“My girls!” Larry Doyle called out from the front of the locker room at the Minx Mixer Lounge. His voice was as cheerful as an off-the-shelf greeting card, and there had been a time when both of those things might have brought a warm glow to Lillith’s mood.

Lately, though, greeting cards had come to feel like markers of where an honest gesture should have been, and Larry’s voice left a sourness under her skin that she was going to have to make a concerted effort to scrub off as soon as he finished talking. Otherwise, it would cling to her all night, affecting her dancing, her client interactions, and crucially, her money.

“Family meeting, girls, huddle up.”

Lillith covered her silky red negligee with a jacket and her grimace with a smile, and made her way through the maze of lockers and makeup tables to the source of the echoing voice.

After a few seconds, the rest of the dancers had joined her in forming a rough semi-circle before their boss.

“Check-in, how’s everyone feeling tonight?” asked Larry, baring his perfect teeth and scanning the circle for the honest responses that every single dancer there was too skilled to give him.

“Feeling great!”

“Feeling sexy!”

“Feeling like a winner!”

They all knew his favorite answers, and how to change them up just enough.

“Glad to hear it,” he said. “Just a few bits of housekeeping to go over. Firstly, I want to see some more smiles out there! Remember, there’s nowhere in the world better to be than here!”

Corners of mouths, Lillith’s included, winched themselves higher at his command.

“Second, we’re having a pajama party after closing this Friday!” he said, as if presenting an excitable dog with its favorite treat. “We’re going to play nerf tag and eat pizza and talk strategy all night, so plan your cheat days accordingly. It’s mandatory.”

A muffled bristling could be heard in the shifting of high heels. Such a demand, unpaid, would have been illegal if they had been humble employees. But no, they were business owners, each and every one of them. And if a bigger business owner wanted to demand a gift of their time as the cost of continuing to do business together, that was his prerogative.

“And third.” Larry paused. It was not a calculated, dramatic pause. He did those often, and they were much longer. This was a pause of hesitation.

Lillith’s stomach took on a preparatory hardness. Anything that gave Larry that kind of pause had to be really bad.

“I don’t want anyone to be taken off guard and say I didn’t warn them. Steve Carson is officially welcome back at the Minx Mixer Lounge, and he’s likely to make an appearance. I expect all of you to show him the same hospitality you would any distinguished customer.”

On Lillith’s left, Paisley wilted at the sound of Steve’s name. She continued wilting millimeter by millimeter for the rest of the announcement.

Lillith’s stomach clenched in ill-advised sympathy, and she bit her tongue.

There weren’t many things in life that Lillith could control, and even fewer that had gone the way she had planned them, but being able to afford her fragile freedom, and some comfort too, was one victory that never lost its novelty. It was one she meant to hang on to, no matter what else turned to shit around her.

And hanging on to those things meant recognizing the moments when speaking would be bad for the money, and shutting the fuck up accordingly.

“He’s… he’s coming tonight?” Paisley asked, like she was hoping she’d misheard.

“Yes, probably,” Larry answered. “Does it matter when?”

“I just thought,” said Paisley, “if we know when he’s going to be here, maybe I could switch shifts with someone?”

“You don’t think you can be a professional about it?” Larry asked, in his coldest warning tone.

“I was a professional last time,” Paisley mumbled, crossing her arm behind her back and grasping her elbow. “But it didn’t—”

“That’s debatable,” Larry pointed a finger at her, almost close enough to brush her nose. “I had a chat with Steve, and he says you tried to charge him for twenty minutes of VIP time for practically nothing.”

Well, if Steve says it, then it must be true, Lillith thought, and bit down harder.

“We were in the room for almost an hour!” Paisley exclaimed, on the verge of tears.

“Working?” Larry asked. “Or talking?”

Talking is half the job, asshole.

“Talking was all he wanted to do!” said Paisley. “I told you, he asked for a VIP room, but when we got there, he just kept asking about my family, my real name, where I lived, all the places he wanted to take me on vacation, what we’d name our kids—”

“How many girls here have had a client fall in love with them?” Larry demanded.

Lillith grudgingly raised her hand along with the others. Either answer could be used against them in the long run.

“It’s your job to take that interest and redirect it in a way that serves your business, and our business,” Larry lectured on. “You keep them focused on enjoying the moment.”

“I tried,” said Paisley, a couple of her tears escaping.

“What do you want me to do?” Larry asked, tossing his hands in the air, making Paisley flinch when his fingers passed near her face. “When that man steps through the door, he doubles the amount of cash up for grabs out there.”

He pointed in the direction of the lounge proper.

“He brings in more than the rest of the guests put together, and watching him spend it makes them want to spend more, just to keep up. Would you take that opportunity away from yourself, away from all your sisters here,” he gestured around the locker room, “Away from me, just so that you can avoid some awkward conversations?”

Paisley slumped and looked down, picking at her sequins. It was a painful sight.

Paisley was a bit of an odd duck, definitely not built with a knack for making awkward conversations less awkward. But she had been a sweet, cheerful odd duck when she’d first arrived at the Minx Mixer a little under a year ago, and every passing month had left her more subdued.

“Please,” said Paisley. “Don’t put me in a room with him again.”

“What is this, high school?” Larry groaned. “Meeting adjourned!”

He swatted at the air in the direction of the other dancers, as if they were a cloud of foul-smelling air. Most of them went, glad to be out of his sight. A few, Lillith among them, stood paralyzed and watching.

“Go on!” Larry shouted a few more of them into dispersing. “Go back to whatever you were doing. Don’t worry, there will be money in the club tonight. I’ll have a chat with this one about how she’s so much better than the rest of you. How she can’t lower herself to breathe the same air as—”

“Her stalker,” Lillith finished aloud, and winced at the sound of her own voice.

“What was that?” Larry blinked at her in disbelief.

Paisley looked at Lillith, guardedly hopeful, like she was a life preserver in the ocean.

