Babes Stripping For Love

Charlotte felt relieved for getting out of the house as Seamus had been watching her a bit too closely for her comfort. Charlotte was the first to arrive at the coffee shop near Babes where she was going to meet Bree and Dee before they started their shift at the club.

While waiting for her friends she fills her time by checking her email on her phone. Her eyes skimmed and started deleting spam emails, but then stopped and froze when she saw his name.

“Heya, Sindy.” Dee greeted her with a dash of her usual morning attitude. She was always the cheerful one out of the whole girls at the club. Bree always said that it was Dee’s personality, which was annoyingly happy. And they laughed about it, but at that exact moment, Charlotte hoped that she could be as positive as her friend.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” Dee asked when she saw Sindy looking paler than she usually was. And at that exact moment, Bree arrived and noticed something was not right with the stripper Ballerina.

“Oh, Sindy, hey… What’s wrong?”

“No… no, just a past that’s trying to catch up with me. I’m just deleting his email. Yep, okay, now I’m good.” Charlotte smiled at her friends and tried to hide her nervousness by drinking her still-too-hot Americano.

Luckily, Dee was a great diversion for them as she start gossiping about how her boyfriend’s family was trying to push them to get married. She was babbling about their youth and their freedom and how they wanted more time for themselves.

Between the two of them, Charlotte managed to catch up on the club’s gossip. And Dee did ask her about what’s going on between Rockford and her. “I’m still waiting for your two men to start fighting for your attention. I’m mostly mad at myself for not being there at the club when it happened and Rocco kept on retelling it as if the guy was front and center when it happened.” Dee babbled, not clear whether she was talking about Charlotte’s kiss with Rockford or the one time she sprained her ankle.

Charlotte gave her an awkward smile. “Well, I’m still trying to start dancing again, though Jojo kept on telling me that I’m needed at the back office.”

“Yeah, about that. I’m sorry if you’ll miss the dancing on stage. But I’m cutting back my hours at the club. Meaning, Jojo will need someone to help her out since I’ll be spending more time with Hazel. Gage thinks our little girl is acting out, between her new school and new friends, I think Gage’s right. So, we will see.” Bree put her hand on Charlotte’s shoulder and she smiled apologetically.

“Well, I know that my housemate will be happy knowing that I’m not dancing for cash. Yet.” Charlotte smiled back with a playful wink.

“Ugh, that sounded positively possessive. So much potential drama to be expected from their meeting. I’m so jealous.”  Dee gave Charlotte her exaggerated sigh and Bree giggled.

They talked and laughed for two more hours before Charlotte say goodbye and told them that they’ll be seeing her tomorrow for her shift with Jojo.

When she arrived at the house, Charlotte took a short nap. Then before dinner time, she went to sit on the back porch scrolling through her phone, lazily wasting her time before dinner. But her phone slipped out of her hand when a new email notification came from the one person she loathed the most. Charlotte went pale.

“Charlotte, is everything okay?”

No… no it’s not…

Charlotte thought to herself. Her hand slightly trembled, and her heart raced. It erratically beating, making her ears numbed to her surroundings.

Seamus looked at her with a puzzled expression, then he retrieved her phone. It was cracked, but he could still see the screen. It was an email. He didn’t want to invade her privacy, but at a glance, he could read the sender’s name. Yanis Morozov.

“Who’s Yanis Morozov?” He asked as seconds ticked by and she didn’t say anything when he gave back her phone and Charlotte put its cracked screen facing down on the small table by her side.

“My old mentor,” Charlotte said coldly, though there was something in her tone that made him push for more.

“And you dropped your phone because he emailed you? The inbox was still unread.”

“Oh, God, I need to…” Charlotte quickly got up. She ran for the bathroom, suddenly the mentioning of his name made her want to throw up.

Seamus went after her and held up her hair when she dry heaved as her body produced no vomit. Charlotte hadn’t eaten lunch and she was thankful because of it. But then, her stomach hurt and her throat felt sore.

“Why don’t you rest, and I’ll get you some tea. I’ll tell Marjorie to prepare soup for dinner.” Seamus left her to rest on her bed, pulling the covers, and insisted that she lay down.

Charlotte was sitting down, resting her back against the headboard, and wiping her tears away when Seamus got back with her tea and bottled water. “Move aside,” he told her and sat next to her. The man put his arm on her shoulder, pulling her to rest her head on his chest after he made her drink the tea.

“Now, tell me, who’s this Yanis Morozov is, and don’t bother lying to me. I don’t want you to and I have the means to dig deep into this acquaintance of yours.” He muttered then mindlessly kissed her temple and Charlotte couldn’t ignore that it felt nice. So nice that she decided that he was right, he will find out sooner or later. With that in mind, she opened the floodgate.

“Yanis is my old mentor. It happened when I was still young and naive. He… molested me, raped me, and convinced me that I was not the only one doing it to get ahead and secure my position at the ballet company.”

For a long minute, Charlotte could feel him tense beside her, his hold on her was firmer and she could hear him cursing lowly under his breath.

“I’ll take care of him. Don’t open his email. On second thought,” he paused to reach for her cracked phone then quickly accessed her email and forward Yanis’s email to himself before deleting the bastard’s emails from hers and blocking him from her account. Charlotte watched Seamus without protest and she visibly relaxes when he takes care of her problems.

“Thank you.” She put her arm across his abdomen and burrow deeper into his chest. She didn’t say anything else, Charlotte just closes her eyes and finally falls asleep after feeling like one heavy burden had been lifted off of her.

After what felt like hours later, she woke up. They were still in the same position when she falls asleep. Seamus’s hand was still holding her, but his eyes were shut and his breath was steady. The man was sleeping she thought, but he woke up as soon as she shifted in his hold.Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

“You’re awake, feeling better?”

“Better, thank you for the tea.” She replied though he knew that she meant for everything else as well. Charlotte closed her eyes once again the second he pressed his lips onto her forehead as if she was basking and wanting to cherish his affection and his attention toward her into her memory.

“You know I’ll take care of you, Charlotte. You just have to tell me about it.” Earlier, when Charlotte confessed and then fell asleep after what he’d assumed was exhaustion, he texted Bruce. He asked him to dig deeper, if her father knew, he might bury the incident knowing it’ll jeopardize her career and Charlotte wouldn’t want that.

“I just want to forget about it.” She said when he helps her up and leads her to the dining room.

“We’re going to talk about it, but I will take care of it. You don’t have to worry about that scumbag. You have my protection.” The moment he said that finishing his sentence with confidence Charlotte knew that she liked him, feelings were blossoming inside her. She liked his attention and his protectiveness and that was wrong, so… so wrong.