Title: "Dancing in the Dark" 1/?
Author: Mala
E-mail: malisita@yahoo.com
Fandom: "General Hospital"
Rating/Classification: 'R', AU, language, sexual situations, C/M, BJ/AJ,
Disclaimer: Oh, boy. I REALLY don't own them.
Summary: In a slightly alternate timeline, Max Jones hates where she's been and Coleman Radcliff hates where he is. Barbara Jean Jones hates where she is and AJ Quartermaine hates... everything. So, where can they go together besides straight to Hell?
"I'll shake this world off my shoulder." --Bruce Springsteen.
The first thing out of her little rosebud mouth was the God's honest truth. The next two things were outrageous lies.
"My name's Max. I'm eighteen. And I want to strip."
She pulled a crumpled birth certificate from the back pocket of her ripped, dusty, jeans, and he didn't have to glance down at it to know the dates were carefully smudged.
Mariah Maxmiliana Jones. Yep, her name was 'Max' all right, a name that didn't seem to fit this sharp-mouthed little pixie doll with a mess of pony-tailed blond hair. But she was fifteen if she was a day. Sixteen at the most. And he'd never known *any* woman, no matter how old, who actually wanted to strip for a living.
Maybe if she had said "I need a job." Or "I need to earn some cash fast." Yeah, he would've bought that. But girls like Miss Max Jones...? They didn't *want* to be strippers. The jeans were in bad shape but they were designer. Her boots genuine leather. And the stone that hung on a silver filigree chain around her neck...? Well, it wasn't no cubic zirconia. Girls like Miss Max...they grew up to be doctors or lawyers or...god forbid...*cops*.
Coleman Radcliff, as a semi-respectable strip club owner, had very little use for cops. They never tipped the girls and refused to look the other way on his parking tickets.
He sighed, hoping the smile quirking on his lips wasn't *too* smug. The girl thought she had him snowed...and he wasn't about to disabuse her of the notion. "You're not from around here, are you?"
"Texas," she said, grabbing the birth certificate off his desk and shoving it back into her pocket with whatever else she'd stolen from her mommy and daddy.
He'd meant this side of Port Charles. Courtland Street and beyond. It wasn't Hell's kitchen...just its bathroom. But, hey, Texas worked as an answer. It was a big place. Nicely vague.
"So, you come here from Texas and you want to take your clothes off at my humble establishment." The Oasis was, in his opinion, not really humble. Just a shithole. And he hated paying protection to the Five Families to keep it running. But it was *his* shithole and he was making do. "Those are good goals to have at eighteen."
"It's better money than waitressing." Fire sparked in her dark brown eyes. *Now* she knew he was patronizing her. "I was on the drill team in high school. I can dance," she snapped. But her lower lip quivered.
Okay, he'd give her fifteen now. She'd dropped out as a sophomore. And she wore entirely too much make-up.
He laughed. He didn't know whether he wanted to give her a spanking or a set of pom-poms. "Don't think you ever cheered topless, Baby Doll. You just don't seem the type."
"How would you know what 'type' I am? Nobody knows my 'type'! Nobody knows what I'm capable of. Not even my pa--" and she cut herself off mid-tirade, mid-pace, just when she was getting good and wound up, clamping her mouth tightly shut and taking her frustration out on the leg of his desk instead.
He had no idea why Lorena had let this kid into his office. It was probably payback for suggesting she give D.A. Baldwin a lap dance when he'd come in for a photo op during his campaign to crack down on adult entertainment. But he wasn't complaining. This was the most adult entertainment *he'd* had in a long time.
He guessed that she'd stockpiled her allowance. Maybe worked up enough for a bus ticket. And why good old PC? Maybe she had relatives here? Maybe she'd just picked the name of the town off the bus schedule because the first boy she'd ever let pet her above the waist was named Chuck. But there was no way in Hell she'd come all this way just to get naked for his drunken clientele.
Proving that...well...that was going to be an unholy amount of fun.
He leaned back in his chair, folding one hand over the other, and gave her his most benevolent smile. "Well, all right Miss Texas...I guess we best get down to the audition."
Her face went, predictably, pale. "Au-audition?"
"Yep." He carelessly waved his hand. "Come on, let's see the goods."
Her hands stalled at the edge of her pretty pink tank top.
He gave her two minutes before she bolted and ran.
Oh, yeah. This was going to be fun.
***
Whoever said that having young parents was the ideal...was full of shit.
Max Jones could trace all her problems...including the one staring at her right at this very moment...back to the fact that her parents were young and adventurous and ultra-cool. And she hated them.
