“Okay, Mr. Wallace, you can roll over now.”

The older man on my massage table rolled over heavily with a grunt that filled the silent room like a gunshot. I pretended I didn’t see his erection as I oiled my hands with the sandalwood scented oil he’d chosen and leaned forward to begin with his shoulders. His hand immediately came around my hip, slipping under the short hem of my skirt. I would have loved to push his hand away, but one of the perks of this club was that the clients got to touch.

I worked quickly, kneading the muscles of his shoulders, then his chest and belly, then his thighs. I was careful to avoid any implication of intimacy despite the fact that his hand continued to explore my ass and his erection continued to stand up on end under the thin sheet that covered his pelvis. It was almost embarrassing, really, that little erection. Some of the girls were classless enough that they laughed about it behind closed doors. But Mr. Wallace was a big tipper, so no one dared say anything where he could hear it.

“How about a happy ending today, Scarlett?” he asked, the tone of his voice making it pretty clear what he was asking for.

“You know club rules, Mr. Wallace.”

“Yeah, I know. You can look, you can touch, but you can’t get relief for these damn blue balls!”

He squeezed my ass before letting go, sitting up and jumping down off the table before I could say anything. “What ever happened to Jasmine?” he mumbled. “She used to give me a little extra whenever I asked for it!”

Yeah, well, look what that got her!

Jasmine, aka Rachel, was still in the hospital, still in a coma from the beating some asshole had given her. A month and the doctors were losing their optimism. And she wasn’t the only one. Two other girls had been jumped outside the club, one in broad daylight when she stopped by to pick up her check, and the other after hours just like Rachel.

It seemed like it was open season on the girls of the Highland Club and there was nothing anyone could do about it, including the extra security guards Rhonda had hired.

I washed my hands and wiped down the massage table after tossing the sheets into the hamper, waiting for Mr. Wallace to finish in the dressing room. He came out a few minutes after I’d finished, catching me looking through the rack of oils in the cabinet.

“What are you doing here, Scarlet?” he asked, coming up behind me, his hands sliding over my bare belly. “A girl like you, you could be made quite comfortable if you let a man do more than cop a feel here or there.”

“You think so?”

“I could buy you a nice condo downtown, one of those places that has windows that showcase all of Memphis. Buy you a car, make sure you have credit at all the right stores. I could make you feel like a queen.”

If I’d wanted to be a kept woman, I could have stayed with Curtis. At least he was closer to my age and he wasn’t afraid to introduce me to his friends. But I knew a lot of girls here would jump at the offer this guy was making me right now.

What was I doing here?

I closed my eyes, reminding myself of my goals. Another few months, maybe as many as six, and I’d have the money I needed. I could do this.

I touched the back of Mr. Wallace’s hand and forced my body to relax back against his. “What would I do, sitting around some fancy condo all day long? I’d be bored to death.”

“You could go shopping. And I’d stop by a couple of times a day.” He moved close to kiss the back of my neck. Again, I had to fight the revulsion that shuddered through my body. “I’d give you plenty to do.”

“I’m sure you would, but I like it here.”

“Think about it.” He shoved something into my bra, something stiff with sharp corners. “I’m a patient man.”

He left a moment later and I sighed a heavy sigh of relief.

Some of my clients were nice people. They just wanted someone to pay attention to them for a little while. But some—like Mr. Wallace—liked to think they owned me. They liked to think that I lived and breathed for their appearance in the club, for the moment when I’d get to spend an hour or so alone with them. They seemed to forget I was here six days a week and I serviced five to eight clients each and every day.

I resisted the urge to duck into the locker room and take a long shower. I slipped the business card wrapped in three hundreds he’d shoved between my breasts, dropped the card into the trash and tucked the money into a small box on the counter that I kept just for that purpose. Then I fixed my hair and makeup in the mirror and went back to the bar, taking up my usual seat in the corner to wait for my next client to come and sniff around.

It was a funny set up, the Highland Club. Men and women—mostly executives and other professionals, but just about anyone who happened to have the high membership fee—would come into the club and change into light bathrobes in the client changing rooms. From there, they had choices of where they wanted to go next. Many of them chose the fantasy rooms. Before going into the changing rooms, they would submit a form about their particular fantasy and one of the rooms would be set up to enact that particular fantasy as close to the client’s request as possible. Or then there were the spa rooms. Clients could have mud baths, they could have their nails done, be given facials. We even had a few beauticians on staff that would cut and style their hair and give them makeovers.

