Leoni was by all accounts a rather attractive woman. And she was a woman, now. She had not really appreciated the change herself. The way her cheeks had come in, her features come finer and lean. The elegant lines of her nose and lips. The way her eyes now looked to men, her slightly green eyes, fortuitous under her red Irish hair.
She hardly wore makeup, but she would confess to spending time on that hair, arranging for its loose waves to cascade lightly over her cheeks, to brush her neck, to spill so teasingly onto her shoulders, down in front just barely over her collarbones. She had very small breasts and always would, but they fit her slender frame and let her wear blouses wildly open sometimes in the evenings, in the right venues, baring more of the braless skin between her nipples than most bustier women would dare. That was her innovation, her capitalization on the particular sensuality her body bespoke. That she could go further, in a way, than other women and still offend no one afforded her a sense of power, of freedom. A guilty fearful indecent thrill.
It was in connection with this fashion epiphany that she had stopped being embarrassed by her nipples. When it was cold, or for the other usual reason, they grew quite long, poking out unmistakeably from all but the heaviest sweaters. Under thin cotton or rayon or silk, they cried out, never failed to draw eyes in the elevator, on the subway. Leoni had worn bras for a while just to hide them, and she still did most times in class and with her family. But at freer times, she let them stand out at her body's whim, and last week she had bought two new clubbing tops that were especially thin; thin enough that in a proper light, the whole of her round rouge areolas could be discerned against her pale freckled skin. She had not had the courage or occasion to wear them yet, but Friday was coming and the Pheonix was dark and she had one laid over the footboard of her bed.
Leoni was a second year student at university yet she was living in residence for the first time - she had lived at home her first year, but became envious of her friends who lived on campus, conscious of the social world she was missing, and so for her second year, she had worked the summer and saved and gotten herself a shared room in a coed dorm. Despite what she told her father, there had been a clear motivation for the coed choice: she had wanted to be around men. Yes, she had even wanted to see them walking down the hall in towels, to catch an accidental glimpse through the open door of their washroom, to unintentionally witness some rugby player's thick flaccid cock there and not look away and have him know it, that she could have looked away. She had wanted to have guys in her room late at night not to sleep with them but just to lounge there talking to them in something she couldn't wear outdoors, knowing but ostensibly oblivious to the show she was giving them. Well she had daydreamed about all that. But then she had been too shy, a largely introverted person who took much courage from the anonymity of the big city and the casual friends and the dark clubs where they danced. In fact she felt strange even changing with her roommate there, and she would turn to face the corner of their room when switching her top or getting ready for bed.
She did indeed see a boy on her floor walking down the hall in a towel on occasion. And after a month, she almost attempted to time her passing by the men's loo a couple of times, before she judged it silly. But her first risque experience in residence was quite the opposite of what she'd expected: it occurred one night after some pre-club drinks, when she decided she needed a pre-club shower and stripped down to nothing with her roommate and her friend there in the room and the door wide open, slung a towel around herself and went out. No one had been walking by in the hall, and her roommate and her friend were of course both girls, but she would not have done it sober. Her roommate seemed a private girl who was probably uncomfortable at the time, and her friend's sexuality was dubious. Kelly, this friend, was quite surprised by the sudden display - she had certainly never seen Leoni naked - and she felt compelled to laugh and look away if only for the first moment and then to tease Leoni with: "Take it off baby!" Leoni couldn't remember if she'd only thought about it or actually done it, but she might have posed for an instant with a sexy recline in her back and her hip set to one side, like she would see the dancers do a month after that when she and a couple of other girls would accompany a group of boys from the floor to the local strip club on a kind of barely enunciated dare.
That was her second risque experience, and it was more than she had bargained for. After the first couple of dances, Leoni and the other girls were coerced into moving with the boys to the front row by the stage, where the dancers kept smiling at her and presenting their thongs for her to slip money in. She was holding the money because Chad kept putting it in her hand, hoping that the dancers would come back and that Leoni would touch one of their hips or asses again in the process of inserting the money. Which they did, and she did. Leoni kept protesting, but if a dancer arrived while she still had the money, and put out her ass or her hip, Leoni would slip in the bill. One time, while she was laughing derisively at Chad and the whole experience, but still giving away Chad's money, one of the dancers winked at her in an alarming, real sort of way that caught her off guard, that stopped her laughing, or thinking or moving. For those few startled seconds, she realized after, her unattended features must have remained roughly as they had been: her lips wide, her teeth showing, her cheeks high and tight. Her head back, presenting her neck, her collarbones, and the pale skin between her breasts. Her gaze fixed mirthfully on the stripper, on the stripper's post-wink eyes, brown and personal.
And then unfortunately on her 36 B's, Leoni remembered, the really very excellent breasts uncovered for her many bills ago with all the splendour of their huge dark puffy nipples. Of course her eyes had been reminding her, warning her of where she was, of who this woman was winking at her, of what the strange wink meant, but then at the end of the day, the fact was her eyes had settled there on this stripper's proud tits and she had watched them from the front, then round and turning, then pert in profile against the lights while the stripper began to rise and turn away but still watched her watching.
And all that time, her fingers were still on the woman's ass. It was really only a matter of seconds, probably, and Leoni only realized where she had left her hand when the stripper stood high enough that her cheeks rose out of reach. But the guys were thrilled with it. She knew at once there was no option but to play along with their idea; to protest it at all would ring of guilt as protest always does. So she turned an impressive stare on Michael and popped her eyebrows and did something with her lips. That would have been enough, but the act possessed her just then and she took her three fingers that still remembered the smooth taut round of the dancer's bottom and put them in her mouth. While the guys watched disbelieving, she drew them out against the pull of her tongue and her lips. Her fingers tasted like strong perfume, which made Leoni suddenly aware that she was but one surface removed from lapping the bare skin of the dancer's bum. She wasn't sure if the shock of that showed through her performance, but she quickly laughed anyway in conclusion and turned back to the stage.
