“Dammit, Sin. Where the hell have you been? The audience
is here and they’re getting nervous. We were supposed to open
fifteen minutes ago,” she whispered as she quickly ushered
Ella in the back door and down the dimly lit hall of Merck Mansion.
“And Prince Charming never showed either,” she added.
“Shit!” Trouble. Big Time.
This just wasn’t her day, was it? First she’d had to
ask for help with her case and now her freaking Prince Charming
had dumped her.
“The next time you hear from him tell him he’s fired.
We’ll start looking for another prince first thing in the
morning.”
Caprice nodded.
They slid into the room where the rest of the small group had gathered
in their colorful, sexy outfits. The instant they saw Ella they
stopped talking and waited eagerly for further instructions from
her.
God, she loved being the boss. The power made her feel strong and
confident—something she never felt in the medical world where
her stepsisters and stepmother always managed to make her feel like
a clumsy idiot.
“The performance is still on,” Ella reassured the small
group as she slipped off her jacket and shoes and put on her black
dance slippers.
“I’ve already mentioned to Merck what the problem is,
he said he’d be more than happy to play the prince,”
the petite, white-haired elderly woman who played Prince Charming’s
mother said innocently.
I’m sure he did.
Merck had a crush on her. Well, maybe a crush was too gentle a
word. He wanted her in his bed and that’s the last place she
ever wanted to be.
“I’ll scan the crowd for a prince before any decisions
are made.” At least that way she’d have some control
over what happened tonight. In order for the play to work she needed
someone she was halfway attracted to.
Someone like Roarke.
Just thinking about him made her pussy clench wickedly and cream
with liquid heat.
Oh yeah, Roarke would be her perfect Prince Charming. But now was
not the time to start fantasizing.
Ella clapped her hands. “Okay everyone. Don’t worry.
We’ll find a prince. As always, let’s give them hell
tonight!”
The group cheered.
“You guys are the best,” Ella complimented her smiling
troupe.
She nodded to Caprice who quickly tied the traditional peasant
kerchief over Ella’s wig and smudged her cheeks lightly with
black soot to give the effect of a woman who spent most of her time
cleaning. Then she led Ella from the room. A moment later she stood
outside the door of the room they’d be performing in.
The first act she’d be alone doing a sensual dance while
cleaning out the fireplace. She’d also be singing one of the
songs she’d learned by heart when she’d been a kid and
watched various Cinderella plays over and over again. Of course,
she’d made her own adjustments to the tunes, turning it into
an adult play her group performed secretly for private audiences.
Ella’s take of the money went anonymously toward several local
charities.
Tonight wasn’t the first night she’d have to pick a
man from the audience to play her prince. For some reason the part
of Prince Charming was the one most often recast…usually because
after the show the prince wanted the play to continue…in the
bedroom. She had no patience for such unprofessionalism. She considered
Sinderella a tasteful, professional, adult spin-off of Cinderella
from which, according to the rumors, she’d heard it had been
originally invented for adults long before it had been re-invented
for children.
Her Sinderella version was a serious, lucrative business and there
was no time to play to a man’s ego or his aroused cock after
the show. It was up to him and not her to get himself relief.
Gosh, she still couldn’t believe she did this erotic stuff.
If her stepmother and stepsisters found out about her secret life,
they’d die right on the spot.
Ella smiled. Wouldn’t that be a lovely thing to happen? To
see their shocked expressions if they ever discovered their loser,
klutzy Ella wasn’t as much of a loser or as clumsy as they
always teased her about being.
Music drifted from the room. It was her cue.
Swallowing back a last blast of stage fright, she forced herself
to glide into the dimly lit room. As she appeared, shocked gasps
rang out. A maddening applause quickly followed. The warm welcome
washed a sizzling rush through her almost nude body and she couldn’t
help but be pleased at the way her troupe had decorated the performance
room.
Ordinarily Merck used it as his library. On presentation nights,
it became Sinderella’s living room. Pine beams laced the white
stuccoed ceiling and a cheerful fire crackled inside the fieldstone
fireplace. Pulled in front of the hearth sat a lone New York ladder-back
chair. It would come in very handy in just a few moments.
Grabbing her feather duster with the dildo-shaped handle from the
fireplace hearth, she began to dust the furniture and sang her sad
tale to the audience of mostly men.
She was Sinderella. Lost in a world of servitude. Her father had
married a nasty woman who had two awful daughters. He’d died
and her stepfamily had made her their servant. Their slave, who
cleaned the chimneys and dusted the house while she fantasized about
being rescued from her dismal life.
The song always gripped her heart. It was a song of fantasies.
Fantasies of who she wanted to be. Of pretending she was a beautiful
princess and had fallen in love with a well-hung prince who would
cherish her and make love to her everyday—it made her feel
sorry because she knew in reality romance would never happen to
her. She was thirty and had never been on a date. Why start now?
Sinderella was her sex life and she enjoyed it immensely, even if
it wasn’t normal behavior for a woman.
While she performed, dancing about with her feather duster, she
scanned the excited faces of the numerous male members in her search
for a Prince Charming. No one captured her interest tonight.
Frustration began to claw at her belly at the thought of giving
in to Merck and allowing him to be her prince. Merck enjoyed tormenting
her by dropping hints that if she wanted him to continue to throw
private showings for Sinderella, she would have to sleep with him.
He was a millionaire heart surgeon and by far Sinderella’s
greatest sponsor. She needed to consider his threat and either do
as he asked or tell him to shove his request right up his ass.
She leaned heavily to the latter.
Denying Merck would put a dent into the pocketbook of the charities
she anonymously donated her share of the Sinderella performances
to, but she did have her principles.
Suddenly from the corner of her eye she noticed a door opening
at the other end of the room.
A latecomer.
Her breath caught as she spied the silhouette standing in the open
doorway. The play of light and shadow hit his face in just the right
way illuminating his profile. Blunt cheekbones, straight nose and
sharp angles that made her heart kick-start.
Roarke? |