Lillith cursed herself internally. It was a foolish thing to say, but Larry had already heard her, and a revenge upon her money would already be incoming for it. She couldn’t take it back, so she might as well make the best of it.

“It just seemed like you were having trouble coming up with the right word for Paisley’s stalker,” Lillith repeated. “So, I thought I’d help you out.”

“Oh, you did?” Larry scrubbed his face with his palm. “Do you know how fucking disappointing it is, getting this from you? I thought, out of everyone here, I could count on you to think about the team.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” said Lillith, her voice firm and factual. “Paisley, has Steve ever threatened you?”

“Well, kinda,” said Paisley. “He said he could get me fired. He said he always gets what he wants. And ever since he got my phone number, he’s been sending me all these videos of him practicing with knives and swords and guns, telling me about how deadly he can be.”

“You know what that makes him?” Lillith asked Larry.

“A ‘stalker’?” Larry guessed, the quotation marks audible in his voice.

“More importantly for you,” Lillith held her voice steady, “It makes him a ‘foreseeable threat’ to Paisley, and this club, and everyone in it. If you as a franchise owner ignore that threat, and he comes here and hurts her, the club would be liable.”

A vein flared in Larry’s forehead at the word “liable.”

“Not that Paisley would ever sue, I’m sure,” Lillith said quickly. “She’s a team player. A family member. Just like the rest of us. But supposing Steve comes in here with one of those detector-proof plastic guns. Or he waits outside for her with the regular old metal variety. And instead of shooting Paisley, or only Paisley, one of his stray bullets hits another guest, and that guest sues. What happens then? I’ll tell you. The parent company will pin it all on you. They’ll call you a ‘bad apple’ and wash their hands of you. The courts will have this place liquidated down to the copper wiring to pay off the family, and then there’s no more money for any of us.”

Larry’s jaw clenched.

“Look who’s suddenly a lawyer,” he taunted through his teeth, which meant he was buying time to think.

“Not a lawyer, and not your lawyer,” Lillith acknowledged. “So, nothing I say is technically legal advice. But I was a claims rep for a bigger company than this one, before I realized there’s nowhere in the world better to be than here.” She forced another grisly smile. “I’ve seen franchises cut loose for less.”

Larry stood there for several seconds, clenching and unclenching his jaw, vein pulsing, looking back and forth between Lillith and Paisley.

For a few of those seconds, Lillith dared to hope that she’d made her point.

“You’re talking about what-ifs,” Larry growled. “I’m talking about paying our bills tonight. And even if a disgruntled client decided to do something stupid, no one here would ever betray the family by claiming there were ‘warning signs.’ Isn’t that right, girls?”

For the first time in months, there was a pause before the approved reaction.

“Jesus Christ,” said Larry. “Do none of you realize what would happen if I banned every blowhard who claimed to be a dangerous man to impress one of you girls? We might as well turn this place into a brunch buffet. How well do you think bitter old church ladies tip the pretty young things who fetch their coffee? Does that sound like a life you’d enjoy?”

“No, boss,” the dancers answered from all over the locker room, the hesitation gone.

Lillith followed along, resigning herself to one of those days when the sourness under her skin would not leave.

She’d said what she could say, and it made no difference. Maybe next time she would remember not to.

“You two,” Larry pointed to Lillith and Paisley. “You’re both off the roster tonight and off the main stage for a week. Get out. And if you can’t come back and give a hundred percent to this family and all of its generous clients, don’t come back at all.”

Wiping her eyes furiously, Paisley grabbed her coat and backpack, neither of which fit over her ornately feathered costume, and ran for the door.

Lillith picked up her own bag and left too.

All she had to do was keep it together long enough to walk out of the locker room door, and then out the side exit, and forty feet to her car. Then she could get on the road and beat the hell out of her steering wheel, and cry, and sing, and eventually calm down enough to assess the damage and make a plan to fix it.

But of course, she only got as far as that first set of doors before Paisley fell into step beside her.

“Hey,” Paisley sniffed self-consciously.

“Yeah, don’t mention it,” said Lillith.

“Oh, okay,” said Paisley. “I was just going ask if you wanted to share an escort.”

She nodded toward Clyde, one of the bouncers, who was leaning against the wall and waiting for the evening rush to begin.

Lillith sighed. After calling out Larry’s security errors so publicly, she couldn’t let him hear that she was being careless with her own safety by sneaking out alone, even if no customers had seen her yet today.

“Fine,” she said.

They both met Clyde’s eye, and he walked close behind them as they made their way out to the parking lot. He mercifully did not ask why they were leaving minutes after they’d arrived.

“Well, this is me…” Paisley said, putting her hand on top of a car with peeling gold paint. “Do you…?” She wiped her eyes with one of her feathers, leaving glittery makeup smears. “I really don’t know if I’m coming back, so….”

Lillith sighed, put an arm around Paisley, and led her onward, toward her own car. “Come on. Let’s get you a drink.”

#

While Lillith drove, Paisley wrestled with her costume in the backseat, trying to find a spot for each piece where it wouldn’t get crushed or obscure Lillith’s vision. They’d probably get where they were going before she managed it, wherever that was.

Paisley had one of the more unconventional acts at the club. It was memorable, Lillith had to give her that.

Her outfit was peacock-themed, and it looked like a cross between an old-school Vegas showgirl costume and a homemade turkey costume for a school Thanksgiving pageant. When she had all her pieces on, she measured almost eight feet tall from heels to plumage.

Multiple times a shift, she did a shimmying belly dance that involved fondling a pair of real hard-boiled eggs, pretending to pluck her own feathers, and a whole lot of tickling of anyone in the stage side seats.

Larry hated her whole bit, frequently calling her a “tacky eyesore,” but she had her regulars, along with plenty of passing customers in search of novelty, enough that he’d always been happy enough to take his cut of her money.

“So,” Paisley sighed, giving up on a tidy arrangement and folding her arms around her headdress. “What’s your real name?”

“Yeah, no, let’s not do that,” said Lillith.

“Okay. Fair. Where do you want to go?”

