I don’t have the kind of parents a girl can bring a girlfriend home to.

Neither does Dara.

What she does have is a very close and active group of friends who hold a biweekly “Bitch Night.” Which I’m now invited to. Dara issued this invitation over breakfast in the course of a few casual sentences, and I accepted, all before I had the chance to realize quite how huge a deal this was.

Or, in Dara’s estimation, before I had time to “psych myself out.”

“The name is just for fun,” Dara explained, while I was obsessing over the three shirts I currently had at her place. “It’s not about being mean, I promise. It’s just a ladies’ night where we vent and complain about stuff. Bitch night.”

“Yeah, I get it,” I said.

“So…?” Dara prompted.

“Are they all… um, work friends?”

“You mean, are they strippers?” Dara cut through my euphemisms. “Yeah. Is that a problem all of a sudden?”

“I just… I feel weird,” I scrambled to explain. “I mean, I’ve probably already met a few of them as a customer. What if they don’t want me crossing over into their real life?”

“You’re with me,” Dara said, as if that settled things.

“And they’re all okay with you making that decision for them?” I asked.

“Believe me,” said Dara. “You’re far from the sketchiest person one of us has brought in. Besides.” She grabbed one of the three shirts, possibly at random, and pushed it decisively to my chest. “You got to show me off to your friends.”

“Did not,” I argued, while I pulled on the chosen shirt. “We were all just customers together. Before you and I were a thing.”

“They still met me,” said Dara.

“Yeah, and I’m amazed you still wanted to be around me afterward.”

“Come on, they were great,” said Dara. “…On average. And now you can brag about me to them whenever you want, and they know who you’re talking about. Don’t I deserve the same?”

“I guess.” I fluffed my hair out of the neckline. “I just don’t get why… never mind.”

“No, why what?”

I sighed, caught red-handed. “I don’t get why you’d want to brag about me.”

Dara was on me in a second, hands on my face, my neck, my breasts.

“No,” she said, catching a nipple between her fingers. “None of that. You are my gorgeous, badass girlfriend, and I don’t want to hear another word denying it.”

“I remembered that before it was out of my mouth,” I said.

“I don’t even want to hear thoughts like that rattling around inside your head,” said Dara, rolling the nipple tightly back and forth, making it very difficult to focus on arguing.

“Oh, you read minds now?”

“If it helps keep yours clear of that shit, then yes,” she smirked and pinched a little harder, “I read minds now. Got that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, putting my arms around her waist and pulling her closer. I smirked back, until she relented and kissed me.

We were a few minutes late getting out the door, entirely from the difficulty of keeping our hands off each other, and not at all because I was dreading this. Honest.

#

The gathering was in a house, an actual house, with a yard and a kitchen island and a sitting room big enough to accommodate the dozen-odd women in attendance.

Dara set down two separate types of homemade salad on the counter to hug the hostess, who I recognized after a moment as Wicked, the curvy devil from the Angel Room club who loved to step on customer’s laps with her red stilettos.

She was one of the older dancers, and she looked drastically different in a flowing pastel blouse and subtle makeup. I had the strange feeling that I was trying to make a good impression on a friend’s mom.

“You might remember Briony,” Dara introduced me.

“…Oh right, the one with the fun hair,” Wicked extended a hand to me, and smiled widely. “How did your friend’s wedding go?”

“It was beautiful, thanks.”

“I hope we didn’t get him in too much trouble.”

“No, no, it was all aboveboard. You were great.”

The next twenty minutes blurred past in a series of similar reintroductions.

With difficulty, I recognized the majority of the guests, and with even more difficulty, most of them recognized me. Others were from different shifts at the Angle Room, or from neighboring clubs along the same street. There was one couple, Lillith and Paisley, who hung around the margins like me, probably recent additions to the clique. Paisley tried several times to start conversation with me, but I couldn’t seem to think of anything to say to her beyond yes and no. Lillith said less than that.

Wicked passed around wine, beer, and sodas in the sitting room, and the promised bitching commenced, mostly focused on politics, family members, and local club owners.

It all felt unsettlingly banal, more like the church potlucks of my childhood than the secret meeting of a coven of nocturnal temptresses. The whole group could have been mistaken for a bedraggled teacher’s union, if it weren’t for all the sexy or cutesy stage names, and even those slipped from time to time.

No one seemed concerned when that happened. No jaws dropped in horror at the possibility that I might have caught someone answering to what was on their driver’s license. Using the stage names seemed more habit than anything else, probably one that was safest to keep up, to avoid slips at work.

After a long lament from Paisley about the megalomaniacal tendencies of the owner of a club called the Minx Mixer, there was a lull in the conversation.

Wicked poured herself a second glass of wine, and fixed her eyes on me.

“So, is this one a new recruit?” she asked.

“No,” said Dara.

“Well… I’m thinking about,” I said.

Dara lifted one eyebrow in surprise.

Everyone else raised both eyebrows, and quite a few of them drew their hands together into excited little claps.

“Aw, an itty-bitty baby new dancer!” Lolly exclaimed.

I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling my skin heat up, not least from awareness that I was not an itty-bitty anything.

“I mean, I’m sure I’m a long way off from qualifying,” I clarified. “But—”

“Bullshit,” interrupted Eden, a dazzlingly acrobatic snake-themed dancer I’d seen onstage but never spoken to.

“What is?” I asked warily.

