Hank knew immediately she was pissed. “Once again, this is not right!”
“Jesus,” he thought and slumped back into his chair. He gripped the phone tighter, the color draining out of his knuckles as the pressure increased. He imagined Karen Miller’s throat in his grasp and tightened his grip another notch. Before he could extract any satisfaction from the image of her gasping for her final breath, she renewed her attack.
“Do I have to do this myself?” she hissed in a tone that left no doubt she had him pegged as totally inept at his job.
He thought better of telling her she’d be better off jumping out the fucking window and drew a deep breath to stabilize the rage before responding. “No Ma’am.”
He paused again, considering whether he should explain or defend the changes he made to the Steering Committee presentation that she would deliver as her own work the next morning. Actually, this version of the presentation represented the fifth attempt to author bullet points in a series of seven slides.
She came at him again. “I just don’t understand it. I tell you what I want, and you just don’t seem to get it. What is this, the tenth try?”
Hank approached his limit but fought to maintain his usual calm. “Fifth.”
“I give you my line of thinking, and all I ask is…”
Hank interrupted, making a rare show of conviction. “And all you do is change your mind because I’ve given you something that makes you think differently. Almost every change I’ve suggested you’ve kept. How can this be my fault?”
Hank could not understand how she ignored the fact that his thoughts enhanced her thinking, improving content and context for making her case effectively to the Steering Committee. Committee members were not the kind of people who sit around and get starry-eyed over a list of new technology to fund. These people want business impact’return on investment. They will stroke a check for two million dollars but only if they are convinced the investment would return ten million back to the business in a year. But did his dumb-shit boss get it? Fuck no, she was hell-bent on impressing senior leadership that she is tech savvy and that tech is the solution even though it would be more impactful if postured as the enabler.
“It’s your fault because you don’t understand the technology,” she snapped.
He stiffened at that accusation. He did understand the technology. In fact, he was the one who developed the Technology Roadmap that she smugly took credit for a month earlier. She understood technology too, but she had no sense of how to position the benefits to the people who held the purse strings. Hank’s jaw muscles rippled; the only other sign of his frustration. He grew weary of constantly carrying the burden of protecting his boss from herself. Rarely did outward appearances or the tone in his voice contradict his respectful demeanor despite her antagonistic onslaught. He never challenged her because it would cost him his job. Too many had gone before him to not heed the value of history. The time had come to use his soft touch and try the “I feel” approach.
“You know what, Ms. Miller? I feel like you don’t appreciate the depth of my experience at this kind of…”
Hank had to pull the phone away from his ear when she erupted. “Appreciate this, Hank! Appreciate the fact that I’ll finish this for you. And appreciate that I’ll include your insubordinate attitude in your performance review next week. I know exactly what I need to do to finally fix this presentation.”
He knew when she turned up the volume the blades were exposed and time to back away had arrived. He exhaled heavily. “Okay. Do you want the couple of changes I’ve already made to this version or do you want…”
“Send me what you’ve done. I’ll try to sort it out myself.”
“Yes Ma’am.” In a couple of clicks the email with the new version attached left for another building across campus. “You should see it any second.”
“Yes, I have it. Why don’t you spend some time working on your self-evaluation? Maybe you can convince me how deep your experience goes in something that matters.”
He held the phone to his ear until he heard the connection click off on the distant end. With an uncharacteristic display of anger, he threw the receiver in the direction of the base unit on his desk and muttered under his breath, “Bitch!”
Hank pushed back from his desk and swiveled in his chair absently surveying the real estate of his tiny cubical. As hard as he thought about the exchange, he could not come up with a shred of justification for her to treat him that way. Every project he’d been involved in had his fingerprints all over it. She always took his work and used it verbatim. She always took his changes and made them her own. And she always treated him like a piece of dirt under her fingernails, flicking him and the value of his contribution away before admiring how perfect she looked once his presence was removed.
“Dude, you’ve got skin a foot thick.” Doug, his neighbor in the cubicle across from his, rolled back in his chair and made eye contact with Hank. “I’d have told the bitch to take her presentation and shove it up her ass.”
Hank cocked his head. “How’d you know what we were talking about?”
“You forget I used to work for that she-devil, and I’ve had the same kind of conversation a hundred times.”
Hank grunted acknowledgement and rocked back in his chair. “Sixty-third for me.”
“I’m tellin’ you, man. She’ll take every shred of intelligence you give her and run upstairs to position how fucking smart she is — and she’ll do that every time.”
“Sixty-third time,” Hank repeated, nodding his head in agreement.