My role was kind of a combination of the first two. I sat at a bar in my skimpy outfit and a client would come up to me, flirt to their heart’s content—I had a few regulars that ended it there, happy just to flirt for a few hours—and if they wanted more, they would give the word and we would go into my assigned room. There we could do anything from a massage, to a little light BDSM, to a long cuddle in the king-sized bed. Sex was discouraged, but we all gave the occasional hand job or a little oral gratification. A quarter of our income was tips and tips after a good orgasm tended to be very generous.

Rachel showed me the ropes when I first started here. When she suggested the whole sexual gratification thing, I balked. But, to be honest, it wasn’t something that came up often. And when it did…well, I’d learned how to say no without losing that generous tip.

It could be a dangerous job, but there were security buttons under nearly every piece of furniture in the private rooms. If I ran into trouble, I only had to touch a button and a security guard would arrive in seconds. That was usually enough to shut down the trouble, but there had been a few times when I had to call for security more than once.

The night Rachel was hurt was one of those nights.

I forced a smile as a client walked over. She was a regular, an executive at a large technology firm downtown. She was one of the flirts, which was something of a relief. I’d been so tense lately, always wondering if one of my clients could be the one who’d hurt Rachel or the other girls. It wasn’t bad enough that I had a crazy ex following me around, but now I had to worry about a client potentially coming after me. It made me a little paranoid about my every move.

It was a relief to not have to move for a while.

*

I ducked out at closing time, slipping into my Miata and speeding across town. Technically visiting hours were in the evening, but the night staff on Rachel’s floor didn’t seem to mind me after two visits. She looked better now, the bruises and swelling on her face mostly healed. But they still had a breathing tube down her throat and all these wires and tubes snaking under the edges of the thin sheet that covered her body. I thought Rachel would be amused to know she’d been naked for over a month, all these tubes too numerous to accommodate even the most convenient hospital gown. But, again, she’d be mortified by the scars that would permanently mark her face, chest, and thighs when this was all said and done.

My body is my best asset.

That’s what she said to me once. Rachel came from the streets, quite literally. Her mom kicked her out when she was fifteen and she survived somehow. She didn’t like to talk about it, but I knew it had been darker than anything I could imagine, especially coming from a privileged background. If I’d never met Curtis, if I’d lived the life my parents had planned for me, I probably wouldn’t have been able to relate to anything Rachel had experienced. As it was, there was this huge chasm between her experiences and mine. But we had enough in common that she was the closest thing I’d had to a friend since I left home.

And now she was lying here in a coma and I was scared of my own shadow.

“Mr. Wallace asked me to become his mistress again today,” I told her, holding her hand between both my own. “I don’t think I’ll be able to push him back much longer. I might actually have to do something with that teeny erection of his.”

I bit my lip, imagining her laughter at that statement, missing it at the same time.

“And Ms. Federer was back. Flirting, like usual. Her hand moved further and further up my thigh this time, but I don’t think she’ll ever allow herself to go further than my panty line. I think she’s frightened by her own lesbian leanings. I thought about introducing her to Bobbi—she’d be more forthcoming than I am—but I’m afraid Bobbi would just scare her off. And she’s a hell of a tipper.”

I studied Rachel’s face, what I could see of it above the respirator’s massive contraption. Her eyes were closed, but I could see a little movement behind them from time to time. And her fingers twitched once in a while. But I knew those were just autonomic muscle movements, an unconscious response. The doctors said that if she began to wake, there would be more purpose to her movements.

I stared at her and begged her silently to make a purposeful movement.

“Curtis has started coming around more and more often. He slashed my tires last month and a couple of weeks ago, someone scratched the paint on the hood. I can’t prove it was him, but I know it was. I’m afraid he’s escalating, that he’s going to do something really crazy. He’s never going to stop.”

I could hear her voice in the back of my head: You have to protect yourself, kid. You have to make him stop.

“I don’t know how,” I whispered as I lifted her hand to my lips. “You can’t leave me, Rachel. You’re the only one I have to talk to about these things.”

No response. Of course.

I bit back tears. “I’ve got to go. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

I walked into my apartment a little later, stripping out of my clothes as I made my way through the narrow living room and galley kitchen. I climbed into the shower and let the water pound down on my shoulders, my head, wishing it was strong enough to wash away the ugliness of my thoughts. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could do this. I was afraid to leave my apartment because of Curtis, afraid to arrive at and leave my job because of the crazy assholes beating up my coworkers. One of these days it would be me lying in that hospital bed. It was a fact, not just a fear. If not at Curtis’s hand, then at the hand of whoever had hurt Rachel. And then what? What would I have to show for this past year? What would I have to build my future on?

Nothing.