“That thing we all tell ourselves about how being good enough is in the future,” said Eden. “It’s bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure you could use a crash course on the fundamentals, and you’ll only get better with practice, but if you’re serious about wanting it, you start in days, maybe weeks. Not years.”

I shook my head, rushing to correct whatever misconceptions must be in play here.

“Oh, no, I’ve had literally two dance classes,” I said. “I’m nowhere near being on the level of anyone here.”

“No, you’re not,” Eden agreed. “Because we’ve all been doing this for years. In a club.”

“The first time I touched a pole was my first day on the job,” Paisley piped up.

“I still barely use the pole,” said Sativa. “Makes me too dizzy. The customers like it just fine when I crawl up close and personal to the edge of the stage and jiggle my ass against the floor.”

I did enjoy watching dancers do that.

“Okay…” I said, rocking back and forth to take this in. “But like… is there a checklist? There must be some kind of audition, or an interview? What am I supposed to know before I start?”

A bunch of voices burst excitedly to life at once, but Sky’s was loudest.

“Hold up,” she said. “I’ll get them.”

“…Them?” I asked.

Sky dug through a knapsack at her side and pulled out a pair of sparkly lace-up boots with heels at least seven inches tall, bolstered by platforms at the toes.

“See, that alone is going to take me years to master,” I said, hoping it sounded lighthearted.

“Have you tried, yet?” Sky asked.

“I mean, I wore kitten heels to a party, once,” I said. “I had to carry them home.”

“Try these,” Sky pushed them insistently into my hands.

I took off my sneakers and slid my feet into the boots. Like all shoes I hadn’t bought specifically for myself, they were a little narrow for my feet, but with the laces adjusted, they were surprisingly wearable.

“Go on!” Lolly clapped again, encouragingly.

I clambered to my feet, immediately stumbled, and had to swing my arms like a windmill to keep from falling. Dara held me around my hips to steady me.

“Press your thighs together, weight on one foot.” Sky directed.

“She means the bevel position from class,” Dara clarified.

I could do that, though I still wasn’t sure how giving myself a narrower base was supposed to make me more stable. I started to tip forward, and Dara tightened her grip.

“Soften your knees a little,” said Sky, sounding a lot like Kim, the unladylike dance teacher. “Tighten your abs, and pull your shoulders down and back.”

As ever, I clumsily juggled these directions, trying not to drop one part of the posture when I added the next.

“You’re trying to pivot your torso back to an upright position,” Dara explained. “To compensate for the heels pushing you forward. Your knees are the fulcrum.”

It was a little easier to think about it that way. I sank into almost a squat, until I could feel my shoulders settling over my hips, and then stretched myself back as tall as I could without unbalancing them again.

Dara cautiously eased her arms away, hovering them around me in case I faltered.

“How do you feel?” asked Lolly.

“Not like I can dance,” I said.

“Twenty seconds ago you didn’t feel like you could stand,” Eden pointed out. “So cut yourself some slack.”

“Try walking to me,” Seraph suggested, beckoning with both hands. “One foot in front of the other, directly in front of the other, like you’re on a balance beam. Don’t lift so high, it’s just a lazy little drag… that’s it,” she said, as I fell into the rhythm with my third step or so.

Oddly, in spite of their appearance, the boots didn’t feel all that much higher than the three-inch kitten heels I’d tried before. The platform toes gave the illusion that my feet were at a much steeper incline than they really were. And if anything, the form-fitting laces actually made them more comfortable than my old party heels. Nothing seemed to be chafing when I moved.

I made my way across the room to touch Seraph’s outstretched arms.

“What’s next?” I asked.

“Practice, practice, practice,” said Sky. “Like, maybe for the rest of the night?”

She quirked an eyebrow at Dara, playful and cajoling.

“It’s been forever since I got to be a guest at a party with a stripper,” said Lillith, prompting a round of agreement sounds.

“It’d be great practice for her,” Paisley reasoned hopefully. “We won’t judge!”

Dara looked to me.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, babe,” she told me, with a conviction that I found spine-tinglingly sexy.

That tingle definitely helped me nod.

“I want to try!” I said. “It’ll be fun. And it’ll even us up a little. I’ve gotten to be a guest with almost everyone here.”

Paisley cheered, and multi-flavored smiles crept across every face in the room, making me equal parts excited and wary.

“What should we call you?” Lolly asked.

I pretended to think about it for a moment. Really, I’d been thinking about it for much longer than a moment.

I turned the idea over and over on my tongue before finally shaping the sounds, “Do you think people would like… Bombshell?”

“I love it!” shouted Lolly.

“How does it feel to you?” Dara asked me.

“I think it fits me,” I answered, dizzy with relief that no one had laughed, or taken my hand to explain to me gently why my instincts on this were all wrong. “Everything about me has always been a bombshell that I had to keep from going off in front of the wrong people. Making it my name feels like… like being a bomb isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It feels powerful, and kinda hot. And like something I don’t have to be super tiny to fit inside.”

Dara got up and crossed the room to hug me. I felt bizarrely tall next to her in her ballet flats.

For a moment, I looked down at my girlfriend, with her head resting on my chest, and then at Lillith and Paisley, openly holding hands, and at the rainbow tattoo on Sativa’s inner wrist. This gathering might be eerily normal, but it was not, in fact, a church potluck. Standing there, I felt like I was both intruding and coming home.

