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“Hey! You must be Zak! I’m Leigh!”
I turn at the sound and find the tiniest orc I’ve ever met standing on stage. She can’t be more than five and a half feet tall, her skin a paler green than mine, and her tusks less pronounced than Kayla’s.She must be a halfling. Kayla didn’t mention that.
“Hey, yeah, it’s nice to meet you.” I walk up to the edge of the stage, shaking her hand, looking up just a little in order to meet her eye. She grins, and the family resemblance to her cousin is uncanny.
“Kayla said you’d be a great fit here, so I’m glad you’ve come along. We’re always looking for new guys to join our team, and diversifying is important to us.” She tucks her hands into the pockets of the coat she’s currently wearing. “It’s almost time for me to do hair and makeup, but I thought I could show you around the space first, introduce you to the guys, and then get you set up at a table here at the front. You’ll be sitting with some of our regulars tonight. They’re excited to have a man sitting with them at the table. They’re a great bunch — really respectful — so you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
I nod. “Sounds good.” I’ve tried my best to have very little expectations coming into tonight — there’s only so much information on their website — but everything so far has seemed reasonable. I climb the stairs leading onto the stage, asking, “So you get regulars?” as I reach the top.
“Yep. Not weekly, but monthly. They’re aspicy book club, actually. A bunch of romance readers and a couple of authors, too. Like I said, they’re harmless.”
I can’t help but grin, taking another look around the place. It feels cosy, almost. Safe.
I think I can do this.
I watchthe guy on stage — a handsome werewolf in nothing but a g-string thong — gyrate above a woman lying on the darkfloor, his crotch hovering over her face, comingso closeto touching her each time his hips roll in a simulation of sex.
I can’t do this.
Around me the room is filled with the delighted squeals of a hundred people — mainly women — with wads of cash waving in the air. The rest of the guys, all stripped down to their thongs after the main group performance, stalk around the room, choosing people at random for lap dances. I haven’t known where to look all night because there’s been so much going on, but now a movement out of the corner of my eye draws my attention, and I stare open-mouthed as a minotaur picks up the entire chair a human woman is sitting on. She’s dressed in a very adult version of a princess costume and I see a flash of her underwear as he presses the chair back against the wall, before doing some sort of jiggling/thrusting move that looksgoodbut borderline boundary-breaking between her spread legs. The squeals from her table are deafening, and when he sets her down once more she’s wearing the biggest grin on her face, herBride to Besash slipping off her shoulder.
“Isn’t it fantastic!”
I nod, wide-eyed, at the woman next to me. She’s one of the authors and, it turns out, a vampire, her grin showing off her two large fangs. Her pale skin is flushed a soft pink around her cheeks and chest — a sign she fed recently — and she laughs, patting me on the back.
“I know it’s a lot at first, but really, this is just a wonderfully empowering show. Look how happy everyone is! And I think you’d do amazing up there. You’ve got the body for it, that’s for sure.”
I shake my head.
“You’ve got rhythm too,” she continues, ignoring the expression on my face. “I saw the way you were bopping along in your seat to the dance before.”
“I just —”
“I am going to beso disappointedif you’re not up there when I come back here next month,” she says insistently, staring at me with her blood-red eyes. “You should do it.”
I open my mouth to reply, but I’m interrupted by the dragon shifter — I think his name was Axel — who suddenly drags back my vampire buddy’s chair. She lets out a whoop of surprise, fangs practically glowing in the UV blacklight that fills the room. He starts performing a lap dance over the vampire, taking her hands and gently placing them on his abs as he moves over her.
He’s smiling, but I recognise the look on his face. It’s totally professional, and just aloof enough to saythis is all an act.
He’sacting. I, an actor myself, feel like an idiot for forgetting this fact. This guy is working. He’s convincing — they all are — but it’s work, they’re professionals, it’s no different to any sex scene I’ve had to act out in front of cameras. And yeah, sometimes I did get a boner when I had to fake having sex with a beautiful woman. So what? It was work, we were professionals, she was all good about it. There were intimacy coordinators involved every step of the way.
I don’t know why I’ve been weird aboutmale entertainment— the correct term, according to Leigh — now that I frame it in that light. It’s a dance and drama show, and sure, the show is very sexualised, but so what?
There’s nothing wrong with it. The wordempoweringseems to be the one every woman I’ve spoken to has used regarding this. I look around the room again, watching everyone in the audience, all comfortable in their sexuality and their sexual desires, not a hint of embarrassment from anyone present.
I don’t see how this could be a bad thing. I can act. I can dance. The pay is better, the place is warm. It beats being a zombie outdoors in the middle of winter.
Damn it, Kayla was right, and I just know she’s never going to let me live it down.
“Okay, let’s see you dance.”
I nod at Ben, the minotaur, taking a position in the middle of the stage. “Uh…” I don’t usually get stage fright, but standing here before all these guys who have just performed the shit out of tonight — doing really complicated, well-timed routines — makes me a little nervous. I’ve never auditioned before six dudes wearing nothing but leather g-strings before.
“Well hold on,” Leigh interrupts, dragging a chair out onto the stage. She was great as the MC tonight, and truly made the show. She plonks herself down on the chair now, doing jazz hands in the air. “Give me a lap dance.”
“What?” I laugh nervously.
“Come on, that’s not fair to him,” Nate, the werewolf, interrupts with a laugh. “Now you’re just being mean.”
