A Dance for Him Read online

  Contents

  PART I

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  PART II

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  EPILOGUE

  MASTERED BY THE MAESTRO

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  EPILOGUE

  Back Matter

  PART I

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Hey, college girl. I just got here, how’s the crowd out there tonight?” Brandi asks me as I make my way to my dressing-table, plonk myself in front of it, and finally get to take off those crazy six-inch stripper platforms that I’ve had on for much of the last three hours.

  Brandi’s another dancer at the Royale, which, despite its rather pompous name, is basically just the local strip club. At least, Brandi’s the name she goes by here - her real name’s something else, I assume, because we don’t generally go by our real names at the club. My club name is Tiffany, but Brandi usually just calls me “college girl” and “darling”, which I actually kind of prefer. It’s only been a couple of months since I started, and I only work here once a week, which is probably why it sometimes still takes me a moment to respond when someone calls me Tiffany …

  Anyway, I really like her. When I was a clueless newbie she was kind enough to advise me on stuff like how to spot and avoid the creeps as far as possible, so now we look out for each other, tipping each other off about sketchy or stingy clients. She’s become a friend in many ways, even though we only see each other at the club and don’t know each other’s real names.

  In fact, all I know about her is that she’s a single mom of about thirty with a seven-year-old son, and that she’s in beauty school part-time, whereas all she knows about me, for the most part, is that I’m twenty and in college.

  And yet, though we don’t know all that much about each other, I feel more comfortable with her than with a lot of my classmates. She’s real, which is to say not at all pretentious.

  I get enough of that at school as it is! …

  “Oh, the usual,” I say casually. “Not too bad. The creepy guy isn’t here today, thank heavens. Just a bunch of dudes here on their own, though there are a few groups, you know how rowdy they can get sometimes.”

  She shrugs, as though to say “yeah, well, what can you do?”, then pats me on the head as she sails past me to the next dressing-table to touch up her makeup.

  I reach for my phone to check my email, which makes her chuckle slightly as she sees me out of the corner of her eye.

  “Sexting your dreamboat professor again, college girl?”

  I blush. “No, Brandi, of course not! We don’t do that sort of thing. He’s my teacher, I don’t want to get him into trouble! I don’t even know for sure if he’s interested.”

  She rolls her eyes at what she probably thinks is my overwhelming naïveté.

  “Of course he is,” she snorts. “A pretty little thing like you, an A+ student … I bet he’s already got you in his spank bank, it probably doesn’t matter if you actually sext him or not. Especially if you occasionally flash him a bit of boob or thigh … and I bet you have.”

  “He’s not the type,” I protest feebly. “He’s very proper.”

  “He’s a man, darling, just like the rest of them. Which means that ultimately he’s not that different from the guys we see out here.”

  “Oh Brandi, he’s sooo not like them.”

  It’s true - I really can’t see Dr. Morland in this place, leering and whistling along with the rest of them. He’s so gallant, so correct, so elegant and lofty of manner … It would be completely unlike him.

  She laughs knowingly. “Darling, seriously, you want him to be at least a bit like them. I mean, you’d like him to actually want you, right? You don’t really want your Mr. Dreamboat to be pure and above it all, you want him to be a dirty boy. Even if it’s only for you. Maybe you want him to be a bit more polite than the average frat boy who shows up here, but I suspect that’s about it.”

  I smile and roll my eyes but I can feel my cheeks flushing … because she’s right.

  Once, in an indiscreet moment, I’d told her about my crush on Dr. Morland. Maybe it was silly of me, but I guess I just needed to talk about him to someone that day, and for obvious reasons I couldn’t really talk about him to any of my classmates.

  Besides, it wasn’t like I mentioned him by name or anything. I would never do that - he’s a public figure, plus I wouldn’t want to get him into trouble for something which might exist only in my overheated imagination.

  Because he’s actually famous. He’s not just some guy with a joint appointment in both English and Creative Writing - he’s Sebastian Morland, way, way better known as the author of a bestselling and critically acclaimed epic historical novel that he’d published five years ago, when he was just thirty.

  But that’s not why I have a crush on him, though there’s no question that it’s a beautifully written book, and I’d just about die to write prose that melodious and richly laden with metaphor.

  Rather, it’s because he’s the most handsome man I’ve ever met - tall, dark-haired, well-built, with perfectly sculpted features and dark soulful eyes.

  Eyes that have a habit of glistening and turning ever so wistful whenever he looks at me with one of those hypnotic, lingering glances that never fail to make my heart beat faster and my panties get wetter …

  I always thought he was completely out of my league. Implausibly good-looking, successful, from a patrician, old-money background, known to be quite popular with the ladies (well he is smoking hot), why would he be interested in me?