“I think it fits me,” I repeated, “but I think it would probably fit a lot of other people just as well. I don’t want to step on any toes, if there’s already someone in town who’s using—”

“It’s yours, babe,” Dara told me, and reached her hand down to give my ass a gentle caress. “Bombshell. Now come back to the couch and give me your first lap dance, yeah? Before someone else calls dibs.”

She took me by the hand and led me back to her seat. All eyes followed us across the room.

My pulse was pounding in my head, and in my confined toes. I was still getting used to this kind of touching with Dara, even in private. Her hand still left ghosts of unfamiliar sensation on my ass.

I dragged my feet in small, languid, zig-zagging steps — it really was easier to keep them close together, so that more of my weight hovered directly above them — and wondered if I was crazy for thinking I was cut out for this.

I could barely doggy-paddle my way through intimacy, and here I was about to cliff-dive for an audience.

But the edge of the cliff was calling to me, fiercely.

Dara sat back on the couch, arms stretched out along the backrest, legs apart, anticipation in her gaze.

I walked as close to her as I could get, letting the tips of my shoes touch hers, and then stopped to figure out how to continue from there. I listened to the slow, moody pop song playing in the background, which someone thoughtfully turned up for me. I summoned all I could remember of my two dance lessons, and of that one hazy bachelor party where so many of these women had visited me and my friends in our dimly lit retreat.

I let myself fall into the music’s rhythm, swaying back and forth as I stripped off my t-shirt and unhooked my bra.

Paisley whooped for me, but it was a brief sound, stifled by a thick, heavy, breathless feeling seeping through the room.

I stopped balancing and let myself tip forward, catching myself on the back of the couch with one hand on either side of Dara.

Our faces were inches apart. A tempting grin broke across her face. But kissing lips was one of the things you didn’t do during a lap dance.

I held the moment for an instant or two longer, and then straddled her knees, arched my back, and pulled myself higher, surrounding her face with my breasts.

She breathed them in, appreciative and passive, like a good customer, letting me guide the movement, the friction. Even when I brushed one of my nipples right over her lips, she just barely parted them.

I repeated that brush on the other side, while I plotted how to transition gracefully to a new position.

I took a breath and shifted my weight to just my right hand and foot, clenching my abs into a sideways plank, and ran my left hand in a swirling line down Dara’s torso. I missed each of her nipples by millimeters, and surprised her, I think, by sneaking a quick touch between her legs.

Then I pushed off from the couch, miraculously managing to stack myself upright without overbalancing, and turned around to show off the second main attraction of such a dance.

My stiff denim skirt was still on, blocking the view, but I made the most of it, taking my time to slide the waistband up and down over the back of my simple black panties to the beat, before finally pushing the whole skirt down and kicking it away.

I ran my hand down the side of my ass, and, before I could change my mind, gave it a slap to set off a volley of jiggles, which Dara insisted were good and sexy and normal.

Dara let out a reverent breath as she watched.

Clenching every leg muscle I had to hold myself up, and pressing my palms into my knees for support, I lowered myself to the level of her lap and rubbed my ass along her thighs.

That move felt strange. Imitative. A little foolish. Like someone playing with a toy version of a tool, without quite understanding how the real thing worked.

Obviously, Dara didn’t have a dick sticking up for me to grind on, and I didn’t have hips boney and sharp enough to reach her clit with, the way Sky could when she danced for someone who had one.

My ass was wider than Dara’s whole lap, and every example I had for how a lap dance was supposed to work involved a smaller person on top of a larger one.

What was I accomplishing like this? I couldn’t even lean back to put my face near hers, not without putting my weight on her, which I wasn’t willing to do. All I could really do from here was shove my ass toward her, this piece of me that I’d believed for so long to be repulsive, and hope that she took it as a gift, instead of a threat to smother her.

I thought about the first time I’d presented my ass to Dara, after class in the dance studio, and recalled with a twinge of excitement how much better that had been.

What was the difference?

Ah, right.

“You can touch me, if you want,” I said, tossing my hair over my shoulder to smile slyly back at her.

That was okay during a lap dance, as long as the dancer said so. As long as I said so.

“Well, if you’re sure…” Dara teased, placing her hands lightly on the sides of my ass.

We wouldn’t be able to do everything we’d done last time, but already, this was so much better than ten seconds ago. Now Dara could communicate, assure me of her enjoyment with a flutter of fingers, instead of leaving me to my grim assumptions.

“Give it a smack,” I suggested.

“Really?” Dara asked with more genuine uncertainty, glancing around the packed room. “Here?”

I was nervous, but not as nervous as I was eager to feel that thrill of harmless impact again. To skip right to the good stuff.

“Really,” I confirmed.

Dara started as she had last time, with the lightest of taps, and when I gasped happily at the tingling jolt rising up my body, she escalated to crisp, loud, but still gentle slaps.

I soon found myself grinding against her thigh less imitatively, more instinctively.

“You can touch me too,” Dara prompted. “However you want.”

How much more could I touch her from here?

I rubbed my ass harder against her lap, wishing that part of my body had more dexterity to offer her. Then I became aware of my hands, still holding a death grip on my own knees.

I stood up a little and shuffled my feet a short way apart, far enough to slide one hand back between my legs.