“Somewhere we can change,” said Lillith.

“Oh. Yeah,” said Paisley. “Better not hang out in a bar like this, I guess. Not a regular one.”

She sounded like she could think of nowhere more dismal to be than a regular bar.

“We don’t have to go to a bar,” said Lillith. “Are you sure you don’t just want to go home?”

At Paisley’s expression, Lillith mentally corrected herself. Apparently, there was nowhere more dismal to be than a regular bar, except for home. Good to know.

“I know a diner with a decent beer menu,” Lillith tried again. “Doesn’t look like a club at all. Might be a little less of a reminder of—”

“Whatever.” Paisley shook head, and her shoulders along with it. “It’s not like I wanted to be a stripper for the rest of my life, anyway.” Her lip began to quiver before she could quite finish the sentence.

Lillith met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “You love the shit out of it, don’t you?”

“I love it so much!” Paisley reached up to wipe free-flowing tears. “It’s the only kind of job I’ve ever loved.” Her sobs came on fast and hard, until she was gasping for breath between words. “I love dancing. I love dressing up. I love talking to the customers, bringing them out of their shells. I love touching people, and I love that look they get on their faces, like it’s the most magical thing that’s ever happened to them. I love being wanted. I love making people happy. I love having something special to offer.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Lillith. “Me too.”

Paisley blinked at her. “Really? You always seem so… I don’t know, above it all?”

“More like ‘over it,’” Lillith snorted.

“Sure, that,” said Paisley.

Lillith drew a long breath. “I still love… well, I love what I wanted it to be,” she admitted.

“A version with only good customers?” Paisley guessed.

Lillith shrugged. “I wouldn’t say no to that. But I don’t think I’d mind the bad ones so much, if the club would just have our back about it.”

“Right?!” said Paisley. “God, I wish… I wish…” this set off another wave of mournful tears.

Lillith couldn’t watch. If she did, she’d start loudly mourning the same wish herself.

“You want to go fuck them up?” Lillith asked, just to change the tone.

“Who?” Paisley sniffed. “Steve? Larry?”

Lillith shrugged. “You happen to know where they live?”

Paisley shook her head.

“Too bad,” said Lillith. “We do know where the lounge is, though. And when it closes.”

Paisley leaned forward to study the steadiness of Lillith’s hands on the wheel. “Have you been pre-gaming?”

“I’m not drunk yet,” said Lillith. “Just pissed off. And trying to make you feel supported. And feeling off-duty levels of blunt.”

“So, that wasn’t a serious offer?” asked Paisley. “To fuck someone up?”

“Did you want it to be?” asked Lillith.

“No! I mean…” Paisley looked so sincerely thoughtful for a moment that Lillith couldn’t help smiling, in spite of her sour mood. “I mean no. I don’t want to make things any worse than they are. And the lounge… other dancers have to use that place. I wouldn’t want to mess it up for them just because I’m on Larry’s shit list.”

“But it’d be fun?” Lillith checked, a temptingly awful idea forming. “If that wasn’t an issue?”

“Yeah,” said Paisley. “Of course it would.”

“Good,” said Lillith, flicking on her signal and turning into the parking lot of a convenience store. “Then I know where we’re going. Whiskey, rum, or tequila?”

#

Ten minutes later, with a bottle of spiced rum, a carton of eggs, and a six-pack of toilet paper on the front seat, Lillith pulled into the parking lot of the Grand Dame, weaving around the shards of broken glass left behind by whoever had last drowned their sorrows on this same cracked rectangle of asphalt.

She parked under the Dame’s front marquee, which was half-covered with a rusty old “For Lease” sign. Underneath, the marquee itself was yellowed with age, stripped of all but a few disjointed letters from its last announcement many years ago, and framed with darkened neon outlines of naked women.

“Now’s when we pre-game,” said Lillith, taking her keys out of the ignition with a satisfying click of finality. “Here, get your pirate on, matey.”

She opened the rum bottle and passed it over her shoulder to Paisley.

Paisley took two large gulps. She coughed and grimaced after each one, but this didn’t seem to deter her.

“What are you doing?” she asked, holding the bottle back out to Lillith, who was bent double, rummaging under the driver’s seat.

“Pillaging,” Lillith answered, pulling out the emergency pry bar she kept there.

She accepted the bottle for a few quick gulps of her own, passed it back, and got out to fit the bar between the Dame’s old wooden double doors.

They popped apart as easily as Lillith had always imagined they would.

“Uh, this seems kind of serious,” said Paisley. “Like we could actually get in big trouble.”

“Yeah,” said Lillith, relishing the truth of this. “It’s been forever since I broke a rule. Might as well get in a good binge of it while I’m at it. Now that you’ve broken my streak.”

“What rule did I make you break?” asked Paisley.

“Oh, just the most important one,” Lillith muttered. “You coming?” she called back louder. “Because either we go inside out of sight, or we should get out of here.”

Paisley touched the side of the toilet paper package with a guilty smile, gathered it up along with the eggs, and followed Lillith inside.

The Grand Dame’s interior was much like that of any of the other strip clubs on the street, with multiple blind turns leading into a lounge full of low-backed armchairs and tiny drink tables arranged around a stage. This stage had three dancing poles, although one of them had come unanchored from the ceiling and was standing at an angle.

Lillith squinted, mentally editing out the fine layer of dust, the empty shelves of the abandoned bar, the spots where chairs were missing, and the more old-fashioned leatherwork on those that remained. She could almost pretend it was the Minx Mixer.

She set her bag down in one of the stage-side seats, reached over to Paisley, and poked her fingers into the tube of one of the toilet paper rolls, breaking open the packaging.

“Heads up, Larry!” she shouted, grabbing the end of the paper and tossing the roll across the stage, over the slanted pole, and behind the bar. “Yeah! How do you like that?”

A high, squeaking noise escaped from Paisley, and Lillith turned to find her stuffing her knuckles into her mouth to stifle a fierce bout of laughter.

