Fallen Angel (Club Burlesque) (2 page)

Read Fallen Angel (Club Burlesque) Online

Authors: Logan Belle

“We are great,” he said. “That’s all you need to think about.”
He kissed her, and she opened her mouth to him, her stomach doing the little flip it always did, still, five years into their relationship.
He smacked her playfully on the ass.
“Are we cool?” he said.
“It’s not that simple.”
“I think it should be.”
The first chords of “Heads Will Roll” played over the sound system: showtime.
 
The thirty seconds before she stepped onto the stage were always the same for her: sheer, unmitigated terror. And then the music kicked in, and the darkness gave way to a stage light, and she tugged off a glove or a stocking, and the crowd met her gesture with applause or catcalls or whistles—the usual give-andtake between burlesque performer and audience that was as much a part of the show as the exposure of any body part.
Tonight, she stepped out in her slutty Marie Antoinette garb (complete with towering blond wig), and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs filled the room with the opening refrain: “Off with your head . . . off with your head . . .” The crowd erupted in laughter and applause.
They get it,
she thought, and that initial connection to the crowd fueled her through the first minute of her act.
She slowly draped herself over a chair, pulling up her dress to reveal her garter. The crowd screamed and clapped, and she turned to flash her ass. She felt the heat of the stage lights on her skin, and she realized her pussy was still throbbing slightly from Alec’s touch.
The song pulsed toward the middle, and she had to fight the urge to race through her act. The foreplay with Alec had left her oddly unsatisfied, and the only thing that would make her feel better now was the rush that came with baring her body to the eyes of dozens of strangers. But going too quickly wouldn’t be fair to the audience, and when she was on stage, they were the most important part of the show. It wasn’t really about her at all, and her recognition of that fact made her a better performer than most.
When it was finally time, the tempo high and the song peaking, Mallory tugged on the dress’s easy-off seam—and she turned in front of the crowd with bare breasts, her nipples covered with sequined French flag pasties (which elicited yet another round of frenzied applause and shrieks). Her pussy was barely concealed by her white lace Belabumbum thong, and her legs stretched long and invitingly thanks to four-inch Celine heels (thank you, paralegal paycheck).
She circled to the rear of the stage, then up toward the front. She cupped her breasts as if offering them to the audience, and the crescendo of applause was almost as good as the pressure of Alec’s fingers inside of her. She slowly eased out of her thong and felt the surge of adrenaline that always came with the knowledge that forty strangers were staring at her shaved pussy. She moved back to the chair, crouched with her bare ass to the audience, and rested her head as if in a guillotine.
Stage to black.
2
M
allory made her exit as a striking blonde rushed to the stage: Violet Offender. She was Agnes’s latest discovery, a performer who put punk before pussy, with tattoos above her crotch and ass to prove it. The first time Mallory saw Violet take off her clothes to reveal the words inscribed below her navel and on her lower back, she couldn’t believe her eyes: on Violet’s front, the tattoo read
Merci
; on the rear, a centimeter above her ass, it read
No Mercy
.
Mallory tried to make a quick getaway. The sight of Violet killed her post-performance buzz.
“Hey—that was very cool,” Violet said, grabbing Mallory’s arm. Mallory pulled back as if touched by something hot.
“Thanks.”
“You’re not still upset about last night, are you?”
“I wasn’t upset. I was just tired.”
“Okay, cool. Listen, I’ll do the tip jar tonight.”
“Really?” Mallory waited for the catch. The tip jar was everyone’s least favorite job at the Angel. At the end of the show, someone had to stand at the door in all of her naked glory and hold a can to collect tips. Tonight was her turn.
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“Okay. Whatever.”
Was this her way of apologizing for crashing Mallory’s night out with Alec? Alec insisted he mentioned offhand where they were going, that he had no idea she would show up. But Mallory couldn’t help but wonder if he was falling back to old bad habits.
There was a time—a brief, chaotic time—when they had tested the boundaries of their relationship with the occasional three-way. It had started as Alec’s idea, and she had gone along with it. Alec would argue that she
more
than went along with it—that she had enjoyed it as much as he did. But the truth was, she had always had mixed feelings about it. Her girlfriends thought she was crazy, that she was asking for trouble. And then a few months ago, she and Alec had both agreed that the adventurousness of it wasn’t worth the tricky emotional terrain. But her best friend, Julie, had told her it wouldn’t be that simple.
“It’s like what Chris Rock says in the HBO special. . . . Once something is ‘on the menu’ for a guy sexually, it’s impossible to take it off.”
“It’s off,” Mallory had insisted. But last night, when Violet had showed up at their dinner date at the Stone Rose, she had to wonder.
Alec was almost finished with his MC segue between acts, and Violet squeezed Mallory’s arm with a wink before slinking onstage.
“Hey, Mal. Great costume,” said Poppy LaRue, her arms full of discarded clothes. Usually they had a designated “stage kitten” to clear the stage after each performance. It was the stage kitten’s job to clean up the stage after each act, to clear it for the next performer, while she waited for the day when she would get the nod from Agnes to take the stage herself. But this natural order had been disrupted when their stage kitten was poached by the rival club, the Slit. “I love Cinderella,” she said.
“Cinderella? Oh—no, Poppy... It was Marie Antoinette.”
Seeing no flicker of recognition, Mallory told her, “Never mind.”
Her friendship with Poppy had come a long way. Poppy LaRue was a tall, pretty blonde straight from the cornfields of Arkansas who had started at the Blue Angel a year before Mallory. She had been so threatened by Mallory’s appearance on the scene and the attention Mallory got from Bette Noir—the object of Poppy’s excruciating crush—that Poppy tried to sabotage Mallory at the club and even, Mallory suspected, made a play for Alec. But Poppy had mellowed once she fell into a great relationship with Patricia Loomis, Mallory’s former boss at her old law firm. Mallory and Poppy had become genuine friends lately. Poppy had even confided in her one night, over strong mixed drinks at a bar after a show two months ago, that while she loved Patricia and had never had a relationship like the one they shared, it bothered her that Patricia wasn’t pretty.
