Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 124077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 620(@200wpm)___ 496(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 620(@200wpm)___ 496(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
“Aw, that’s bullshit, and you know it,” Jackson snarled. “If you don’t want to let the kids meet Shannon, then I guess you don’t want them to see me, either.”
“Don’t be like that,” Terra had pleaded. “You can at least come in and spend some time with them.”
“And leave Shannon out in the truck? No fucking way!” he exclaimed. “She’s excited to meet the kids!”
“Yeah, she looks really excited,” Terra remarked, shooting a glance at the bored looking girl in the cab of the enormous, shiny truck.
In the end, Jackson had refused to see the kids without his new girlfriend and so Terra had called off the visit. Since then, she’d only seen him twice—both times driving around town in his shiny new truck. He hadn’t paid a single dime of either alimony or child-support and as a result, she’d lost the house, which had been part of the divorce settlement.
Terra and her kids had been forced to move back in with her mom—who lived in a tiny little bungalow in a part of town which used to be good…but was rapidly becoming more dangerous. Once Terra had hoped to move her mom out of there for good—now that dream was dead.
Her part time job at the library didn’t pay nearly as much as she needed to live and support her kids, but she still made too much to get any support from the government. In desperation, she’d gone to The Doll House, a local strip club.
She hadn’t been looking for work as a stripper—honestly she hadn’t. She’d heard from a friend that they were hiring waitresses and that you could make good money in tips if you were willing to wear a skimpy outfit and put up with men grabbing your ass from time to time.
Terra didn’t love the ass grabbing part, but she didn’t mind wearing sexy outfits. What she hadn’t expected during the interview was that the club manager would ask her if she wanted to strip instead of waiting tables.
“Me?” Terra had pointed to herself in disbelief. “But I’m not some twenty-year old—who’s going to want to see me take my clothes off?”
“Lots of guys—you have what we call a ‘mature figure,’” the manager told her. “Big ass, thick thighs—and most important, big tits. You’re not skinny but you’re not exactly fat either. Lots of guys like that shape.” And he’d described an overfull hourglass in the air with his hands.
“I don’t know…” Terra had hesitated. “I mean, I’ve taken a pole-dancing class but—”
“That’s perfect. Get up there and show me your stuff!”
And that was how her job interview for a waitress position had turned into an audition for stripping. Apparently the manager liked what he saw, because Terra got the job.
She’d taken the job out of desperation, but she didn’t hate it—the dancing part, anyway. She found it strangely empowering, the idea that men still found her attractive. Jackson had been older than her, but he was always putting her down and acting like she was the one who was “over the hill” and past her sexual prime. Terra had learned that she was neither.
The part of the job she didn’t like was having to do lap dances and VIP dances. Because while she didn’t mind taking off her clothes in front of strangers, she didn’t especially want them touching her while she did it.
But again, desperation drove her. The girls who didn’t do lap dances missed out on a lot of tips. And the ones who refused to work the VIP rooms got less and less stage time—the manager saw to that. So though she hated letting a sweaty stranger paw her while she was mostly naked, Terra forced herself to grit her teeth and do it at least once a night every time she worked.
Tonight was no exception. She was in the groove and enjoying herself on stage, but she knew, in the back of her mind, that she was going to have to do either a lap dance or take some customer to the VIP room as soon as her set was over.
Don’t think about it, she told herself as she tossed her long blond hair over one shoulder and rolled her hips. The long, straight waterfall of blonde hair was a wig—one of the props she’d bought herself to help differentiate her stage persona—Bunny Canyon, from her true self.
Terra had bought herself some stripper outfits as well—you couldn’t just wear regular lingerie—and some sky-high heels, of course. But other than that, all the money she made went into raising her kids and trying to save a little money to get all of them into a better living situation. That and the college courses she was taking on her nights off to learn to be an accountant.
Terra had always been good with numbers—in fact, she’d been planning to get a degree in accounting way back before she’d met Jackson and he’d knocked her up in the back seat of his car a few days after graduation. By the time college started that fall, Terra was already beginning to show, and her mom had insisted that the two of them get married, despite their age gap. She had never approved of Jackson, but she approved of being pregnant “out of wedlock” even less.