Chapter One

Clipped by Destiny

 

At the door, in the windowless corridor before the windowless expanse of the floor of The Lodge, the option is given of buying a bracelet or a collar. Paul must have gone ten times in the span of a couple of months before he had the courage to spend the extra ten dollars. The doorman handed over the leather strap with a silver metal loop in the middle without much of a reaction, though Paul had his eyes cast down as he received it. He fit the collar snug around his neck.

He grabbed the handle of the door into the main room. Bass pounded from inside. The force vibrated in his hand, up his arm, through his body. He opened and stepped in. A conspicuous feeling still struck him when he first stepped into a club for the clear, sole purpose of viewing women naked, but with the collar on, every person in the room seemed to look over. He imagined as his eyes slowly adjusted to the dim lighting a filled club of patrons and entertainers enjoying the spectacle of him finally arriving with the collar on he'd been fantasizing about wearing since the change at The Lodge. Even the dancer on stage looked up, seemed to notice the collar, and smiled before unsnapping her bikini top and letting it fall.

Whether it had been a month or a day, the first glimpse of a pair of pink nipples upturned on fleshy mounds of tan softness was a glorious sight. The dancers offstage, moving among the room, were showing plenty of skin in their bikinis, but the treasures of pink were the reason for paying the price of admission. Paul went straight to the stage and pulled two bills from the wad of singles in his front pocket. He would give every dancer two for a stage show and some of his favorites he gave five. There was no way he would offer a hard working dancer the same dollar exotic entertainers have been getting for the last twenty years when she gave him ten seconds of her time. Inflation had occurred. They seemed to appreciate it and grant him extra attention. They knew him.

The dancer, Selena-he'd bought a couple of private dances with her in the past-tiptoed straight over and knelt. Her proximity immediately thrilled him. She leaned over with a hand on his shoulder and, cupping a breast with her other hand, caressed her nipple between her finger and thumb inches from his gaze. She spun on all fours and slammed her heels against the solid stage floor and gyrated her hips up and down, shaking her ass. She turned back around and sat at the rim of the stage and lifted the garter around her thigh, already loaded with money. Her brief dance lulled Paul into such a trance, he nearly forgot about the collar, but as he fed two dollars in-careful not to touch her thigh as badly as he wanted to-she pinched the collar and jiggled it, giggling.

He blushed.

The song came to an end, and Selena crossed the stage and picked up her top. She left it dangling from her hand and stood by the step in front of the backstage curtain. An elegant touch, the dancer leaving the stage always offered a hand to the next dancer stepping down in her heels. They announced her name, and Destiny emerged from behind the curtain. She caught Paul in her quick survey of the men around the stage, briefly smiled his way, but then she looked a second time as though just noticing the collar. Her smile grew. Paul's heartbeat quickened. He reached into his other pocket filled with several fives and pulled one out.

Destiny drifted away from Selena, released her hand, and twirled. Her tiny skirt rose above her hips and her string bikini bottoms flashed around the room. She always wore a skirt that hid most of her prominent feature: her gorgeous behind. An exotic dancer packing a large, round and firm butt could fill the stage any day of the week, but while her ass may have lured them closer, Destiny's best feature was her stage presence. She spun to the pole and smiled around the room at her admirers. She climbed the pole and swung down with one leg hooked around and the other stretched out, pointed at the men gathered around.

Men waved dollars as she strut the stage, but she teased them, made them wait. She returned to the pole and flipped upside down, facing the audience, her thighs clamped around the shiny metal. She reached behind her back, unraveled her top, and let it fall. Her nipples, on her large, upside down breasts, pointed toward her smiling face. She cupped them in her hands and, slowly extending her tongue, gave one-or mimed giving one-a lick. Her thighs squeaked down the pole. She landed on her shoulders and rolled off backwards. The hard toes of her heels banged the stage.

On hands and knees, she crawled from dollar to dollar, giving every man a brief dance, jiggling her boobs in front of their faces, spreading her legs with her bikini-covered pussy just in front of them, and backing toward them on all fours and shaking her ass. She made time to do this for almost every man at the stage for a dollar, but she didn't do it for Paul, even though he had a five held up in plain sight. Every time she crossed the stage, she looked his way and smiled, but her last song came to an end. She picked up her top and carried it off the stage.

