Electrified(4)
Down to her bra and panties, Sienna strutted to the front of the platform. She tugged her hair loose from the elastic band that held it, then bent over to shake her long locks loose. When she flipped back up, hand to hip, dancing suggestively, swaying her middle while letting her hair fall down her back, she saw him.
He was staring. Not gawking or watching awkwardly like most fans, but gazing possessively at her. A mysterious warmth flooded her body, seeping out from her veins to her muscles, skin, and most private parts, making her want to touch, feel, and gaze openly.
That was all she could handle. Sienna turned and went back up the pole to finish the song, avoiding looking at the audience. She couldn’t stand another second of the heat between their gazes.
Twisting and wrapping her lean body around the pole, never breaking a seductive smile, Sienna had the crowd twisted in lust. She could feel it in the air. It was heavy, blanketing the audience in a fever. Unable to cool down, the crowd’s only choice was to take in more sensuality.
At the end of the song, Sienna didn’t wait to see if the man she’d already spent too much time thinking about had left. She did a quick spin around, giving the crowd one more long look at her toned bare butt, blew kisses to her fans, and sashayed off the stage.
To look at her, one would never know her insides were churning with anxiety, that her thong was soaked…not from sweat, and her heart was beating hard…not from exertion.
The crowd probably expected her to head to the back to get laid. There was nothing else to do after a performance like the one she just gave other than melt into another person. She didn’t have a significant other, though, so she went to her dressing room to be alone.
As always.
Twenty-four hours earlier, Thursday night
THE OVERHEAD lights were dim, the stage dark with a single spotlight focused dead center. It was showtime. Sienna waited backstage, inspecting herself in a full-length mirror one last time to be sure her minimal costume covered what it should. She checked her makeup, then ran a hand over her skin to ensure the lotion she’d just applied had been absorbed completely; it would make her skin shimmer and sparkle when the light hit it. Her audience had come to expect her lush, creamy skin to radiate onstage, and she wouldn’t disappoint them tonight.
The music in the main room began to pulse, sending vibrations throughout the entire building, and marked the time for her entrance. Counting backward from ten, Sienna entered stage left as if she owned the huge platform rising above the crowd. Her demeanor actually said more than that; her moves suggested she owned the whole club.
Actually, she did own the entire club…now.
Well, half of it, to be precise.
It had only been three months since that fateful change of fortune; only time would allow the idea to settle with her.
She now owned half of all this. This being the Electric Tunnel, the one and only route to Vegas’s heady, lust-filled underground, and a fiery inferno of deep, hot, anything-goes fantasies of the sensual nature.
Asher Peterson, the club’s owner and the top purveyor of everything and anything sensuous in Sin City, had brought Sienna in three months ago as a partner in “the Tunnel.”
“You deserve it,” he had told her one night as they left the club. She had just stared at her closest friend—her only true friend—watching him run a hand through his thick, wavy blond hair and thinking he needed a haircut, and a goatee trim while he was at it.
“Without you,” he’d said, “this would still be just a small strip joint on the outskirts of the Strip. Now it’s the most sought-after place to go to in Vegas. I won’t take no for an answer. From now on, Sie, we’re fifty/fifty partners.” Asher had kept his eyes trained on her, waiting for a reaction, his serious expression letting her know he would accept nothing short of “yes.”
She had continued to stare. No longer distracted by her boss and closest friend’s facial hair, she had pondered the idea.
Me, Lila, the sweet little religious girl who’s only ever slept with one man, owning a strip club? Imagine that.
It had been enough to make a little laugh bubble up in her throat at the absurdity of it, but Asher had insisted he wanted her to have it.
Warming up to the subject, his silver-gray eyes had been intense with sincerity as he’d said, “You bring in the big money, the men with hundred-dollar bills to burn, the couples with serious cash to spend on a decadent time in Vegas, the bachelor parties with guys who drink like fish and buy lap dances like they’re candy, and the lonely businessmen who would pay anything to get off and go to sleep. They all come to see you. You’re their fantasy come true. They wait in line, fill the crowd, buy booze, and book private rooms months in advance to simply dream of you. It’s Vegas, baby, and you make the whole experience for them. You need to own that, love.”