There were seven men and three women in the bar.  Seven men that she was watching in the mirror behind the bar.  The women were simply background noise for now.<br/><br/>One - a man with broad shoulders and raw red knuckles on a hand he couldn’t stop flexing. He tried to hide the pained grimaces but she saw them. She saw everything.<br/><br/>Next, there was a man directly behind her, wearing a suit that was a little too snug across his shoulders.  He had a glass of whiskey in front of him he was nursing but when he lifted the glass to his lips for another sip, she saw how his eyes drifted down the bare skin of her back.<br/><br/>The third was behind her, not directly like the whiskey drinker but in the corner mostly hidden beneath the cloud of cigar smoke that had settled above his table.  He was speaking in low tones to the other besuited men seated at the table with him.  He couldn’t keep his eyes off her either.  She wondered what he was saying.<br/><br/>The fourth man was too close, his clammy hand placed possessively on the bare skin of her lower back and his breath hot against her shoulder.  His little finger dipped into the draped fabric of her dress far too familiarly in a way she pretended to like, encouraging his touch with the slightest shift of her hips.  Leaning in, he pressed his nose into the side of her neck and inhaled the scent of her perfume.<br/><br/>Then there was the man in front of her.  He was watching her too but only in quick glances as he polished the glasses then lined them up with the others who had already received his attention.  She let her eyes drop to his forearm and the way his muscle rolled and bunched as he twisted the towel quickly inside the wine glass in his other hand.  She liked this man in front of her.  He always remembered how she liked her martini - three olives, not two - and was always ready with a light and a clean ashtray when she extricated the enameled cigarette case from her clutch.<br/><br/>Another man behind her with close-cropped hair and a tattoo under his left eye finally looked up long enough to meet her eyes in the mirror.  Not for long though, just enough to let their eyes lock, before his slid away in indifference.  She’d seen that look before, right before low voices growled in her ear that they knew what she was.  Sometimes they liked the pain, sometimes they liked the pleasure, but they never ever kept up their feigned disinterest.<br/><br/>There was an older man behind her with soft hands who had never thrown more than money and orders at his problems.  He had a circle of weight around his middle that she didn’t like but could be paid to ignore.  Most of the other men and the women seemed to defer to him.  He dropped a wad of bills on the table as he stood up then set his cigar on the ashtray that was in the center of his table.<br/><br/>There were women behind her, loud and laughing, trying too hard with the way they acted and the way they dressed.  She didn’t have to look in the mirror to know their dresses were far too tight, their make-up was garish, and they were fawning all over the soft-all-over middle-aged men that were getting far too handsy with them.<br/><br/>It was all a game, nothing more than a farce.  A show for an audience of none.  She knew the game.  Knew it well, in fact.  She just preferred to play it her own way.  There were far more things to be gained from the transactions in which the other women in the bar engaged than just money.  It<i>was</i>nice, there was no denying that.  She needed it to live, after all, but it wasn’t everything.  There was far more power and influence in the secrets these soft men gasped and whispered when they were in bed with her.  Secrets and stories she collected like a dragon hoarded gold.  So she didn’t dress like those other women with their too tight, too short, too cheap dresses.  She didn’t smear her face with bright colors and overapplied glitter.  She chose well-tailored dresses that didn’t show too much of her body, taking the advice of an older woman who told her long ago that a classy woman only showed off one area of skin at a time.  It was advice that had served her well, setting her on the path to gathering more and more important secrets and the money that accompanied her silence.  Tonight, she’d chosen to expose the expanse of her back with a dress whose cowled back dipped low enough to hover, but not cross, the border into indecent.<br/><br/>The man with his nose still skimming over her blonde hair gasped suddenly - in pain or pleasure or both, perhaps - as he leaned closer until his soft middle pressed against the side of her arm and her hip.  “Not yet, Tiger,” she admonished in her most practiced bedroom voice.  He’d touched too much and tried to go too far before money exchanged hands.  She’d had to teach him a lesson.<br/><br/>His nose pressed harder against the side of her neck, crushed as he dragged too wet lips along her skin and upward toward her ear.  “You’re mine, Lilah.  I paid for you,” he snarled.<br/><br/>Lilah turned on her barstool, not completely but enough that now she could see the man with the tattoo and the man with the raw red knuckles without using the mirror.  She treated them to the start of her lips-pressed-together smirk then let it turn into a knowing smile as she turned her face up to the man who felt he owned her.  “Only for an hour…”<br/><br/>“Two.”<br/><br/>The smile didn’t falter but her eyes narrowed at the corners.  She didn’t like doing two hours and Shailen knew that.  “Two then.”  Lilah reached behind her, letting her fingertips trail across the hand that was still resting too low on her back, following the ridge of his knuckles.<br/><br/>“Fuck,” he hissed under his breath as his eyes rolled up, eyelids fluttering.  His fingers dug into the flesh of her back.  She didn’t protest.  Instead, she traced lazy circles on the back of his hand.  His fingers dug in harder.  There would be bruises tomorrow.<br/><br/>Shailen Rappaport coughed behind her.<br/><br/>Lilah pulled her hand away and turned on her stool until she was facing the mirror again.  Lifting the fresh drink to her lips, she glanced up to let her eyes meet those of the man with the raw red knuckles and then those of the man with the tattoo on his face.<br/><br/>This time she didn’t look away, not even when that clammy hand dipped too low on her back again.<br/><br/><a class="username" data-user-id="17" data-username="Deviance" data-xf-init="member-tooltip" href="https://blackdahliaroleplaying.com/members/17/">Deviance</a>