Felicia Jones wasn't the kind of mother who baked you cookies and told you your top was too low-cut. Frisco Jones was too busy playing Super Spy to tell her she was grounded until she pulled a B in Math. Collectively, they were the kind of parents who decided to con gun-runners in Columbia instead of buying her a car for her sixteenth birthday...and they'd dropped her off at her grandmother's ranch in Texas shortly thereafter.
She loved Mariah. She did. But it was a little late to pretend she could take Johnny Q. Austin to the junior prom and ace her SATs.
She knew how to fire three different kinds of semi-automatic weapons. She knew the capitals of every country in Africa because she'd lived in each for at least a month. And she could drive a Land Rover with her eyes closed... even though she had no license.
One thing, however, that she did NOT know how to do...was strip.
Sure, she could take off her clothes. Unbutton them. Before bed. Before a bath. To change into something else.
But she had never been on drill team. And she didn't want to be a stripper.
She just wanted to get the Hell away from her life.
And, well, this was about as far as it got.
The man...Coleman...was staring at her, expectantly. And the smile under the trim mustache was raw and wicked. Daring. He was daring her to do it.
She knew he was on to her. If there was one useful thing, besides how to handle a revolver, her father had taught her, it was how to spot bullshit ...and how to know when someone smelled yours. He probably thought he had her all figured out. Lost little rich girl, down on her luck, who would chicken out at the last minute. He was going to tease her until she ran away and then have a good chuckle with his little dark-haired hostess after hours.
He was right about the first two things. But the last...? No way.
Max Jones did *not* chicken out.
She cocked her head, staring at him and trying to guess his age. Thirty-five maybe? Older? Definitely around her father's age. And he was scruffy and hairy and had a really hideous orange shirt on. But he wasn't like the guys on the Greyhound who smelled like gin and mothballs and tried to feel her up at the rest stops. Or the boys back at the mission schools who had stared at her like she was something alien and then said dopey things like, "I love your voice, Maxie. Say my name, please?"
She had a great voice. A sex voice, she'd been told. Husky and faintly drugged. Unfortunately, finding work as a 'telephone actress' wasn't as easy as something like this.
Yeah. This was easy. It had to be.
She smiled at him and gestured towards the battered radio on the shelf behind him as her fingers danced around the hem of her top. "You want an audition? Fine...turn on some music," she taunted as she began to lift it.
He choked. Audibly. Slammed forward in his chair instead of back to flip on the radio. And his eyes went black. She'd heard the expression before, but never actually seen it. They darkened in degrees until she could almost see herself reflected. "If you want to dance, Baby Doll...you'd better be prepared for what that means," he growled. "Because I ain't puttin' my club on the line so some underage virgin can get her kicks."
He was really kind of hot when he was pissed off. But the words...the words...no, she couldn't have that. No. "I am NOT a virgin!" she huffed, panicked. "And I am NOT underage."
He stood up, moving around the desk, and the hands that had brushed hers while trading the birth certificate were powerful and clenched. "You ain't careful and somebody's going to make at least one of those lies the truth," he warned, huskily.
Even as the shiver ran up her spine, she felt her jaw set solid. "Who says I want to be careful?" she demanded.
And then she took off her shirt.
***
He'd seen a lot of breasts in his time. Big ones. Small ones. Nipples barely covered by pasties. Tassles. You name it, he'd seen it. And they rarely, if ever, incited him to heart failure.
But all he could think as he closed his eyes and prayed to Mother Mary and tried to remember how to breathe was..."Doesn't the girl believe in bras?" Well, that and..."Holyshitshitshitshit."
There was challenge in those slightly-slanted dark eyes. The tables had turned and now it was her patronizing him. She was daring him to look away, to grab the tank top off the floor and fling it back at her. To kick her pert little ass out the door.
Which meant she already knew he wouldn't do it.
Miss Max Jones had thought she had him snowed...and she'd been right.
Legal issues were floating above his head like miniature angels. Lawsuits. Raids. The loss of his liquor license. And on top of those angels were dirty-faced little devils who wanted him to strip the rest of her clothes off and see if she was as perfect and proportioned all over as those gorgeous, round, B-cup tits would imply.
"I gotta tell you, Baby Doll," he heard himself whisper, jaggedly. "Ain't nobody in their right mind going to believe you're eighteen."
She leaned forward...and suddenly that amazing chest was pressed up against him and her arm was going around his neck. Before he could even yank it away or push her back or say anything, she had him. "Then I'll just have to drive them crazy," she whispered against his mouth.
He would bet his life on the fact that she'd only kissed one boy in her entire short existence. Some sloppy school boy out behind the goalposts on the football field. Chuck. And he would bet his soul on the fact that this kiss...this hot, sweet, wine of a kiss...was sending him straight to Hell.
