Pretty X-Woman update (Patreon)

There was always some way to make money in the Mansion. But to make money quick… there was the rub. Chris volunteered as a ‘teaching assistant,’ letting students practice their powers on him, teachers demonstrate techniques on him. Not exactly easy work. But by the end of the week, he had three hundred and thirty dollars.

Now he just had to figure out how to talk to Laura. He thought she’d hinted at wanting him to spend the three hundred dollars on her, literally, but she’d also hinted at not wanting to go out with him except in this prostitution context.

For a blunt woman, she was all kinds of opaque. How the hell was he supposed to ask her out? Not just for drinks, but to let him pay her money to fuck him? Even if it was maybe kinda sorta what she wanted, how did you just—

Laura cornered him as he was coming out of class. Chris had dropped his papers and had to retrieve them, so he was the last one out of the room. Laura took him like he was a sick calf that’d been cut off from the herd.

“You’ve been watching me.”

“No, no, I haven’t been back to the club since—“

“At school,” Laura reiterated. “You’ve been looking at me. Do you want my services?”

“Uh… yes? I mean, not as…”

“Do you have three hundred dollars?”

“Yes.”

“Any plans tonight?”

“No, I—“

“Good. Tonight then.”

As she left, Chris just had to boggle at her sales technique. Really something.

***

She took him back to the red light district they’d met in last time, this time visiting a place called the Monkey Bar. Chris wondered how much of a busman’s holiday it was. Had she worked here, maybe, a second job, picking up a shift for someone else, taken a holiday job—what?

It was a darkened space, lit by neon that reduced the patrons to shadows with garishly colored silhouettes. The traditional uniform was full coat and hat. Laura, in her tied-off top and short-shorts, had the neon lighting up her sweaty flesh like a vision from another world. She led Chris by the hand to a table, rapping on its surface to summon a waitress. She paid—odd, when she was doing this to make three hundred.

The DJ was good, Chris discovered, much too good for a strip joint, reaching deep into the archives for some old cuts that were never dated, but always timelessly suited to the shifting atmosphere in the place as the evening wore on, the drinks flowed, and the tension of the day evaporated. By the time Chris recognized a song, something funky that he looked up on his phone to buy later, the waitress had brought them their margaritas.

Laura licked at the salt-covered rim of the glass, eyes up and aware, like an animal at a watering hole.

“Good drink?” Chris prompted.

“Good enough.”

“I always wonder what they put in them besides salt.”

“Grapefruit juice, among other things,” Laura answered readily. She nodded to his and, taking her meaning, Chris picked it up and tried it. Sweeter than he’d expected, going down smooth. Laura drank as well. “You don’t have to worry about getting drunk on these. They’re good, but weak. You’d have to drink a lot of them to lower your inhibitions.”

When they were done, the waitress brought them another two without asking.

The DJ spun up another tune, slower, louder, its beat more insistent than before. Chris watched as a woman came up on the stage, pretty, masked, a tight dress shrouding her form, hiding her skin but showing off her curves. She danced sensually upon the small stage, working her body around to the beat the DJ layered over her, his booth above her like a puppet master pulling her strings.

A seductive smile underneath the black, studded leather of her mask—it seemed to cover her from the lips on up, blonde hair emerging out the back in a tightly coiled ponytail—the dancer reached behind her and pulled down her zipper, stop and go, sometimes freezing with a lull in the music, sometimes rolling her hips as she undid the dress and let it billow open, the tune of the DJ spurring her on like a cracking whip.

“Anyone ever tell you you have something of a one-track mind?” Chris asked.

Laura sat stiffly and watched the girl, her eyes seeming to grade the work as the stripper teased the dress off her shoulders. She reached across the tabletop, finding Chris’s hand where it was wrapped around his glass. She pried at his fingers. He released the glass, felt her fingers fit to his, and was suddenly holding her hand. One of the stripper’s breasts came into view, covered by a peekaboo lace bra cup. The stripper palmed the large teat, licking her red lips sensuously as she groped herself. Laura squeezed Chris’s hand.

Mist rose from the stage, bleeding upward in slow, supple waterfalls, not geysers like a rock show, but spritzes of white fog that hung lazily in the air. It obscured the woman, just as she worked the dress down her hips, bending over to give the audience an unthinkingly calculated view down her cleavage, and the room echoed with groans of dismay as her half-naked form became a darkened silhouette.

Chris looked over at Laura. He was amazed to see a look of sheer fascination on her face, a far damn cry from her usual stoic expression—it was like a whole new world had opened up to her, to him, being able to see her like this. Chris quietly dropped the idea of leaving.

