Chapter Nine

Georgia checked her face in the mirror of an old Ford pickup parked on the curb outside the Candy Lounge.

Perfect, the girls back at RagStar had helped touch up her makeup before offering to carry the many shopping bags full of complimentary stock out to her car. Not that she had a car–the very thought! Georgia was an environmentalist–but it did occur to her she could probably get one now if she really wanted…

No, that sort of thinking was a slippery slope and she wasn’t Vince. Georgia wasn’t going to take advantage of people more than she strictly needed to set things right. She simply had Linh carry the bags for her instead.

The shop attendants hadn’t needed to do much and said so. A hint of lip liner to bring out her small cupid's bow of a mouth, a little mascara to thicken her long lashes. It was as though the faint acne scars Georgia used to hide under layers of foundation and powder had vanished and her cheek bones looked sharp enough to cut down whole forests.

Linh had found a display of fake lashes and two inch long monstrosities now clung to her lids–heavy with lilac eye shadow–like bat wings.

“Ummm, babe? What are we doing at the strip club?” Linh asked, grunting as she shifted her heavy load.

“Seeking allies.” She replied, tugging at the strap pulled taut across her chest. It dug into her pliant flesh more than it had back in the shop and rubbed tantalizingly across her stiff nipples. That seemed a little strange but was hardly unpleasant. “How’s the setting, do you need me to adjust it?”

Georgia reached for the small plastic remote in her clutch but Linh stopped her with an outflung hand that trembled like the strings of a violin.

“No! No… it’s good. Great, really.” She groaned, her knees on the verge of knocking together and her fine featured face glistening with perspiration. “It’s way up in there, you know? Pulsing right against my sweet spot. I can’t take too much more without humiliating myself.”

Georgia felt oddly disappointed. The sex shop owner, a kindly older lady with her gray hair tied up in a neat bun, had been positively enthusiastic about showing off their range of vibrating eggs. The model they had chosen was purple and came with a wireless remote that allowed Georgia to toy with her roommate at her leisure.

Something about that appealed to Georgia and she pouted a little as she let her hand drop to her side. Did she really want to see Linh fall to her knees on a public street and cry out her climax for everyone to hear?

No, of course not but at the same time…

“Keep it together then.” She huffed as she turned to the big muscle-bound bouncer leaning lazily against the glass entry booth beside the doors to the Candy Lounge. They were lined in pink velvet and the giant of a man looked half asleep. “I am here to see the Limponi brothers. You will let me in.”

A small breeze ruffled her straight inky hair and blew a few discarded cigarette butts down the cracked downtown sidewalk. The hulking man’s nostrils flared and his beady eyes visibly dilated.

“Su-Sure thing.” He said as his large pumped-up body seemed to deflate in on itself like a ruptured air mattress. “Are you one of the new dancers? The bosses have been looking for new talent but I gotta warn you, the crowd here is pretty rough.”

“They wish.” Georgia said with a disdainful sniff as he held the door open for her and she swept past. “I’m here to save their business. To save everyone. Come, Linh.”

“Yes, Georgie.” The athletic little Asian gasped, bustling in behind her with an anxious expression and the rustling of paper shopping bags.

“That blonde bitch thinks she can poach our girls?” Rocco Limponi roared.

Rocco and his brother Tommy were seated at a booth at the back of the dimly lit club. The place was all but deserted. The music was at a low volume with one lonely looking brunette in an emerald bikini halfheartedly spinning around the pole for the small smattering of patrons who appeared more interested in the greasy all-you-can-eat fried chicken buffet than her dancing.

Well, it was lunchtime on a Sunday. Georgia imagined the holy rollers didn’t get their rocks off until after evening mass.

“There isn’t much we can do about it until she has them actually doing something illegal.” Tommy replied sourly, chewing on a foul smelling cigar. “So far they are just parading about that shithole of a bar in those slutty little uniforms and shaking their skanky asses at each other. There’s no breach of her license in that.”

Both men were built large and oily. Layers of old muscle covered in rolls of fat stuffed into cheap pinstripe suits and topped with slicked back manes of jet black hair. Gold chains glittered in the nests of dark chest hair sprouting from half unbuttoned dress shirts and the heavy gold watches on their wrists might have been genuine Rolex’s but Georgia doubted it as she glided up to the table.

“In the meantime I’m **** to put my midweek girls in our prime weekend time slots?” Rocco raged, heedless of who might be listening. “Look at Claire up there. She couldn’t drum up pennies for bus fare with an ass that flat.”

Poor Claire either wasn’t listening or was numb to the harsh words as her song ended and she began to collect the few paltry tips scattered about the edge of the stage. Bus fare indeed but Georgia didn’t have time to feel sorry for the girl. She stood over the table and waited, watching both of the men expectantly.

“They’ll come crawling back, you’ll see. That bitch can’t afford to be paying all their wages, even at minimum industry standard. Especially since none of her old regulars will go near the place anymore.” Tommy soothed his brother with an expansive wave of the cigar in his meaty hand before noticing Georgia standing there. "You need something, sugartits?”

Sugartits?!

Georgia’s back stiffened and she glared down at her nose at the two brutes, waiting for them to bend and break under her powerfully fragrant presence. Nothing happened. Tommy just leered at her chest while Rocco gave her a quick up and down before leaning sideways to stare past her at Linh.

