Chapter 2

“I’ll take the packet,” Natalia said, grabbing it from her mother’s hand. “I’m the one that needs to read it.”

“Yes, you do, sweetheart.”

Her mother’s voice sounded too sweet.

Natalia turned and rolled her eyes when she headed for her room. Once there, she closed her door.

“Like hell I’m going to read this.”

She kept her voice low, almost afraid that her room was bugged. However, she tore open the packet. A quick glance at the contents caused her to swallow hard and feel light headed. The five sheets were double-sided and filled with small print. They were exactly what Rebecca had received. There was no customization.

“Boilerplate. My name isn’t anywhere on here. They probably make these up before hand and just grab one when they need it.”

She tossed the pages onto her makeup table, then stood in the middle of her room. It was decorated as if she were a fairy princess, and she hated it. The pink and the lace were excessive.

“Like I’m some stupid five-year-old,” she said in a low voice.

She managed a deep breath before going to her closet. From the very back, she pulled out a red dress.

“Who thought I would actually need this.”

She rolled it up and put it into a small backpack.

“The girl pack won’t believe me when I tell them,” she said. “I laugh that you never noticed this, Mother, when I added it to that pile of clothes you were buying.”

She stepped over to her makeup table, taking the few items she thought she would need to make herself up and placed them in the backpack. On the floor were some red slippers. She put those in as well before zipping the bag closed.

“One dress. No bra. No undies. About as sexy as I can get.”

She looked around and listened hard. The house was dead quiet.

“And no one is going to know,” she mouthed the words to herself, thinking about Rebecca.

Rebecca had relied on friends after her escape, but one ultimately betrayed her, thinking it was for her own good.

“If no one knows, no one can tell.”

She tiptoed to her door to open it slowly. There was no one in the hall. She closed the door without a sound and sat on her bed.

“The girl pack discussed this, should it happen again. One sexy dress. One guy. One pregnancy. The church will no longer want you.”

She swallowed with apprehension.

“And here I am in that situation. But I have the time. I have the plan. Head to the Strip, find a guy, and have sex.”

She grimaced.

“Of course, he has to be an adult over eighteen. Damn male birth control.”

She mulled over the fact that underaged males were on medications that prevented them from having erections.

“It’s in your food, you idiots. That’s how you’re getting it. I think the stuff makes them stupid, too.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I have to get pregnant. Contract states…”

She rose to pick up the papers. Her eyes seemed to immediately find the paragraph, causing her to swallow hard again.

“There it is. The applicant cannot be pregnant or have born children.”

She put the papers down and resumed her seat on the end of her bed.

“Once pregnant, no more nunnery.”

She paused to think things over.

“I wonder how many times it will take to get pregnant? I think I’m in a good time now. Stupid cravings. Hungry all the time. Of course, I’m not eating regular meals. I have to make sure I’m not getting fed birth control or anything else.”

She chuckled.

“You help there, Mother. You love to eat at restaurants. Can’t drug my food at a restaurant. At least, I hope not.”

Someone walked by her door, causing her to freeze. She figured it was her mother since her father had left for work immediately upon dropping them off at the house. The closing of her mother’s door confirmed her identity.

“Just eight more weeks and I’ll be eighteen. So close, but…”

She flopped to a prone position on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Father’s rich. There’s no way the Church is going to pass on me. Waiting to review my application, my ass. They’re probably just going to make you pay more money, Father.”

She sat up abruptly.

“I can’t go to the Strip a virgin.”

Her voice was but a whisper.

“Can’t have an intact hymen. Girl pack talked about that too.”

She rose and locked herself in her bathroom.

“I hope this doesn’t hurt as much as everyone makes it out to be.”

She grabbed an emery board and sharpened one fingernail into a point. Her reflection in the mirror showed her in deep thought. She had always thought she could be a model because of her huge blue eyes. Hair could be any color, but her natural color was strawberry blond. She knew the red dress would highlight that trait.

“I’ve got the slender figure. Everyone’s slender because that’s the fad, but I got more cleavage that most this skinny.”

She turned sideways to look at how much her breasts protruded.

“Yeah, Lord Abbot. You were staring at my boobs,” she said with a sneer.

Her white dress was straining against her breasts. It glared back at her.

“Stupid dress.”

She took it off with no regard if she ripped anything and threw it onto the floor. With glee, she stomped on it while she undid her bra and added it to the pile, along with her panties.

“And last... This annoying thing.”

She unclasped the cameo necklace that her mom always insisted she wear and dropped it onto the pile. From out of a drawer, she pulled out a bottle of baby oil and a sex toy wrapped in a towel.

“I can’t believe you let me buy this, Mother. To think it’s okay to buy such a thing for a bachelorette party. A party you ended up not letting me attend. But you forgot about this.”

She set the items on the edge of the tub before she positioned herself in the tub by laying back with her knees up and her legs spread. The tub was cold to her skin, but she didn’t feel like getting a towel to lay against.

“A good distraction, the cold. Now, a little baby oil,” she said, dribbling some between her legs and over her finger with the sharpened nail.