He kissed her back for as long as his temporary insanity would allow...teeth and tongue and swallowing her shocked little moan as her nipples went hard...and then...*then* he pulled away, gasping and hoping the edges of his shirt covered his own totally whacked out and inappropriate response.
"There is no fucking way you're going up on my stage," he assured, his throat constricted and his voice like an unpaved road.
"But...no...you can't...I have to...I'll go somewhere else if I have to...there are OTHER places in Port Charles, I know there are!" Her pretty little face crumpled and her chest heaved and he, damn it all to Hell, had to look away again when he interrupted.
He had to look away, but he had to cave. Had to fall. Had to admit he'd lost to her...this brave little girl with a birth certificate in her pocket and a monkey on her back.
He fiercely shook his head, grabbing her wrist. "You want some extra cash? You want to dance for it? Then you dance for *me*." He swallowed her moan again, her mouth, the fresh taste of her innocence and her determination. "Just me. You got that, Baby Doll?"
And, yeah, she got that.
Because her tiny little fingers began to work the zipper on her jeans.
***
One of her early Christmases in Port Charles...before Mom and Dad had completely lost their minds and gone Mr.&Mrs. Bond...she'd been playing with her cousins Lucas and BJ. She remembered it well. She couldn't have been more than five.
"I have a penis!" Lucas had announced, abruptly, putting down his Tonka truck.
She and BJ hadn't been impressed, even then, by a man's need to point out the obvious. They'd giggled, wondering, "So? Big deal!"
A game of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" had occurred. It had been educational, since she still remembered it, but underwhelming. At least until her aunt Bobbie had interrupted, given them a lecture while trying not to laugh, and then shooed them down to the kitchen for ice cream.
The ice cream...*that* had been the big thrill. Especially since Lucas had to eat the lame non-sugary kind. She figured it had been just punishment for the show-and-tell.
Coleman was no little boy. He didn't need to announce anything. It was right there beneath the fly of his jeans. But here she was playing "I'll show you mine" anyway. Because he would pay her. He would pay her to do this just for him...not for drunken creeps in the show room.
His hand closed over hers, stalling her fumbling with the button and zipper of her own jeans. And he called her "Baby Doll" again in that voice...that voice that was a hundred times more of a "sex voice" than her own. Her dad had called her any number of sweet nicknames while he sang her to sleep...Sweetheart, Baby Girl, Darling...but none of them...none of them... had sounded quite like this. "Baby Doll" didn't make her feel like anyone's little dress-up toy with fluttery eyelashes. Anyone's precious little daughter.
Just like the kiss hadn't made her feel like anything except a grown woman.
And maybe he read that thought in her eyes...just like he'd read everything else the minute she'd walked in...because he leaned down and kissed her again and it was her...her that was being driven crazy. He'd tasted faintly like smoke and whiskey the first time...and his mustache had tickled...and she had no idea how to move her lips, where to put her tongue, but he'd shown her. Now...now it was like she was suddenly an expert because she couldn't get enough and she was melting-hot inside and arching up on her toes so she could crawl right in.
His hand splayed against her bare back and she was glad because her knees were quivering and she wasn't sure she could stand.
And then, all of a sudden, he wasn't kissing her anymore. He was pushing her away, breathing hard, and she felt the same strangled need for air in herself. "Not tonight," he ground out. "Not tonight."
She reached for something to hold on to as the panic set in again and the closest thing was his shirt. Her fingers closed around the soft material. "But..."
"Come back tomorrow, Miss Max Jones." He closed his eyes and slowly lifted each of her fingers off his shirt...until he was free, and then he turned his back to her. He leaned against the desk and she wondered...she wondered what it was he couldn't show her. "The club's closed tomorrow...I'll put you up on the stage and see what you can do."
"Coleman..." How could she tell him that she'd used up all of her guts tonight? That she'd learned so many new things that her entire body was one live nerve ending? That she wasn't sure she could try this again?
He made a sound that was part-groan, part-sob. Desperate and hungry and it made her want to touch his face and lick his jaw. "Baby Doll...I can't let you do this tonight..."
"But why?"
"'Cause I'm in a bad way. Worse than I ever seen myself. I need a day to get my shit back together." And he laughed. When he turned back to look at her, his eyes were black again. A look she would now, forever, know meant he wanted her. He wanted her so badly it turned off his lights. He reached out ...and then pulled his hand back before it could make contact with her skin. "If you take the rest of your clothes off right now...I'm going to fuck you till you can't walk. So run, Baby Doll. Run as far as you can."
Her legs wouldn't move. She couldn't even take one step, much less run.
This was as far from her life as she could get. Two steps from the only man who had said "fuck" to her in a way that made her clench and want to see it through.
