Author: Akiko

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I caught her at the bar an hour later, between customers.

“Have dinner with me,” I said. “A proper date. Away from here.”

Jade’s smile flickered. “Owen.”

“I mean it. After what happened in there…”

“What happened in there,” she said quietly, “happened in there.” She glanced at Dez, then back at me, and lowered her voice. “Babe, listen. That was real. I’m not saying it wasn’t. But I don’t date customers. Not ever. Seven years, and that rule’s the only reason I’m still sane.”

“I’m not just a customer.”

“You paid me a hundred quid an hour ago.” Not unkind. Just true.

I didn’t have anything to say to that.

She touched my cheek. “You can still come Fridays. I meant that. But if you ask me out again, I have to stop dancing for you, because then it gets messy, and messy is how girls in here get hurt.”

I went back the next Friday anyway. She danced for me. It was good. It was really good, actually, her hips rolling in my lap, her breath catching. But it never quite hit that spot again, and I could see her keeping it from happening, a careful half inch of distance between us, every single time.

After a month I stopped going.

Sometimes I still think about that one song. The one where she forgot it was her job.

Ending 18 of 25: Crossing the Line. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I came back next Friday. She was waiting at the bar for me, and she didn’t even pretend she wasn’t.

“Not the booth,” Jade said. “Not tonight. Stay till close.”

I stayed till close. I watched her dance three sets with her eyes on me. At two the lights came up, Dez herded everyone out, and Jade said something in his ear. He rolled his eyes, handed her a key and went off to count the till.

She took me up onto the main stage. The empty club, chairs up on the tables, one spotlight still on. She sat me on the edge of the stage and danced for me once more under the light, this time completely naked, the gold chain the only thing she kept on.

“No camera on this bit,” she said, straddling me. “I checked.”

She unzipped me, rolled a condom down my cock and sank onto it, no jeans between us now, wet and hot, and gasped exactly like she had last week. My hands were everywhere. Her tits, her arse, her hips. She rode me slow under that spotlight, then fast, the stage creaking, chasing the same spot she’d found through the denim.

“That doesn’t happen,” she said again, shaking, as she came.

“It keeps happening.”

“I know. I’ve decided I like it.” She kissed me hard as I came, holding her tight against me.

Afterwards she lay on my chest on the stage, the spotlight warm on our skin.

“My name’s Priya,” she said. “Thought you should know who you’re dating.”

Ending 17 of 25: Lights Up. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I decided to wait a week. Don’t look desperate. Let her wonder.

I hung the shirt up with the napkin still folded in the pocket, so I wouldn’t lose it. Very sensible.

On Thursday my mum came round to help, which meant she cried about my ex for ten minutes and then did all my washing without asking. I came back from the job centre to find the shirt drying on the radiator, crisp and clean, and a little grey ball of pulp in the pocket.

I unrolled it on the kitchen table like an archaeologist. Eyeliner, it turns out, does not survive a forty-degree wash. I could make out a seven and a zero. Possibly a nine. The rest was a smudge.

So I went back to the Velvet Room on Friday to explain. Jade was on the stage. She saw me and her face did something complicated.

“Tuesday came and went, talker,” she said when she came over.

“I know. My mum washed my shirt.”

She stared at me. “That’s the worst excuse I’ve ever heard. And I once had a man tell me his wife was a hologram.”

“It’s true.”

“It’s probably true. That’s what makes it worse.” She sighed, but she was smiling a little. “I don’t give my number out twice, Owen. That’s a rule.”

She danced for me on the floor for twenty quid. She was gorgeous and kind and completely professional, and she never mentioned dinner again.

Ending 16 of 25: Through the Wash. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I lasted until Monday lunchtime. She answered on the second ring.

“It’s the honest man,” she said. “Tuesday. Seven. You’re buying me a curry, and it’s not costing more than twenty quid.”

The curry house was on the corner by the launderette, all flock wallpaper and laminated menus. Priya turned up in jeans and a huge cardigan, no makeup, hair in a clip, and she was even more beautiful than she’d been in white sequins. We split a jalfrezi and two naans and talked for three hours. It came to eighteen pounds forty.

“Under budget,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

Her flat was upstairs, warm and cluttered, fairy lights and a grumpy grey cat. She kicked the door shut and kissed me against it, and nobody said anything about rules.

