Pier Lights (4 page)

Sandy had started to heckle quietly but
stopped. This girl wasn’t going anywhere. She had a hell of a lot
of potential, although obviously inexperienced. Not with dance. She
knew dance. Even small and tan, she yanked attention and had them
pulled in to her movement. Her back bends were fabulous: her head
nearly brushed the floor and she came up slowly, very slowly,
perfectly in control of her body.

She played with the skirt, rubbed it away
from one leg as a hand slid up from her knee to her inner thigh to
her outer thigh, up her hip. Someone yelled at her to take it off.
She eyed the screamer directly and moved away, to the other side,
teased with her skirt, her body, her gaze. She looked at them. Most
new girls didn’t dare. They kept their gaze anywhere but at the
audience.

No wonder Sandy called her cocky. Dio would
call her confident. Sexy. Sensual. Beautiful. Intriguing. He could
think of a hell of a lot of names to call her, but he’d missed her
introduction through Sandy’s chatter. He bent toward her to
ask.

“Lina. And wow, I doubt she’s going
anywhere, no matter how mad Hayes gets.”

No. If he had been mad, Hayes wouldn’t be
now, not after this first performance. The girl probably lied. She
wasn’t inexperienced. Not by far. Not even the closers were this
good, this confident.

“What singer is this?”

Sandy shrugged. “I only listen to men. Can’t
stand girl singers.”

Dio rolled his eyes. Her voice was fairly
deep for a “girl singer” and sensual, as sensual as Lina’s
movements.

The skirt slipped from around her waist.
Unlike most of the girls who wore skimpy bikini bottoms, Lina wore
what looked like the new swim bottoms, short skin-tight shorts. She
played with the band by running fingers along the top edge, pulled
them down only enough to tease. Screeches from the audience told
her to take more off. She could only take so much more off. Most of
the girls took off their tops. Bottoms had to stay on. Dio was just
as glad. He preferred a little something left to the imagination,
and he didn’t want to see quite that much of his coworkers. Breasts
were good, though. He hoped she would take off the top.

But she ended the song still covered. And
they yelled for her anyway.

Dio had planned to introduce himself when
she was done, but he changed his mind. Not tonight. He was too
turned on by her, and he had to be able to perform later.

~4~

Caroline was ready for a night off by
Tuesday. Saturday and Sunday, she’d left before the end, although
she wanted to see the closer. She found the experience more
exhausting than she expected.

And she wanted to hit the beach, to
unwind.

Okay, she might as well be honest with
herself. She’d wanted to catch her swordsman if he was still there.
He hadn’t been. Caroline tried to convince herself she wasn’t
really as disappointed as she felt she was. It was just a guy with
a sword. So what? Honestly, she could be so childish at times.

Monday night, last night – had it only just
been last night? – she stayed until the end. Again she was
disappointed. The older lady in dark red closed on Monday. Caroline
wasn’t too impressed. She was flirty. She was very flirty, and very
open. And her breasts were still in good shape for her age, not too
saggy, no stretch marks, at least not apparent from stage. But she
was a bad dancer.

Of course, she was a stripper, not a dancer.
They weren’t the same. Similar. Not the same.

With a sigh, Caroline spread her towel on
the sand and slipped out of her sarong. She’d worn a very small
bikini this time, and she relished the way men nearby turned to
leer. She made a show of it; she realized she already enjoyed
putting on a show with her body, allowing appreciation of what
she’d worked so hard for so many years to have. Slowly, she took
the elastic band off her wrist and bent her head back slightly to
gather her medium length boring colored hair and twirled it into a
ponytail high on her head. Then she tossed her head so it swished
like a horse’s mane and, again slowly, settled on her towel, on her
back, her feet propped flat-footed and her knees up and parted,
slightly, not vulgar. Dark sunglasses shielded her eyes from the
glaring sun. It would lower soon. She would enjoy the heat for a
while, take a long swim, then return to lie on her front and leave
her barely covered rear to catch whatever rays were left for the
day. It was time for a tan. Ballerinas didn’t have tans, but
strippers did.