Her laugh sounded brittle and faintly drunk to her own ears. She wondered what he would do if she went ahead and took off her pants. But she didn't have to wonder because she knew. He meant it. And he meant it when he was telling her to run.
"I...I would..." she whispered, shakily, reaching down to pick up her tank top and pull it over her head. "But...but I have nowhere to go."
She couldn't exactly picture herself showing up at Aunt Bobbie's brownstone and bunking down with BJ with her swollen lips and screaming nerves. Especially since it would facilitate an immediate call to Texas and there would be no tomorrow...no tomorrow night here at the Oasis.
Which was the only thing she wanted.
No, she didn't want to be a stripper.
But, suddenly, more than anything, she wanted to be naked for Coleman.
***
She was giving him those eyes. Another concentrated snowjob. Begging for it. For her legs spread wide on his desk and a spot warming his bed.
And in another five minutes, he was probably going to deliver.
Yep, he was going straight to Hell.
And she...she was going straight out the door if he had to pick her up and carry her.
"I know a place you can snag a room cheap...and they won't ask questions," he said, going back behind his desk so he at least had one barrier between himself and temptation. He scribbled down an address on the back of a receipt and tossed it, half-crumpled, into her waiting palm. "The lady behind the bar is Jake. Tell her Coleman sent you. She won't give you any trouble unless you give her some."
She swallowed and he was altogether too fascinated by the movement of her pale throat. "You...you're sure you don't want me to strip tonight?"
He chuckled, hoarsely. "Baby Doll, you want to slum so bad, you can come slumming all you want tomorrow. Tonight, the only plans I got involve going to church, confessing, coming home and jerking off, strangling Lorena...then going and confessing some more."
She was so startled...probably by his admission that he had some religion to him...or maybe at the mental picture of him jerking his own chain...that it took the coy little schemer right out of her...and she blushed beet red. "Oh. Oh...okay. Right, then. Tomorrow."
Fifteen. He was back to fifteen. Shit.
And as she stumbled towards the door, her hand closed on it's edge and she turned. She turned and let him have it. That curved little mouth with his kisses still clinging to it. "And by the way, Coleman...in case you were wondering...? Sixteen."
The echo of the door slamming behind her...the silence in the wake of her husky laughter...and his own ridiculously raging hard-on told him there was only one thing on his list he really wanted to do at the moment.
"Lorena! You dumb bitch, where the fuck are you? You're fired, you hear me? Get your shit and get out!!!"
He wasn't the kind of man who hollered at his girls. He knew full well that they got enough of that shit at home from the old man they were probably keeping in beer and cigarettes. But Lorena Parker was a special case. She had no Old Man because no man was damn fool enough to live with her for very long. She'd been a whore once and it was common knowledge she'd hog-tied johns for less than adequate tips. She gave no quarter. It was why she made a damn fine hostess and a great den mother for all the girls.
It was also why she was the bane of his existence.
And she was calmly pouring him a drink behind the bar when he thundered into the club. "You didn't like my present?"
"I like my dancers to have at least hit puberty!" he growled, sliding onto a stool and swiping the still-settling shot of Maker's Mark from her perfectly manicured and shaped fingers.
"Well, I didn't get THAT inter-office memo." She stared at him with big, liquid, blue eyes. Not the least bit innocent. Just knowing. "Oh, come on...tell me you don't miss Fresh-As-a-Daisy? I thought version 2.0 would make you happy."
Miss Daisy? Ha. He missed Courtney Matthews like he missed a hole in the head. Several holes in the head. And cement shoes. Between her louse of an ex-husband with his hard-on for arson and her brother and her new boyfriend's status as *the* Crime Syndicate of PC, there was nothing about the pretty blonde he missed. The Oasis had closed down for six months because of Daisy...and he'd almost wound up dead.
And Max? Well, she definitely wasn't version 2.0. No daisies. She was a snap-dragon and she'd almost snapped his cock right off.
"You're a real humanitarian, 'Rena," he sighed, downing the shot in one gulp and sliding the glass back for another. "But next time...? Do me a favor and *don't* do me a favor."
Lorena clicked her tongue, crossing her arms on the bar and leaning her impressive rack on them. Luckily he was immune to those ample charms by now. "So, you didn't fuck her?"
He choked on his next mouthful of whiskey. "Jesus! She's sixteen!" he wheezed out as fire zig-zagged down his throat and tears sprang to his eyes.
"So?" She shrugged. "I started hooking at fourteen. What's your point?"
He winced. "My point is...Max is not you."
"That's true. She's definitely not me." Her red, red, lips twitched with smug amusement. "I was smart enough to divorce you. She's so dumb, she's coming back."
It was a toss-up as to who'd been dumber. He believed that firmly. He stared up at his ex-wife and scowled.