With intent focus and no hesitation, she inserted her finger into herself. She gasped, flinching from the pain. Some quick breathing and a little massaging made the pain dissipated quickly.

“That wasn’t so bad,” she said with a deep breath. “Everyone said it was a horrible pain. Probably some exaggeration. Not an interesting story without pain and gore.”

However, she still had to take a few more deep breaths before she continued. She oiled the sex toy and slowly inserted it while masturbating. Her mind could think of no daydream to make this a pleasant experience. There was no sexual desire considering why she was doing this. She stopped after a short time, then wiped herself and cleaned up.

“I don’t need this anymore,” she said, wrapping the sex toy in a feminine napkin.

She threw it into the trash, then filed down the fingernail until it wasn’t so sharp.

“Whew. Glad that’s over. Now I just have to wait.”

She dressed only in jeans and a t-shirt, not bothering with underwear.

“Would just be a bother to take off anyway.”

She slipped on her running shoes and retired on her bed with some books to read.

The rest of her day was predictable. So were her parents.

At two pm, her mother left for a charity tea event. Natalia almost had the house to herself. There were four servants. She heard one of them vacuuming the hall. They did all the cleaning while her parents were gone.

“I don’t count. They just have to keep tabs on me to make sure I don’t wander off somewhere.”

At five pm, she went down, as was her habit, to have her dinner. She walked out to one of the patios with her plate.

“Father’s stupid expensive hunting dogs. And he doesn’t even hunt. Just lets you run the property as if you’re protecting it. But he’s scared to leave you out at night and kennels you.

She laughed.

“This is the one time I like you dogs.”

She fed her dinner to them.

“Hopefully my food isn’t drugged for your sake,” she said while one licked her plate.

She returned the plate to the kitchen, then returned to her room.

Shortly after six, her mother came home.

She knew her mother would have a light meal and then retire to her bedroom. It was almost seven pm when she heard her pass the door.

“One more to go,” she said.

She lay on her bed to wait and fell asleep.

It was dark when she woke. She bolted upright and looked at the clock. It was almost ten-thirty pm. She sighed with relief that she hadn’t slept the night away. There were noises downstairs that she recognized were coming from her father. She figured he must have just gotten home. Ten minutes later, he walked by her door, down the hall. She heard him shut his door. Her parents slept in separate rooms.

Natalia waited ten more minutes before grabbing the backpack. She opened her door slowly to make sure there was no one around. The house was quiet. She knew the servants retired once her father headed to bed.

As stealthy as possible, she trotted down the stairs and out a side door. Natalia paused as she let the door shut behind her. She breathed deep, finding the evening air smelling wonderful and fresh. For a moment, she felt so free, until the door clicked softly behind her. She jumped.

Just the door latching shut, she thought. She checked the area. There was no one visible and no sounds of anyone. She trotted across the yard. There was a route she knew to take that wouldn’t trip any of the security lights. She knew it well, having gone out many times before.

There was one fence to climb over, but it was easy, since it was meant to be more decorative and keep the dogs in than to keep people in or out. Once out of the yard, she knew to keep to the shadows, which were plentiful. She also knew which yards to avoid because of dogs.

Almost two hours of jogging and fast walking brought her into the part of town she wanted. She was no longer the only person walking, but everyone kept to themselves.

At times, she felt it was adults who ruled the day, but it was the children who ruled the night. Every person she saw was a minor. If she saw someone walking alone, she assumed, just like everyone else, that the person was heading toward their pack.

She spied a teenage girl walking with a boy, hand-in-hand. Her eyes saw a sister and brother. There was no age limit, but the youngest she had heard that escaped parents was seven years of age. She hadn’t started escaping until she was ten, but only because of the security around her parents’ house. It had taken her a while to figure out the security light pattern.

Tonight, however, Natalia was avoiding the areas where her pack hung out. She didn’t want to be seen by any of her friends.

“Pee-yew.”

She turned into a dark alley and stopped. The heavy stench of garbage greeted her. However, she knew because of that there wouldn’t be anyone here: not even a drunk, a drug addict, or a dumpster diver. She glanced around, not looking to see if anyone was around, but that there weren’t any rats.

“I hate rats.”

She was glad to find that there were neither people nor rats when she stepped into the darkness. With care, she positioned herself between two dumpsters, pausing a short while to let her eyes adjust. The stench was powerful, pushing her to more haste. She stripped naked. Her hands shook while she rolled up her jeans and t-shirt into a tight ball. She pulled out the dress and slippers before stuffing in the ball of clothes. The backpack, along with her running shoes, were stuffed behind a bin for later retrieval. She felt herself tremble but couldn’t tell if it was the cool of the night or her nerves from being naked. She was quick to slip on the dress and slippers.

“Damn, this is shorter than I remember,” she muttered to herself, still feeling anxious.

The dress was barely a couple of inches past her rear. She wondered if she could walk without it inching up and revealing her ass. She took a few tentative steps. The tightness of the dress and the fact that the material felt glued to her, made her realize the dress would stay in place. However, she found no comfort in that. In fact, she was feeling more and more nervous.

“I can do this,” she said in a tense whisper that caused her to jump.

Her voice seemed loud.

