Three Hot Wishes (Fantasy Come to Life - Magic in the Real World Novel) (22 page)

Sloane

Once I finished ballet ad got out of the showers, I tore open my bag in the change room and pored over the flyer I'd grabbed outside the library.

The top of it said 'Earn Money from Home!!!', but the rest of it was very different from all of the other scams I'd seen.

There was a picture of a woman taken from behind her. Her shirt and bra were off, and she was sitting at in front of her laptop.

'Be a Cam Girl!' was written underneath her in big letters, along with a web address.

I folded the flyer back up grabbed my stuff before heading out, my head full of conflict.

I had a little bit of an understanding about what those girls did on their webcams for men, but I told myself over and over that it was worth a look. After all, it wasn't stripping.

Right?

The train ride home went by faster than any I'd had before. All I could think of was getting back into my shitty apartment and turning on the laptop, and once I got in the door I did exactly that.

Research. That's what I needed.

And what I got was an eyeful. There were women on there from all over the world, sitting on their bed in sunshine or darkness depending on their location. Most of them were naked, and the ones that weren't wore very revealing outfits that I felt certain were going to end up on their bedroom floor before too long.

As far as signing up to watch, it looked like it was free. Guys, and presumably girls too, could put in their credit card number if they wanted to, which they used to buy 'tokens'. The tokens got given to the web cam models as payment, complete with a loud little ka-ching! noise that prompted the women to thank their tipper, often by plunging the viewers into a show that went even further than they'd been going a second ago.

And the things they did! Vibrators, whips, dildos, massage oil, candle wax... I saw more in the two hours of clicking models' pictures and entering 'performances' than I had in a lifetime.

Up until today, I'd have said I was fairly well-versed sex stuff. I didn't particularly look forward to any future encounters, of course, but I thought I knew what was out there to be had.

Well, it turns out I was wrong. By the time I logged of, my hands were shaking and my breath was fast and shallow. I was absolutely naive when it came to that sort of thing. Hell, I only had a vibrator because one of my idiot friends had given it to me as a gag gift, something to help 'warm my bed since I hated men'.

But those women online. They were shameless! In so many ways it was worse than stripping. At least when you were grinding on a pole for a bunch of drunks, you stopped once you were naked. On that sight, naked was were you started...

Still, I found that I couldn't let myself dismiss the idea so easily. Yes, the things they were doing was intense, but even I could see just by the amount of tokens being tipped that they were making good money. The most successful woman I'd watched had made almost a hundred and fifty bucks over the course of half an hour!

And that was money I could use, there was no doubt about that...

There was one more thing that made it appeal to me. More than the money, more than the fact that I could make the web cam thing fit in around my crazy schedule, it was the anonymity.

You could see the girls' faces, which was an issue. But at least she couldn't see the men as they inevitably touched themselves. She couldn't see their leers, or their erections, or the way their eyes would demand more and more and more. It looked like the performer could even turn off the chat, giving her even more of a wall between her and the faceless paying customers.

I closed the lid of the laptop and drummed my fingers along the top. I didn't necessarily have a problem with my body being on display, so long as I couldn't see the guys. I didn't want to be recognized though, just in case somebody saw me on the street or my dancing took off. That would be the worst, now that I thought about it, to have some guy who'd recorded my 'show' try and ruin my future career with a 'sex tape', or something.

But there were ways around that, right?

I looked around, suddenly struck by inspiration. Last year we'd done Pulcinella, and I still had the glittery mask that I'd worn throughout the performance. Because we needed our hands free for the dance, it had straps to hold it snugly in place.

"Perfect," I said out loud, suddenly all too aware that I'd need my hands free for this new career, too...

Angel

"Let me hear what you've got," I told Cole when I caught up with him over a beer. It was around eleven at night, and I was finding it hard to make my mind not drift back to last night, when I'd first met Sloane.

"You didn't really give me much to go on, you know," he said.

I shrugged. Cole knew computers. He and I went way back, and this morning I'd emailed him all of the information I had on Sloane and asked him to see if he could somehow track her down for me.

"Well," he said, taking a swig of beer before setting it aside, "she's a dancer. All sorts of types or styles or disciplines or whatever, though she got in to NYU on a ballet scholarship. I don't know much about ballet, but she's fucking amazing, bro."

"I don't doubt it," I said.

Cole nodded. "I've emailed you a bunch of YouTube clips of her routines. She's been in enough performances lately that it isn't that hard to find them."

I shrugged. "For you, maybe. What else?"

"That's the bulk of it. Her scholarship gives her a full ride, though it looks like the schedule she's got to keep is pretty crazy. No wonder she was working at a bar. A real job wouldn't give her enough time to keep up with everything else they make her do to keep the scholarship."

"Makes sense."