Doug looked at his watch. “C’mon. Let’s go get a beer. I’m buying. I’ll take you someplace you can forget about that barracuda and get a little respect for your contributions. If you’re lucky, maybe a little wood to go with it.”
“Naw, Doug, you know I’m not into that crap.”
Hank knew Doug meant the source of respect he too could earn would come at a price of two bucks a pop and twenty dollars for every lap dance at Temptress Moon, a local strip club. That kind of entertainment never appealed to Hank. For some reason it just seemed wrong that the same woman he might see fully clothed at the mall could transform somehow under a black light and strip down to nothing but high-heels and a smile for a fist full of two-dollar bills. How different was that from partial prostitution? True, nobody got fucked in the literal sense but everything mental and emotional attribute of fucking had to be confronted in his mind and in his heart. He always refused the invitation to partake, but Doug nevertheless asked him to go with him on every visit.
Doug leaned toward him, propping his elbows on his thighs. “Right. You’re just a little faggot who’s into getting’ your ass chewed by a heartless bitch who’s been riding you around like a cheap foreign car and…”
Hank launched his ink pen at Doug’s grinning face. “Fuck you, jerk-off.”
Doug ducked out of the line of fire and howled with laughter. “That’s what you’ve been getting here, dude — fucked. Sixty-three times fucked if I heard you right.”
Hank knew he’d just endured another bout of being on the receiving end of a good screwing over. Truth be known, that kind of thing had happened a lot more times than the sixty-three at the hands of Karen Miller. All his life he had been the one giving and never taking anything except whatever bone might be thrown his way. Maybe the time had come to go do a little taking for himself.
Doug stood up and threw on his topcoat. “Drop the holier-than-thou bullshit, and let’s go drink some beer and have some big ol’ titties in our face and some sweet ass grinding in our laps.”
Hank stood up and jammed an arm into his leather jacket, glaring at his cube-mate. “Okay! Okay, I’ll go, but there’ll be nothing rubbed in this face even if it’s free.”
Doug laughed and clapped his hand on Hank’s back as they headed for the door. “That’s what every virgin titty-bar patron says. Your fucking cheeks’ll be chapped before you take your first pee.”
Hank shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and stepped through the office door that a confidently grinning Doug held open. “Not fucking likely.”
* * *
The purple neon script flickered on the word “Moon” on the sign out front of the battered and weathered old building when they pulled into the parking lot. Doug drove, and despite several near-collisions, Hank concentrated on justification for allowing himself to be talked into being there. Everything about what he planned to do smacked of contradiction of who he believed himself to be. He was single, so going to a strip club had no implications of deception or chicanery to hide his foray into the world of promiscuous women. But he had a hard time justifying paying for a woman to strip in front of him. Something about that whole transaction stuck in is craw.
Twelve dollars later and the back of his hand stamped, Hank walked into the cavern that looked exactly like he always pictured it would look. A darkened fog of cigarette smoke drifted in too many black lights, and a plentiful odor of beer and a stale anticipation of implied debauchery flooded his senses. Three scantily clad women leaned on the bar engaged in conversation with a couple of men about whatever people in these places talked about. A much-too-loud voice blurted over the sound system, competing with the thud of background music to announce an exotic line-up of pure platinum dancers, and be sure to tip your servers. Hank felt like he had just boarded the express train to Hell.
Van Halen pounded in his ears as Doug pointed across the room and leaned close to Hank to shout their good fortune. “C’mon, we’re early, and there’s the perfect spot right over there.”
Everything felt foreign. Doug towed Hank through the scattered furniture. They walked right past some open seats that looked perfectly fine to Hank, but Doug appeared to have a sense of what would be even better. As it tuned out, they each had front row love seats in the shadows on the far side of the stage. Within seconds of their butts landing in the comfort of simulated leather a thong-clad server queried them over how they planned to become inebriated. Doug went with beer, and Hank embraced his usual Jack on the rocks.
Hank could not help but notice flawless ass cheeks depart for the bar with their order and mouthed his appreciation. “Whoa!”
Doug saw his friend’s preoccupation and intervened to properly set the stage. “Dude, that shit’s tame. Wait until you feast your eyes on Diamond.”
“Diamond?”
“Yeah, she’s got tits that I swear to God are real. Seriously, they exceed the limits of what’re handed out to the natural born female population.”
Hank said nothing but could not help imagining some grotesque overly-titted wench in a thong dancing for his personal pleasure — and his cash, and not necessarily in that order. The images he conjured in his mind didn’t do much to comfort his actually being in this place, and he was slightly less than a heartbeat away from calling a cab to leave.