We didn’t make it to the bedroom. She pulled my shirt off on the sofa, and I finally got to touch her the way I’d wanted to in that booth: her full tits in my hands, the swallow tattoo under my mouth, my fingers sliding into her until she was gasping. She pushed me back, rolled a condom on me and climbed on, sinking all the way down with a long, shaky moan.

“Seven years,” she breathed, rocking slowly. “Seven years of dancing on men and never finishing.”

She finished. Twice. Once on top, once with me behind her over the arm of the sofa, the cat watching in disgust. The second time I came with her, groaning into her neck.

“Next Tuesday,” she said, breathless. “Cheaper curry.”

Ending 15 of 25: Tuesday Curry. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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Next Friday I went straight to the VIP room and ordered the champagne. I told myself I’d budgeted. I hadn’t.

Jade did the routine. The knickers down to her knees and back up. The arch across my lap. The trickle of fizz between her tits.

“Oops,” she said.

I watched it go and realised I’d seen this exact moment twice already: once in my lap, once in the lap of a man in a pinstripe suit. The same angle. The same little gasp. I could have mouthed it along with her.

It was still extremely hot. That was the problem.

She whispered the filthy things again. Same words, I noticed. Same order. I was still hard enough to hammer nails. She still didn’t let me touch her. The buzzer went at exactly the moment the bottle ran dry, which I was beginning to suspect was not a coincidence.

“Settle up at the bar, babe.”

Four hundred and sixty this time. Prices had gone up.

The barman ran my card. It went through, just. On the way out, Dez held the door again and gave me a long look.

“Twice?” he said.

“Twice.”

“There’s a bloke who’s been coming in every Friday for three years,” Dez said. “Champagne every week. Nearly bought her a car.” He shrugged. “Don’t be that bloke, mate.”

I sat in the car park and checked my balance on my phone. Then I sat there a while longer with the engine off, doing sums and wondering what exactly I’d been buying.

Ending 14 of 25: Same Bottle Twice. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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Next Friday I went back with sixty quid in my pocket and a firm plan. No VIP room. No champagne. Just a stool at the bar.

Jade spotted me and came over, all sequins and sparkle. “My champagne man! Booth’s free.”

“I’m staying here,” I said. “I’ll buy you one vodka soda. Then I’d just like to talk.”

She blinked. “Talk.”

So we talked. About the stag do with the Monopoly money. About her cat. About my job centre appointment, which had gone badly. Somewhere around the second hour she stopped doing the voice, the purring sales voice, and just talked like a person.

“You know that bottle cost the club eleven quid,” she said eventually.

“I know.”

“And you came back anyway.”

“I came back for you. Not the fizz.”

She looked at me for a long time. Then she took my hand and led me through the curtain into an empty booth, and she didn’t pick up the menu.

“This one’s on the house,” she said. “And the rules are off.”

She stripped slowly, then pulled my jeans down and climbed onto me, guiding my hands to her full tits. She rolled a condom on me and slid down onto my cock with a long groan, wet and tight, and rode me deep while I sucked her dark nipples, her swallow tattoo right under my lips. She came grinding hard, hand over her own mouth. I came seconds after, holding her down on me.

“Priya,” she whispered. “My name. Don’t tell Dez.”

Ending 13 of 25: On the House. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I didn’t sleep. At seven I bought the biggest bunch of flowers the petrol station had, two coffees and a croissant, and drove to the university.

It was enormous. I hadn’t thought about that. Eleven buildings, three car parks and about four thousand students, all of whom seemed to be carrying lanyards. I didn’t know her course code. I didn’t know which exam. I knew her name was Bryony and she had freckles.

I stood outside the medical building for an hour and a half holding carnations. The coffee went cold. A security guard asked me, twice, who I was waiting for.

“Bryony,” I said. “She’s sitting an exam. Nursing. Red hair.”

“Surname?”

I didn’t have one.

He walked me back to my car, very politely, the way you’d escort a pigeon out of a supermarket.

On Friday I went to the Velvet Room. Scarlett was on the stage. When she came over she was smiling, but there was a crease between her eyebrows.

“Security emailed the whole nursing year,” she said. “Warning about a man with flowers hanging round the exam halls. Description sounded familiar.”