Paul felt the sting of rejection. Dancers meet a lot of men who fawn over them; it takes a few times over the course of several weeks for a dancer to come to think of a customer as one of her regulars. The dancers seemed to like finding men in the crowd, go-to-guys, who they knew would be saving most of their money for them, and it felt nice to be that guy for a beautiful woman. Paul thought, after as much attention as he'd given her, that he was that guy for Destiny, but one of the perks was a dancer would usually give one of her regulars a slightly longer and more risqué stage dance and Destiny had completely ignored him and his five-dollar bill.

The DJ announced the private dance special. The club did this every hour. They paraded all the entertainers across the stage and advertised a pair of dances. Since the recent change at the club, the dancers had started targeting men wearing collars over men wearing wristbands. The dances cost twice as much for customers with collars on, and the extra money went to the entertainers. Since the club change, the dancers came off the stage in a new way: they carried leashes.

Destiny turned round the stage, even weaving past some men who appeared to be vying for her attention, and walked right up to Paul. So much for ignoring him, but instead of feeling pleased or relieved, he felt a surge of terror at the prospect of following through. She had the loop end of the leash pointed toward him. "Would you like a dance?"

A certain protocol had developed in how collared men were expected to answer this request, and he followed it. "Yes, please, Mistress."

She clipped the leash to the ring on his collar. Her hand brushed under his chin, and he swallowed nervously. She drew away and stepped back. A sharp tug on the leash, and he dropped off his stool and fell to his knees in front of her. He knew this was coming. Since the club's change he'd seen intrepid men crawl at the ends of dancers' leashes to the private dance area. The room was dim enough that the men were barely recognizable crawling in the shadows, and the powerful sight of the women leading attracted all the attention of any men watching, but even knowing he would be nothing but a prop, if he was noticed at all, he was still terrified. He trembled, but Destiny gave an assured tug on the leash and started walking, and Paul pattered, on all fours, after her.

The other dancers, at least near them, who had snagged dances, had apparently settled for men wearing wristbands. Those men walked side-by-side, hand-in-hand, with their entertainers. The dancers' attention was already focused on their customers, but they made time to smile at Destiny and flash amused grins back at Paul.

The crawl between the tables past the perimeter of the stage felt endless. He started to think Destiny was leading him on a zigzag course so she could add to his humiliation. He avoided eye contact with customers sipping drinks at the tables. He had something appealing to occupy his attention. Destiny's tiny umbrella skirt barely covered half of her ass, and from his position on his hands and knees behind her, he had a fantastic view. Every stride made the string of her bikini bottoms appear for a moment before plunging again out of sight buried between her cheeks. She looked back and caught him staring. She smiled and looped the leash an extra time around her wrist. He felt a slight pull and sped up till he was right on her heels. Her ass loomed in his field of vision. From his angle, nearly under her, the contours of the triangle of thong covering her showed the folds of her pussy.

She led him up a short flight of steps and into the dance area. The lighting there was slightly improved, always nice when receiving a dance, but he had forgotten about that and now felt doubly conspicuous. Destiny headed toward a middle couch. The couches on either side each had a dancer sitting with her customer. Both men wore wristbands and their entertainers were squeezed against them in bikinis, lavishing them with flirtatious small talk.

Destiny sat in the middle of the couch between the other two and leaned back. She gave the leash a sharp tug and pointed at the floor. Paul crawled to a stop and knelt up. Destiny crossed her legs. She kicked her heel in the air between them. The view up her tiny skirt revealed her bikini bottoms pressed between her tightly closed thighs, but the glorious sight remained in his periphery. He couldn't remove his gaze from her face as she smiled down at him. "I wondered if you would come in with a collar on. You seemed like the type." She uncrossed her legs and, placing both feet on the floor, leaned forward. She pinched his cheek. "Were you too shy?"

"Yes."

She leaned back, drawing the leash tight, pulling him slightly off balance and making him tense up. She raised her chin and glared down. "While you're at the end of my leash, you will address me as 'Mistress Destiny'."

"Yes, Mistress Destiny."

She smiled and let the leash go slack. She crossed her legs, again. She told him she was enjoying the change at the club. She was having fun with it. Several of her regulars were coming in with collars on. Paul never liked hearing about her other regulars. He didn't have any delusions. Of course, she was an entertainer and men came in to see her, and it never bothered him to see her admired by other men she danced for, but he did like to think she wasn't anyone else's primary reason for coming in. When a dancer spots a man and knows when she sees him he's a certain yes for a dance a nice bond is created. He wished his sharing of that with her was unique, but he obediently nodded along, listening attentively as she continued speaking, her foot moving through the air just under his chin.