"She's from the south side of Chicago. Twenty fourish or so, judging by when she graduated high school."

I nodded. That was about the age I'd pegged her at, too. All of this was good stuff, but it was hardly the dirt I'd expected a guy like Cole to be able to dig up, given an afternoon and the extent of his contacts.

"Cole?"

"Yeah?"

"Spill it."

"Huh?" He did his best to look confused, but we both knew what I was getting at.

"I know you. I know what you can do. There's no way you would have called me and had me meet you here if all you had were a couple YouTube videos and her hometown."

"Yeah, well..."

"Let me hear it," I told him.

"Okay," Cole said at last, "but just remember, I'm only the messenger."

"Got it."

Cole took a deep breath and let it out. "I know how you feel about strippers and stuff, after the way things went with a couple of your exes. Well, I got in a back door and attached an alert to her bank account. It's way more technical than this, but basically I set it to let me know whenever a payment went in or came out."

"And?"

"And a couple of hours ago she had a test payment from a website for Cam girls. A test payment is when they pay you a penny to make sure the account is legitimate. They only do that for people that have signed up to be, umm, on show..."

I held up my hand so he'd shut up. I needed a second to let this sink in. "Are you saying that there's every possibility that right this second the girl of my dreams is sitting in some dive apartment in front of a webcam, doing God knows what for God knows who just to make a buck?"

Whatever he heard in my voice and saw in my eyes made him wary, no matter how much history we'd shared. I looked down at the table and saw that my hands were folded in to fists. It took a force of will, but I opened them up and placed my hands flat against the wood.

Cole swallowed hard. "Umm... Maybe?"

That was all I needed to hear. "I'm gone," I said, standing up and tossing five hundred bucks on to the table, a little for the beers and the rest for his services. "Thanks for all your work on this."

"No problem, Angel." He hesitated, then picked up the money. "You're not mad?"

"Not yet. Text me the address of the web cam site, yeah? Like, now."

He nodded. "Are you going home to have a look?"

"Damn straight."

A wicked grin crept on to his face, and it was all I could do not to hit him. "Might be a good way to test drive what you're thinking of sinking in to, if you know what I mean."

"Fuck that," I growled. "That girl doesn't need to spread her legs on the internet for a bunch of strangers to make a buck. Not now and not ever."

He didn't know what to say, so I just left him sitting there.

"Hurry up and text me that site," I said over my shoulder as I pushed through the crowd and left.

Sloane

That night, I dragged out the few sexy outfits I had. The selection wasn't great, but maybe I'd make enough in my first few shows to improve my options.

As it stood, I had the choice between a 'naughty' nurse and a silky little number that I'd bought to sleep in during our last heatwave on a whim.

I went with that one, stepping into the black teddy and sliding the slender straps up my arms. Whatever magic spell these things had in them worked on me. It was funny, really. Every time I saw lingerie I couldn't help but think how ridiculous it'd look on me; but when I put it on I felt instantly sexy.

Even desirable.

It was easy to create an account. All they needed was my bank details, a little blurb about me and a name and I'd be good to go.

The first part was easy. I had to keep such a tight rein on my finances that I knew the numbers by heart, and there was so little money in their that I knew I didn't have to worry about the site scamming me. Besides, I'd read enough online reviews of the service today to believe that they were for real.

The blurb was a little bit harder, at least until I decided it didn't have to be a true, exactly-as-written autobiography. After all, the whole thing was about fantasy, right? So why not give the paying customers what they were after?

I'm a dancer, I wrote. At least that much was true. Very new to all of this, I put next, just in case that sounded sexy. And finally, Come and play with me?

Good enough, I figured.

Now, to decide on a name. Sloane was out, of course. It was way too noticeable.

Stuck for inspiration, I looked around the room, trying desperately to think of something that sounded seductive enough to catch the eye without being lost in the see of Ambers and Kellys I'd seen on the site all afternoon.

I shrugged and typed Little Miss Ballerina in the Name field. Good enough. One of the things the site had made clear was that you could change your name as often as you wanted, though they warned that doing so would make it impossible for your 'followers' to find you.

I tried to imagine that, being good enough or sexy enough or successfully enough at this to actually have followers. Would I be okay with that?

I didn't know. I told myself that I was only going to try this silliness for a night or two. I was prepared to fail.

Hell, I expected it.

With that fact squarely in my mind I got up and turned around to study my bedroom with a discerning eye. It was the most comfortable room in the house, the only one where I'd splurged a little. It had been forever since I'd had friends over, and I'd never invited a guy to share the space, so I didn't think I had to worry about someone recognizing it.

Still, it needed a little splash of something. I got some colorful silk scarves out of my closet and draped one of them over the lamp, hanging the rest from the backs of chairs or the mirror on the dresser to soften the space.