Dara let out a series of happy little yelps when I ran my hand over her pussy, then forward over my own, and back to hers again. She spanked me a little harder, like it was the only way she could make her reaction emphatic enough. I rubbed us both harder, for the same reason.

I’m sure everyone in the room could guess exactly what we were doing down to the smallest move, but my ass taking up all of Dara’s lap and more actually acted as a sort of privacy screen, making the touching feel like something gotten away with, under a table, or in a dark back room.

That combination of public and private, scary and thrilling, rough and tender, it was like a perpetual motion machine, the way the feelings tumbled over and over each other, fueling me on and on and on.

We were both gasping, grabbing, moving, like being alone together.

And then the song changed, and I had to stop, to keep calling this lap dance practice. Otherwise, we were just humping in someone else’s living room.

I stood up, shakily, and took a joking bow. My nerves trilled their intoxicating disappointment at being teased and then required to settle down so soon.

“A-plus-plus, babe,” Dara said, patting me on the back, a little breathless herself.

“It was okay,” said Wicked, with taunting dismissal. “I mean for a first time, with a partner you know. But a professional has to be flexible. Ready to meet any challenge.”

“Such as?” I asked, more than willing to be goaded.

I was thrumming with energy, ready to crash through any obstacle and into the uncharted territory on the other side.

Wicked smiled. “I’m sure we can come up with a few.”

#

Dara poured herself a drink and gave me a silent toast of approval, as I began to make my way around the room, seeking out my next dance partner.

“Hey, how’s your day going?” I asked, plunking myself down next to Lolly on one of the couches.

I was using my regular voice, which didn’t quite convey the flirty vibe I was aiming for, but I was afraid of sounding like a caricature if I tried to change it. I wondered if Dara knew a good class for learning hot people elocution, the way I was learning hot people body language in dance.

“Still sticking to the safe bets, I see,” said Wicked.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lolly asked before I could.

“It means you’re pitifully easy to please,” said Wicked.

“Life is more fun that way,” Lolly argued.

It felt rude to switch now just to impress Wicked, so I put an arm around Lolly.

Of everyone I’d seen both here and at the club, Lolly had the most in common with her stage persona. Her cheerfulness and Australian accent were apparently real, and she was still dressed in bright pink, this time in the form of a long t-shirt over light blue leggings.

“You tell her,” I said. “So, what can I do for you?”

“Um, I just like to feel taken care of,” said Lolly.

“You got it.”

I started to get up, to get into position the way I had with Dara, but Lolly clung to me, and tucked herself under one of my arms.

“You don’t have to be on my lap the whole time,” she said. “Or at all.”

I’d never really thought of that, but now that she pointed it out, I realized that several of the dancers at the bachelor party had spent most of their time sitting between us, standing over us, crawling between our legs, taking all sorts of positions besides sitting in our laps forwards or backwards.

I stroked Lolly’s upper arm, waiting for a fresh song to start, and thinking about what I could do from right here.

“I take it back,” said Wicked. “I actually think Lolly could make for a great challenge.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because she’s so pitifully easy to please,” said Wicked. “She’s the kind who could buy one dance, cum in her pants, and then lose interest and go home.”

“So?” said Lolly, playfully offended. “It’s not as if I make a mess.”

“When we’re at the club, we want people to settle in,” said Wicked. “Spend time with us, all of us, make some memories worth holding on to, so that they want to come back again. And we don’t want them bragging about how they got off for the price of one topless dance, because they won’t include the part about what a hair-trigger they have, and the next thing you know, all of their friends will come in expecting the same to happen for them.”

“Makes sense,” I agreed.

“So,” said Wicked. “Your challenge is to make Lolly feel ‘taken care of,’ without letting her cum.”

I looked to Lolly, who gave me a good-natured “take what I can get” shrug.

The new song began. This one had more base to it, with pitches almost below human hearing, that filled my chest with a second beat, louder than my heart.

Lolly lay back against my shoulder and smiled up at me.

I started by lightly brushing the backs of my fingers along her cheek, then her arm, then her abs. I hugged her hard from behind, then softened my touch again to bring my hands up to her breasts. I spread my fingers apart and pulled them back together over the thin cups of her sports bra, catching the already hard peaks of her nipples between them.

It wasn’t quite a “dance” in the traditional sense, but I did try to synchronize my movements to the music. I rubbed her in time with the beat, and then paused or moved on to a new type of touching at the end of every few lines. It felt like I was coordinating a light show, matching one sensory experience to another.

After the first few seconds, Lolly closed her eyes. For the first time all evening, I didn’t feel the need to think about my body, how it looked, what it weighed, where it was, and whether it was taking up too much space. This dance was all about her body, what it wanted, how it reacted. And that was plenty to occupy my mind.

Wicked was right, Lolly really was unusually easy to please. The first time I touched her pussy through her leggings, she gasped and leaned into me so exuberantly that I moved on to a different touch before the song told me to, afraid that she might cum right away if I continued a second longer.

I spent almost a whole verse on her breasts before wandering my fingers back down, more cautiously. I hovered my whole hand over her pussy, but touched down only with my thumb and pinkie, tracing the creases of her hips.

She moaned with an odd blend of desire and contentment.

“I know, I know,” I found myself murmuring to her. “I hear you.”

I could hear her feeling exactly what Wicked had told me to make her feel.

I was so caught up in feeling proud and capable, and listening to Lolly’s sweet accented cooing sounds, that I almost didn’t notice her legs beginning to tense. Even with my fingertips barely brushing only the most peripheral nerve endings of her pussy, she was still making progress somehow.