  Then I caught him staring at me from a distance with an odd smile on his face. A smile that seemed unusually glowy, and which couldn’t seem to quit.

  And then it happened again … and again … and again.

  I tell myself all the time it can’t be, that he’s just being very sweet and kind, that he just likes talking to me because he thinks I write well. After all, he never actually does anything, just stares and smiles for the most part.

  It’s true that on occasion when I’ve shown up in a short skirt he’s looked at me like he could just about devour me, but that’s about it, and for
all I know he doesn’t just do that with me.

  Although it’s also true that I’ve never seen him do that with anyone else, and it’s not exactly like there’s any shortage of pretty girls out to impress Sebastian Morland with short skirts and cleavage.

  Of course, for all I know, it’s pure silliness on my part. Which is probably why I secretly like it when Brandi teases me about him, about my being in his spank bank, just because, for that brief moment, it’s kind of like: hmm, if she thinks he likes me, and she knows a lot more about these things than I do, maybe he actually does! …

  Well, whatever the truth of it, it’s nice to have a guy like him to secretly lust after.

  Convenient, even, given this job.

  Because it isn’t always easy to go out there and try and embody the fantasies of the men in the audience. The real pros can just turn it on like that, but I can’t say I’ve figured out how to do that.

  To be honest I sometimes feel like a bit of a fraud considering that I’ve never even had sex ever. A virgin stripper, ha! I’d probably be laughed off the stage if anybody knew. It pays well, though, and leaves me lots of time to study and write, since I just have to do a five-hour shift each week to pay for rent and groceries with a bit to put aside for law school in the future (thank goodness for the full scholarship I have at the moment!).

  And so I think about him when I go out on stage, when I have to do private dances. It’s so strange, I even walk differently when I think about him, it’s like I can be sexual only when I think about him …

  “Well, I’m getting out there, college girl,” says Brandi, shaking me out of my reverie. “You doing another shift tonight?”

  I blink as I walk onto the stage, the glare from the spotlights blinding me briefly before my eyes get used to it.

  It’s always a bit of sensory overload in the club proper - the light, the noise, the overpowering smell of body spray and sweat and loneliness …

  The DJ’s playing Hot for Teacher to match my naughty schoolgirl costume - the one reference to my real life I’m willing to make here, maybe because it’s the one place I can practically announce my crush on Dr. Morland to the world at large and yet keep it secret at the same time …

  I stride on in my black Mary Jane-style stilettos, and I get into my routine, toying with the hem of my barely-there skirt as I swivel my hips provocatively, in a parody of coy faux-bashfulness, then lean against a pole with my back arched and head thrown back in pinup mode.

  The place has filled up since I left, and the VIP tables are now fully occupied - it looks like some sort of bachelor party has arrived in the meantime.

  Well, as long as they tip well, I suppose! …

  A lot of whistling happens when I turn my back to the audience, flip my skirt up and start gyrating. I like this part the best - the light isn’t as bad, and I don’t have to look at anyone, so that’s when I think of Dr. Morland, of how he looks at me, of what he would think if he saw me dance.

  It’s enough for the rest to come naturally - the segueing into a split, the hair whipping as I wriggle out of my skimpy bra (more whistling), the writhing about on the floor, the twirling around on the pole.

  I end by leaning against the pole in my earlier position as the song wraps up, and various dollar bills flutter onto the stage, along with a bunch of balled-up bills, tossed one by one as though they were spitballs (ugh).

  It’s his signature move, the creepy guy of whom I’d said to Brandi that he wasn’t here tonight. Damn. He’s not the only guy around who pulls that move, but given that they all landed on stage in the same batch and in the location where they usually end up, I know it has to be him.

  As I get on my knees to pick up the money, I glance vaguely in the direction of where he tends to sit, careful to use my peripheral vision so that I don’t make any direct eye contact with him.

  And it is him in his usual seat, though unusually enough he’s not alone but with a bunch of other guys from what I assumed was the bachelor party.

  He’s already staring at me, so I just smile tightly without looking at him and turn my attention to the table at large, so it looks like I maybe didn’t see him.

  Except that two seats away from him, at the same table, there’s someone who looks all too familiar, who’s also staring at me.

  As we make eye contact he reaches into his wallet and tosses a twenty-dollar bill onto the stage, making his friends snicker.

  He doesn’t seem amused in the least, though, and his friends’ teasing doesn’t appear to be registering with him - he’s pale as death, and he’s clearly recognised me.

  As I have him.

  It’s Sebastian Morland.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It can’t be her, can’t possibly be … And yet I know it is her, know it has to be her, given the way she turned pale and froze briefly when she saw me, as though she’d gotten quite a jolt.