“Can you believe Ryan Ellison is in the audience tonight?” Poppy said, stretching her long legs like a colt after a run. “I’ve never seen a movie star here before. There was that musician once. . . .What’s his name?”
“Ryan Ellison is in the audience?” Mind clicking, Mallory looked back at the stage curtain, where Violet was doing her thing. “Who else knows about this?”
“I don’t know. I just heard Agnes telling Violet.”
The tip jar. Standing at the exit after the show: the perfect way to meet Ryan Ellison.
That
bitch
. What an operator. And she was trying to operate her way right into Alec’s bed.
Violet squinted at the audience, trying to single him out while she moved through her performance to the Faint song, “Erection.” It was impossible to see with the stage light in her eyes. Some of the girls liked that—made it easier to show their pussies without looking someone in the eye. Violet thought
they
were pussies. But not her. That’s why Agnes had told her that Ryan Ellison was in the audience. She knew Violet wouldn’t fold under pressure—unlike Mallory. No way could Mallory handle performing in front of the hottest actor in Hollywood. Hell—she couldn’t even handle the suggestion of a threesome with her own boyfriend! What was that about? The way she looked at Alec and her last night . . . It was like they were suggesting making a sacrifice to a demonic cult, not some harmless fucking.
She’d have to work on her.
In the meantime, she would be working on Mr. Ryan Ellison.
Violet exited the stage to applause, foot stomping, and whistling. She loved being the showstopper—the final performer. She knew she would be the one the guys were thinking about later that night as they fondled their still-hard dicks. And hopefully she was the performer the girls thought about when they ate each other out. They were the ones she was really performing for—all those cute lesbians who came to the show every Friday night as a warm-up to their own lovemaking.
Like that couple who came every Friday night last month, a redhead and an Asian who sat in the front row. On the last night, the Asian came up to her and said her friend was going back to Ireland. Did she want to come to the going away party?
Yes. She did.
The next night, Violet followed the directions from the Asian girl’s text to a shitty apartment off of Avenue A. She climbed six flights of stairs to a small room filled with drunken undergrads dancing to bad house music and drinking cheap booze and flat beer from a keg. Violet hadn’t hung out at parties like that even when she was in college, so she certainly wasn’t going to start now that she was three years free of that scene. She was just about to hightail it out of there when the Asian girl appeared by her side, taking her by the elbow.
“The real party’s in the back. Wait here a sec—don’t leave, okay?”
Violet nodded, watching her slip back in the crowd. Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” played off the iDock. She began a mental countdown from twenty and resolved to leave at one.
She had reached three when she spotted the Asian girl weaving back to her through the crowd. The Asian girl grabbed her hand and led her to the bedroom. It was dark—only a desk lamp was on, and a black T-shirt was tossed over the lampshade—and smelled like cigarette smoke. Violet had hated cigarettes ever since she quit three months ago.
The Irish girl was on the bed. She was naked and blindfolded, her arms tied to the headboard.
“Your going away present has arrived,” the Asian girl said to Irish, taking a seat at the foot of the bed.
Violet was about to give her a piece of her mind—tell her she was a performer, not a call girl. Then she looked more closely at the girl on the bed. With her dark hair and pale, cream-colored skin, she reminded Violet of someone else she knew. Someone she had fantasized about getting in this exact same position.
She moved to the edge of the bed, peering at the girl. She reached out and cupped her breasts. The girl stirred only slightly, mouth open and nearly breathless. She hadn’t made a sound since Violet had entered the room.
Her breasts were bigger than those of the woman Violet really wanted—but that woman’s body was an impossible standard. This girl was close enough—close enough for Violet to close her eyes and take a nipple into her mouth. Close enough for her to slide her mouth down the length of the redhead’s lean torso, pausing at her hips.
Violet sat back on her knees, and lifted off her tank top. The girl shifted her hips impatiently. Violet turned back to her, placing her hands on her thighs and gently spreading her legs.
“Take off your jeans,” breathed the Asian girl from behind. Violet considered telling her to fuck off, but then thought better of it. As long as she was here, she might as well increase her chances of getting off as well. She hopped off the bed, easing off her white jeans. She kept on her black thong, and turned back to Irish, who had spread her legs wider. Violet got on her knees, ass in the air, and flicked her tongue against Irish’s pussy. She wondered what Asian thought of the view.
She pressed her tongue deeply into Irish’s cunt, and the girl finally emitted a sound—a short, breathy gasp. Violet felt a stirring between her own legs and was happy to sense Asian moving around behind her. She didn’t know what the woman was going to do, but anticipated it would feel good.
She focused on Irish, moving her mouth to her inner thigh and slipping her finger in her. The girl clenched her thighs against Violet’s hand, and Violet made her motions quicker.
Asian moved behind her, grinding her slippery cunt against Violet and reaching around to feel her breasts. Violet just wanted her to finger fuck her and get her off quickly.
Violet put her mouth on Irish’s clit, and the girl yelled out, “Don’t stop,” in her thick accent. It jarred Violet, breaking her fantasy that she was sucking off the woman she dreamed about, reminding her that she was instead with an exchange student in a crappy apartment building filled with people chugging beer. The woman she wanted would never be in this situation.
And because of this, even when Asian moved her fingers expertly inside her, even when she tasted Irish coming, even when they were finished and both women gazed at her with adoration and told her she was the most beautiful thing they’d ever seen, Violet felt nothing.
And she was tired of it.
 