I did notice just in time to pull away. She groaned and twisted sideways, pressing her legs together. I wrapped my arms tight around her again, patting her hair and whispering soft hushing sounds in her ear until the song ended.

“So, was that all right?” I asked, letting go.

Lolly laughed and slapped my shoulder lightly, like she was trying to reset herself to a more friendly physical dynamic.

“Excuse me for just a minute for no reason, okay?” she said, getting up and stepping over what seemed like a thousand legs on her way toward Wicked’s bathroom.

There were laughs and whoops.

“What, you can’t take one little lap dance with some grace?” Piety shouted tauntingly after Lolly.

“I’m not the one in training here!” Lolly giggle-shouted back at us, before slamming the bathroom door.

“Who’s next?” I asked.

“I think I’ll claim that privilege now,” Wicked announced.

#

I tried to look like a conquering champion as I made my way over to Wicked, in spite of forgetting how to walk in my heels for a second.

“Go ahead,” I said, putting my hands on Wicked’s armrest and leaning over her. “Do it. Set me up to fail.”

“Oh, you’ve got the wrong idea about me, hun,” said Wicked. “I’d like nothing more than to see you succeed at a few reasonable, moderate requests.”

“Such as?” I asked.

“It’s no more than the reverse of what you just did, really,” said Wicked, examining her own red fingernails. “I want you to convince me that you’re really trying to cum in my lap. You want it badly, and you want it from me.”

“No problem,” I said, swinging one leg between hers to pretend to sit on her knee.

“Uh-uh, before you get started, I want to be clear that you are the one in training,” said Wicked. “And cumming in the middle of a shift is the surest way to a mediocre day.”

“Hey!” Lolly objected, already returning. “There’s nothing mediocre about my days, and I—”

“If you’re not Lolly,” Wicked corrected herself. “And you don’t share her nearly superhuman appetites, it’s not a good idea. Sure, the customer will probably love it, but it’s not just about them. You need to stay excited to touch anyone who walks through the door, and that’s a lot more difficult when you’re satisfied. So, if I see you sneaking off before the party’s done, or getting a little too much out of any dance, I count that as you failing my challenge. Fair?”

“Fair,” I agreed.

Her advice made sense, plus I was quite enjoying the pent-up charge in my body right now. I didn’t want it to abandon me any time soon.

The song changed, to something brassy and retro, and I put on a show.

I rocked my hips from side to side on top of Wicked’s knee, tracing my hands along my own body in the self-lovemaking way we’d learned in class. I touched my face, my neck, my breasts as tenderly as if they belonged to someone else, and as frantically as if I simply couldn’t help myself.

Wicked had the only lap in the room that made for as wide and sturdy a stage as my own, sturdy enough that I felt safe throwing my weight into the grind, instead of strictly hovering. Her body was warm, and soft, delicious to rub against, but difficult to find real purchase on. Ideal for the challenge she’d given me, really. I felt like I could spend all day teasing myself against her thighs, never getting quite close enough to the hard, toned muscles inside.

Again, I changed positions every few lines, not to keep her on edge, but to show her my restlessness, my desperate search for the pressure that her proximity made me crave, just as she’d requested.

I humped one thigh, and the other, and both, I faced her and faced away, I took her hand in mine and guided it to my clit.

Through the whole performance, Wicked stayed passive, but powerfully so. Rather than simply respecting my space like Dara, she was refusing my every invitation to participate, to help me in any way. Her narrowed gaze reminded me each time I met it that I was the entertainer, and she the audience, and service went in only one direction between us.

She resisted nothing, but even when I tucked her fingers under the waistband of my panties, they remained as still as a static toy.

Maybe I got a little complacent, in the knowledge that she wasn’t going to directly try to make me cum. Maybe I was just basking in the attention, and the flow of my dance, and the living proof beneath me of how alluring bodies my own size could be.

Whatever the reason, the quickening tension in my pelvis took me by surprise. One moment I had no expectation that this pleasant rubbing was leading anywhere, and the next, I was practically there.

I paused and changed positions again, but that only bought me a matter of seconds before I was back on track toward a fierce orgasm.

My legs shook, my breath hitched, excuses swirled in my head for why I should just let go and let it happen, almost too fast for me to swat each one away.

I was so close, so close, and what was I supposed to do with it? I couldn’t slow down, couldn’t do anything that suggested I was trying to stop myself, and yet I had to.

The customer will probably love it, my brain batted back to me, among the volley of excuses.

I grabbed that excuse and fashioned it into a compromise instead.

“Oh fuck!” I gasped, and squeezed my thighs tight around Wicked’s. I shut down and stopped moving, blaming it on the most plausible pretense I could think of: failure.

I grabbed Wicked by the shoulders for stability and moaned with more realism than I was quite prepared for myself. It didn’t take much to turn a grunt of frustration to one of ecstasy; the passion was the same either way.

Even my own body seemed confused about what was happening. Faintly tingling waves of placid tiredness washed lazily upward from pussy to my scalp, like backup dancers who hadn’t noticed that their star performer had missed her cue.

The pulsing contractions of pleasure were missing, kept away in reserve, but all the other parts of an orgasm, the muscle tremors, the panting breaths, the dizzy flattening of my mind, those were entirely authentic.