TBC.
Author: Mala
E-mail: malisita@yahoo.com
Fandom: "General Hospital"
Rating/Classification: 'R', AU, language, sexual situations, C/M, BJ/AJ,
Disclaimer: Oh, boy. I REALLY don't own them.
Summary: In a slightly alternate timeline, Max Jones hates where she's been and Coleman Radcliff hates where he is. Barbara Jean Jones hates where she is and AJ Quartermaine hates... everything. So, where can they go together besides straight to Hell?
"I'll shake this world off my shoulder." --Bruce Springsteen.
The first thing out of her little rosebud mouth was the God's honest truth. The next two things were outrageous lies.
"My name's Max. I'm eighteen. And I want to strip."
She pulled a crumpled birth certificate from the back pocket of her ripped, dusty, jeans, and he didn't have to glance down at it to know the dates were carefully smudged.
Mariah Maxmiliana Jones. Yep, her name was 'Max' all right, a name that didn't seem to fit this sharp-mouthed little pixie doll with a mess of pony-tailed blond hair. But she was fifteen if she was a day. Sixteen at the most. And he'd never known *any* woman, no matter how old, who actually wanted to strip for a living.
Maybe if she had said "I need a job." Or "I need to earn some cash fast." Yeah, he would've bought that. But girls like Miss Max Jones...? They didn't *want* to be strippers. The jeans were in bad shape but they were designer. Her boots genuine leather. And the stone that hung on a silver filigree chain around her neck...? Well, it wasn't no cubic zirconia. Girls like Miss Max...they grew up to be doctors or lawyers or...god forbid...*cops*.
Coleman Radcliff, as a semi-respectable strip club owner, had very little use for cops. They never tipped the girls and refused to look the other way on his parking tickets.
He sighed, hoping the smile quirking on his lips wasn't *too* smug. The girl thought she had him snowed...and he wasn't about to disabuse her of the notion. "You're not from around here, are you?"
"Texas," she said, grabbing the birth certificate off his desk and shoving it back into her pocket with whatever else she'd stolen from her mommy and daddy.
He'd meant this side of Port Charles. Courtland Street and beyond. It wasn't Hell's kitchen...just its bathroom. But, hey, Texas worked as an answer. It was a big place. Nicely vague.
"So, you come here from Texas and you want to take your clothes off at my humble establishment." The Oasis was, in his opinion, not really humble. Just a shithole. And he hated paying protection to the Five Families to keep it running. But it was *his* shithole and he was making do. "Those are good goals to have at eighteen."
"It's better money than waitressing." Fire sparked in her dark brown eyes. *Now* she knew he was patronizing her. "I was on the drill team in high school. I can dance," she snapped. But her lower lip quivered.
Okay, he'd give her fifteen now. She'd dropped out as a sophomore. And she wore entirely too much make-up.
He laughed. He didn't know whether he wanted to give her a spanking or a set of pom-poms. "Don't think you ever cheered topless, Baby Doll. You just don't seem the type."
"How would you know what 'type' I am? Nobody knows my 'type'! Nobody knows what I'm capable of. Not even my pa--" and she cut herself off mid-tirade, mid-pace, just when she was getting good and wound up, clamping her mouth tightly shut and taking her frustration out on the leg of his desk instead.
He had no idea why Lorena had let this kid into his office. It was probably payback for suggesting she give D.A. Baldwin a lap dance when he'd come in for a photo op during his campaign to crack down on adult entertainment. But he wasn't complaining. This was the most adult entertainment *he'd* had in a long time.
He guessed that she'd stockpiled her allowance. Maybe worked up enough for a bus ticket. And why good old PC? Maybe she had relatives here? Maybe she'd just picked the name of the town off the bus schedule because the first boy she'd ever let pet her above the waist was named Chuck. But there was no way in Hell she'd come all this way just to get naked for his drunken clientele.
Proving that...well...that was going to be an unholy amount of fun.
He leaned back in his chair, folding one hand over the other, and gave her his most benevolent smile. "Well, all right Miss Texas...I guess we best get down to the audition."
Her face went, predictably, pale. "Au-audition?"
"Yep." He carelessly waved his hand. "Come on, let's see the goods."
Her hands stalled at the edge of her pretty pink tank top.
He gave her two minutes before she bolted and ran.
Oh, yeah. This was going to be fun.
***
Whoever said that having young parents was the ideal...was full of shit.
Max Jones could trace all her problems...including the one staring at her right at this very moment...back to the fact that her parents were young and adventurous and ultra-cool. And she hated them.
