Page 5 of Cry Baby
The suit fucking itched.
Every seam scratched like a line of ants crawling under my skin, and I tried to pull the expensive collar away from my neck. The fabric scraped the back of my skin and clung too tightly to my shoulders.
I need air.
This shit is suffocating.
I can’t breathe.
Wearing clothes at all felt wrong. Skin was supposed to breathe.
Mistress said the suit made me look “respectable.” She said wealthy men trusted someone who looked expensive.
“You need the wealthy men to trust you, the women to want you, and the boys to envy you.”
Whelp. Here I am.
Twenty years old, wrapped in charcoal wool that probably cost more than the club itself.
My fingers slid along the inside of my sleeve again, letting my nails graze the skin where the irritation had already turned red.
Don’t scratch.
Don’t let them see.
Be normal.
Mistress hated when I scratched at my skin, she hated my paints, and when I counted her freckles out loud.
I withdrew my hand from my sleeve slowly and looked around the bar.
“Introduce yourself. Become part of the scene and make them interested in you. You are masquerading as a businessman, a young entrepreneur, with a price most cannot reach. Use their greed to bring them to me.”
Her words bounced in my head like waves stuck in a glass bottle.
Left to right.
Right to left.
The place pulsed with awful robot music and too many bodies, all smelling of sweat and cigarettes. The walls were covered in blue and violet lights. The strobe effect flashed across the crowd, turning sweat into glitter and shadows into whispers that led to people running off to fuck, probably.
The air smelled like alcohol, too powerful cologne, and a thickness that felt like heat.
I want to paint them, all of them.
It was a perfect hunting ground. Rich men came to bars like this because they were lonely, right? Everything I’d been told blended together, giving me a headache.
These rich guys were bored with their Beverly Hills housewives and annoyed at the hundreds of bastard children mooching off them.
That, or, well…they were just horny.
“Maybe they’re drunk enough to forget the reason why.”
Sometimes it was all of those reasons or more.
“Huh?”
I ignored the guy next to me, not realizing I'd spoken my thoughts aloud, but not really caring either. The man in front of me was cute. Boyish features, sparkly blue eyes, and a tuft of red hair. He wasn’t much older than me and definitely didn’t fit the Mistress’s target plan for the night.