“Mmmm, I can hardly wait,” muttered Hank under his breath.
Doug leaned toward him. “What? I can’t hear you.”
“I said I can’t wait!” This time leaving off the sarcasm. No sense ruining his friend’s evening too. The song ended, and the DJ jumped in to welcome all the early birds, and confirming how lucky they were to be in the good seats. He promised the show would be the best ever; the girls were the hottest in town; and the servers needed to be remembered when it became time to tip. The line-up of dancers included stage names of nearly every gem stone and precious metal on the planet with a Tiffany, Relish, Sinful Cindy, and oddly enough, a Stephanie to round out the evening’s program. Hank sat quietly, shaking his head on the inside, reflecting how detached everything felt from life outside this artificial place. Could it be that Diamond was more valuable than Ruby or Emerald? Were platinum dancers Olympic-quality strippers compared to the lowly solid gold dancers?
Tits spilled out of a bustier in front of his face. “Here’s your JD, sir. Enjoy!”
Hank dropped six bucks for a five dollar drink on her tray and dismissed her with a smile and a nod. She smiled back and turned and stuck her exquisite ass in his face as she bent down to deliver Doug’s Bud Lite. For a moment he felt indebted. Logic swelled in his brain. Never had an ass so perfect been so close to his face. That had to be worth something. He grinned, and laughed out loud.
Hank’s reaction to shake his head in disbelief garnered a response from Doug as the server departed. “What?”
Hank leaned toward Doug. “I can’t believe that woman just stuck her ass in my face like that.” Doug howled and raised his beer in a toast. “Welcome to Temptress Moon, my man. I swear to God, dude, that’s only the beginning of what’ll be in your face and…in your lap before the night’s over.”
Hank returned his friend’s toast and swallowed another sarcastic ‘I can’t wait’ with a long sip of his JD rocks.
* * *
The music started with something by Lynnrd Skynnrd and danced to by Emerald, one of the Platinum dancers. A skimpy top that barely covered nipples, a thong, high, high heels, and a drop-dead gorgeous smile floated across the stage taunting, teasing, and thrusting everything sexual at any man that would look. Hank held his drink, his second sip, inches from his lips, frozen in place by the grace of this woman. Sure the tits had to be store-bought, and Emerald certainly wasn’t her name, but Jesus, the woman could move. When she hit the pole and swung those incredible legs upward, he had a whole new appreciation for the talent required to be a stripper. Still, two sips of Jack Daniels hadn’t been enough to validate his participation no matter how fucking acrobatic a woman with plastic tits could be gyrating and humping upside-down on a brass pole.
“Whooowaaa!” howled Doug when the music stopped, jumping up and standing at the edge of the stage waiting for Emerald to work her way through the crowd of front row men to take his contribution in the garter on her thigh.
Doug turned to Hank and hooted before sitting down. “Can you fucking believe that?”
“What? Believe that you just stuffed five bucks in to the garter of a woman with artificial tits?”
Doug flopped in his seat. “Fuck dude. They’re tits. They’re huge. Who the fuck cares if they’re not real?”
Hanks took another draw off his JD and muttered, “I rest my case.”
The evening progressed with more of the same kind of display of embedded silicon, legs longer than life and smiles that promised a rapid collection of cash. Hank sat and watched men within the glow of the stage lights fall in love and lust with a hundred smiles and as many winks as the music and drinks were pounded in unison. He found watching the other clowns turning loose of their money to be more entertaining than the women gyrating on the stage. Things went to a whole new level when the first few dancers started working the crowd on the floor for the infamous twenty dollar lap dances. He turned down at least as many as Doug accepted.
“Doug, how many lap dances are you going to buy?”
Doug sat slouched down in his seat with the weight of a half dozen beers and as many ass prints in his pants and grinned. “When the money’s gone, the honeys are gone.”
Three Jack Daniels and seven more dancers did little to change Hank’s mood. The urge to call a cab and leave Doug to his devices became stronger. The DJ made an additional flourish when he introduced the next dancer, Stephanie. The music began and strains of Purple Rain foretold of a long set.
Lithe did not begin to describe this woman. Everything about her seemed so perfect. She stood tall in her heels, even her tits looked different…like real breasts were intended to look. There was something else about her that refused to let Hank’s eyes stray. He locked on to every move she made. Calf muscles flexed as she stabbed a foot down hard in front of him. Something was very different. He could not put his finger on it at first, but then it came to him. No eye contact. Stephanie did not work the crowd with her eyes. She danced like she was alone in the room. The other men were watching closely too. The hoots and general raucous behavior shifted into something more subdued and focused. She moved like a cat with her eyes down-cast firing off only an occasional glance that stabbed deep into the soul of the eyes that happened to meet hers. Even then, she released them as soon as she struck.
