Chapter 10: The Strip Show
The living room was a map of scattered chaos. Pizza boxes formed greasy continents on the coffee table. Dice, character sheets, and half-finished cans of cheap beer marked the territories of four young men hunched around the table. The only light came from a single desk lamp, throwing their exaggerated shadows against blueprints taped to the wall.
“Natural twenty, you fucker!” Leo cackled, his braces flashing. He was a skinny physics major who still wore his high school cross-country hoodie.
“Bullshit. Roll it again where I can see,” grumbled Steve, scratching his thick red beard. He played a dwarven cleric and took everything too seriously.
Andrew, a pimple faced greasy nerd, just groaned and drained his beer. “My paladin is so dead. Again.”
Derek sat at the head of the table, the Dungeon Master’s screen a fortress before him. He adjusted his glasses, the lamplight catching the lenses and turning his eyes into pale, observant discs.
He watched Raven over the top of the screen. She was curled on the far end of the couch, a paperback novel obscuring her face, one foot tapping absently to a silent rhythm. She had been ignoring them for an hour, which was perfect.
"The owlbear’s talons rake toward your neck, Leo,” Derek said, his voice a flat monotone. “What’s your AC?”
“Sixteen! Shit, does that hit?” Leo squeaked, his fingers scrambling across his character sheet.
Derek let the pause hang, his eyes flicking to Raven. “It hits. Now, speaking of hits, that new track ‘Glittering Neon’ is just relentlessly catchy, isn’t it? It gets in your head.”
The words were casual, a throwaway line swallowed by the room’s background noise. The effect was not.
Raven’s book lowered. Her green eyes, lined in smudged black, stared at nothing. The paperback slid from her fingers and thumped softly onto the cushion. She stood in one fluid, unnerving motion, her movements detached from the person she had been seconds before.
She walked to the stereo with the placid grace of a sleepwalker. No one spoke. Steve’s complaint died in his throat. She bypassed her usual playlists, selected a track at random, and a pounding, synthetic bass line flooded the room. It was nothing she would normally listen to.
Then she began to move.
Her hips found the beat first, a slow, rolling circle that made her black lace skirt swish. Her hands slid up her own torso, over the tight fabric of her tank top, until her fingers hooked under the hem. She pulled it off in a single, deliberate motion, letting it fall. Her pale breasts spilled free, the silver hoops through her nipples glinting in the low light.
“What the fuck?” Andrew whispered, his mouth hanging open.
She ignored him, her expression serene and distant. Her thumbs hooked into the waistband of her skin-tight jeans, and she shimmied them down over her hips, stepping out of them. Now she stood in only a black G-string, her body a stark landscape of pale skin and dark ink. The violet streak in her hair seemed to pulse under the lamp.
She turned her gaze to the table. Her eyes, glazed and hungry, locked onto Derek. She sauntered over, the click of her chunky boots on the hardwood the only sound besides the thumping music. She didn’t stop until she was standing over him, then she swung a leg over and settled onto his lap, her warm weight pressing down.
The heat of her through the thin lace of her thong was immediate and shocking. She ground down slowly, a wet, deliberate circle against the denim covering his crotch. He could smell her – vanilla perfume and something muskier, something profoundly female.
She leaned in, her breasts pressing against his chest, and put her lips to his ear. Her breath was hot. “You like what you see, geek?” she murmured, her voice a husky parody of her usual sarcasm.
Derek smiled, a thin, tight expression. He pulled a crumpled dollar bill from his pocket. He didn’t hand it to her. He slid it slowly, deliberately, under the elastic waistband of her G-string, letting his knuckles drag against the bare skin of her lower belly. His fingertips grazed the sodden lace between her legs, and came away slick.
“Atta girl,” he said softly, for her ears only.
She rose, leaving a damp patch on his jeans, and moved to Leo. The skinny kid looked like a rabbit caught in headlights, his face flushed crimson beneath his freckles. “I… I don’t…” he stammered.
Raven silenced him by grinding her ass back into his lap, reaching behind to guide his shaking hands to her hips. She rocked against him, the wet lace leaving a dark smear on his chinos. “Pay up, braces,” she breathed, looking over her shoulder.
