PROLOGUE
The room was incredibly vast and outrageously packed with men. On a raised dais were live band players, and a girl was singing. Obinna had his back to the dais but he was strongly aware of the pop song that was being sung by the most sonorous voice he’d ever heard. The voice was a very feminine voice that had the tunes right on, and the entire patrons and the women of the crowded bar were all nodding their heads to the sound of the voice.
The singing stopped abruptly. And then the music changed, from the upbeat sounds that were being belted out by the sonorous voice to an exotic Eastern beat that was seductive. The lights had dimmed. Simultaneously, all the men held their breath. Astonished, Obinna glanced around wildly so he could understand why the men were acting so strangely, and when his eyes fell on the girl who’d emerged as if conjured up from a puff of smoke, he understood the reason for the instantaneous enchantment.
She stood there, her back turned to the room, her body draped from neck to toes in a veil of shiny tulle. There were jewels ringed on her arms, so long they almost formed a percussion band; there was a snake bracelet draped around her biceps, and she looked like something that had been conjured up from a dream. The veil covered her, and there was the sight of a long, glorious body hidden in the material she’d covered herself with. Her head was tilted back, and there was her hips moving and undulating in a slow, seductive rhythm that was as enchanting as it was exoteric.
It was like watching a very long snake move languidly through the room, and she could move; she seemed to flow, from one move to the other, and it was as if she was oblivious to the people in the room. There was a mystery to her moves, as if she was performing a very slow, very sexy ritual only she was privy to.
She turned, and the light played on the jewels that were entwined in her long, glorious hair; it played on the heavy kohl that lined her eyes, and her body seemed to shimmer with reflected light in the semi-dark room. She was wonderfully tall, fair-complexioned; with full breasts that strained against the thin material of her dress, with the tulle veils straining against the luscious body that had been so carefully covered, and yet so artfully revealed; deliciously long legs that seemed endless, but it was her chiseled face that drew the most attention. It drew the eyes, and held it, causing uneasiness and even a shiver of shock to pass through the beholder of such beauty.
Her chiseled face was framed in long raven black hair that was like black satin against her fair complexion, a very straight, narrow nose, pouty, provocative lips that were outlined in a slash of red and high cheekbones that accentuated her stunning facial bone structure. She was astonishingly beautiful, and she seemed magical, like a sea nymph or a sylph that had come to the earth to wreck havoc on the male folk. Hers was the type of beauty that needed no physical enhancements for her maintain it
Mesmerized, Obinna leaned forward. ‘Wow!’ he exclaimed.
Seemingly oblivious to the shock she’d caused in the room, she continued to move, her bones twisting and turning with a languid flexibility that seemed a vision of its own. Then the first veil came down, and if a pin had dropped in the room, it would have sounded like a bomb_ the room was so still and silent. The light-skinned body was revealed just a bit, and her bones were delicate, and beautiful, and there was a flawless perfection to the body that made her ravishing. Then came the second veil, and there was the red velvet gown that clung to the perfect body like a second skin; the outline of the perfect body was now visible, and when the final veil came down to her feet, the lights played on her.
She looked dazzling.
And she turned and twisted, still almost seemingly oblivious to the crowd, and the spectators were twisting in their chairs, all eyes straining to see her every move, her every body language. She looked like a sea goddess dancing to the tunes of some musical number, a tribute from her worshippers.
The girl suddenly stopped and swayed slightly on her feet as though drunk, and then she stood stock still. The men applauded, all of them drawn and entangled in her web of allure and seduction. Oblivious to the thunderous applause, the girl shook her beautiful head this way and that to the steady beat of the music while her long black hair swirled round her face like a cloud.
‘Wow!’ Obinna exclaimed to his companion, Richard, as they all watched this dancing flame of fire and epitome of beauty as she worked her art with a sexy grace that held the eyes unblinkingly to her face. ‘That girl is marvelous and great. Look at her! Just look at her!’
Richard nodded, his eye still glued to the dais. ‘Yeah. I know how marvelous she really is. She’s a singer, an agile dancer, and I hear that sometimes, though rarely, she doubles as a whore in order to earn some extra cash for herself. I really do not even know why a girl as beautiful as she is should stay here, performing a striptease for a bunch of leering men when she could go and be a model or a singer.’
