Prologue

Smoke and desired sin. That's what the air of the four-cornered room smelt like as the red lights flooded the room with the colour of lust. The space was simply furnished by a seat parallel to the foot-high stage signed with a single pole which stood in the centre of it all.

Lights lined the ceiling while a medium-high backside table gave wait to the money that would be paid after each show took place in front of it. The main event of this simple room. Me.

Each new body that drops its body on the chair across me undresses my already bare body in an effort to envision my body without the little material that I have left. Lips licked in alpha fuelled lust, greedy for what I chose to exude. Each is different yet similar as their fantasies spill through their grins and burning gazes.

Never do I start a new client by being in the room first. No, I let them feel the room, allowing whatever sense of power they believe manifests into the idea that they wait to be served and catered to. 

Believing that they are powerful as they wait for me to bear myself for them. Then I take it away with my gentle strides to the centre stage of the velvet-walled room, like a shadow awaiting a new evil to find comfort in before ripping into flesh and currency. Yes, they may sit in the chair, drunk on monarch mentality, but I'm the one looking down on them.

My body is dressed in gently crystallized, black torn silk allowing my movements around the pole to draw their eyes in. The draw of desire painted on my lips with red gloss. I don't present myself as an angel because I am not. I don't want forgiveness. I want to take all I can have with a greedy breath. Be it by body or might.

Walking to the door of my  I see him. My last client sits in the chair, a black suit jacket draped over the frame of the chair, with him sitting back. His right arm was over the rest with a glass tilted in his hand and a white business shirt sleeves rolled up. The other hand ran through his dark hair while his broad shoulders strained the shirt as though if he could feel any more tension he would rip it. He sits with control and assertiveness as an aura.

I walk into the room almost cautiously to the pole with the sound of my black pump heels bringing him to attention that I have arrived, yet he does not move to look back at me. The tune of music serenades the room as I pass him noting that no scent of cologne drenches his body. Walking towards the stage, I have yet to see his face. I don't want to because something feels different with this, with him.

He is not demanding the room and I notice him. Instead, he sits in the chair as though it was built for his body alone. My fingertips embrace the feeling of the cool metal of the pole while my movements do their most not turn to the gaze of the man in the seat across me. But I know I must, I need my power back, but the moment I force my eyes to his while looking over my shoulder, I feel my body succumb to a darkness that consumes shadows. 

The fair tan-skinned man sits, three buttons undone letting the drizzle of chest hair show. His dress pants and shoes were black as night, and his eye colour unknown due to the red eyes still yet chaotic. When I met with them, I felt desperate to speak but lost for words. Gaining my composure back I let my body move to the beat of the music and for the first time in a while, I leave my choreography and tell a story. My body's seductive turns and slides as I wrap around the pole. Chest heavy as I inhale the energy of the room of lust, desperation, starvation, and if I'm not wrong, understanding.

Why does he look at my body and my performance yet only truly focus on my eyes? Like he feels my body but reads my eyes like a sick tale he wants to wrap his arms around and capture in a mission of possession and protection.

The music drifts into the distance as it fades letting my body slide down the pole when I slowly land on my knees, my arms still holding the pole because he won't let his gaze go. He won't stop reading me, taking me in. He won't stop feeding off me as though he finds intoxication in my confusion. He won't let me go.

Slowly he places his now empty glass on the table while standing, slips his jacket over his shoulders, and straightens himself. Still, I'm stuck in my position on the stage when he strides slowly towards me. My body doesn't move as my eyes refuse to follow him when he stops before me. That's when I feel his rough hand gently tilt my head up - a small breath taken in shock at his touch- so that I am locked in his tunnel vision once again. Maybe the devil did walk amongst us.

Brushing the loose curl of my almond hair from the frame of my face his thumb runs past my glossed lips, smudging it lightly. Unconsciously I lean into his touch as our eyes lock before husky words leave his lips "Mi Sirena." (My siren.) And after his words, his hands lift from the curve of y cheek so slowly I would swear he wanted to leave with the warmth of it lingering in his palm when he let go. That's he lets me go leaving me cold and, on my knees, with little understanding of what just happened.