Excerpt of Strippers by Megan Ziese, Marna Martin

EXPOSED by Megan Ziese

Chapter One

Keira Johnson, aka Sexx, took one last look in the mirror, shifting her red halter top a little more. The D.J. was going to call her name any minute. Even after a week of dancing at the club, she still wasn’t over her stage nerves. She supposed for the most part that, more than worrying about strangers ogling her, she’d been nervous that one day her boss might discover that she’d taken on a second job working nights at Cheaters.

She had worked at the law firm of Douglas and Tremaine for almost six months before she’d finally concluded that one job just wasn’t going to pay the bills. If she was ever going to get out from under her college debts, she was going to have to try something drastic.

Deciding to work nights as an exotic dancer was pretty drastic, but then she’d considered long and hard before she’d finally concluded it was her best option. Nothing else would bring in enough money to get her debts off of her back nearly as quickly, and she didn’t think she had the stamina to hold down two jobs for very long. She didn’t think it would even have occurred to her to check out the exotic dance scene except that she’d discovered pretty soon after she’d started working for the firm that her boss, Devin Tremaine, entertained his male clients at a strip joint fairly regularly.

As far as she’d been able to discover, though, Devin Tremaine always took his clients to the strip club down the street, the Purple Pony. She’d been as casual as she could possibly be when she’d asked his personal secretary, Sarah, on their lunch break one day if he always frequented that establishment. Sarah had given her a strange look, which had given her the uneasy feeling that, maybe, she hadn’t been as subtle as she’d thought, but had assured her that Mr. Tremaine always went to the Purple Pony.

Strip by Marna Martin

Chapter One

The note on the door was simple. Babe, came by for the rest of my shit. Later. Vintage Ethan, really. Lissa didn’t doubt that Ethan had planned his little foray for a time when she would be out. She wasn’t sure how he got into the apartment after the locks were changed, but Ethan did have a way of getting into places where he had no business going. Lissa was pretty sure the only reason he’d bothered to leave a note at all was to keep her from calling the police. Not that she had anything really worth bothering the police over. They’d laugh and tell her to stop wasting their time if she called them out.

She sighed and opened the door, dropping her mail and worn denim backpack on the sofa, the nearest flat surface. A quick look around showed Ethan had claimed the oil paintings he’d always laughingly referred to as his share of the rent, the ones he’d had her pose for late into the night. Most of the books were gone from the cinder-block bookshelf, particularly the uber-expensive science texts that she’d saved for future resale. A quick glance at the kitchen showed the big butcher-block table was gone, replaced with the tiny café set the upstairs neighbors left on the curb when they moved out.

Lissa opened her cabinets. The dishes were gone, and all the alcohol. The bastard even took the four-pack of wine coolers from the back of the fridge. Ethan hated wine coolers, but he certainly wasn’t above cleaning them out just to prove his point. Great, she thought, he can come and go as he please—not really all that different from when we were dating, she thought.

In the bedroom, the 400-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets he’d talked her into putting on her credit card had been stripped from the bed. The steel dagger she kept under her mattress for protection was jammed in the door frame. Lissa opened the jewelry box she’d had since she was a child, the pink ballerina standing on tiptoe in frilled dignity as she twirled to the strains of ‘Musicbox Dancer’. The ring was gone. The ring. Ethan had spotted it in an antique shop and declared it perfect for her. The gold band twisted and wound through pairs of opals and diamonds in an Art Deco design. “It’s the perfect engagement ring,” Ethan said as he slid it onto her finger. “Once I pay it off, we’ll set the date.” Buying it had completely maxed out the tiny limit on her credit card. The ‘engagement’ was over, but she’d held onto the ring simply because it was such a beautiful work of art. Lissa slammed the lid shut on the serene ballerina.

Ethan did know the way to her heart, for better or for worse.

She picked up her mail and began sorting through it. Anything was better than the thought of Ethan ghosting in to her apartment and taking whatever struck his fancy. Pizza coupons, supermarket circulars, the standard mailbox spam. Snail mail ads were almost as annoying as having a SpaMail account. The one actual envelope was from the university. Lissa ripped it open with the corner of one chipped nail.