“Nothing,” Paisley wheezed before Lillith could ask what was so funny. “Nothing, just….”

Lillith followed her gaze back to the toilet paper, to that one pale streak of juvenile defiance stretching itself through the darkness of a room Larry Doyle had never seen and never would.

The longer she stared at the paper, the more she felt her chest filling with a grim wave of laughter at her own expense.

It really had been a long time since she had broken the rules.

“Shut up,” Lillith snorted without conviction, taking the rum bottle from Paisley. “We just need a little more of this, to help us see how great an idea this is.”

She drank until she felt her equilibrium falter in real time, and passed the bottle back.

“I don’t think it works that way,” said Paisley, but she drank anyway, nearly matching Lillith, and then set down the supplies in her arms to go retrieve the toilet paper roll.

She anchored the paper strand behind an old hot water keg and threw the roll back.

Lillith caught it, though she fell backward into one of the chairs in the process. On her next throw, the roll went tumbling off into one of the club’s private alcoves.

“I’ve never TPd anything before,” Paisley admitted, kicking off her blue glitter heels to go find it. “But aren’t you supposed to try to make the paper hang from something high up?”

Lillith laced her fingers together and popped her knuckles, stretching her neck to one side and then the other.

“On it.”

She took the roll, climbed up onto the stage, and tested one of the still-attached poles with her hands.

“Ooh, I don’t know if you should—”

Ignoring both Paisley and her own good sense, Lillith hoisted herself up, locking her thighs around the pole. It was static, rather than free-spinning, less than ideal for putting on a hypnotically dynamic performance, but it felt solid enough.

Shifting her weight between her legs and arms, she made her way easily up to the ceiling, gave the paper a long, slow lick to impart some grip, and tied it around the topmost end of the pole. Then, holding the roll loosely and gracefully over her head, she gripped the pole between her legs and leaned back, twirling her way to the ground and leaving a spiraling streamer behind her, like on a May pole.

“Yeah, girl!” Paisley whistled and applauded once Lillith was safely back at ground level. “Way to look great not dying!”

Lillith felt a warmer kind of laugh overtake her.

“Oh, you like that?” she asked, slamming her heels to the floor and spinning to face away from the pole, leaning against it with an arched back. She ran her fingers lightly down her long neck, one of her standard moves to fit with her vampire theme. “How about this?”

She hooked her fingers into the wire-shaped cups of her negligee and peeled them down, tucking them underneath her naked breasts.

Paisley whooped and shouted, “You’re fucking gorgeous!” as if there were a full, screaming crowd she needed to be heard over.

The crowd at the Minx Mixer never screamed. They could be packed shoulder to shoulder on a Saturday night, watching fully naked, Olympics-worthy acrobatics, and their primary focus would still be on looking too cool to notice.

Encouraged, Lillith gathered her breasts in her hands and played with them, squeezing the ample flesh up into their roundest shape. She slid down to her knees and made them jiggle with sharp little bounces on her heels.

Paisley whooped louder.

It felt incredible, performing here this way, and not just because of the rum, which ran warm and tingling through Lillith’s blood. It felt the way dancing had felt when she’d fallen in love with it — magical, powerful, limitless, everything she wanted to make of it and more. This was how it had felt before she’d come to associated the pole and heels with the constant threat of Larry’s judgment.

Lillith had tried dancing alone a few times, trying to recapture that old feeling, but could never completely expel him from her head. He loomed there over every idea she had, reminding her that there was no point putting energy towards the ones he didn’t like, since he would never allow them to be used for money.

Paisley’s attention felt like a glorious antidote, a reset to a clean state that only made Lillith more aware of how much sourness she had been carrying, for years now, even on the days when she thought she had scrubbed it off.

She toyed with her breasts a little more explicitly, tapping the nipples with her fingertips, stalling what she knew she wanted to do.

He’s really not here, Lillith assured herself. He’s not here to say I’m being weird. This isn’t for him.

She lifted up the slightly larger of her breasts, extended her tongue, and flicked the tip across her own nipple. It fluttered, tingled, and hardened in the moisture and cool air.

Paisley gasped, but then cheered louder, and louder still when Lillith leaned her head down, hissed, and bit herself right on that hardened, sensitized bud of skin. For about half a second, she moved her hand away, letting the breast’s weight hang from her mouth, before returning the support and easing it back down.

“Didn’t that hurt?” Paisley asked, eyes wide.

“A little,” said Lillith. “It’s actually more about suction than teeth.”

Paisley experimentally lifted up one of her own breasts, still in her costume. Hers were more naturally rounded, and not long enough to reach her mouth. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”

“Come on, get up here,” said Lillith reaching out both her hands.

“I really like watching you work,” Paisley protested.

“Yeah, well, ditto,” said Lillith.

“You do?” Paisley blushed faintly.

“Yes, already,” said Lillith, beckoning. “I’m sorry for being a stoic douche about it all this time, to validate an even bigger douche. Okay?”

Paisley stopped to pick up the carton of eggs, before placing one of her soft hands in Lillith’s and stepping barefoot up onto the stage with her.

“So, you like my act,” said Paisley, with a self-satisfied grin that Lillith found shockingly charming. “And you brought me to a place with a stage, and just happened to bring along a supply of eggs.”

She picked two eggs out of the carton and blew on them gently, the way she did in her usual dance. In spite of not having balls, Lillith couldn’t help imagining that brush of air on some part of her own skin.

“Were these ever really meant for vandalism?” Paisley asked.

“They actually were,” said Lillith, “but this is way better.”

Paisley took a third egg from the carton and began juggling. It was a quick, confident motion, and not one from her usual act. She shifted back and forth seamlessly between making the eggs form a circle and a figure-eight, tossing them higher and higher, until she had time to position herself under them as they fell. Then, in quick succession, she caught one between her breasts, one in her panties with a quick pull of her waistband, and the final one deep in her mouth, with her jaws spread almost impossibly wide to keep it away from her teeth.

“Let me guess,” Lillith shouted over her own applause. “Larry vetoed most of that from the stage.”

