Page 34 of Shamed
I’m still stuck with the same suffocating guilt that erodes my soul like acid on flesh.
I grip the back of the man’s chair and adjust my knees on either side of his thighs, shaking my tits and rolling my hips. All the while trying to ignore the growing erection in his pants.
Without the safety of my happy place, every bone in my body protests against the actions I’m forcing it to do. My mind revolts against the mental stress it’s enduring.
But I keep going.
You fucking deserve this.
“Do you work in the private rooms as well?”
I resist the urge to recoil. “No.”
It’s not entirely true. Chester requires all of us to work in a private room at least once every six months to give the regular customers a treat and the regular girls a break.
My time in that room is coming up soon. I won’t tell him that, though.
If he ever asked for me, Chester may just send me in there to make the customer happy, even if it wasn’t my scheduled night.
Just the thought of it makes my skin crawl.
How much time does he have left?
“That’s a shame.” Lifting his hands, he moves them around my breasts and hips, as if sliding over my skin, but he keeps an inch of space between his palms and my body.
Seconds feel like minutes, minutes like hours, and thenfinally, the timer on my watch goes off. The song happens to finish at the same time, and I leave him with cash stuffed into my bra.
I want to run.
Run far away from here and hide away from the world, but that life would be a blessing I don’t deserve.
And the night is only getting started.
Six hours later, I hit the bathroom on my way to the dressing room, collapsing onto the toilet seat and burying my face in my hands.
Another night done.
Breathe.
Eyes closed and body curled forward, I allow myself a minute to unravel at the seams, spilling all the emotions that have been trapped inside all night onto the floor.
This is your sentence. Suck it up.
Swallowing, I drag my body to a sitting position, mentally shoving all my thoughts and emotions back inside and covering them with a neutral expression. Another ten seconds passand I get up, walking out of the stall to find a few girls chatting by the sinks.
They mostly work the stage and pole, while I stay on the floor, so we don’t interact a lot—not that I interact a lot with anyone here.
They smile, acknowledging me as they continue their conversation as if they were in a coffee shop, not shimmering with glitter and dressed in tiny pieces of lace and fabric after rubbing their bodies all over a pole or men and women all night. I smile back but quickly leave. They know I’m not chatty, so it’s nothing out of the ordinary.
Tired legs carry me into the dressing room, and the second I reach the vanity I’m assigned to, I fall back onto the chair, peeling off my stilettos and shoving them under the counter. I wiggle my toes and arch my feet with a slight wince, trying to stretch out the ache.
“JJ, you going to come have a drink at my apartment?” Melody asks, leaning a hip against her vanity to the right of mine.
Melody is a beautiful African woman, who I’m sure could be a model if she tried but somehow ended up here. She’s a few inches taller than my five-foot-seven, though she still wears heels that shoot her well above six-foot.
Her gorgeous chocolate eyes stay fixed on me, waiting for an answer, though she already knows what I’ll say.
I see Candy, who’s assigned the vanity on my left side, approaching out of the corner of my eye seconds before her red lips land on my cheek. I internally cringe at the color.
