Fallen Angel (Club Burlesque) Read Free Page A

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