Paisley removed the three still-pristine eggs from where they’d landed. This included carefully extracting the one in her mouth with an impressive absence of gagging, which Lillith supposed was the point.

“Yeah, he said I’d make a mess. And then when I reminded him that I usually use hard-boiled, he said…” Paisley trailed off, licking saliva from the shell of that egg and wiping her mouth dry. “Huh. Even my forbidden moves are designed to impress a man more than you, aren’t they?”

“They’re working for me anyway,” Lillith admitted.

“Still, it’s kind of sad, isn’t it?” said Paisley. “I can do better than that.”

Eyes open and fixed on Lillith’s, she put the narrow end of the egg to her lips, kissing it softly without taking it in deeper. She twirled her tongue in tight circles around the delicate surface.

“Oh, I’m not complaining about this,” said Lillith, leaning over the side of the stage to grab her phone from her bag. She searched a moment and put on Paisley’s go-to stage song, a fast, twanging, staccato dance number.

Paisley shimmied her shoulders, then her hips, and tossed the egg in the air a couple times. She stepped closer to Lillith with each throw, telegraphing her idea. Lillith lifted her breasts again, forming a target shelf. Paisley tossed the egg, and Lillith stepped forward, catching it snugly in the bottomless valley of her cleavage.

For a moment, Lillith thought she must have accidentally cracked it, but it was just the lingering moisture from Paisley’s tongue transferring to her skin.

Still shimmying and bumping her wide, muscular hips, Paisley plucked a real peacock’s feather from her homemade tail, and trailed a tickling path down Lillith’s neck, past the egg’s landing spot, and over each of her nipples. Every part of Lillith’s skin that could harden did. Every little hair reached out to make firmer contact, with the feather, with anything, dialing her sensory acuity to its max.

Staying balanced over her heels suddenly took much more effort than usual.

“Didn’t I volunteer to cheer you up?” Lillith thought out loud. “Is there anything special you want to see me do?”

Paisley ran the edge of a feather along her own lower lip, and smiled. “Still kind of curious about how that suction bite feels, actually.”

That was invitation enough for Lillith.

She let go of her breasts, letting the egg shatter on the stage, and reached a hand out for Paisley. Paisley threw herself into Lillith’s arms, nearly toppling her, but then held her steady, sharing her barefoot, bottom-heavy stability.

Lillith leaned down, Paisley lifted herself on tiptoes, and they met in the middle for a deep, heavy kiss.

This was definitely not allowed on the stage of the Minx Mixer.

Paisley reached for one of Lillith’s exposed breasts, and ran her thumb back and forth over the hard, searching nipple with the same precision her tongue had shown on the end of that egg.

Lillith kissed her way down to Paisley’s costume top. It had long, sequined bell sleeves, but just barely enough fabric in the middle to cover her breasts, leaving her midriff exposed all the way down to her soft boyshort panties.

Paisley unlaced the closure at the front of the top and spread it open, giving Lillith full access,

“Are you sure?” Lillith asked, between giving each of Paisley’s breasts a gentle kiss. “It doesn’t not hurt.”

“I love the way you say that,” said Paisley. “Yes, I’m sure.”

Lillith grabbed the TPd dancing pole in one hand, wrapped her other arm around the small of Paisley’s back, and dipped her low.

She growled low in the back of her throat, building up to that signature vampire hiss, and then struck, with the speed of a snake but none of the pressure. She caught Paisley’s nipple between her teeth, as gently and precisely as catching one of her thrown eggs.

Having shown off the “bite,” she formed a seal and sucked, slowly raising her head and lowering Paisley’s body away from her, until the nipple stretched and pulled and finally slipped out of her hold.

Paisley shrieked and giggled. “Now lower.”

“Really?” Lillith raised an eyebrow. “You want it like that, but lower?”

“You heard me,” said Paisley.

“If you insist….”

Lillith knelt down on the stage and helped Paisley pull down her shorts. She started slowly, lightly sucking and nibbling at her labia, but Paisley soon wove her fingers through Lillith’s hair for purchase and pressed her clit to Lillith’s lips.

Lillith placed her teeth gently above and below the little hooded bump, drawing a gasp of anticipation from Paisley, and then sucked, increasing the pressure incrementally, searching for the level that got her the best response, but Paisley only gasped louder and more rapturously the harder she sucked. Soon, Lillith had created such a strong vacuum that her own teeth ached a little from the pressure, but Paisley held her close by the hair and drowned out the music with her moans. Lillith vibrated her clit back and forth between her teeth with tiny changes in the suction.

“Oh my god! Oh my god, that’s perfect. Lie down.” Paisley tugged Lillith’s head away from her and gasped at the moment of added pressure before the seal of her mouth broke. “Holy crap, you’re strong!”

“And you’re insanely tough!” Lillith replied. “You really like it like that?”

“You’re better than the intake valve at a hotel pool,” said Paisley.

Lillith laughed with what must have been obvious shock.

“What?” asked Paisley.

“Nothing,” said Lillith. “I just didn’t know that you were so…”

“Fun?” Paisley finished.

Lillith found herself at a loss for a retort.

"Sorry, you’ve had to see me creeped out so often,” Paisley said, more softly.

“Me, too,” said Lillith.

“Also, I think the rum is helping.”

“Well, good,” said Lillith. “That’s what it’s for.”

Paisley put a hand on Lillith’s chest and pushed. Lillith lay back with her feet still tucked under her, not having the time or motivation to stretch them out while Paisley circled around to straddle her face.

Lillith happily placed her teeth back in their careful framing position and returned to sucking. She only stopped to say, “I’m not insanely tough, by the way,” when Paisley leaned forward and pulled up the lace hem of her negligee, to touch the front of her thong.

“That’s okay,” said Paisley, pushing the thong to the side. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Paisley leaned down and licked Lillith so softly that it was almost more breath than tongue.