Felicia Jones wasn't the kind of mother who baked you cookies and told you your top was too low-cut. Frisco Jones was too busy playing Super Spy to tell her she was grounded until she pulled a B in Math. Collectively, they were the kind of parents who decided to con gun-runners in Columbia instead of buying her a car for her sixteenth birthday...and they'd dropped her off at her grandmother's ranch in Texas shortly thereafter.
She loved Mariah. She did. But it was a little late to pretend she could take Johnny Q. Austin to the junior prom and ace her SATs.
She knew how to fire three different kinds of semi-automatic weapons. She knew the capitals of every country in Africa because she'd lived in each for at least a month. And she could drive a Land Rover with her eyes closed... even though she had no license.
One thing, however, that she did NOT know how to do...was strip.
Sure, she could take off her clothes. Unbutton them. Before bed. Before a bath. To change into something else.
But she had never been on drill team. And she didn't want to be a stripper.
She just wanted to get the Hell away from her life.
And, well, this was about as far as it got.
The man...Coleman...was staring at her, expectantly. And the smile under the trim mustache was raw and wicked. Daring. He was daring her to do it.
She knew he was on to her. If there was one useful thing, besides how to handle a revolver, her father had taught her, it was how to spot bullshit ...and how to know when someone smelled yours. He probably thought he had her all figured out. Lost little rich girl, down on her luck, who would chicken out at the last minute. He was going to tease her until she ran away and then have a good chuckle with his little dark-haired hostess after hours.
He was right about the first two things. But the last...? No way.
Max Jones did *not* chicken out.
She cocked her head, staring at him and trying to guess his age. Thirty-five maybe? Older? Definitely around her father's age. And he was scruffy and hairy and had a really hideous orange shirt on. But he wasn't like the guys on the Greyhound who smelled like gin and mothballs and tried to feel her up at the rest stops. Or the boys back at the mission schools who had stared at her like she was something alien and then said dopey things like, "I love your voice, Maxie. Say my name, please?"
She had a great voice. A sex voice, she'd been told. Husky and faintly drugged. Unfortunately, finding work as a 'telephone actress' wasn't as easy as something like this.
Yeah. This was easy. It had to be.
She smiled at him and gestured towards the battered radio on the shelf behind him as her fingers danced around the hem of her top. "You want an audition? Fine...turn on some music," she taunted as she began to lift it.
He choked. Audibly. Slammed forward in his chair instead of back to flip on the radio. And his eyes went black. She'd heard the expression before, but never actually seen it. They darkened in degrees until she could almost see herself reflected. "If you want to dance, Baby Doll...you'd better be prepared for what that means," he growled. "Because I ain't puttin' my club on the line so some underage virgin can get her kicks."
He was really kind of hot when he was pissed off. But the words...the words...no, she couldn't have that. No. "I am NOT a virgin!" she huffed, panicked. "And I am NOT underage."
He stood up, moving around the desk, and the hands that had brushed hers while trading the birth certificate were powerful and clenched. "You ain't careful and somebody's going to make at least one of those lies the truth," he warned, huskily.
Even as the shiver ran up her spine, she felt her jaw set solid. "Who says I want to be careful?" she demanded.
And then she took off her shirt.
***
He'd seen a lot of breasts in his time. Big ones. Small ones. Nipples barely covered by pasties. Tassles. You name it, he'd seen it. And they rarely, if ever, incited him to heart failure.
But all he could think as he closed his eyes and prayed to Mother Mary and tried to remember how to breathe was..."Doesn't the girl believe in bras?" Well, that and..."Holyshitshitshitshit."
There was challenge in those slightly-slanted dark eyes. The tables had turned and now it was her patronizing him. She was daring him to look away, to grab the tank top off the floor and fling it back at her. To kick her pert little ass out the door.
Which meant she already knew he wouldn't do it.
Miss Max Jones had thought she had him snowed...and she'd been right.
Legal issues were floating above his head like miniature angels. Lawsuits. Raids. The loss of his liquor license. And on top of those angels were dirty-faced little devils who wanted him to strip the rest of her clothes off and see if she was as perfect and proportioned all over as those gorgeous, round, B-cup tits would imply.
"I gotta tell you, Baby Doll," he heard himself whisper, jaggedly. "Ain't nobody in their right mind going to believe you're eighteen."
She leaned forward...and suddenly that amazing chest was pressed up against him and her arm was going around his neck. Before he could even yank it away or push her back or say anything, she had him. "Then I'll just have to drive them crazy," she whispered against his mouth.
He would bet his life on the fact that she'd only kissed one boy in her entire short existence. Some sloppy school boy out behind the goalposts on the football field. Chuck. And he would bet his soul on the fact that this kiss...this hot, sweet, wine of a kiss...was sending him straight to Hell.