The girl glanced around wildly, as though lost, or as though she had forgotten her surroundings, but to Obinna, she looked as though she were testing the air for a scent of prey she could pounce on. Her luminous eyes scanned the dense crowd of men, hovering over the man seated next to Obinna, and then rested on him with a mesmerizing intensity that made him gasp. She held him in her gaze, and to him it was like being stared down by a huge animal of prey which had come on down to devour him. And her fingers moved across her face, her lips parted, and the smile that was revealed flashed blindingly white against the red paint of her lips. But never for once did her gaze waver from his face.
She looked at him and he looked at her; or rather, he was trapped in her gaze while she held him mesmerized in her grasp. It seemed as if the very universe had shifted, that this stunningly beautiful seductive dancer was the only thing that was now visible in his universe. The shock of her gaze held him entranced, and though she was still making her exotic dance moves with the fluidity of a snake, she seemed not to be moving of her own voluntary free will, that her body was controlling itself independently of her will.
That was when she took off her red velvet gown, or rather, the gown seemed to slip from her at some silent command from her, and she stood before the spell-bound audience dressed now in nothing but a red bra and a small red wrap that covered her from waist and then on past her buttocks. There was a collective gasp from the appreciative audience, for she had the kind of shape that would tempt even a Buddhist monk into giving up his vows and taking her right there and then.
There was the luscious curve of her hips, the type some women would kill for, and there was the curve of her full, firm, high breasts that stood out on her chest like sirens that beckoned for some attention. With the black hair, the stunning face and the bone structure, and the killer shape she had under the nothing thing she wore, she was the physical embodiment of every straight man’s wet dream.
Totally unaccustomed to such intense stares, and such stunning, glorious beauty, with the accompanying performance and the snaky feel of it, Obinna stood up and headed for the door because her gaze had shocked him and had his heart thumping. Unfortunately, he couldn’t seem to get out fast enough; his progress was painfully slow, and he could hear the cheers of the men as they screamed their encouragement at the girl_ it seemed as though she’d come to the end of her shock act.
And then finally, he emerged on the wide corridor, and he heaved a sigh of relief. He had really enjoyed himself here at the Happy Day club which was surprising because it was situated at Ajegunle, one of the slums of Lagos State. And the only reason for that was because of the performance of this girl. Whoever the hell she was, she had the looks, she had the power and the magnetism, and she had the sensuality to trap any man she sunk her clutches into to do anything she wanted him to do for her.
He was breathing heavily, and he knew that the loud palpitation of his heart was due to the fact that the stunning dancer had worked some sort of invisible charm on him to make him lose half his senses and have him thinking about the dark rim of her almond-shaped eyes, and the curve of those kissable red lips, and the swell of that killer shape she had below her flat midriff which had given him an erection the very moment he’d laid his eyes on them.
Running his fingers through his blunt-cut hair, he heaved a big sigh as he thought to himself what a blessing it would be for him to flee from the sin this young exotic dancer was trying to lead him into and run back to his parents’ house so he could enjoy a few days of quiet before he packed up his things and left the country for the continuation of his studies.
He turned, and then he felt his muscles freeze into rigidity as a shudder ran through him and the ice was dropped into his bowels. God, there was no escaping the sin that oozed from this place like the pus from a festering wound.
Leaning against the wall, smiling and staring at him with her mesmerizing, luminous eyes, was the girl. Her eyes seemed hard and very cold as she trapped him in her gaze once again.
‘Hello, sugar,’ she said. Her voice was low, and very sweet, like chocolate, and there was a glint in her eyes. She walked towards him with a measured sway of her provocatively curvy hips. ‘See anything you like, my dear?’ she asked. She was smiling at him again, knowing that she had him in her grasp.
He was staring at her. There was something about her that was totally seductive, and could transfix any man with desire. Scowling with frustration at the welcome prospect of his body’s reaction to her, which he so did not wish to act upon, he forced a smile. She smiled right back, and he was immediately done in. ‘How much?’ he asked her.
‘For a man with a purse as deep as yours, I think 5000 NGN per hour will suffice as a reasonable price.’
‘I’ll pay you 8.’
Adamma stifled a gasp and then she spread her rosy lips in a smile of silent sexual victory over him. She had not spent two years in this nightclub without detecting the signs and strange aura of power and sureness of their superior status that emanated from men of blue blood who dabbled effortlessly in wealth.
As she had performed her on the stage_ for her singing and dancing was her art_ her hunter’s instincts had switched on of their own volition, and she’d pandered to it by scanning the dense crowd of men that worshipped at the altar of her beauty. And then there he was, standing out from the others like a wild rose in a field of plain white daisies. There was something that was completely innocent and enchanting about him, and then there was the wealth that he stank of; he was the perfect prey.
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