Lillith gasped and wriggled, as much as she could with her feet pinned beneath her, and more than she meant to. The soft incompleteness of Paisley’s touch was unbearably delicious, impossible to take with dignity.

Paisley went in for another lick, just barely firmer than the first, bringing her lips in close enough that Lillith could feel the shape of her smile.

Lillith latched her mouth onto Paisley’s clit again, sucking as hard as she could, flicking her tongue roughly back and forth over it inside that vacuum. This was more than reciprocation; it was the only way Lillith could stifle the undignified moans that would otherwise have poured out of her mouth. It was a way to channel the restless need for motion that came with Paisley’s soft, tickling attention.

Paisley didn’t seem to care about stifling her own moans. The vibrations of her voice infused the tinglingly light strokes of her tongue.

Soon, Lillith felt her own sucking take on a desperate tone, as if by giving Paisley enough of the forceful contact she liked, she could inject just a touch more force into the contact Paisley gave back.

It didn’t work, and Lillith was glad. As fiercely as her instincts told her she needed to scratch the itch that Paisley’s tongue created, it felt so much better to let the itch grow, undisturbed.

It was entirely possible that Lillith had never been this aroused before in her life. Through hundreds of thousands of successful orgasms, partnered and alone, her body had never felt quite this open, this welcoming to touch, this free of the urge to brace and protect itself from being touched too hard or too clumsily.

Her pinned legs began to twitch and seize, and her mouth lost its seal for a moment in a rush of air.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Lillith sputtered.

Paisley’s mouth lifted off of her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m… amazing,” Lillith panted. “I just have to stop, or else I’ll finish.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I’m not ready for tonight to be over.”

“Who says it’d have to be over?” Paisley snorted. “We can ‘finish’ as many times as you want.”

“Sure, as long as I don’t get one of those bullshit moments of clarity and kill the mood first,” said Lillith.

“Why would you kill the mood?” asked Paisley, with a hint of hurt. “Are you going to decide this was a mistake?”

Lillith was way too close to the edge for this much thinking, but she was here to un-hurt Paisley, so she tried her best. “If I knew what I was going to see in a moment of clarity, it wouldn’t be a moment of clarity. It’d just be another moment.”

Paisley didn’t respond, and as much as Lillith was enjoying their current position, she really wished she could see Paisley’s face.

“I just want to stay drunk and horny as long as possible, okay?” Lillith explained into the silence.

Paisley drew a long breath in and out, letting it tickle and cool Lillith’s wet pussy with a precision that must have been intentional.

“Have it your way,” she whispered and sat up, hovering on her knees over Lillith’s face. “But I want to gorge myself on orgasms.”

Without needing to voice her understanding, Lillith lifted her head again to suck.

She didn’t stop until Paisley’s legs weakened, and she fell forward to lie moaning and trembling on top of Lillith, with her head resting on one of her thighs.

#

“I. Hate. These. Chairs!” Lillith shouted, swinging her prybar at one of the low-backed armchairs. She knocked it on its back, shattered a couple of its stumpy legs, and braced her foot on its back while she went to work on one of the arms.

Paisley was still lying on the stage in a moment of afterglow.

“It’s not the chair’s fault you’re all worked up,” she teased.

Lillith’s legs were indeed weak from all of Paisley’s unresolved attention, and the physical act of swinging the bar felt especially good in this moment, while the sexual charge inside her was still in search of an outlet. But also, she had always wanted to do this, with the Minx Mixer’s nearly identical chairs.

“Useless pieces of junk!” said Lillith, whacking splinters across the floor. “There’s no space! There’s no support! The big guys don’t fit in them, and the little guys, the ones you’re scared of crushing, you have no choice but to sit right in their laps anyway, because there’s no room on the armrest for your ass! And everyone who sits in them ends up with a backache after an hour.”

“Well, if they had headrests, only the front row would be able to see the stage,” Paisley noted. “And I guess they’re probably sized to fit as many average-sized people in the space as possible?”

“Fuck logical explanations!” Lillith finally kicked the absurdly narrow armrest free of the frame.

“Okay,” Paisley rolled over and propped her head up on one hand. “You show that chair. How about the lap dance couches? Any complaints about those?”

#

“I have always wanted to try this,” Lillith admitted, resting her head against one of the gloriously high-backed dance booths, while Paisley straddled her leg. “From the client side, I mean.”

Paisley leaned forward and surrounded Lillith’s face with her breasts, knocking their springy firmness gently back and forth against her, in time with the music from Lillith’s phone. Her knee brushed Lillith’s still hungry pussy just slowly enough that there was no danger of pushing her over the edge. It was a practiced every-other-beat rhythm, perfect for bringing a customer back for more without making a mess.

Lillith savored each brush, anticipating the next.

Right when she started to worry that even this level of contact actually might set her off, Paisley stopped and turned around like the pro she was. The feathers of her costume tail tickled Lillith’s neck, while Paisley ground against her bare thigh. She hadn’t put her shorts back on, and she was still wet from her time on Lillith’s mouth. Or maybe she was wet all over again. By the enthusiastic vigor of her grinding, it seemed possible.

Lillith wasn’t sure whether it would be more blessing or curse to be that resistant to hypersensitivity, but however Paisley liked her body treated, Lillith was here for it.

Paisley turned slightly to the side, tucked her tail out of the way, and leaned back against Lillith, so that their cheeks were touching.

Lillith had kept her hands at her sides, in the spirit of the lap dance experience. And, still in the spirit of the lap dance experience, Paisley reached back, picked her hands up from the couch, and placed them on her breasts.

It was a move Lillith had pulled herself, countless times, with customers she felt comfortable enough with to offer a little secret bonus contact. She accepted Paisley’s invitation in the way the best customers did, by touching her gently right where she’d indicated, without wandering.

“How am I doing?” Paisley whispered in her ear.

“Is that a serious question?” Lillith laughed.

“I like hearing the answer,” said Paisley.

“You are magnificent,” Lillith obliged.

Paisley moved Lillith’s right hand down to her pussy, and pressed her first two fingers forcefully against her clit. “Keep going,” she instructed.

