I bring Sweet-Pea up into a hip lift and she springs up perfectly, smiling into the dark. I swing us around to the sound of applause. Avis mirrors me on the other side of the stage, and we both smoothly bring our partners down across our bodies into a dip. I bring her up against my chest and our eyes connect. Sweet-Pea's smile looks forced to me. Probably because I'm the one paired with her this eve, instead of Avis.
Avis is with Ethelinda, our tattooed beauty, which makes sense. Ethelinda - being around my size and height - was going to need Big Girl Avis to lift her up. Surely Sweat-Pea understands that too. Though having the object of your infatuation dance with someone else is enough to make anyone hurt, but having to dance with your antagoniser of all people, well, it's just adding salt to the snail.
My grin is not forced.
The routine is relatively simple, and yet the two newbies paired together at the back are still behind. Well, not behind, but they're movements are so stiff they might as well be doing a completely different dance number. I'll have to punish them for it, later.
Avis and I are in drag, though Avis pulls it off far more convincingly. I'm very clearly a woman in a suit. It's not like we're trying to fool anyone with a proper cross-dress, we're just meant to look good. I blow a few strands of hair out of my face only to have them fall back and catch on my lip. I leave it and take Sweet-Pea by the crook of her knee and guide her into another dip. Her head throws back, allowing me to admire her thin throat for a second. It's glistening in the stage light. She must be sweating away all her lovely perfume. The scent is intermingling on the air all-round the stage. She chose well, I don't know the name of it, but it's doing weird things to me.
That's nothing new though, everything about her does weird things to me. Her eyes, her nose, her little voice. It's like finding a cute puppy. A little fluff ball with a smile and big, wide eyes, that's just so adorable and pure you don't know what to do with yourself, so you grit your teeth and tense your fingers and all you want to do is 'crush the puppy, crush it, squeeze its little head in!'
Maybe I'm just a bad person. The notion has struck me before.
Backstage after the show, we're cleaning off our makeup. I watch Avis through my mirror. She takes her top hat off as she slowly reads a note in her palm. She looks around to make sure no one's watching her, missing my gaze. Thinking that she has an opening, she slips away. No one besides me sees her go, and even Sweet-Pea looks a little lost for a moment when she notices her friend is gone.
I leave as well. I know exactly where she is, what that note said. I walk purposefully down the hall, down the stairs and into the storage room next to Roxanne's office. There's a brick wall separating us, with holes in the mortar. I squat and peak through a crack.
Roxanne has her wearing an anal hook this time. It's attached by rope, pulled taunt across her back and connected to a collar. Her strong throat tenses underneath it. The veins are protruding in her neck; she must be on the verge of unconsciousness from the lack of blood flow to her brain.
Roxanne has her on the couch and is pounding away at her dripping sex. Nowhere to go for the butch, not with her legs tied together like that, clamping her pussy even tighter down on the glass member. From the sounds of things, it's catching her g-spot.
So, Roxanne's switched things up and gone for glass this time. I know that it must feel silky smooth, warmed from the submissive dyke's internal temperature. When Roxanne cards her nails through Avis's hair, Avis closes her eyes and gives this content, toothy grin. She's so absorbed in her role as the MC's whore I don't know if she even realizes she's not that special.
Roxanne had been keeping that puppy close to heel ever since the bath incident. She wasn't subtle about her favoritism either, at least not to me. It wasn't out of jealousy or mistrust she kept Avis so close to her, oh no, that's not her style. It was the simple fact that she could that she did.
I'd been in that room multiple times, just like the other girls. I'd knelt on that rug and fantasied about her lifting that skirt up for me.
I was her favourite before Avis. I've had my face forced between her legs, had been impaled on more than one of her 'trophies'. I've had her nails card through my hair and electrify my scalp as well. Now it's over...I'm just another one of her girls. Now it's Avis's turn.
'You're not special, there have been others before you, Avis.' That's what I want to tell her. I'm not bitter about it though, I was never interested in Roxanne romantically, but the sex was good. Though I'll have to admit, I can see Roxanne has taken a liking to Avis a lot quicker than expected. Maybe there's hope for the girl. Who knows, but I'm not putting money on it.
After a while, I grow bored of the show and head back upstairs.
_ _ _
Winter. The fireplace is crackling but it's only warm on one side of the sleeping quarters. There's an unspoken hierarchy in who gets to sleep closer towards the fire and who gets to freeze. Usually it's the green beans, only moving their way up as they earn it.
Avis sleeps at the very, very end. Usually. She'd be curled up against the wall, rigid as one of the bricks and never complain. She's our newest, after all, and our toughest. However, it seems she lucked out. Roxanne has already taken her into her bed for the night before lights off.
My nice, warm bed was given up a while ago for stepping out of line. I'm making good progress though, still an alpha cat, still on the warmer side of the quarters and inching my way ever further up the ladder. In fact, I'm already ahead of Sweet-Pea by one rung.
I have my back to the fireplace and I can very faintly feel it's warmth at my neck. Everyone's asleep already, the crackling pop of firewood sent them off with a kiss into stressful dreams. We've pushed our twin beds together into Siamese pairs, the especially friendly girls got as many as four or five teams of beds.
I'm paired up with Sweet-Pea. Her back is to me and she's almost hanging off the edge of the bed trying to stay away from me, curled tight in her blanket. I'm staring at the nape of her neck, and at the lithe muscles of her back under her nightgown. I wonder if she's cold.