Stephanie knew her music and every single move seemed orchestrated as though it belonged as part of the song. When she threw her head hard to the right, her eyes fell on Hank. The breath in his lungs evaporated like he’d been kicked in the chest. He had to sit back in his seat under the weight of a glance that grew into something else, refusing to look away, refusing to release him for another man. She turned to face him, hips swaying to match the rhythm booming in his ears. Fuck-me red fingernails traced the path she wanted his eyes to follow, and he had no choice but to obey. For the first time, Hank felt like he was supposed to be there. Justification came for outside of his own efforts, from five-feet-ten-inches of a power he could not understand.
Hank left his seat and walked to the edge of the stage as though he was in a hypnotic trance. Stephanie’s eyes never released him, reeling him in. Being released was well down the list of what Hank wanted at that moment. He stood there spellbound and watched her dance. Her eyes never left his as she reached behind her neck to untie the strings that held her bikini top in place. With three quick strides she closed the distance between them and fell to her knees, her nose only a foot from his and dropped the strings in front of her. Her bikini top remained in place, although the top edges curled away under the weight of the loose strings.
She leaned down as thought she wanted to kiss him and stopped a few inches in front of his face. Bottomless dark-brown eyes redefined control of his soul. Over the music he barely heard her request. “Pull my top off for me.”
The desire to rip her top off collided with the embarrassment of her request. This was not the way he wanted to undress her. Not in a room full of men who did not appreciate her beauty. He hesitated and looked down at the curve of her breasts, the scant top barely hanging in place. The slightest touch would unclothe her, exposing her gift to him and to the rest of the room. His eyes went back to hers filled with doubt and selfishness. He opened his mouth to speak, but the fire in her eyes sucked what breath he might use from his chest.
She leaned closer, her cheek brushing his. Her scent flooded into his senses, transporting him beyond the Jack Daniel’s buzz to a new level of intoxication. She put both arms around his neck and whispered into his ear. “I want you to see my tits first. No one else. Just you.”
Her arms tightened around his neck and her fingers closed in his hair. There was something sexually urgent in the way her muscles and fingers tensed. “Pull the strings down, and look at my tits. I’m giving them to you.”
Hank’s cock was as hard as it had ever been. She kept her head beside his, her fingers flexing and clenching in his hair in time with the music. Every beat encouraged him, every second this beauty rested her arms around his neck did nothing but embolden him beyond the embarrassment that held him fast. Fingers closed on the strings, and his eyes fell to watch the garment drop away.
Her nipples stood at full attention, adding another layer to the perfection he already admired. She rocked with the music, throwing her head back and arched her back, bringing her breasts even closer to his face. He refused to look away. Her fingers flexed hard against his scalp, and she dropped her head back next to his and spread her knees apart, nearly touching him with her breasts. “I want to let you lick my nipples. Just you, lover. Just you.”
Hank could not breathe. Hank could not believe. She released him and stood tall in front of him, gyrating her hips only inches from his face before striding away to let some undeserving fuck see breasts that she had promised to him. To punctuate her impact on Hank, Stephanie looked back over her shoulder as she knelt in front of another man who had stepped to the edge of the stage. It felt good to be special. It felt so fucking good to be special.
“Dude, are you ever going to sit down or what?” Doug crowed over the music. “Why didn’t you give her some money? That’s what you do, asshole. They show you their tits, and you give them money. Jesus, do I have to draw you a fucking map?”
Hank turned to Doug with an offended look on his face. “It wasn’t like that, man!”
Doug flopped back in his seat and howled. “He’s in fucking love. Oh…My…God. Been here, what, two hours and he’s in fucking love with a stripper?”
Hank turned back to the stage and watched Stephanie kneel in front of another guy and flinched as he stuffed cash underneath the waist string on her thong. He bristled, transitioning his feelings through as many emotions as dancers he’d seen that night. Part of him was angry at Doug for bringing him to this place. Part of him demanded he defend his relationship with Stephanie. And part of him felt crushed by the betrayal of her sharing those perfect breasts with other men when he had been the one she wanted most of all.
Hank did not know what to feel or what to do until he looked at her again. It seemed like his gaze touched her, and she looked back over her shoulder at him—only at him. The feeling of being special came back in a rush. She stood and walked back to him and knelt again. She leaned back down, brushing his cheek with hers once more. “Do you think I was kidding?”