Lillith dragged her fingers around in a circle with what felt like an excessive amount of pressure, but Paisley’s hand on hers kept pushing and adding more.

Just in case Paisley had meant “keep talking,” Lillith did that too.

“You’re so beautiful,” Lillith whispered fervently. “You’re an unforgettable performer. I’m the luckiest person in the world right now, just getting to see you at work from this close up.”

“Aww,” Paisley cooed softly in her arms.

“You’re a sweet human being with a skill that should be treasured like diamonds, and anyone who doesn’t see that is an asshole.”

“An asshole,” Paisley repeated, and just saying this out loud lit up her face with a grin of daring wickedness. “Really?”

“Really.”

“You’re sure I’m not just a weird fuckup?” asked Paisley, eyes wide open for the answer. “With esoteric tastes that will never please a big enough crowd to keep me alive, no matter how hard I work at it?”

“Who told you that?” asked Lillith.

“Lots of people,” said Paisley. “In different words.”

Lillith hugged Paisley tight with the arm that was still draped across her breasts, and circled her clit a little faster, hoping to drown out those kinds of thoughts.

“You,” she insisted, “are a breath of life, in a stale tomb.”

Paisley moaned and arched her back luxuriously against Lillith.

“You’re a reminder that stripping is a fucking art form.”

Paisley sucked in a vocal gasp, and her whole body quaked like a fault line. The only part of her that remained still was her hand, which guided Lillith confidently through a firm follow-through circle, around and around until the quaking finally stopped.

This was definitely not part of the lap dance experience, not as far as Lillith had ever observed, but she wouldn’t have traded it for any amount of authenticity.

Lillith held Paisley while she caught her breath, kissing her along the neck.

“I’d offer to dance for you next,” said Lillith. “But I feel like I’d have a disadvantage now, getting a reaction. Maybe I should have gone first.”

Paisley twisted around to face her, and pinched her nipple in the same way close friends poked each other in the ribs. Sensation radiated down to Lillith’s pussy and up her neck to her scalp, making her hair stand on end.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” asked Paisley. “Just because I finished doesn’t mean I’m done. Show me what you’ve got.”

Lillith reached for her phone and changed the song, picking something slower, moodier, more sensual.

Paisley slid off her lap and sat on the couch, drumming her fingers on her knees in such wholesome anticipation that Lillith felt more responsibility than ever not to disappoint her.

She started by standing, swaying to the music, stroking her own skin as if in a passionately slow lovemaking session with herself, and then snapped her eyes to Paisley’s with a snarling smile.

On a good night, she could give a customer goosebumps with this intro alone, make them feel like some helpless creature, pinned under the attention of a force they didn’t fully understand.

Paisley didn’t show any goosebumps, but she clapped with delight.

Lillith stepped back toward her with two sharp taps of her heels, and climbed on top of her.

From there, Lillith worked through a highlights reel of her best moves. She ran her teeth lightly along Paisley’s arms, and then held her shoulder as an anchor as she leaned back, sweeping her bouncy, short-bobbed hair around in a dramatic arc. But soon enough, she reached the point when she would have knelt down to teasingly bite the customer through his pants.

Paisley had no clothes to act as a barrier, so the pretense of a standard dance ended there, with Lillith’s teeth and tongue back on Paisley’s pussy.

It was already eager to receive them again.

#

“Okay, there is one thing I’ve always wondered about,” Paisley admitted, carefully sipping exactly half of the remaining rum from the bottle and handing it off to Lillith, as they stumbled back into the Dame’s main lounge.

“What’s that?” asked Lillith, downing what was left.

“What would it actually be like to have sex on a pole?”

“What do you mean on a pole?” asked Lillith.

“I mean,” said Paisley, leaping onto the stage and wobbling slightly even on her bare feet. “Who decided pole dancing was the most sexual kind of dancing there is? Sure, it’s hot, but, like, ballroom dancers could actually have sex in some of those standing positions. Breakdancers? Easy, they’re dancing on a cushioned floor.”

Paisley grabbed the third pole, the one that was neither visibly broken nor toilet paper adorned. Her concerns about the stage’s structural soundness seemed to have eased as they’d worked their way to the bottom of that bottle. She only gave the pole a couple of stiff test-yanks before wrapping her thighs around it and cinching her way up into the air.

“But poles? We’re usually up here all alone.” She spread her legs into a wide, shallow V, grinding herself against the pole with nothing but the strength of her arms. “And if we did manage to cum in mid-dance, would we even be able to hold on, or would we just fall?”

She locked her legs back around the pole and leaned back, looking at Lillith upside-down.

“If we get hurt,” Lillith sighed, stepping up to join Paisley on the stage, “it was your idea.”

When Paisley didn’t argue with this, Lillith grabbed the section of pole above her, and swung herself up, so that she was effectively sitting sideways in Paisley’s lap in midair.

Paisley sat up to face her, and without a word, the two of them arranged their hands in a sturdy, alternating pattern on the pole.

They let go with their legs and stretched their bodies out straight in opposite directions for a moment, like flags if the wind could blow both ways at once.

After a silently bragging display of their core strength and control, they returned their legs to the pole, weaving them neatly together this time.

Each of their left legs gripped the pole’s surface directly, while their right legs helped support each other’s lefts from the outside.

The floor lay two feet below them, irrelevant.

“You’re pretty good at spinning on a static pole,” Paisley noted.

“Oh, I can do it,” said Lillith. “But it sure generates a lot of friction.”

Paisley smiled and squeezed the pole, extra prepared.

Together, they began to turn it, or rather, turn themselves around it, as if their entangled bodies were a single carnival teacup.

“Oh, yeah,” Paisley sighed, tilting her head back, her long, silky black hair tickling Lillith’s shins.

For her part, Lillith gasped at the intensity of the cold metal grinding endlessly sideways against her pussy, quickly pushing aside her damp thong. At first, she twisted her hips slightly to the right, taking refuge in the warmth of Paisley’s knee, but powerful as it was, the friction soon called her back to it. The metal didn’t stay cold for long, as the two of them rubbed their way around and around it together.