Leo fumbled a five-dollar bill from his wallet with trembling hands. He tucked it into her waistband, his fingers brushing the swell of her ass cheek. A small, pathetic whimper escaped him.
Andrew was next, and he was less shy, his pimpled face gleeful. “Hell yeah!” he grunted as she faced him, undulating her hips, her tits swaying near his face. He shoved a few dollars into her thong, then boldly squeezed her breast, thumb rubbing over her pierced nipple. Raven moaned, a low, theatrical sound, and pushed herself harder against his groin.
Finally, she came to Steve. The big, bearded man was rigid, his fists clenched on the table. “Raven, stop this. This isn’t funny.”
She didn’t speak. She simply turned her back to him, placed her hands on the cluttered table, and bent over. The black G-string disappeared between the full, pale globes of her ass, offering him a blatant view of everything. The scent of her arousal, tangy and rich, was unmistakable.
“Steve,” Derek said, his voice calm and prompting from behind his DM screen. “The lady’s performing. It’s customary to tip.”
Steve’s face was a storm of confusion and raw want. He pulled a ten from his wallet. His hand shook as he reached out. Instead of just tucking it, his fingers lingered, pressing the bill against her soaked pussy. The lace was soaked through, plastered to her lips. He pressed harder, a rough, exploring push, and Raven gasped, pushing back against his hand.
“Fuck,” Steve breathed, his resolve crumbling. He rubbed the bill against her, his thick fingers slipping beneath the elastic to feel the bare, swollen flesh beneath. She was dripping. He shoved the wet ten deeper into the fabric, his finger sliding along her slit in the process. “You’re fucking soaked.”
The shudder began deep in her spine, a convulsive ripple that traveled through her pelvis and made her knees buckle against the table leg. Steve’s thick finger, wedged beside the crumpled currency, felt the inner muscles of her cunt spasm and flutter around nothing. A low, guttural moan tore from her throat, raw and unfiltered.
“Jesus Christ,” Steve whispered, his breath hot against the small of her back. He didn’t remove his hand.
He didn’t remove his hand. The damp heat radiating through the lace seemed to hold his fingers there, magnetized. Raven pushed back against him, a slow, insistent grind that smeared her wetness against his knuckles. “That’s it,” she slurred, her voice thick and distant. “Keep paying.”
Her own hands came back, fingers fumbling with the button of his jeans. The metallic snick was loud in the hushed room. Steve froze, his breath catching, as she worked the zipper down over the obvious, straining bulge beneath.
“Come on, big tipper,” she cooed, her words a sticky whisper. She reached into the open fly of his boxers and wrapped her fingers around him. His cock was already fully hard, thick and hot in her palm. She pulled it out into the cool, charged air of the room. “Look at this. You’ve been saving this for me, haven’t you?”
She pumped him slowly, her thumb smearing a bead of precum over the swollen head. The other guys watched, mesmerized and silent, their earlier bravado replaced by a raw, hungry stillness. Andrew licked his lips. Leo’s hands were clenched in his lap, his knuckles white.
Raven leaned forward, taking the weight of him in her hand, giving him three long, deliberate strokes from root to tip. Her pierced tongue flicked out, a pink flash, but she didn’t take him in her mouth. Not yet. She was following a deeper, transactional logic they were all beginning to understand.
She released him, letting his cock stand stiff and glistening against his belly. She turned her glazed eyes toward Andrew, who was now waving a crumpled fistful of bills—a ten and several fives—like a flag of surrender. “My turn,” he barked, his voice cracking with urgency.
Raven stood, leaving Steve throbbing and exposed. She swayed toward Andrew, her movements a liquid slide. He shoved the money roughly into the front of her thong, his fingers digging, groping for more. “I want what he got,” Andrew demanded, his pimpled face a mask of entitled hunger.
She nodded, a slow, doll-like dip of her chin. Her hand went to his belt. This was the currency now. Money bought proximity. It bought contact. It bought degradation.
It bought degradation. Andrew’s belt buckle clattered to the floor. Raven dropped to her knees between his sprawled legs, the cold hardwood biting into her skin. She didn’t hesitate.
She took him into her mouth in one slow, wet slide, her lips stretching around his girth. Andrew gasped, a sharp, punched-out sound. “Oh fuck, her mouth is so hot,” he moaned to the room, his hands immediately clawing into her violet-streaked hair. She worked him with a mechanical intensity, her head bobbing, her tongue flattening against the veined underside. Saliva dripped down his shaft, slicking her strokes.