Finally, the song faded out, allowing me to roll, gasping, off of Wicked’s lap.

“Aww, better luck next time, baby dancer,” said Wicked. “Don’t worry, you’ll learn to hold out, even with clients as gorgeous as me.”

“I did hold out,” I said, dropping what there was to drop of the act.

I was still shaky, breathless, and lightheaded, but my voice settled down easily enough into its usual pitch.

Wicked eyed me with suspicion.

“You’re joking,” she said. “You expect us to just take your word?”

I grabbed her hand and pressed her fingers back to my clit, where I should have been sore in the aftermath of a real climax.

“I can cum for real right now if you need proof,” I proposed. “But it might mess up our other plans for a while.”

Wicked laughed and pulled her hand away, apparently taking the offer as proof enough.

“Let me guess,” she said. “Lots of experience faking for an incompetent boyfriend?”

“Oh, I don’t think I was ever that convincing with him,” I admitted without thinking, and then blushed at the laughs this got. “I just mean…” I fell into the laughter as well, “I mean, it’s a lot easier to imitate an orgasm when it’s right there within reach!” I explained. “You’re already imagining what it’s going to feel like!”

#

The group didn’t give me more than a moment to catch my breath before shouting out their own requests and challenges, emboldened by Wicked’s example.

I snuggled Sativa. I bit Paisley’s pussy gently through her jeans. I postured all over Piety and even bent myself over her knee, like I was daring her to touch me, without ever signaling that it was okay to do so.

To each her own.

I was starting to feel like I could please anyone I set my mind to, when Lillith asked, “Do we all have to be good customers?”

Wicked’s lips tightened with restrained interest. “Well, I guess that depends on how far Bombshell wants to push herself in one day.”

“Far,” I confirmed immediately.

What were the odds that all these amazing experts would allow me to hijack another of their get-togethers into a training session for myself? Sure, they were getting free lap dances out of it, but the novelty was sure to wear off. This might be the only lesson of its kind I’d ever get.

“Here’s what I suggest,” said Wicked, lacing her fingers together. “Stop me if any of this sounds like too much for you, Bombshell. I think you should make your rounds of the room, being friendly, making conversation, offering your services like before. And we’re all going to be thoroughly inappropriate about it, right, bitches?”

There were cheers and nods of various levels of enthusiasm. Dara’s face was wary.

“And I just have to put up with it, or what?” I asked.

“Respond however comes naturally, at first,” said Wicked. “And then we’ll give you some pointers to try.”

So, I did it. I took another turn of the room, trying not to anticipate anything being different from before.

I couldn’t approach Dara again, of course. She’d go much too easy on me.

This new exercise had been Lillith’s idea, so I settled on approaching her first.

“Hey, how’s your day going?” I asked brightly, squatting down on my heels in front of her to see her face better.

“Jesus, I hope your moves are more original than your lines,” Lillith snorted. “How’s your day going? Really? That’s the best you can do?”

“Oh,” I said, hating the irrational stab of panic that shot outward from my stomach, making my voice wobble. “Sorry, I… I do like the classics. I thought maybe you did too.”

“You calling me old?” Lillith raised her voice and leaned forward.

My hands were shaking.

What was wrong with me? I knew what the game was here. These women were trying to help me. Lillith’s deliberate inflection, and the way Paisley snorted next to her in recognition, told me plainly that she was doing an unflattering impression of someone in particular. She was making fun of some absent grump, not of me.

And yet the slightest hint of aggression or disapproval still made something inside me shrivel away, taking my confidence and fun along with it.

“N… no,” I said. “I just meant, you’re in a strip club, and it would be sad to leave without experiencing some of the things you’d expect to happen in a strip club. Right?”

“You’re asking my opinion?” Lillith huffed.

“I’m asking… would you like to, um, experience….” This transition was going horribly, but I didn’t really want to carry on this conversation long enough to wait for a better setup.

“Would I like to experience a ripoff from an amateur?” said Lillith. “That’s gonna be a no from me, doll.”

“Uh, okay, no problem,” I said, in a voice that would definitely not be audible over the background noise of a real club.

I straightened up and turned to try someone else. As soon as I was looking away, Lillith gave my ass a rough smack.

It was probably no rougher than anything Dara had done, physically, but I was too fragile inside to process it that way.

I turned my head reflexively back toward Lillith, on the verge of freezing, or crying, or maybe both at once.

“What?” Lillith shrugged. “It was right there.”

“Time out!” Dara spoke up sharply.

“Bombshell?” Wicked asked me. “Are you good?”

“I’m not good,” Dara answered before I could. “Time out. For my sake. Now.”

“Sorry, Violet,” Lillith said to Dara, dropping the character completely. “Sorry, Bombshell.”

“No, no, I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing my arms like I could scrape the panic off. “I should have called the time out myself, I’m sorry. I just really didn’t want to quit in the first round.”

“Hey, hey, you have nothing to apologize for,” Lillith reached out and squeezed my hand. Her face was softer and more open than I’d yet seen it. “The problem customers you’re prepping for should be the ones apologizing. But since that’s not likely to happen, well, that’s why we prep.”

I nodded, feeling my nerves settle down with every confirmation that the character Lillith had been a moment ago was not really here.

“Anyone have ideas on a different way to handle that situation?” Wicked asked the room.

“How about a kick to the face?” Dara answered dryly.