Good enough.

Makeup? Check. Sexy lingerie? Check. It was warm in the room. I had a bottle of water. Earlier I'd found the vibrator in the bottom of a linen closet, taken it out of the plastic and put batteries in it.

It was a pink thing with 'rabbit ears', according to the packaging, and I tossed it next to the pillow.

I put on the mask last, and once it was in place it was as if I'd flicked a switch. Most of my worry fell away, and I dared to think that this may just work.

"Here goes nothing," I said out loud, grabbing the laptop and setting up on the bed before pushing the 'Make a Room!' button.

My heart was pounding.

How long would it take before I had my first visitor? Would I get a warning before they appeared in my room, or did I have to sprawl out sexily all the time, hoping for interest?

I figured that was it. Earlier when I'd been on the sight, you could hover your mouse over any of the cam girls' pictures and get a live preview of what was happening in their room.

I frowned, then caught myself. Nobody wanted to watch a moody bitch on these things, did they?

"It's just like dancing," I said. Ballet hurt. It was a grueling, physically overwhelming activity that was only beautiful because the true art of the dancer was to make it look effortless.

The mask covered most of my face and some of my hair, but revealed my mouth.

So I smiled as if I were on the biggest stage of my life.

And maybe I was...

Angel

I got home as fast as I could, pushing through traffic, running lights if I had to. I didn't care.

Whatever tickets I got I'd pay for, and the cops probably had more important things to worry about than my driving.

All I could think about was Sloane in her bedroom somewhere out there in this big, hungry city. She'd be scared, but too desperate for money to let herself off the hook.

I could see why she was doing it. The bar must have been a good deal for her, and now that she wasn't pouring drinks there was probably a chance that her landlord would throw her out on her ass at the end of the month.

After all, how much could a student of ballet really make? Not anywhere near as much as it cost to live near the University, that was for sure.

Right now, she could be gritting her teeth and spreading her legs for some jerk on the Internet.

And it was my fault! I'd tried to avoid that fact all day, but there was really no getting away from it.

She'd had a decent thing going and I'd ruined it by hitting on her.

Shit. I wasn't any different than whatever scumbag she was chatting to online right now.

I'd made her retreat from her duties pouring beers, and her boss Frank had tried to take advantage of the position I'd put her in. If I ever found her again, I swore to myself that I'd make it up to her. Maybe she didn't feel the same way about me that I felt about her, but I wasn't going to let that stop me.

If I tracked her down and she still didn't want to give me the time of day, fine.
 
Understandable, even, given the fact that I'd been too drunk to even say goodbye to her properly last night.

Hell, she was probably halfway to convincing herself that whoever she was currently disrobing for was a better option than the alcoholic asshole from the bar.

And would she be right?

I tried not to answer that. I was supposed to be in training, which meant that binges like the one I'd been in the middle of when I'd first met Sloane were a no-no.

I wasn't far from the hotel. I gunned the engine and zoomed through another red light. It was late enough that the traffic had all gone away, at least. The Jaguar purred as I gave it the gas, and by the time I rolled up to the valet and tossed the guy my keys I was feeling pretty good about being able to get to Sloane in time.

The elevator ride was slow, though, which gave me time to think. How does one sign up for these things? I looked at my phone. Cole had sent me the address.

"How hard can it possibly be?" I asked myself out loud. I mean, these things had to be simple enough that just about anyone could work out how to log on and put their credit card numbers in, right?

After all, I couldn't imagine the owners of the site getting in the way of its users spending money any more than they had to.

The elevator dinged and I stepped out into my suite, hurrying to the computer desk and typing in the web address.

When the site came up, I caught myself making a face. Girls I'd have considered hot up until now were splashed across the screen, caught in the act of lifting up their shirt or stepping out of a dress or sliding their hand into their panties.

Even though I was in a hurry, I caught myself just sitting there, staring at these women.

Sloane had already changed me. I looked at these wanton creatures now with no lust in my heart.

If a bartender I'd seen across a crowded nightclub in a haze of alcohol fueled blurriness had somehow had somehow already had this kind of effect on me, I knew I was in trouble.

I made a user name and plugged in my credit card numbers.

Now, how was I going to find her? There were hundreds of girls on there, each of them with silly names like Roxxxy and Starr and Miss_Double_D.

I scanned the list, hoping to find something that jumped out at me.

Frustrated, I realized exactly how little I knew about her. I was sure she'd want to conceal her identity, but I also knew that when people did things they thought of as 'wrong', they usually left a little clue, a hidden arrow that points at themselves.

It was human nature, the desire to show off ever so slightly, to say 'look at me, I did this, I was here and if you were as smart as me you'd have worked it out!'

But I couldn't find her...