Paisley visibly reveled in it, at one point taking her hands off the pole and leaning back to let Lillith control the pace, then putting her hands back in place and gesturing that Lillith could try the same if she wanted.

Lillith kept a death grip on the pole, so overcome by the steady stream of pleasure radiating out from their shared, oversized toy that she couldn’t let go of it, no more than she could have let go of a live electrical cable.

There was no way she was going to find the will to delay again. Not this time.

“Don’t you drop me, lightweight,” Paisley said, playfully overlapping their fingers, without a hint of real worry.

Lillith clamped down every muscle when the orgasm took her, not even opening her jaws to give her scream a clearer path out of her throat. Her legs and hands twitched against the pole, and against Paisley’s, until they were sore and aching, but they kept their grip as if two lives truly depended on it.

“I’m right behind you,” said Paisley, brushing a lock of hair fondly behind Lillith’s ear.

Lillith backed up slightly, pressing her pussy firmly into the relatively stationary surface of Paisley’s knee, to join her for a few more spins.

Paisley’s triceps flexed powerfully as she dragged the two of them up and down the pole by a few inches, as well as around, until she finally yelped and sighed with the satisfaction of her fourth orgasm of the night.

#

“Do you think a club could ever actually be what Larry says the Minx Mixer is?” Paisley asked, as she and Lillith spooned on the stage, basking in the sweet fog of lingering sensation. “You know, a good place where people take care of each other? A family?”

Lillith let a breath out between her teeth at this question.

“Fuck, I don’t know,” she said. “I was really hoping so, for a while. He makes a good pitch at first. But I’ve danced in a lot of clubs, and they all turn out pretty much the same in the end. Some asshole drunk on power ruins the vibe for everyone. Same as any type of business, I guess.”

“Right?” Paisley sighed. “It feels so much like when I was back in health insurance, telling sick people to get lost and paying for my own drinks at the boss’s boring birthday parties.”

Lillith groaned in sympathy. “Same, just replace ‘sick people’ with ‘injured people.’ I tricked so many victims into telling me how to destroy the evidence they needed against my old boss. And he still treated me like I owed him my fucking life. And now I’m dealing with the same kind of shit, only I have to do it with my tits out. I’m not saying I’d go back to an office,” she added quickly, with a reflexive glance around, as if some sinister genie might be listening in, waiting to drag her back to the deeper, darker hell of respectability as soon as she gave the word.

“No, ditto,” said Paisley, with a similar shudder. “I’m just… I’m so disappointed.”

“Me too,” said Lillith. “Because yeah, if you just cut out the bullshit, clubs like the Minx Mixer could be paradise. It’s like, move over and let us handle it, you know? We could do so much better.”

“Yeah,” said Paisley, rolling over to face Lillith, a warm smile overtaking her face. “We could. Can you imagine? You and me, running our own club? Over there,” she pointed to the bar. “Bam, five-dollar cocktails, specially themed to every dancer’s act.”

“Bam!” Lillith continued in kind. “Safe, anchored poles, both static and spinning, arial silks hanging from the ceiling, and a drain in the floor in case you want to toss a bucket of water over yourself.”

Paisley laughed. “And speaking of wanting to toss a bucket of water over yourself, bam!” she pointed to one of the bare walls. “A space heater and a giant fan to stand in front of between dances, depending on how much of a sweat you’re working up.”

“Yes! Bam,” Lillith pointed to some wasted blank space near the winding entrance. “Sex shop. Toys. Books. Lingerie.”

“Bam! Comfy booths where you can talk to customers about what they like, where you can actually hear them.”

“Bam, private rooms with mood lighting, where you don’t ding your elbows on the walls just taking your top off.”

“Bam, tampon dispensers that are always full.”

“Bam, DJs, bartenders, bouncers, all paid well out of the house’s cut instead of the dancers’.”

“Bam, restrooms for all the guests, not just ‘gentlemen.’”

“Or maybe just for ladies,” Lillith joked. “All ladies, all the time, onstage and off.”

“All ladies?”

“Well, maybe we could let in some others on a case-by-case, if they’re here as a lady’s guest.”

“Picture the outrage!” Paisley cackled and swept her hand across an imaginary sign. “Ladies’ club, no unescorted gentlemen allowed! Scandalous. But seriously, I’d miss most of my customers. Wouldn’t you?”

“I got kicked off the main stage today, give me a second to be bitter, jeez.” Lillith took a breath. “Okay, yeah, of course I’d miss them. Bam!” She waved her hand across the entranceway. “Lesbian, bi, and pan flags front and center, surrounded by trans and ace and all that good stuff. I mean, we probably wouldn’t get a lot of ace people through that door, but if we did, we’d pour them a drink. Big rainbow sign saying All are welcome. No, better make it, Be kind and be welcome, something like that, right over the front bouncer’s desk. And a bulletin board of banned assholes, with Larry Doyle’s smug fucking face right in the middle.”

“And restrooms for everyone?” Paisley asked.

“Sure, fine, anyone who sees that front lobby, thinks, ‘this is my kind of place,’ comes in and behaves themselves, they can use the bathroom,” said Lillith. “You get really hung up on the logistics of your drunk talk, you know? It’s just a fantasy.”

Paisley bit her tongue.

“What?” asked Lillith.

“What… if it weren’t?” asked Paisley. “What if we actually did it?”

Lillith scoffed and lay her head back.

A few seconds passed in silence, in which Lillith found her eyes roaming the space with new, wary, but unshakable interest. The For Lease sign over the marquee out front felt burnt into her mental vision.

“We are not having this conversation drunk,” she said. “Or hungover.”

“But we are having this conversation,” Paisley detected her omission, grinning wider.

“Yeah,” said Lillith, standing up and pulling the toilet paper down from the first pole, gathering it into a neat pile. “But we’re going to need a lot more of us.”

***

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