I wrapped my towel tighter around myself.

"Well, Alina," said Dean Smith, the choreographer from South Africa. "Overall I enjoyed the dance, but I felt the dance portion was a bit safe from a technical aspect. You didn't really attempt many difficult moves, and those that you did try left a bit to be desired. So for a technical score, I have to give you a four. However, I can't deny that the creativity and sensuality of your performance deserves a ten."

The next judge, a slim black man with a bald head and bright white smile, immediately chimed in. "I have to agree with most of that, but I enjoyed the technical part of your performance more than Dean. The whole dance, even before the end, was very sensual, which is the most important part of a strip dance. So for that, I give you a technical score of six and a creativity score of nine."

Nine? Really?

"Alright, that's 29 points so far," said Owen Harris. "It all comes down to our final judge, Corinne Bellerose. She needs to give you a score of at least 15 for you to take home the gold. Corinne, what'd you think?"

I took a deep breath. My heart was pounding out of my chest. I was so close to taking the gold from Gabriela. But it was all up to Madame Bellerose, an editor at a hoity-toity French dance magazine. She hadn't looked overtly disgusted like Mi-sook Park, but she also hadn't been grinning like a horny high-school boy the entire time the way the three men at the judges' table had been.

"Miss Smith," she began in a heavy French accent. Her expression was still unreadable. "Your dance was mediocre. The strip parts were okay, but the dance moves were not so good. Some of them could have been much uh..." she fumbled for the word, "...crisper. So for your technical score, I give you a five."

Shit. That means I need a ten for creativity to win it.

"However, the end of your dance was incredible. A strip dance is so often focused on one woman removing her clothes, so the way you had your backup dancers strip as well was quite brilliant. But you even took it a step further. You teased us all by making us think the dance was over, and then you teased your dancers by letting that spinning platform determine which of them got to have you and which of them had to watch. And then having some of the backup dancers fight over you? Even with a few of them pretending to be knocked out cold? I could feel the passion. Strip dances are all about building desire, and I think that dance made every man on the planet desire you. So for creativity, I give you a ten."

Ten? Did she really say ten? I looked at the jumbotron to check the scores. Gabriela - 43. Alina - 44.

Holy fuck! I really won!

"Congratulations, Alina," said Owen with a smile. "You just won gold."

I smiled and threw my arms around him.

He cleared his throat.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry."

"It's okay." He winked at me and lifted one of my hands in the air. And in that moment, all I could think about was that I won gold. I won gold and beat Gabriela.

The familiar sound of the crowd cheering for me filled the air. God, I loved that sound.

Chapter 49

Sunday

Isadora

Sex, for many people, is when they feel most alive, connecting with another human on some base and animalistic level. Maybe I felt that way about sex at some point, before I was beaten and broken by Rodrigo and his customers, but now, only the ocean made me feel truly alive. It was the one bright spot in my life filled mainly with the darkness of drugs and prostitution. On the rare occasion that Rodrigo didn't demand my presence at the club, I would always go to the beach, and for a few hours, I'd smell the salty ocean breeze and feel the hot Brazilian sun beating down on my tan skin.

I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the salty ocean air one more time before leaving the balcony to go back inside the penthouse suite of the Copacabana Palace. My best friend, Giovanna, was sitting on one of the four couches in the penthouse, while Rodrigo nursed a scotch at the bar in front of his laptop. I didn't have to see the screen to know that he was watching a live feed from Vitor of Bryce's sister, Emily. A similar video feed had been present on Rodrigo's laptop during every pivotal event, with the only variables being a different loved one based on which operative was supposed to be rigging the event. I didn't understand why he actually had to kill some innocent girl if Bryce failed. It would be smarter to just use the threat of her death to make Bryce do his bidding, especially since he would owe Vitor more money for actually carrying out the hit on the girl, but Rodrigo didn't see it that way. If someone crossed him, he took something they loved. It was brutal, but thus far in life, it appeared to have served him well.

That's going to change today.

"Is it back on?" asked Rodrigo in Portuguese.

"Not yet," said Giovanna. "The announcer is still claiming that they're having...technical difficulties." She looked down at her phone for a second and then held it up for Rodrigo and me to see. "But if you look at the Twitter..."

I looked at the screen. Someone in the audience had tweeted out a low quality ten-second video of the American girl getting gangbanged on stage by her backup dancers. Another life ruined by Rodrigo.

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