He kissed her back for as long as his temporary insanity would allow...teeth and tongue and swallowing her shocked little moan as her nipples went hard...and then...*then* he pulled away, gasping and hoping the edges of his shirt covered his own totally whacked out and inappropriate response.
"There is no fucking way you're going up on my stage," he assured, his throat constricted and his voice like an unpaved road.
"But...no...you can't...I have to...I'll go somewhere else if I have to...there are OTHER places in Port Charles, I know there are!" Her pretty little face crumpled and her chest heaved and he, damn it all to Hell, had to look away again when he interrupted.
He had to look away, but he had to cave. Had to fall. Had to admit he'd lost to her...this brave little girl with a birth certificate in her pocket and a monkey on her back.
He fiercely shook his head, grabbing her wrist. "You want some extra cash? You want to dance for it? Then you dance for *me*." He swallowed her moan again, her mouth, the fresh taste of her innocence and her determination. "Just me. You got that, Baby Doll?"
And, yeah, she got that.
Because her tiny little fingers began to work the zipper on her jeans.
***
One of her early Christmases in Port Charles...before Mom and Dad had completely lost their minds and gone Mr.&Mrs. Bond...she'd been playing with her cousins Lucas and BJ. She remembered it well. She couldn't have been more than five.
"I have a penis!" Lucas had announced, abruptly, putting down his Tonka truck.
She and BJ hadn't been impressed, even then, by a man's need to point out the obvious. They'd giggled, wondering, "So? Big deal!"
A game of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" had occurred. It had been educational, since she still remembered it, but underwhelming. At least until her aunt Bobbie had interrupted, given them a lecture while trying not to laugh, and then shooed them down to the kitchen for ice cream.
The ice cream...*that* had been the big thrill. Especially since Lucas had to eat the lame non-sugary kind. She figured it had been just punishment for the show-and-tell.
Coleman was no little boy. He didn't need to announce anything. It was right there beneath the fly of his jeans. But here she was playing "I'll show you mine" anyway. Because he would pay her. He would pay her to do this just for him...not for drunken creeps in the show room.
His hand closed over hers, stalling her fumbling with the button and zipper of her own jeans. And he called her "Baby Doll" again in that voice...that voice that was a hundred times more of a "sex voice" than her own. Her dad had called her any number of sweet nicknames while he sang her to sleep...Sweetheart, Baby Girl, Darling...but none of them...none of them... had sounded quite like this. "Baby Doll" didn't make her feel like anyone's little dress-up toy with fluttery eyelashes. Anyone's precious little daughter.
Just like the kiss hadn't made her feel like anything except a grown woman.
And maybe he read that thought in her eyes...just like he'd read everything else the minute she'd walked in...because he leaned down and kissed her again and it was her...her that was being driven crazy. He'd tasted faintly like smoke and whiskey the first time...and his mustache had tickled...and she had no idea how to move her lips, where to put her tongue, but he'd shown her. Now...now it was like she was suddenly an expert because she couldn't get enough and she was melting-hot inside and arching up on her toes so she could crawl right in.
His hand splayed against her bare back and she was glad because her knees were quivering and she wasn't sure she could stand.
And then, all of a sudden, he wasn't kissing her anymore. He was pushing her away, breathing hard, and she felt the same strangled need for air in herself. "Not tonight," he ground out. "Not tonight."
She reached for something to hold on to as the panic set in again and the closest thing was his shirt. Her fingers closed around the soft material. "But..."
"Come back tomorrow, Miss Max Jones." He closed his eyes and slowly lifted each of her fingers off his shirt...until he was free, and then he turned his back to her. He leaned against the desk and she wondered...she wondered what it was he couldn't show her. "The club's closed tomorrow...I'll put you up on the stage and see what you can do."
"Coleman..." How could she tell him that she'd used up all of her guts tonight? That she'd learned so many new things that her entire body was one live nerve ending? That she wasn't sure she could try this again?
He made a sound that was part-groan, part-sob. Desperate and hungry and it made her want to touch his face and lick his jaw. "Baby Doll...I can't let you do this tonight..."
"But why?"
"'Cause I'm in a bad way. Worse than I ever seen myself. I need a day to get my shit back together." And he laughed. When he turned back to look at her, his eyes were black again. A look she would now, forever, know meant he wanted her. He wanted her so badly it turned off his lights. He reached out ...and then pulled his hand back before it could make contact with her skin. "If you take the rest of your clothes off right now...I'm going to fuck you till you can't walk. So run, Baby Doll. Run as far as you can."
Her legs wouldn't move. She couldn't even take one step, much less run.
This was as far from her life as she could get. Two steps from the only man who had said "fuck" to her in a way that made her clench and want to see it through.