Well, that would get talked about for the next week and then once or twice at a party later in the year, she figured. Then it would be over. Not so bad. Maybe it would make Michael want her, which she wouldn't mind.
After the dance was finished, Leoni turned to Kelly - who had been spending a lot of time with Tom lately but came to the strip club of course, as if to maintain the dubiousness of her sexuality - and said: "Are you ready to go? Why don't we head out before the next dance starts up?" She hadn't wanted to ask the guys to leave, lest there were any hint of incriminating protest in that, so she was appealing to her friend to get the movement going. But to her infinite annoyance, Kelly replied too loudly:
"I don't know, I think you should get a lap-dance."
Chad liked that idea. Leoni rolled her eyes, turned away from them, and slumped a little with her arms across her chest. At the far side of the stage, her dancer was striding off with her clothes bunched in her hands, still naked, bare-assed. Despite herself, Leoni felt a light-hearted satisfaction. The stripper was undeniably gorgeous, and she couldn't have drawn a better ass to put on her shapely legs. Any guy would have gone poor to lay his hands on it. But it was Leoni's fingers the stripper had left there. Maybe had wanted there. It occurred to Leoni suddenly that during her performance for the guys and her preoccupied reflections thereafter, she had missed seeing the dancer's pubes, the big finale where she finally removed her thong altogether. Some "lesbian" Leoni was! While she amused herself with that thought, she leaned her head a bit after the dancer as she disappeared into the back, it having occurred to some part of Leoni's brain to try to look through the pretty butt and determine what the other side would have looked like. But that was only curiosity, and she didn't even make note of it. The first dancers had had severely trimmed strips for pubic hair, which had amazed Leoni, and she wanted to know whether it was a stripper thing.
She next wondered whether the stripper had tried to get her attention during that last portion of her act. Leoni thought from the wink that she would have. For a bit, Leoni felt bad at that, like she had been mean ignoring the woman. So cold to go from the wink-stare to nothing like that. The stripper didn't know she hadn't meant it. But the stripper surely wasn't for real anyway, so it was okay. Unless of course she had seen Leoni's Finger Lickin' Good show. Then she would have pegged Leoni for a lesbian for sure. Which would have been scary if the dancer was a lesbian too, and mortifying if she wasn't. Too. If the dancer was a lesbian too. Leoni shook her head at her error, smiling despite herself.
There was a break before the next dance, and sometime during this break, the strippers from the last dance appeared among the crowd, (barely) dressed slightly differently than they had been on stage. One had a schoolgirl outfit on - not that any school would have admitted her in it - while the second wore a neon green bikini. They were both quite attractive, better than the girls that were on when Leoni and her friends had first come in. But Leoni didn't see her dancer. The guys were fiddling with money and it looked as if they might be going. Leoni sighed in relief and unfolded her arms.
It was about then that the lithe arms of another woman fell over her shoulders, hung together at the wrists before her chest. Next was the smell of that perfume, and a changing of the sounds of the room as something obscured her ear. And then tickles of hair on her cheek, her earlobe. The dancer had had short hair, black, sweeping out away from her head in short spiky layers. So Leoni knew how close she was before she spoke.
"Hi," she said in a low, slow, melodic way.
Leoni was essentially rigid at this point, her lungs stuffed up with air. She put out something like a laugh.
"Did you like my dancing?"
"You're very good," Leoni offered politely, detached.
"Thanks. Would you like a private dance?"
"Oh, no thanks no offence, I -. I -."
"You're friends thought you might like it."
Chad.
One of the dancer's bare arms disappeared and then reappeared under Leoni's chin with a number of green bills in the hand. "They gave me all this money if you'll let me dance for you."
Leoni started to turn her head toward the dancer's, but she was too close; Leoni somehow felt the closeness of their cheeks before she had turned very far. How does the body do that? Is it the heat? Some kind of static-electrical thing?
"I'm sorry, you're a very good dancer but I just don't...I don't...go...that way."
"You shouldn't knock it 'till you try it," the dancer cooed.
"-."
"Don't worry about it; you don't have to like it like that. Just let me dance. It's a nice change dancing for a woman like you, instead of all these horny jocks. We can even just go to the back room and talk for half an hour if you want."
"Half and hour?"
"They pooled a lot of money to get you back there with me. Come on, give me a chance; this is the easiest money I'll make all night."
"I don't know."
"Now the dancer brought her lips against Leoni's ears - Leoni thought they actually touched at one point - and whispered just audibly. "Come on. I'll even give you twenty. Pull one over on your friends." She reached down and slipped a bill into Leoni's loosely-buttoned blouse, slid it over her right breast, just far enough for the edge to tickle her nipple.
Leoni leaned her head away so that she could turn to face the dancer without rubbing noses, though even so they almost did. The dancer's breath was sweet and fresh, and her eyes were astounding up close. The irises were brown but the colour had such depth, and a warm radiance to it. The whites were white even in the dark light, and the lashes, the shape of the eyes, the eyebrows, were all exquisite, more like a retouched photo, Leoni thought, than a real woman's eyes. Her nose was fine and long enough and under it her lips, the upper one fine, with so much shape, like an archery bow -