She sucked him deep, until the head nudged the back of her throat, and held it there. Her green eyes, glazed and unseeing, stared up at him as she gagged softly. Andrew’s hips jerked. “Yeah, choke on it, you slut,” he panted, fucking upward into her mouth. The obscene, wet sounds filled the silence left by the forgotten music.
After a minute, he roughly pushed her head away. “My turn’s up,” he said, his voice shaky with triumph. He looked at Steve, who was still standing, his cock out and angry-red. “She’s all yours, man.”
Steve didn’t need a second invitation. He hauled Raven up by her arms and bent her over the table. Character sheets crumpled under her elbows. Dice skittered to the floor. He positioned himself behind her, one broad hand splaying across the small of her back, the other guiding himself to her soaked opening.
He entered her in one brutal, deep thrust. There was no tenderness, no preamble. Raven cried out, a raw sound that was equal parts pain and something else, a shuddering release of tension. “Tight little fucking cunt,” Steve grunted, his beard brushing her shoulder as he set a punishing rhythm. The table shook with each drive of his hips.
Leo watched, hypnotized, his hand moving frantically in his own lap. He fumbled another bill from his pocket, a twenty this time. He stood on shaky legs and approached the heaving forms. As Steve pistoned into her, Leo reached around and shoved the crumpled twenty into Raven’s slack, open mouth. “Suck on that, too,” he whispered, his voice tremulous.
The paper soaked up her saliva instantly. She groaned around it, the vibration traveling through Steve’s cock. The synergy of it, the filthy finance, seemed to push them all over an edge. Derek watched, his fingers steepled, his expression one of clinical fascination. The data was perfect.
Steve came with a roar, slamming into her one final time, his body rigid. Raven convulsed around him, a second, sharper orgasm tearing through her as he emptied himself inside her. He pulled out, staggering back, leaving her dripping and bent over the table.
Andrew was hard again. He pushed her onto her back amidst the pizza grease and spilled beer. Her head lolled, the twenty still hanging from her lips. He didn’t remove it. He shoved her legs apart and mounted her, his thinner cock plunging into her well-used pussy with a wet squelch. “My turn again,” he chanted, “my turn, my turn.”
Leo, emboldened, crawled onto the table. He didn’t enter her. He presented his cock to her mouth. Raven, her body being jackhammered by Andrew, turned her head and took Leo into her mouth automatically, around the sodden bill. She suckled him, her cheeks hollowing, as Andrew pounded into her.
It was a crude, rotating circuit of flesh and cash. Steve recovered, fetched another beer, and watched with dark, hungry eyes. When Andrew finished, spurting onto her stomach with a whimper, Leo moved from her mouth to between her legs. He was quick, frantic, his thrusts shallow and desperate. He came inside her mere moments later.
A heavy silence descended, broken only by ragged breathing. Raven lay wrecked on the table, covered in sweat and spend. Her gaze was utterly vacant, a doll with its batteries dead.
Derek finally moved. He stood, walked to the table, and looked down at his handiwork. He placed a crisp hundred-dollar bill on her heaving stomach. Then, with a thoughtful precision, he took a five from his pocket, rolled it into a tight cylinder, and gently pushed it into her slack, cum-filled pussy. He took a single, pushed it into her still-dripping asshole. He plucked the wet twenty from her mouth, replaced it with a fifty, folding it and tucking it deep against her cheek.
She was a bank, a broken vault.
He turned to the others, who were now avoiding each other’s eyes, zipping up, the shame and animal fervor warring on their faces. “Game’s over, guys,” Derek said, his voice calm and clean in the filthy air. “I think Raven needs to sleep it off.”
They scattered like roaches, muttering excuses, not looking back at the tableau on the table. The front door clicked shut behind them. Derek walked to the stereo and turned off the thumping bass. The sudden quiet was a physical thing.
He returned to the table. Raven’s eyes were closed now. Her breath had evened out. The programmed oblivion was taking hold, rewriting the violent truth into a hazy, satisfactory dream. He smiled, a small, private twitch of his lips. Glittering Neon had performed flawlessly.