The music starts waning and I realize Amy is at the end of her routine. She ends it by hooking her fingers in the strings of the thong that rest at her hip, shimmying them down her long legs. She steps out of them, catching the edge on one manicured toe encased in silver, high-heeled sandals, and flicks it out so the material goes sailing at Lance. He deftly catches it and just like the schmuck that I know him to be, brings it to his nose and inhales deeply with a sensuous look on his face. That earns him a cheeky grin from Amy, bare-assed naked and staring boldly down at us.
Cocking one hand on her hip and letting the other hang loosely at her side, she says, "So what did you think? Do I have the job?"
Simon and Lance bend their heads toward one another, voices so low that I can't hear a damn thing now. They don't bother to conference me in because my opinion doesn't matter at this point. I did my job … brought the prospects to the table, and now it's Simon's decision.
Pulling back, Simon looks up at Amy and gives her a smooth smile. "You're hired, baby. Head back to the dressing room and get your clothes on. You can go over the details with Raze a bit later. We have two more auditions."
Fuck.
He hired her, and that just decreased Andrea's chances.
"Who's up next?" Simon asks me.
I glance down at the application I had filled out the day before and pretend I'm not overly familiar with the fake person it belongs to. "Nikki Oliver, but she goes by Nikki O … She said it means Nikki Orgasm," I say with a snort, and Simon and Lance laugh along with me.
"That's right," Simon muses. "I thought that one had particular promise when you told me about her."
I shrug my shoulders carelessly, as I don't want him to get a hint of how much I want him to hire her. "No better than any of the others. I think they're all easy marks."
"That last one won't be easy on the buyer we have in mind," Lance says darkly. "But he's got a bit of a whipping fetish, so he'll enjoy knocking that smug smile off her face."
My stomach cramps hard over those words, and I take another swallow of my Pepsi to coat my dry tongue.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I hope I didn't just condemn that girl to a nightmare of a life. My only hope at this point is that her potential buyer won't be along soon to collect his toy.
"Nikki Oliver," I yell out toward the stage. I know she's standing just behind the curtain … ready to go. "You're up."
A slow, sexy beat of music starts … thumping almost ominously, rising in crescendo, until it's taken over the loud pounding of my own heart. And there she is … striding out onto the stage.
And holy fuck … I almost don't recognize her.
My jaw drops, but I pick it back up quickly, slamming my teeth together. Her golden hair is loose … long … flowing down her back in sexy waves. Her makeup is flawless with long lashes that make her blue eyes pop and fuck-me red lipstick is painted onto those full lips.
She chose to come out with guns blazing, because she didn't bother with any type of clichéd fantasy costume-naughty nurse, spankable schoolgirl, or dominatrix professor. No, instead, she chose to come out in a sexy-as-sin, black bustier with a simple and very, very tiny black G-string.
The bustier was perfectly chosen … the cups covering yet plumping up what I now understand to be luscious breasts that she must have had flattened down behind a sports bra when I last saw her. The bottom half of the bustier is in black lace, coming to just above her belly button, and trimmed in dove-gray lace around the edges. It's not an expensive piece of lingerie, the cups done in some type of faux leather, and I realize with admiration that she wore something sexy yet of obvious cheap quality so as to enhance her "down-and-out" character portrayal. My gut tightens as my eyes sweep over the G-string, the tiny triangle of black cotton stretched precariously between her legs, with thin straps arching over the most perfect-looking hipbones I've ever seen.
I've always had a thing for a woman's hips.
She walks-no prowls-down the center of the stage, her eyes sweeping briefly over Lance, then Simon, and finally me. Her lips quirk up sexily and her eyes flutter closed briefly as she reaches a lazy hand out to the metal pole, and then reels her entire body inward toward it. Looping one long leg around the pole, she releases her hand's grip and arches her back, tilting her head way back so that her the ends of her hair brush the lacquered floor.
Smoothly … sexily, she pulls her body up, unwraps her leg from around the pole, and starts a slow, gyrating dance. Her movements are silky … fluid, almost with a touch of hard-edged grace about her. Her body moves in perfect synchronicity to the slow beat of music, undulating like the current of a lazy river.