“You girls looking for work?” Rocco asked, “Know how to dance a pole? We got a few openings if you do.”

“More than a few.” Tommy agreed sourly, puffing out a stinking plume of blue-gray smoke.

The very idea that Georgia would debase herself enough to work in a place solely devoted to reducing women to sex objects had her gritting her teeth.

“I came here looking for two men but all I’ve found is a couple of little boys bickering over their lost toys.” Georgia bit out with a flick of her hair. It felt smoother and glossier than ever under her fingers. “I guess I will have to go search elsewhere.”

The Limponi brothers froze and for a moment Georgia thought she had them until Rocco surged to his feet with a face contorted into a seething snarl.

“The hell did you just say to us?!”

Georgia stumbled backwards a step as the massive slab of a man stalked around the table with his huge fists balled in fury. Why hadn’t it worked? She gasped as he reached out to grab her then smelled it.

The club.

The Candy Lounge was a pungent mess of harsh odors. **** cigar smoke, stale spilled beer and cheap body oil with a dried layer of acrid sweat underlying all of it. Georgia fumbled with her purse for the spray bottle inside but dropped it when Rocco grabbed her by the arms and shook her roughly.

“You’ve got some stones to walk into our club and start giving us shit, you fucking whore…”

“You let her go!” Linh screamed, swinging at his back with the shopping bags. It did little more than send various fripperies of lace, satin and leather flying in a fluffy cloud around the hulking man. “Don’t you dare hurt her!”

Georgia could feel her brain rattling about in her bobbling skull and was about to scream for help when the older Limponi brother slowed his **** and then stopped. He had been about to get up in her face again when his flattened nose twitched and his angry expression began to sag like melting candle wax.

Georgia took a second to calm her fraying nerves and compose herself before changing her tact. She had come at this all wrong, trying to bulldoze two lifelong misogynists with her newfound power. So, instead of pulling away from Rocco’s foul grasp she stepped further into it.

“I’m so sorry.” She murmured, just loud enough for him to hear over the persistent thudding bass of the sound system as she pressed her lithe body against his big barrel chest. “I shouldn’t have said those horrible things.”

The whole club had gone still, watching the strange spectacle as Georgia snuggled up close under the thuggish man’s chin and smoothed her delicate hands up over his broad shoulders.

“Ah, yeah. You shouldn’t have, ummm… miss.” Rocco said with an edge of uncertainty, his breathing deepened.

“Rocco, what are you doing? Throw the dirty skanks out already.”

Georgia turned to Tommy with her pretty face downcast and her hands clasped demurely under her carefully framed chest. “But I need to apologize to you too, Mr Limponi. I didn’t mean it, I’ve just been so scared lately…”

“I ain’t buying any of this bullshit.” Tommy spat, reclining back in his seat with a dismissive wave of his cigar, “We run a strip joint, bitch. This isn’t amateur hour and it isn't my first rodeo. Get the fuck out of my club already.”

“Please, I can’t go back to that place. Back to… the First Edition.” Georgia pleaded, letting a small theatrical quaver enter her voice as she swayed towards the fat, oily toad with her eyes meekly averted. “It’s not right, what is happening over there.”

She spared a surreptitious glance back at Rocco but the big lug was just watching the back of her short swishing skirts with a slack jaw and a growing bulge in his slacks. Clearly not the brains of the operation then.

Tommy seemed less impressed but smirked knowingly as though he was humoring Georgia.

“That old dump? You don’t say.” He drawled, spreading his legs wide as she grew close enough to touch and tapped his knee with the base of his cigar. “Why don’t you take a seat right here, sweet cheeks and tell me all about it.”

Georgia had to hide a smirk of her own as she slid smoothly onto Tommy’s lap, plastering herself to his front and pushing her long raven locks right up under his beak of a nose.

“Do you know anything about a guy named Vince?” She asked in a girlishly innocent tone of voice. She let her dark painted nails trace little circles on the front of his dress shirt. “I think he might have come in here a few times.”

“Can’t say the name rings a bell.” The sleaze was playing with a strand of her shiny hair and raised it to his face to give it a long curious sniff. Georgia suppressed an excited giggle. “But we get all sorts in here.”

“He's giving you trouble, this… Vince guy?” Rocco growled, the swift change in his attitude and the target of his ire sent a deliciously warm shiver down Georgia’s spine.

“He’s making trouble for all of us.” She gestured at Linh to retrieve her dropped handbag before looking up at Tommy Limponi with wide imploring eyes. “He’s the one who took away your dancers. He works for Sammy at the First Edition.”

She wiggled sweetly in his lap and almost crowed in victory when she felt a growing stiffness pressing against her taut little butt.

Stupid little men, so easily led around by their stupid little pricks.

“Tell us more, Doll. Show us where we can find this asshole.” Tommy groaned before he buried his sharp nose in her luxuriant, silky hair.

This time Georgia did let herself grin as she took her new clutch from Linh and reached inside for the glass perfume bottle.

Thanks for reading my latest chapter. If you want to help support my writing or read advanced chapters consider buying me a coffee. Cheers and happy reading!