As dark descended, Caroline would sip at her
thermos of red wine that would look only like she was drinking
water, and munch on the few things she’d thrown in her little
cooler. Fresh cut veggies. Rolled up ham and cheese. Crackers. And
she’d wait for a glimpse of him.

Dio looked forward to being at work.

He worked Saturday and Sunday nights, had
Monday off, and worked Tuesday. Then not again until Saturday. Most
often he loved Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday when he could go to
bed early and recover from the rest of the week. This week, he
resented not being there, not being able to see her. The new girl.
He’d missed her last night. He looked forward to her tonight.

Sandy slapped his rear as she walked past.
“Gonna come home with me tonight?”

“Same answer as last time.”

“Yeah, yeah, no coworkers. Don’t know why,
though. Think I can’t be as good as some bimbo you take home after
she sticks money down your pants? I can do better than that.” She
slid her fingers into the waistband of his elasticized black
pants.

Dio didn’t stop her. It had been some time
since he took some bimbo back to her place. Never home. He would
never take them home. Even if it was just Sandy, the touch helped
him prepare for the show. It turned him on, only enough, as he
watched her tease. When she teased far enough he considered hauling
her to a back room, he leaned down, pulled his mask up just enough,
and kissed her neck, not enough to leave a mark, but close. Her
body relaxed, her head dropped back.

And he walked away.

If she wanted to tease, he could play that
game. He chuckled as she cursed him.

Caroline gave up. It was after one in the
morning and she shouldn’t have let herself sit out there and wait
for him for so long. The ocean air had turned chilly. Sick was the
last thing she needed. She’d danced sick plenty often. Unless you
were near death as a ballerina, you danced. Otherwise, those just
below you swooped in fast, got a chance to prove they could do it
if you couldn’t. She wouldn’t take that chance. She danced sick.
She danced in hellish pain. She danced. And she never let it show
on her face.

The girl at the club the night before had
irked her to no end as she whined like she’d never had cramps
before and never had to work through them. Caroline barely kept
herself from telling her to shut up and get the hell over it. She
managed to hold her tongue. The girl got Hayes to let her go home
early.

Baby.

Caroline never danced anymore without pain.
Never. That was part of dance, of the job of dance. You get over it
and get through it and that’s how you get on top, where she was, or
had been, very nearly on top.

Pain or not, though, some things kept you
from getting there.

It didn’t matter anymore. She would get
there this time. All the way there.

Although tonight, she wouldn’t mind being on
top in a fully different way. Maybe next time Mr. Big Sword showed
himself, she would make that intention known.

Payback was pure hell.

The new girl was off tonight. He would miss
her again. It had to be payback for giving in to Sandy’s level of
torment. Dio tried to stay above that level, above the nastiness
and jealousy and game playing in the club. Most nights it worked.
Some nights, though, his frustration took hold and he gave in to
it. Like he had tonight.

It was payback.

The thought of not seeing her again made his
own performance far more lackluster than it should have been. Hayes
bitched at him. Dio didn’t argue. It wasn’t the first time. Far
from it. But no one had the skill he had. No one could jump in and
fill the role if Hayes got rid of him. And his act mattered more
than his looks. That’s what women came to see, and Hayes knew it
well enough. They liked the danger of it. The glimmer. The fear.
The thrill.

No one could provide that in the same
way.

One of these next nights, the new girl would
be there long enough to see it. And he may be damned to hell for
it, but Dio was going to make sure she had the thought of going
home with him, more than the thought. He wanted her to lust after
him more than she had after any man in the world.

And then he’d say no. She was a coworker. He
didn’t do coworkers. Just the thought of it would add more spark to
his shows.

He would damn sure go to hell for how turned
on the idea made him.

So be it.