Before he could answer she rose up and turned away, pulled by the music, once more dancing like no one else could see her move. He reached out with a ten-dollar bill in his hand and waited for her to turn back in his direction. As she turned and saw him standing there with his contribution in hand, she smiled and shook her head, refusing his offering and mouthed the words, “Just you.”
“See, you pissed her off,” Doug squawked. “You should’ve given her the fucking money the first time, ya dumb ass rookie.”
The parade of dancers that followed did not matter. The music that blared in the background mattered even less. Topless girls circulated among the patrons soliciting lap dances right and left, but there was no sign of Stephanie. Hank scanned the room, ignoring the stage dancers completely, his eyes glued to the curtained-doorway where the girls came and went.
He jumped when a soft hand landed on his shoulder. “Have you been waiting for me?”
Hanks looked up into the depths of the brown eyes of his queen. The grin on his face gave away every chance of remaining composed. He could not speak, so he nodded like a school-boy being offered a favorite candy treat. At that moment, they were the only two people in the room, her eyes capturing every shred of his attention. She stepped in front of him and wedged her legs between his and forced his knees apart. He could only look into her eyes, though every ounce of manhood said to look at the rest of her beauty. Stephanie leaned forward and grabbed the back of his loveseat and looked down at him, saying nothing, watching his eyes. They never broke the powerful connection between them. She stepped over his thighs and knelt on the loveseat, straddling him. Hank’s heart pounded like a jackhammer in his chest and his cock throbbed in precise syncopation.
Stephanie looked over one shoulder then the other and leaned close to his ear. “We’re not allowed to do this, so wait until I lean close. I want your mouth on my tits, but you can’t look like that’s what you’re doing. Okay? Slouch down a little so I can ride that cock of yours.”
How could he refuse? His voice failed him again, but his lips speaking his agreement in silence gave her the okay she needed. He shifted downward in his seat, and she nestled onto his lap, her legs widening and dropping her into contact with hard evidence she was a professional at work. Stephanie looked away and arched her back, running both hands up and into the auburn curls that fell about her shoulders. She swayed to the music, and her hips rotated, grinding against his aching cock. She scanned the room as she swayed and then leaned close to him, a breast brushing his lips, a nipple as hard as stone begging for the heat of his tongue.
Her hands came back down and gripped the back of the loveseat and she ground down hard on his cock and stiffened, leaning forward and pressing her nipple to his lips. “Now. Suck it hard. Now, Jesus-God!”
Hank did not need any more encouragement. He sucked her nipple into his mouth and licked it with his tongue, pinching and rolling it between his upper teeth. Stephanie pressed herself hard against his mouth, her hips bucking as she moaned and quivered in his lap. Hank nearly came in his pants when she got off against him. That had never happened to him before in his life. Her hair fell forward and covered his face as he continued to lick and suckle her breast. She caressed his head with one of her hands and leaned back, shaking the hair from her face and scooting back onto his thighs. Eyes flashed along with a big smile. “Wow, that was nice.”
Hank became her echo. “Wow, that was amazing.”
Stephanie rose from the loveseat and stood in front of him, the smell of her sex filling his senses. His only desire was the one thing he knew he could not have, though ever fiber of his being knew right then it belonged to him. Reaching into his pocket he fished out a twenty-dollar bill and folded it to tuck it along side the others in her thong, but she pushed his hand away. “This one’s on me, lover.” She turned on her heel and walked away, turning to look back at him and blowing a kiss. Hank just sat there, his cock throbbing in his pants, stunned that the most gorgeous woman in the place had just sat down in his lap and shared a fucking orgasm with him.
“Told you that if you were lucky you’d get a little wood,” laughed Doug.
Hank just looked at his friend and rolled his eyes. “Fuck. Did you see what she did?”
“Yup. Seen her do that every now and then. Picks out one guy and does that ultimate lap dance. Gets off like a rocket. Guess it was your lucky night, bud.”
The last set came and went, but Stephanie never danced again that evening. Hank felt like he had been chosen for some reason he could not understand. Maybe this was his reward for being a good guy and living with all the shit his work-life threw at him. Maybe this was his reward for being the tolerant one. Truthfully, it did not matter why, only that it did happen. He and Doug headed for the door as the house lights came up. Hank wanted to see her again. He wanted to relive that special moment she shared with him. He liked being treated like royalty’treated like a king by the Queen of Temptress Moon.
© 2007 G. Gregory. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.