Eden raised a hand and high-fived her.

“Just back away and leave him lonely,” said Sky. “Don’t try for the dance, don’t even say goodbye.”

“I… didn’t think not trying was an option,” I realized out loud.

“Not offering a dance should always be an option!” Dara said, in the middle of a wave of similar exclamations. “Especially if someone’s being a dick.”

“Should,” Lillith muttered, to no one in particular.

“It’s one of our best defenses,” Wicked agreed. “Walking away is a good easy level response to a lot of situations.”

“What’s the advanced level response?” I asked, hungry to arm myself in every possible way, against anyone and anything that could wither me like that.

It took me a moment to realize that Wicked was waiting for Dara to answer my question.

Dara sighed, grudgingly accepting her apparent role as resident expert on advanced asshole management.

“If you really want to,” she told me, “you can try to figure out what’s wrong with them. Because it’s always something wrong with them, not you. They don’t know you. They just want someone to unload on. Once you know that, really know it in your bones, once you stop assuming you’re the problem… it doesn’t always mean you can help them, but it’s harder for them to hurt you.”

I crossed the room to her, and sank back down into a heel squat, ready to literally learn at her feet.

God, she was incredible. How did I end up not just with a gorgeous stripper, but with the gorgeous stripper other gorgeous strippers turn to for her insight?

“That was what you did for me,” I recalled. “You looked at me that first day, and started taking notes on all the ways I was broken.”

“Yeah, well, you weren’t being an asshole about it,” Dara said softly. “You were just regular broken, and managing to be decent anyway.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

The room held its silence for us, for several seconds more, and then Seraph raised her hand. “I’m ready to do one,” she said. “When, if, you want to try again?”

“I do,” I said to Dara. “Please?”

I held her gaze until she gave me a smile, and a nod.

#

After that rough start, I decided I might actually like this game more than practicing for the good customers.

I walked the room, letting everyone grope and slap and heckle me, and figuring out a system of responses.

I raised my left hand when I needed to stop, which happened less and less often, and my right hand when I thought it would be time to call for a bouncer in real life. The others either confirmed my instincts or made counter-suggestions.

I experimented with a hundred different comebacks, both scripted and, once I started to get the hang of it, off the top of my head.

Seraph slapped my crotch, and I slapped hers right back. She feigned the reaction of someone with testicles, while I feigned sympathy and confusion that someone who would initiate rough play couldn’t handle it.

Sky grabbed my ass without asking, and I channeled the old fear into a meek, mousy startle, like it had never yet occurred to me that someone might do that to me. Sky’s imaginary customer felt terrible. Then we backed up and tried it again, with an imaginary customer who didn’t feel terrible.

Paisley called me an ugly cunt, and I asked her in a low, steady voice to describe the last time she had felt loved. Her character ended up sobbing cartoonishly into my shoulder. It was ridiculous, but so much fun.

Every second of the exercise felt like kicking off heavy chains. It didn’t matter if I won some clever victory, or ended up screaming for help.

The important thing was that I could breathe. I could speak. I could move. I could think.

I could choose to try things, and then try other things, none of which were sinking into the sound of my own heartbeat and waiting for the moment to end.

#

I was still high on that revelation when Bitch Night started winding up.

Dara jumped in to help Wicked with the cleanup. I returned Sky’s shoes and hung back with her for a few minutes, picking her brain for tips on buying my own.

When she offered her last few tips and headed to her car, I gathered up the remaining plates and glasses and went to join Dara in the kitchen.

“She’s got promise,” Wicked was saying. “And you two are so cute together.”

“Thanks,” said Dara. “Yeah. I know it’s early, but I really think she’s something special.”

“Then why do you look so sour?”

“I’m not.”

My stomach tightened a little as I pictured Wicked giving Dara an inescapably knowing look, zeroing in on clues that I myself could not see. Aside from that brief moment when I’d let my old panic sour the mood, I really thought everyone had been having a good time, Dara included.

I had so much left to learn. About reading people, about being in a relationship, about Dara.

I stopped dead just outside the kitchen doorway.

“You’re not jealous, are you?” Wicked teased Dara. “You thought you could keep that little gem all to yourself at home, cooking a roast in a cute lace apron, waiting for you to get home from the club?”

“No,” Dara answered emphatically. “No, it’s not about jealousy. I’m just… I’m scared for her. She’s so soft, and she’s been hurt so much already.”

Wicked laughed out loud. “Which of us hasn’t? Vi, honey, everyone’s got something to work out on that pole. How many of us have parents who kicked us out, or old bosses from so-called nonsexual jobs who treated us like cute, squeezable decorations until we figured we might as well be getting paid better for our trouble? We’re artists. We’re rebels. We’re hopeless suckers for whoever has the cash to give us a stage to perform on and a place to hide from the world for another day. Most of us are queer, anxious, angry, horny hot messes. And we’re all lost babes in the woods, at least at first. Trust your girl, Vi. Give her a chance to find her way to what she’s looking for, just like you had to do for yourself.”

“You’re right, you’re right, you’re right,” said Dara. “I hear the words, and I know you’re right. But I lose my mind a little bit, when I think of someone being mean to her for real, alone in some dark room where I can’t stop them.”

“Well,” Wicked took a heavy breath, “when that happens, you’ll—”

“When,” Dara repeated. “You know it’s when, not if. Because… god, I hate saying this.”