~5~

Caroline woke up thinking of him. What was
wrong with her? It was just a guy with a sword. So what? The guys
at the club, her fellow performers, were also well built, not quite
as well, but well enough, and talented with their bodies. The one
she hadn’t seen yet she’d heard was the biggest draw, but he only
worked a few nights and his next night wouldn’t be till
Saturday.

Damn she was turned on. The big sword had
flooded her thoughts far too late into the early morning. If she
was a guy, she knew she’d be hard as hell. And she hadn’t even had
her coffee.

Shoving her blanket away, Caroline got out
of bed and cursed. Her foot hurt. A lot. She knew she’d turned
wrong the night before, in the sand, when she thought she saw a
glimmer as she left the beach and pivoted toward it. Too fast. Too
careless. She’d felt the pop, had to sit down long enough to
massage it back to where she could walk home. And damn it hurt
today. It would be a long night at work as she forced herself to
hide it.

It nearly pulled her thoughts from the sword
guy, though. Not quite. It was too intense, her vision of him. Of
course as always her thoughts made him far more intriguing than he
would be if she got to know him, if she knew what he did on a daily
basis. She always did. She always fantasized men into more than
they were and the reality when it whacked her in the face always
knocked her over.

So this time it wouldn’t. This time she
would enjoy her fantasy and never meet him. Her fantasies were
always kick ass. Her reality couldn’t ever compare. She didn’t ever
expect it to compare, unlike a lot of naive women who thought they
could have a fantasy man in real life.

Caroline laughed as she hobbled to the
shower and turned it all the way to the hottest position. At least
she could separate her fantasy from reality. At least she learned
from her earlier mistakes. That was more than many women did. They
just kept on looking for Mr. Perfect who would never exist.

Let them. If that’s what got them through
their days, let them have at it. She would find something more
real, something temporary and fleeting and passionate ... and then
she’d move on first.

Not with Mr. Big Sword. Him, she would not
meet. She would not use and leave him. She would admire him from
the shadowy distance and make him into anything she wanted and
refuse to let that burst into nothing by actually meeting him.

Although she did have to wonder if his other
sword was just as appealing, just as...

Of course it was. He was a fantasy. She
would make him anything she pleased. Of course it was. He was
magnificent. Big. Broad. Muscled. Controlled. Oh, so very
controlled. And so very uncontrolled.

Damn. The pain couldn’t even begin to
distract her from that.

~6~

Dio rowed out from their dock out along the
shore, down toward the pier. Tomorrow night he could go back to
work. He was tempted to go tonight, to see her. But the day had
been long, too long, and he needed time alone to unwind under the
stars.

He’d waited later than normal, until his
mother was finally asleep through her congestion. He worried when
she got sick, even a little summer cold as she called it. She told
him again to find a nice girl so he’d still have someone around for
him once she wasn’t, someone to cook for him and to look after
things for him, to talk to at night.

He told her he could cook just fine and look
after things just fine. Talk didn’t matter. He’d rarely talked to a
girl who held his interest enough, or agreed with his views well
enough, to be worth the trouble. He only needed one for his
physical needs and he could do that with bimbos from the audience,
while in costume, when they didn’t know who he was.

He wouldn’t again risk trying for more, not
with the way things were. It wasn’t worth the heartache.

And he wouldn’t allow himself more
heartache.

Anchoring his boat to his normal spot since
he wasn’t interested in exploring tonight or in seeking new waters,
Dio stripped out of his clothes, other than the black shorts, and
picked up his sword. He started with easy warm ups, rotations,
thrusts, bends that rocked his boat but only as far as it would
still hold him. He knew exactly how far he could push and when he
had to rein in and shorten his movements.

There was something exhilarating in taking
it almost all the way to the edge and then pulling it back. It was
something perverse in his nature, he expected. Or it was
learned.

Either way, it was part of him. And it would
drive a “nice girl” right over the edge. His mom didn’t understand.
She saw only his good side. She didn’t know what dwelled within
that would be unfair to lay on some nice girl’s shoulders. He
couldn’t do it.