Very Important Person (Gomorrah)

Oh.” With Chloe’s worries dealt with, she loosened up a little.

“Well, Rose… I was already thinking of asking you for one, actually. But if it’s for a good cause…” she smirked. “What do you say? Want to be my first lap dance?”

And so Rose was Chloe’s first lap dance. The pink-skinned fae led her by the hand to a private room, and Chloe remembered being giddy with excitement, feeling her body throb with every heartbeat, surprised at herself that she was actually going through with this. The green of Rose’s hair reminded Chloe of her girlfriend, which might have been part of her attraction. She tried not to think about whether this qualified as cheating. As it turned out, ‘not-thinking’ was a very easy thing for her to do while getting a lap dance.

Rose was also her second lap dance, very soon after the first. Later, after watching a few more strippers on the main stage and chatting with others, Blue was her third. Blue and Rose were able to do things normal humans couldn’t; Chloe learned some of these things because they were cleverly incorporated into their lap dances.

Chloe herself might have used her power for several seconds at a time, when, for example, Rose straddled her thigh or Blue caressed her with her tentacles. She didn’t intend to, but she didn’t feel too sorry about it either. It probably made the dancers feel a little bit better about what they were doing.

Soon, she was saying goodbye to some of the dancers, thanking them, and walking to the stairway with Janica in tow. She was just about to go back downstairs, but she stopped.

“Janica?” She looked to her personal waitress. She was still a bit giddy from all the flirtation and nudity and physical contact from earlier, still blushing. “I know the VIP floor is off limits to pretty much everyone, but… is it cool if I go see what’s up there?” Chloe certainly felt like a ‘very important person’ right about now. Maybe that had something to do with all the attention she had been getting earlier.

Chloe wasn’t expecting to get stonewalled here. She noticed that the idea made Janica super uncomfortable, which meant two things:

First, this was something that Chloe probably wasn’t supposed to see.

Second, Chloe absolutely had to see it. She was starting to remember why she actually came here; it was because of stuff like this. She wanted to know what her ‘father’ was really like. That meant seeing things he probably didn’t want her to see.

“Oh… Well, did he say I’d need his permission to go up there? What happened to ‘my temple is your temple?’”

She looked up the stairs, thoughtful. It could be all sorts of things. Chloe was starting to think that it was a brothel. Or maybe a kinky sex dungeon, or something. “What’s up there, anyway?”

“So… the third floor of my and my father’s temple is not part of my and my father’s temple.” Chloe spoke slowly, as though she was having a hard time following along. “Who does he invite up there, then? Is it an illegal side-business, or something? Because I don’t care if he’s doing something illegal, but I…”

The half-demon stopped talking. She turned to watch as a pair of bouncers dragged a young man up the stairs from the lower floor. He didn’t look particularly enthused about where he was going, as indicated by the trembling and the terrified-to-death look on his face. He already stopped struggling. He knew it would be pointless.

“Are you all going to the VIP room?” Chloe asked them.

Chloe opened her mouth, then shut it again. She didn’t know what to say. Apparently, Gabriel had people tortured on the third floor. Or something like that. According to the bouncer-type guy, the person they were carrying up deserved what was coming to him. So it was punishment for something.

Janica seemed really stressed out by the fact that Chloe was seeing all this. “I’ll take full responsibility for sticking my nose into this. If he gets mad, I mean,” Chloe reassured her. “You did everything you could.”

She stood there for a bit longer, thinking. Maybe the VIP room was where they took the boy from earlier, who tried to steal elixir. Chloe didn’t remember seeing an exit at the first floor of this stairwell, so they couldn’t have just thrown him out. Gabriel probably didn’t want her to know about this if Janica was getting so stressed about it, so it could be a waste of time to ask him, but she still wanted to learn more.

“It’s probably not a big deal anyway. I think I’ll go downstairs now,” she said, smiling, still trying to reassure the waitress. “I’ll try flirting with people who aren’t getting paid to put up with me.”

She started to take the stairs down.

“A wind nymph,” Chloe repeated. She didn’t know how she would be able to recognize a wind nymph, if she wanted to pursue one. Maybe she would know him if she saw him. “I’ll keep that in mind.” The half-demon leaned against a wall, observing the other patrons, waving back at her ‘father’ when they spotted each other.

Of course, Chloe didn’t intend to go too far with this. She still had a girlfriend. But… would it be so bad, if she made out with some rando in the stairwell? She could feed off of them, and it would get Janica off her back long enough for her to sneak upstairs. Plus, didn’t she just finish getting three lapdances? It couldn’t make things that much worse if she made out with some rando.

It was decided, then. She would pick up a rando and make out with them in the stairwell. But before she could do that, she would need to find a suitable rando to pick up. Her gaze moved from patron to patron. The cutie with the pink gravity-defying hair seemed to be with a group, though Chloe had to watch for a while to figure this out. She noticed the tentacle-creature again; he would probably be difficult to make out with in any conventional sense. The guy with the pointy ears and the fur by the bar gave Chloe a sort of creeper vibe, and he was probably about twice her age anyway.

There! He was perfect. A tall Roma-looking boy with blue eyes and a crazy mop of hair. He came in alone, didn’t seem to be with a group, and looked horribly out of place among all the more clearly nonhuman patrons. There was a sort of inhuman beauty about him as well, a magnetism that pulled her gaze to him, which she almost had to fight whenever she wanted to look at something else.

Chloe closed her eyes for a moment. Deep breath in, breath out. “I can do this,” she muttered to herself.

And then she walked towards him, slipping in front of him, intercepting him. What the hell am I doing?

“Hey.” She stopped in front of him, making eye contact, mischievous smile pulling at her lips. “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before…” Her gaze traveled down and up his body before meeting his eyes again. “I’m Chloe.”

Her grin widened, and she extended a hand. She would drain him a little when their hands touched; it would make him feel as giddy as his first kiss.

She hoped she wasn’t making a massive fool of herself.