“Just get it out,” Wicked advised.

“At the end of the day,” Dara sighed, “There’s a big difference between playing a stripper for a party full of women, and working as one at a business run by men, for men.”

“The Angel Room is woman-owned,” Wicked said, like it was a phrase she’d comforted herself with many times before. “Bea may not be perfect, but she’ll take good care of—”

“Bea is great,” said Dara. “But how much longer do you think we’re going to have her? The guy from the Minx Mixer won’t rest until he owns every club on the street, in the state, in the world. And Bea’s almost ready to retire. Even when she says she’s not.”

There was a long pause.

“Look, if you’re that worried… maybe have a chat with Lillith and Paisley,” said Wicked. “They’ve been trying to drum up some support to start a new club, new business model. Dancer-owned somehow. There would still be men—”

“That’s fine,” Dara said quickly. “Briony likes men. I like men. It’s just when they have all the power… and the kind of men who have it, men like Larry Doyle—”

“I understand completely,” Wicked assured her. “But you’ve got to realize, even if they do get a club like that started, that’s no guarantee that it’ll last, or that Larry can’t take it from them. It’s not necessarily safer than the Angel Room, just a different risk.”

I worked up the nerve, and knocked on the open kitchen door.

“It sounds like a great idea,” I said. “Anything I can do to help?”

Dara stepped away from Wicked, looking guilty and embarrassed. It was one thing to grind on other people’s laps, but talking behind each other’s backs was something else.

I had to admit, I liked the terms of our relationship more every day.

“Briony,” she said. “Bombshell. I was—”

“Looking out for me, without my permission,” I finished for her, setting down the plates and glasses and reaching out a hand. “Come here, my good, good, bad girl.”

Dara let me pull her into a tight hug, accompanied by a light slap to her ass.

“You two go on,” Wicked encouraged, turning on the faucet and holding the first glass under the stream. “I’ve got this.”

#

We’d come to Bitch Night in Dara’s car, and both of us were probably more than safe to drive by this point in the evening, but she’d had maybe a splash or two more wine than I had, and she offered me her keys without hesitation.

“Sorry for the eavesdropping,” I said, adjusting the mirrors and starting us back toward her apartment with particular care.

Dara shrugged. “We weren’t discreet. Sorry.”

“For not being more discreet?” I asked.

“No, for speaking for you, like you were a kid,” said Dara.

“Okay, cool,” I said.

“What’s cool?” asked Dara.

“We are, if you want to be,” I said, shooting her a hopeful smile.

“Just like that?” Dara asked.

“Yeah, I mean, that was the main thing I needed to hear,” I said. “You got it right away.”

“Are we completely cool?” Dara asked, sitting sideways in her seat to examine me more closely. “Or are we cool for now, because you’re horny?”

“I… don’t think so?”

I thought about it. My body was still swimming in the unresolved stimulation of the day. All I wanted was to skip ahead to the next good stuff I could see on the horizon, the moment when I could get my hands on Dara, and her hands on me, in a place where there were no limits to remember but our own.

“It’s okay if you’ve got more to say,” said Dara. “I’d just prefer to know.”

I pulled over on one of the quiet residential side streets of Wicked’s neighborhood. This place would do as well as any, as far as I was concerned.

I put a hand questioningly on Dara’s knee.

She put a hand answeringly on mine.

I kissed her, and then stopped.

“Okay, just one more thing,” I said. “Are you going to try to stop me from becoming a dancer?”

“I’m the one who introduced you to unladylike dancing,” said Dara.

“I know,” I said. “Are you?”

“No.”

“Because it’s my life, and it’s not your place to tell me how to live it?” I guessed.

Dara nodded.

“But you’d rather I stay away from your work?” I asked.

Dara stroked the back of my neck, with her forehead pressed to mine.

“I’d rather you lived in a kind world where nothing will ever hurt you,” she said. “Which is impossible. In or out of the club. It’s just easier for me to fool myself into thinking you’re safe when you’re somewhere I know less about. It’s a dumb fake comfort, and it’s mine to get over, okay?”

I nodded my way right back into the kiss, nudging her face higher, dragging my hand higher up her leg.

Hers found its way under my skirt.

“Would you prefer to wait for home?” I asked.

Dara sank her teeth into my lower lip and shook her head, a gentle pantomime of a carnivore trying to rip a bite free.

I pulled her closer, unbuttoned her jeans, and slid my fingers under the soft lace of her everyday panties.

We both fought against the gearshift between us for a better angle to rub each other from.

I gasped out loud when she reached my clit, and couldn’t help thinking about Wicked’s motionless fingers, earlier in the day, teasing me into this continued desperation to be touched, really touched.

“Is it okay,” I breathed close to Dara’s mouth, “is it okay if some of this feeling is still from other people?”

To my delight, Dara laughed, a high, joyful sound close to my ear, without stopping the perfect little circles she was rubbing against me.

“Of course some of it is from other people,” she said. “If you’re going to be a dancer, that’s one thing you’ll have to get used to.”

“Okay,” I said, already panting for breath. “Okay, but even if it comes from someone else, it’s for you. Everything is for you, if you want it, you know? Everything me is for you.”

Dara swirled her fingers around my clit with just a touch more pressure, until I could not have faked or stalled the results if my life depended on it.

“When we’re together,” she said, while I seized and gasped in her arms, “everything is for us.”

***

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