Patricia Rosemoor: Skin

Economic freedom. If only there were courses in the subject starting in grade school. Girls needed to be able to take care of themselves before having a family. If Mama had known how, after Daddy died, she wouldn’t have married Marlon Aldrich rather than be on her own with her two daughters. Then Hannah would never have been forced to run away, disappearing without a trace.

Remembering the last time she’d seen her younger sister, Lilith swallowed hard. Hannah had been little more than a kid. She couldn’t even imagine how a thirteen-year-old had survived on her own on the street.

If she had survived.

Lilith didn’t want to think her sister was dead, but guilt kept Hannah in her mind every day. A scholarship to college had been her way out of that house of hell. She’d been gone barely eight months when Hannah had been compelled to run.

It was that guilt that led Lilith to be part of the mentoring program. Carmen would never take Hannah’s place, but she was a great kid, and Lilith wanted to make sure Carmen had opportunities that she hadn’t been able to give her own sister.

Though Lilith had found the strength to overcome her own past, she knew either the lack of money or naivete in managing finances too often trapped women in situations that were humiliating, unbearable and sometimes downright dangerous.

TOSSING HER DARK HAIR around her bared shoulders, Hannah Mitchell noted the hunger in the faces of the customers sitting along the edges of the stage, read the lust in the eyes that crept up her flesh. Pumped with power to make these men salivate, she flowed along the stage and slithered down the ramp.

“Hey, Anna, c’mon, give us some tits!” a beefy young man called.

She flashed him a smile as fake as the name she was using — Anna Youngheart. As fake as the interior of Club Paradise, the gentlemen’s club where the palm trees were either neon or plastic. Her disguise allowed her a power over men that was as intoxicating as any drug. She never felt so high as when she controlled a man’s wallet for the night.

She changed her look and her identity as easily as she changed towns. New York… Los Angeles… Las Vegas… New Orleans. Fantasy. That’s what she sold.

Sliding scarlet dragon-queen nails down her own thigh past a hot pink satin thong and a black garter belt, Hannah puckered her lips and played with the straps of her top.

“Take it off!”

Ignoring the demand, she aimed her fake-hot gaze at one of the regulars. Michael Wyndham. Longish dark hair. Good looking with that edgy shadow of a beard narrowing his cheeks. He was quiet. Serious. Mysterious. A student of human nature, he sat at the back of the room, mentally dissecting it all: the bouncers in tuxes guarding the place as well as the dancers; the waitresses in loose trousers and backless vests delivering watered-down drinks. She hadn’t quite figured what made him tick yet. But she would.

She held out a net-stockinged leg and let a customer slip a twenty under her garter. When his coarse fingers lingered on her flesh a little too long, she kicked out and shook her finger at him, then whirled away, pulling money from her bra and removing the scrap of clothing just as her music ended.

Her bare back was to her audience, her long hair trailing her breasts at the sides.

Guys whistled and stomped.

“Hey, baby, turn around and give us a better look!”

Smiling, Hannah kept her back to the man, grabbed the clothes she’d stripped off, and with a toss of her head, left the stage to the next dancer.

Power was the name of the game for her, even as it was for the men who mixed business deals with cocktails and lust.

In the corridor that led to the dressing room, Hannah slipped back into the clothing before sashaying around the room and stopping at the bar. No sooner had she ordered a soda to quench her thirst, than a hot breath trailed along her neck. Shivering, she turned to find Rudy Barnes grinning down at her, his pale blue eyes gleaming strangely, as if he were on something, which probably he was.

Hannah frowned at the tall, lanky man with the pock-marked face. “Crawled out of your booth, did you?” she asked the disk jockey. “What’s the occasion?”

“Just needed to wet my whistle, same as you, Sweetpea.”

“Uh-huh.” She took her soda and turned to walk away.

Rudy grabbed her arm. “And I need to eat, same as you. How about we do it together after hours.”

“I would rather eat dirt.”

Hannah pulled her arm free and walked away from the snake she’d dated once. Afterward, he’d expected her to give him head in the booth while he worked. According to the other dancers, that was his thing. Well, it wasn’t hers.

She would stick to well-off customers.

Finishing her soda, she left the glass on an empty table and checked out the manager who stood near the entrance, demanding a kid’s ID. Sal Ruscio was trying to coax back a full head of dark hair with strategically placed hair plugs. And to further his youthful image, he wore his trademark flowered shirt with a thousand-buck suit.

Hannah entered the dressing room that reeked with the smell of weed. The counter below the lit mirror was littered with open cases, a jumble of loose makeup, cheap hair fasteners and equally cheap jewelry spilling from their guts. A dusting of white powder on a hand mirror sat in the midst of it all. Most of the girls were on drugs. Maybe that’s how they got through the night. Not her, though. She wasn’t going to throw away good money on bullshit. On the opposite wall stood several lockers and a rack of scanty costumes. Only two other dancers primped before the mirrors.

A dark-haired girl who looked young enough to be illegal was applying an extra coat of deep red to her bee-stung lips.

“Hey, Melinda.”

“Hannah. So is Paulie out there tonight?”

“Isn’t he out there every night?”

Paul Ensdorf came to watch his sister dance. Melinda laughed about it, thought it was funny, her big brother lathering himself up over her. Hannah thought it was creepy how he kept tabs on his sibling like that.

“It isn’t bad enough that our harridan of a grandmother was on my back when I lived with her,” Melinda complained. “Now Paulie has to follow me around, trying to reform me.”

“Have Sal keep him out.”

“Right. Like Sal’s going to boot a customer who doesn’t mind spreading the wealth.”

Hannah shrugged. “You have a point.”

“Thanks for the thought, though. Later.”

Melinda left, leaving Hannah alone with the other new girl who called herself Caresse.

Sitting before the mirror and applying blush to her dusky face, Caresse looked up. A small frown creased the skin between her dark, almost black eyes. “You look whipped, child.”

Hannah dumped herself in a nearby chair. “Yeah, I’m splitting early.”

She picked up a crumpled pack of cigarettes and tried not to let Caresse’s steady gaze disturb her. The exotic-looking woman was as tough as they came. Tall and raw-boned, she exuded a don’t mess with me kind of attitude. Lighting her cigarette, Hannah took a long drag and tried to blank her mind.

“Something wrong, child?”

Caresse hadn’t worked at Club Paradise long, but she seemed concerned about the other dancers. Though Hannah usually appreciated the caring, tonight she wasn’t in the mood.

“If there was something wrong, could you give me a prescription to make it all better, Doctor Caresse?”

The other dancer gave her one of those looks that made some of the girls shrink. “You got a problem with your life, you fix it.”

Like it was so easy.

The last time, she’d ended up back on the street as she had when she’d first run away. She’d do anything to make certain that never happened again. She was safe now. Money did that for a girl. Besides, she liked having a good time, liked buying herself things. Most of all, she liked having the upper hand for once.