Sometime between the end of her set and the time she got to the door with the tip jar, the crowd discovered there was a celebrity in the house. Ryan Ellison was surrounded by audience members, although this was New York, so they were all busy pretending not to notice him.
Violet stood by the door, wearing only combat boots and a black thong. A few people filed out, stuffing singles and the occasional five in the jar. Cheap bastards, she thought. She didn’t know how the other girls tolerated this job. It wasn’t that she thought it was demeaning—she just wanted to punch these people who spent an hour watching them flash their pussies and then couldn’t part with a few bucks on the way out the door to go drinking.
Which brought her to a momentary dilemma: What if Ryan Ellison didn’t fork over some cash? Could she still go through with it if he fell into the “cheap bastard” category? It was one thing to be a starfucker (literally), but another to be with someone who exhibited her pet peeve of behavior: cheapness.
Did Bette Noir worry about things like this? No, of course not. If she got hung up on the details, she wouldn’t have managed to fuck her way to a six-figure Dolce & Gabbana contract.
But Violet had nothing to worry about. By the time Ryan Ellison reached the door, he was holding a fistful of twenties.
“Great show,” he said to her. It was surreal talking to him—she had to remind herself it wasn’t the character from the last movie she had seen him in. The one about the six college kids trapped on a beach along with a drug cartel. The press made fun of it, but it was number one at the box office all summer. Ryan looked gorgeous in it, but even better in person. He wasn’t just cute or sexy. He was handsome in the way most movie stars weren’t, not really. And he was tall. Much taller than her, which always got her a little hot.
“Thanks,” she said, meeting his eyes. To his credit, they were looking at her face.
“We’re going to catch another show—wanna come with?”

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