I walked up the short flight of steps onto the stage and made my way to the center. I stopped there and posed again, and the spotlight cut off, and the music cut on.

On stage, I was alive.

I began dancing, swaying my hips and running my hands down my body. I made eye contact with one of the clients sitting near the stage and winked. He leaned toward me, lips parting, and I wanted to laugh. I was powerful. In that one moment, I wasn’t doing it for the money. I was doing it because I wanted to. I wanted these men to look at me, and want me.

My dance was a striptease. The robe would stay on; the corset, eventually, would come off, and I would use the robe’s sheer fabric to conceal while revealing, until finally that came off too. I had fifteen minutes, and I didn’t intend to get naked until the very end. They would be desperate for it by the time I finally let one of them take off my g-string.

As I danced, I scanned the audience, wondering which of the men watching me was the owner. Was it the silver-haired gentleman in the double-breasted suit? Was it the middle-aged man ignoring me in favor of his phone? It could have been any of them. Unlike Poppy, I didn’t really care. The owner had never shown any interest in interfering with the day-to-day activities at the club, and so I wasn’t going to waste any mental energy worrying about it.

I turned on my heel to face another section of the room. It was important to keep turning around so that everyone got a good view. I bent my head to find the zipper on my corset and drew the zipper down. The two halves of the corset peeled open, and I drew it off and tossed it onto the stage. The gauzy fabric of my robe slid across my breasts as I made another quarter turn, and I deliberately arched my back to display my nipples.

A man near the stage raised his glass to me.

I winked at him and turned again, hips swaying the whole time, hands at my neck and then at my hips, letting them all imagine that it was their hands touching me, their hands gliding across the warm silk of my skin. I drew the rope open, fully exposing my body, and then pulled it closed again, teasing, giving them just a taste.

I paused for a moment, bending over backwards with my arms above my head. Upside-down, a man sitting toward the back of the room caught my attention, and I straightened again and turned around to get a better look at him.

Holy shit.

It was the guy from earlier, the one who had bandaged my knees.

I swayed in place, watching him, mesmerized.

He tipped his chin up, and our eyes met.

It shook me to my bones.

It was like wandering through the desert for forty days and forty nights, and suddenly finding water. Like remembering a long-forgotten dream, or waking in the night to distant thunder.

There was something in his eyes, darkly amused, that made me think he’d seen right through me, right down to the soles of my feet.

Rattled, I turned my back to him and kept dancing.

I knew he was there, though. I could feel his eyes on me.

I risked a glance back over my shoulder. He was still watching.

Rule 1: never get involved with the clients.

No matter how attractive they were.

No matter how kind they had been to you.

Had he followed me? Did he know I worked at the club, or was it just a weird coincidence?

Either way, I was pretty unsettled.

The music changed, my cue that I needed to wrap things up. Fine with me; I was suddenly eager to get off stage and go back to the safety of the seraglio. I let my robe slither to the floor and spun slowly on one foot, cupping my breasts in both hands, giving the watching men the view they had all been waiting for. Now was ordinarily the time when I stepped off the stage and let a client peel off my g-string, but the man in the dark suit was still watching me, and I didn’t want to linger. I pulled the g-string to the side just enough to give a peek, and then gave a little curtsy as the music ended, blew a kiss to the audience, and left the stage.

As Mercedes took the stage behind me, I made my rounds of the audience, collecting tips and pausing here and there to let a man slide one hand down the curve of my ass. This was usually a prime opportunity to talk someone into a lap dance or a private room, but I wasn’t feeling it. I wanted to go back to the seraglio and gossip with Scarlet some more. Maybe I would take tomorrow off. I had worked for a week and a half straight, and I was feeling a little burned out.

I slowly wove through the tables, moving inevitably closer to the man in the suit at the back of the room. He hadn’t looked away from me, and I had the strange sensation that he was reeling me toward him like a fish on a line. Impossible, of course, but I felt the draw, a steady tug, and I wondered what he would say to me when I finally made my way over to him. What he would do.

My heart beat in a relentless pounding rhythm.

But as soon as I came close enough that he could have touched me or spoken to me, he looked down at his phone and ignored me.

I paused by his table, uncertain, waiting for him to look up again, to give some indication that he knew I was there—but he didn’t, and I had to keep moving or it would get weird.

A man at the next table said, “Are you entertaining clients tonight, sugar?”

I looked him up and down: young-ish, handsome-ish, probably very wealthy. A good catch. A safe bet. I could make a lot of money off of him.

But he wasn’t the man in the dark suit, and I wasn’t interested.

“Not tonight, sorry,” I said, and moved on.

I regretted it immediately. I wasn’t in this business for my own pleasure; I was in it to make money, and I should never turn down any man who was willing to offer me money.

Too late to take it back, though.

I sighed and looked around the room. Everyone was paying attention to Mercedes now, and my g-string was stuffed full of bills. Time to go back to the seraglio and regroup. It was still early. Maybe I could join Schoenemann’s party later.

As I left the floor, I glanced back over my shoulder, wanting one last glimpse at the man in the dark suit.

He was watching me again.

* * *

When I arrived at the club the next afternoon, Germaine called me into her office.

“What’s up, G?” I asked, leaning in the doorway. “Am I getting fired?”

I liked Germaine. She worked too much—I didn’t think she had taken a single day off since I had been hired—and that was a little weird, but whatever made her happy. She was efficient, and she didn’t play favorites, and she wasn’t a tight-ass about scheduling. A good boss.

She didn’t look too happy, though. I wondered if I had pissed off a client, or one of the other dancers. She set aside her paperwork and said, “You’ve been requested.”