  My best student, whom I’ve longed for in vain for much of the term. That sweet, innocent-looking little thing, who blushes bright red whenever we so much as make eye contact, whether in class or in my office.

  I’m pretty sure she has a bit of a crush on me - she’s always finding an excuse to come and talk during office hours, and she’s always a bit flirty and nervous and giggly in a sweet way. All the usual stuff, you know, the extra-bright smile, the hair-touching, the extended eye contact …

  Fuck, I lose myself in those sparkling blue eyes just like that, without even trying, and she’ll just gaze back at me, a huge smile on her pretty face, her eyes soft, her lips gently parted as if in unconscious invitation.

  It’s not like I don’t get this sort of thing from students (not to mention colleagues and friends and random women) all the time, but there’s just something different about her. I don’t know what exactly it is, but it’s new to me, this combination of dizzy boner-generating lust and heart-melting tenderness that she induces in me.

  I’ve never done or said anything to her because I don’t want to scare her, and besides I can’t fuck a student, it wouldn’t be right. Every time I say goodbye to her after we talk I find myself wishing I’d met her somewhere else - anywhere else but in the classroom.

  Except that after she walks out of my office, I end up telling myself not to be stupid, that even if I did meet her somewhere else, she’d probably be too young and innocent for what I’d like to do to her. Because my tastes run kinky - they always have - and that’s not about to change any time soon.

  But now it seems she’s not so innocent …

  I just can’t get those images out of my head, those images of her with her lovely tits bared and her long legs spread as she writhed on the ground. I’ve spent a lot of time fantasising about her and wondering what she looks like naked.

  Well, now I know.

  And she’s more perfect than I’d even thought possible.

  But what do I do now? If she hadn’t already caught on to the fact that I want her desperately, she must know by now.

  I gave her that twenty in an impetuous moment, because that asshole Caleb was throwing all those balled-up notes at her, after making a whole bunch of crude comments about how he liked to do that so she’d have to get on her knees on stage in front of him and pick them up one by one, because it was a great way to check out her jiggling tits. “They’re all sluts, of course,” he said, “this one’s a bit more stuck up than the rest but I bet if I throw enough money at her she’ll eventually let me fuck her.”

  I could have killed him for talking like that about my precious girl - my best student, the only one of them who isn’t some kind of pretentious flake. If he’d been some random guy, I probably would have. Hell, even if he were just some random guy who happened to be the son of the dean, which he is, I’d probably have punched his lights out by now, at the very least.

  But he’s the cousin of Brandon, the groom-to-be, my best friend in college - and the only reason I’m even in a strip club to begin with …

  Fuck, Caleb’s started going on about
her again. She’s working the floor now, and he’s tipped one of the floor managers to ask her over to our table. Says he wants to buy a dance and maybe also treat Brandon to the best tits and ass he’s going to see for a while. Possibly in the VIP room, even. Because his bro deserves the best.

  In the meantime, my poor baby’s over in the other corner of the room, probably trying to avoid Caleb, possibly trying to avoid me as well.

  Fuck.

  The floor manager makes his way over to her, talks to her and indicates our table.

  She looks over, ever so reluctantly, and Caleb waves and ostentatiously blows her a kiss.

  There’s a brief flash of panic and distaste on her sweet face before she rearranges her features into a strained smile and starts walking over here. Yes, I’m rather beginning to suspect that Caleb was the one who suggested this club for the bachelor party - she clearly knows who he is, and almost certainly wants to avoid him …

  When she approaches, Caleb breaks out into a big grin. “Gentlemen. There she is. My beautiful girl Tiffany. I couldn’t pass up a chance to introduce her to you, she’s the best lap dancer in this club …”

  I can’t take it any more, she’s looking stricken, and I saw how she winced when he called her his beautiful girl. There’s no fucking way I’m going to stand by and let Caleb humiliate her in front of all of us … and Brandon, you may be my best friend from college, but you already have a lovely fiancée, I don’t even know what the hell you’re doing in a strip club when you have her, and more importantly, Paige is mine.

  “I’m glad you introduced her to us, Caleb,” I interject imperiously before he can continue, pretending to be oblivious to the fact that he’d declared earlier he was going to book her for himself and Brandon. “Because she’s quite charming. So, Ms. Tiffany, I’d like to see you in the VIP room. Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me.”

  She’s looking at me, wide-eyed. I’d like to say that I see unmixed relief on her face but I’m not sure what it is that I do see.

  She’s clearly glad not to have to stay here in Caleb’s presence, but there’s something else more complicated, I don’t quite know what exactly. A sort of distance.