Her laugh sounded brittle and faintly drunk to her own ears. She wondered what he would do if she went ahead and took off her pants. But she didn't have to wonder because she knew. He meant it. And he meant it when he was telling her to run.
"I...I would..." she whispered, shakily, reaching down to pick up her tank top and pull it over her head. "But...but I have nowhere to go."
She couldn't exactly picture herself showing up at Aunt Bobbie's brownstone and bunking down with BJ with her swollen lips and screaming nerves. Especially since it would facilitate an immediate call to Texas and there would be no tomorrow...no tomorrow night here at the Oasis.
Which was the only thing she wanted.
No, she didn't want to be a stripper.
But, suddenly, more than anything, she wanted to be naked for Coleman.
***
She was giving him those eyes. Another concentrated snowjob. Begging for it. For her legs spread wide on his desk and a spot warming his bed.
And in another five minutes, he was probably going to deliver.
Yep, he was going straight to Hell.
And she...she was going straight out the door if he had to pick her up and carry her.
"I know a place you can snag a room cheap...and they won't ask questions," he said, going back behind his desk so he at least had one barrier between himself and temptation. He scribbled down an address on the back of a receipt and tossed it, half-crumpled, into her waiting palm. "The lady behind the bar is Jake. Tell her Coleman sent you. She won't give you any trouble unless you give her some."
She swallowed and he was altogether too fascinated by the movement of her pale throat. "You...you're sure you don't want me to strip tonight?"
He chuckled, hoarsely. "Baby Doll, you want to slum so bad, you can come slumming all you want tomorrow. Tonight, the only plans I got involve going to church, confessing, coming home and jerking off, strangling Lorena...then going and confessing some more."
She was so startled...probably by his admission that he had some religion to him...or maybe at the mental picture of him jerking his own chain...that it took the coy little schemer right out of her...and she blushed beet red. "Oh. Oh...okay. Right, then. Tomorrow."
Fifteen. He was back to fifteen. Shit.
And as she stumbled towards the door, her hand closed on it's edge and she turned. She turned and let him have it. That curved little mouth with his kisses still clinging to it. "And by the way, Coleman...in case you were wondering...? Sixteen."
The echo of the door slamming behind her...the silence in the wake of her husky laughter...and his own ridiculously raging hard-on told him there was only one thing on his list he really wanted to do at the moment.
"Lorena! You dumb bitch, where the fuck are you? You're fired, you hear me? Get your shit and get out!!!"
He wasn't the kind of man who hollered at his girls. He knew full well that they got enough of that shit at home from the old man they were probably keeping in beer and cigarettes. But Lorena Parker was a special case. She had no Old Man because no man was damn fool enough to live with her for very long. She'd been a whore once and it was common knowledge she'd hog-tied johns for less than adequate tips. She gave no quarter. It was why she made a damn fine hostess and a great den mother for all the girls.
It was also why she was the bane of his existence.
And she was calmly pouring him a drink behind the bar when he thundered into the club. "You didn't like my present?"
"I like my dancers to have at least hit puberty!" he growled, sliding onto a stool and swiping the still-settling shot of Maker's Mark from her perfectly manicured and shaped fingers.
"Well, I didn't get THAT inter-office memo." She stared at him with big, liquid, blue eyes. Not the least bit innocent. Just knowing. "Oh, come on...tell me you don't miss Fresh-As-a-Daisy? I thought version 2.0 would make you happy."
Miss Daisy? Ha. He missed Courtney Matthews like he missed a hole in the head. Several holes in the head. And cement shoes. Between her louse of an ex-husband with his hard-on for arson and her brother and her new boyfriend's status as *the* Crime Syndicate of PC, there was nothing about the pretty blonde he missed. The Oasis had closed down for six months because of Daisy...and he'd almost wound up dead.
And Max? Well, she definitely wasn't version 2.0. No daisies. She was a snap-dragon and she'd almost snapped his cock right off.
"You're a real humanitarian, 'Rena," he sighed, downing the shot in one gulp and sliding the glass back for another. "But next time...? Do me a favor and *don't* do me a favor."
Lorena clicked her tongue, crossing her arms on the bar and leaning her impressive rack on them. Luckily he was immune to those ample charms by now. "So, you didn't fuck her?"
He choked on his next mouthful of whiskey. "Jesus! She's sixteen!" he wheezed out as fire zig-zagged down his throat and tears sprang to his eyes.
"So?" She shrugged. "I started hooking at fourteen. What's your point?"
He winced. "My point is...Max is not you."
"That's true. She's definitely not me." Her red, red, lips twitched with smug amusement. "I was smart enough to divorce you. She's so dumb, she's coming back."
It was a toss-up as to who'd been dumber. He believed that firmly. He stared up at his ex-wife and scowled.
TBC.