“I just wanted to wish you luck.”

“I know.” She sighed and squeezed my hand. “It’s sweet. It’s also a lot, Owen. Twenty quid a song. Let’s keep it in here for now.”

She danced for me. She was lovely. And at the end of the song she went back to work, and I drove home with a bunch of wilting carnations on the passenger seat.

Ending 11 of 25: Flowers for Nobody. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I came back on Friday. Paid my twenty quid cover, sat at the edge of the stage and waited.

Scarlett saw me from across the room and her face lit up. She walked straight over, ignoring a man who was waving a fifty at her.

“You came.”

“You said pay like everybody else. Here I am. Everybody else.”

“I passed,” she said, before I could ask. “The exam. Distinction.” She took my hand. “VIP. Now. My treat.”

In the booth she pulled the curtain, sat me down and climbed into my lap, and the first thing she did was put my hands on her hips herself.

“Dez is on his break,” she whispered.

She was wearing green lace this time. She danced for exactly one song. Then she was kissing me, and I was pulling the lace aside, and she was unzipping me with that same practised hand, and the dance turned into something no menu covered. She rolled a condom on me, sank down slowly, biting her lip to keep quiet, and rode me with her hand over my mouth while the bass thumped through the wall. When she came she buried her face in my neck and shook. I came holding her hips tight, both of us trying not to laugh.

“That’s definitely against the rules,” I said.

“I’m nearly a nurse,” Bryony said, straightening her lace. “I prescribed it.” She kissed me. “Pick me up at two. You’re staying at mine. Four years of this and three of studying, and I want a boyfriend with a sad kettle story.”

I picked her up at two.

Ending 10 of 25: Exam Results. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“Thank you,” I said, buttoning my jacket. “Both of you. That was… I don’t have words.”

“You don’t have money either,” Jade said, not unkindly.

“No.”

Scarlett kissed my cheek. Jade patted my head like a dog who’d done a good trick. Then they were gone through the curtain together, and I walked out across the main floor with a damp patch in my jeans and my jacket held strategically low.

It was only on the pavement that I checked my pockets.

My wallet was empty. I knew that. What I hadn’t thought about were my car keys, which were on the floor of the VIP booth, where they’d fallen out during the four most exciting minutes of my life.

Dez wouldn’t let me back in. “Club rules, mate. Once you’re out, you’re out.” He said he’d hand them in at the bar. The bar was shut.

So I walked to the bus stop. The night bus wanted two pounds fifty. I had a pound coin and some fluff. The driver looked at the coin, then at my jeans, and waved me on with an expression of deep, weary pity.

I sat at the back. The bus smelled of chips. A woman in a hen-party sash fell asleep on my shoulder.

I got home at four. I picked the car up on Monday, on the way to the job centre, and Dez handed me the keys with a perfectly straight face.

“They said you lasted four minutes,” he said.

Ending 8 of 25: Bus Fare. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“What are you two doing after close?” I asked.

Jade and Scarlett looked at each other. A whole conversation happened in that look.

“Usually?” Jade said. “Chips and a cab.”

“He’s skint, Jade,” Scarlett said. “He just gave us his last three hundred.”

“I know.” Jade grinned. “So he’s not a customer anymore, is he?”

That was how I ended up at half two in the morning in Jade’s flat above a launderette, on a sofa with a grumpy grey cat glaring at me, while two of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen kissed each other in the middle of the rug.

This time there were no rules.

They undressed me together, laughing, and pulled me down onto the rug with them. Jade rolled a condom onto me, pushed me onto my back and sank onto my cock, wet and tight, rolling her hips slowly while Scarlett straddled my face. I licked her while she leaned forward to kiss Jade over my chest, the two of them moaning into each other’s mouths. Scarlett came first, thighs clamped round my head. Then they swapped, Scarlett riding me hard while Jade’s fingers worked her clit until she shook.

I lasted a lot longer than four minutes this time. When I finally came, buried in Scarlett with Jade’s mouth on my neck, all three of us were sweaty and giggling.

“Twenty-seven, twenty-nine and thirty-four,” Scarlett said, sprawled across both of us. “Ninety years of experience.”

“He’s done for,” said Jade, and the cat seemed to agree.

Ending 7 of 25: After Hours for Three. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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