Taming His Wild Girl by Lee Savino
Chapter 1
Four years later
Isabelle
The heavy door to the changing room was jammed, as usual. I put my shoulder into it and it gave way suddenly, tossing me into the room. I gave a squeak of dismay, and Destiny—also known as Alice—looked up from a cracked pleather chair in the corner and smirked.
“Hi,” I said weakly, and she went back to her phone. She was wearing a lacy bodysuit and a pair of very unsexy glasses. I dumped my holdall on the counter, glad there was no one else there to witness my latest humiliation.
The room was windowless, and the yellowish walls were daubed with graffiti. One of the strip lights was buzzing and flickering, and the air stank of cigarette smoke and singed carpet.
What a palace.
I pulled off my sweatshirt and pants and stuffed them in my bag. Underneath, I was wearing a ballerina’s leotard—a silver shiny thing. But instead of tights, I’d teamed them with a pair of lacy hold-ups, and instead of pointe shoes, I pulled a pair of sky-high stripper heels out of my bag. I also took out a ridiculous frilly tutu, and a pair of red sequin-covered hearts, which I needed to attach to my nipples. At the sight of them, my stomach turned over. Tonight would be my second ever time on stage. During the third song, I’d been told by the boss, I needed to pull the top of my leotard down and, “Show the audience your tits. Give ‘em a bit of a tease.”
Bile rose in my throat again and I clapped my hand over my mouth. This was just the beginning. In three more shows, I would have to take more and more off, until the ‘climax’ night, when I was going to dance fully nude. Doing the splits, turns on the pole, bending double—all the stuff I’d watched the other girls do—while a bunch of men stared at my private parts with hungry eyes. The awfulness of it churned and churned in my mind, and I blinked fast until my eyes stopped stinging.
I leaned close to the mirror to attach a pair of false eyelashes, and sweep shimmery shadow across my lids. Then I straightened up and checked the overall effect. I didn’t have a ballerina’s body anymore. I had rounded C-cup boobs, and curvy hips. They probably would have wrecked my career—if it hadn’t already been destroyed on that terrible day, along with every single other thing I cared about. The fabric of my stockings was more opaque than most strippers’ , because it concealed an ugly, eleven-inch scar—the sole physical reminder of everything I’d lost.
I was pulling my bleached platinum bob up into a bun when some of the graffiti caught my eye:
I’m just a waitress, she said.
The scrawled statement was a mockery of us dancers. Us strippers. Anger flared in me. I’d been just a waitress here, until my stupid mouth had confided in one of the other waitresses. I hadn’t told her everything—about all the loss and grief, of course—just that I used to be a pretty serious dancer. And that had been enough. She’d told the bosses—probably for a kick-back, I guessed, from the smug look on her face the last time I saw her. They’d practically wet their pants in excitement, and now I was being forced to strip. And if I refused? “Well, we don’t want to talk about that, honey, do we?”
I shuddered. These guys were mafia. European, olive-skinned, leather-jacketed, and everything about them radiated menace. I cursed the day I saw the ad for the waitressing job and somehow thought it wouldn’t be so bad.
The door burst open and Elio, the uber-boss, slouched in, his salt-and pepper hair slicked back with grease.
His eyes ran all over me, and he broke into a wolfish smile.
“Ready, Black Swan?”
I grunted at his reflection in the mirror. He had a craggy face and shrewd, cold eyes. I imagined he could slide a knife into my belly without his expression ever changing.
“Give me a twirl.”
I knew it wasn’t a suggestion, and obediently, I lifted my arm above my head and turned around in a grotesque parody of the move I used to practice so diligently, back in the day, when I still had dreams and a family who loved me.
He looked satisfied. “You give ‘em the white swan, then the black swan, okay? First song all pure, then you get dirty. Men love that. Innocence corrupted.” His hand cupped my ass cheek and he squeezed, hard.
I gritted my teeth, refusing to let the pain show on my face. “Got it,” I mumbled.
There was a glint of real, sadistic pleasure in his eyes.
Bastard.
I bit down hard on the end of my tongue.
A moment later, the music outside got real loud. A mad, club music mash-up of Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Kind of ingenious how they’d found it.
If only the sound of it didn’t shatter my heart all over again.
I checked one last time that my pasties were still attached, and, legs shaking, I exited the room through the rear door that led right onto the stage.