She forced herself to walk out of the alley, but it took two blocks of fast walking to ease her breathing and nerves. It helped that no one seemed to take any notice of her, even dressed this way.

“Just a sex worker heading to work,” she murmured. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

Except for the fact that she could feel the cool night air wafting up the dress. Her ass felt cold, and she kept touching to make sure the dress hadn’t shifted, but it was just the fact that she was wearing no underwear.

“Three blocks to go,” she muttered.

She knew exactly where she was and could tell she was getting closer to the Strip. There were more people walking about, and they weren’t dressed for a Sunday stroll. Red and bright colors were the norm. The more skin showing, the better.

She turned one last corner, and found herself on a wide, four-lane boulevard. Along both sides of the street, for more than a mile, she knew was full of sex workers.

A police car drove by. She flinched even though she knew she didn’t have to be concerned. Based on what she had seen, if the workers stayed on this boulevard, the city ignored them.

A chauffeured car drove by. The rear window was open, and she caught sight of an old man sitting in the back. Most of the traffic consisted of fancy sports cars or limousines of various lengths.

“The rich and horny men of high society,” she said under her breath.

She wondered if her father ever cruised down this street. She knew he wasn’t getting any more sex from her mother. Maybe why he worked so late, if he was really working. She bet he had a mistress.

Natalia paused to check what her competition was. A pair of skinny men, dressed in tight pants, strolled by. They were in a hot discussion about a designer brand of shoes and which colors were best. There were two women together in a huddle further up and one woman who was very wobbly on her feet. However, across the alley from this section of the block, there were dozens of scantily clad women strutting.

The large number of women caused her some alarm since she didn’t think there would be that many down this far. There were many nights that she and her pack had sat on the stairs of a building that overlooked the Strip. They learned the rules of engagement by watching. One rule appeared to be about earning your position on the street. They had seen that women nearer to the clubs had a better chance of finding business. Her current position was almost as far as she could get from the clubs and still be on the Strip. She thought it was the safest place to start.

She already knew she couldn’t move farther up the street to improve her odds. On one occasion, she had seen the brutal beating of a worker who had moved up without regard to those ahead. She knew she would only be able to work this bit of the block.

The fact that traffic was streaming past at a fast pace seemed to confirm that the men wanted to be closer to the clubs. None were moving slow or near the curb which signaled that they were looking. She now had the concern that she might not attract anyone down this far.

Natalia moved closer to the lone woman who appeared intoxicated. The woman stumbled, and Natalia bumped her, keeping her from falling. She gently navigated the woman to a light post.

“Grab on. Look like a pole dancer,” she said to the woman who laughed, but didn’t push Natalia away.

There was truth to the adage that there was safety in numbers. If she could buddy up with someone, then no one would bother them. She had heard that making buddies also tended to promote one’s status and allow a worker to move up the street.

The woman tried to twirl around the pole, but almost fell again. Natalia kept her from falling.

“Warsh er nam?”

Natalia kept herself from wrinkling her nose. The woman’s breath was horrendous.

“Nattie. What’s yours?”

The woman giggled and mouthed a name. Natalia didn’t catch it since a limo choose that moment to screech a U-turn, just barely missing the curb. Then it hugged the curb, going slow. The window at the back was down, signaling that the person was looking, but Natalia noted no one seemed interested in approaching the limo. She knew this was odd. From her distant observations, when a vehicle had a window down, the workers swamped it, vying for the person’s attention. She was unable to see who was inside because of the tinted windows and it was dark within the vehicle. Her only thought was that this person was known and not well liked. Or maybe... they were looking for a guy?

No, the two guys strutting were ignoring the limo as well.

“There’s your chance,” Natalia said to the woman clinging to the pole.

“Devil,” she said before tottering off, breaking any buddyship between them.

Natalia suddenly felt self-conscious that she was standing there by herself. She controlled the urge to pull her dress down further.

The limo was almost next to her when the other two women approached. One gave Natalia a quick sneer as a warning to keep her distance. Natalia stepped back away from them.

“Hey, babe. Looking for me?” one said.

A man's hand appeared out the window. He snapped his fingers once and pointed at Natalia. The other two women looked disappointed and walked off. Natalia found she didn’t know what she was to do. Her distant observations didn’t include what was said.

The limo pulled up to the point where the open window was just beyond her, however, she still couldn’t see the person inside. The door opened. The dark figure of a man stepped out part way, grabbed her hand and pulled her in.

Natalia felt herself land on his lap, then slide partially beside him. She heard the door shut and felt the limo move. The man at once seemed to be smelling her hair and neck. She had the feeling they weren’t alone. After a few moments of him sniffing and pawing over her, she was able to see that there was an older man with a young woman sitting across from them. She had the feeling they had picked up that woman from the other side of the street. She had lots of makeup on and a tight dress with a push-up bra. It was at that moment that Natalia realized she had forgotten to put on her makeup. It was too late now and didn’t seem to matter.

The old man smiled and chuckled. The young woman frowned and looked a little disgusted.

To Natalia's concern, the limo was no longer cruising along the curb, but in the middle of the street, moving quickly.