He could see motion within the fog—sweeping legs, gesticulating hands, like a witch casting a spell over a bubbling cauldron. He was always on the verge of seeing, but the mist always a little too thick, the motion too fast, the girl dancing back before she could be seen. Visible more in the trail of roiling disturbance she left in the fog than in her own flesh.

Chris reached over with his other hand, taking the margarita, bringing it to his lips for a big swallow. “Take it off!” someone called, and Chris nearly spat his drink out.

“Take it all off,” Laura said, a mad glee in her voice, and Chris could barely take his eyes off her to look at the stage.

He couldn’t see the woman, just her arms—elbows peeking out to either side as she reached behind herself, then the arms straightening, extending forward beseechingly, as the lacy bra slid down them. The mist rolled in again, covering her, but not before she kicked the bra away, sending it sliding across the floor. It emerged from the mist and dangling off the edge of the stage, while in the shadows of layer after layer of mist, Chris thought he saw two large globes sway from side to side.

“Do you want to see them?” the woman asked, and Chris gasped out loud. He recognized the voice. It was Emma Frost. Was she the woman under the mask, so familiar—or maybe one of the Cuckoos, while she emceed? It didn’t matter. It was shocking enough that this was her game. “I know you do. But why see them when you can taste them? They taste even better than they look…”

“Prove it, prove it!” someone demanded. Palms slapped on tabletops, feet stomped—Emma, if it was her, was driving the place to the point of rioting.

“Oh? So you would like that.” Chris could see the mists part a moment, saw Emma walking from side to side—a flash of flank, long bare leg, the sides of her breasts as they jiggled unrestrained—then she was gone again. But still pacing, contained within the mist like a lion in its cage. “Well, come on then. Come and have a taste. Just remember: you have to earn it.”

Covertly glancing at the other tables, Chris could see that the place was getting crowded, people arriving unnoticed in the dark and noise as if drawn to Emma’s game. Many young men, many young women, more than a few couples.

Teased by her friends, a sorority girl departed the pack and went over to the stage. There was a set of stairs off to the side and as she came up them, Emma’s voice rang out again, strident and strong.

“Not so fast! Down on your knees. Approach me like a peasant would approach a queen and I’ll see if you’re worthy of my body.”

Giggling to herself, the girl got down on her knees. Suddenly, Emma’s arm emerged from the mist right in front of her. It caught her by the shirt and thrust her down onto all fours.

“So let’s see!” Emma cried, still half-obscured by mist, but half not, dewdrops of fog rolling off her body like white rain, making her terrible, spectral, as she pulled back her hand and brought it forward with a tremendous clap on the girl’s buttocks. She yelped and immediately crawled forward, unthinkingly trying to get away, while Emma spanked her twice more, chasing her right off the stage.

The episode had been brief, stark, almost hallucinatory in its intensity. And now Emma stood there, at the forefront of the stage, the mist the barest covering, just a layer of silk holding her body, as if the act of sadism had physically removed any doubt as to her perfection, her beauty, her regal elegance and its terrible harshness.

She stood there, legs akimbo, hands on her hips—a riding crop in her hand, beside her black thong, its tip running down beside her thigh-high boots. Outside the mist, she wasn’t just ravishing—she was a dominatrix.

“Any other takers?” Emma asked. “Anyone man enough for me? Or anything else for me?”

They sat and watched through two tries. A tough guy and another girl. Both put up a fight, but while they could withstand Emma’s gloved hands, they couldn’t manage the riding crop. They fled. Emma padded along the edge of the mist again. Chris could see a damp spot on her panties.

“Doesn’t anyone want me?” Emma pouted. “Doesn’t anyone love me? Don’t you all know that love hurts?” Emphasized with a swish of her riding crop, slapping angrily against her own leg. Chris sucked in breath—that had sounded like it hurt.

Laura put her hand on his arm. Her face was flushed. “Don’t look away. No matter what.”

Chris’s jaw must’ve missed the floor by inches. “Um, errr, I mean… yeah. If you want to. I guess!” he stammered.

Laura gave him a quick kiss, then slid out of the booth. The audience cheered as she approached the stage, up the stairs, into the mist with a determinedly headstrong stride. Chris was too shocked to move, even to thank the waitress as she brought him another drink. He was both scared and excited, with no idea what would happen. Would Laura back out? Attack Emma? Have a wardrobe malfunction?

Then the mist cleared.