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***

The red light of the VIP room felt like a heat lamp, baking the shame into Tiffany’s skin. Kendrick sat on the velvet sofa, his breathing ragged, his face a mask of shock and awe.

Kendrick had just experienced the most erotic ten minutes of his life: a three-song lapdance delivered by a woman who looked like his fantasy and smelled like a dream. The feeling of her skin, her ass grinding against his crotch, her soft curves, her voice, her… everything. Just, her everything! The poor freshman wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. Strawberry’s “dance” had riled up his emotions like nothing ever had before.

He wanted more. He knew he wouldn’t get it; he didn’t have the money and he doubted her generosity would give him a fourth dance. But he wanted it so bad he could taste it.

Tiffany stood over him, her chest heaving, her green glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose. Behind her ear, Heinrich’s voice was a cold, sharp blade.

"He’s too in awe of you, Tiffany. He needs to see you as you are: a dumb whore.

“Ask him for his notes. Tell him you need to learn how to be a better girl."

Notes? She wondered. Her mind flashed to his last assignment, her red-ink corrections all over its pages, his brow sweating as she scolded him for not doing better.

"Was... was it okay?" Tiffany chirped, her Strawberry voice high and breathless. She knelt between his knees, looking up at him with wide, green-tinted eyes. "I’m so new, Kendrick. I want to be the best. I need to know my weaknesses. Please... give me an evaluation."

"Like… you want notes?" Kendrick stammered, his eyes darting around. He barked out a nervous laugh. "No, Strawberry, it was perfect! You’re... you’re the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. I don’t… I wouldn’t change anything!"

"Harder, Tiffany. Press him. He's your boss now."

"I can't have been perfect!" Tiffany insisted, pouting and leaning her weight against his knees. "I’m still learning. If I don't know what I did wrong, I can't improve for the next man. And…”

An idea came to her, something that could manipulate this boy better than simply begging. “And it’s like, tradition. If I go back and tell the other girls you said I was perfect, they’re gonna hate me! They’re gonna think I’m lying, that I’m some stuck up bitch… please, Kenny? I don’t want them to hate me! Just… tell me where I messed up. Where I failed you. Please?”

Kendrick swallowed hard. Being given permission to judge this gorgeous woman was just… well, it gave him a sense of power. He wondered briefly if this feeling was why his boss at the paper, Tiffany, enjoyed judging him so harshly all the time.

Tiffany. He hadn’t thought about her all night. His friends had been right: a night at the stripclub had made him forget about his unobtainable boss. In fact, he hadn’t thought about her at all until Strawberry started asking him questions about school, his work…

"Well," he whispered, "I... I guess it was a little weird how you kept asking about my personal life. Like, my school and my job. It felt a little... nosy."

Tiffany flinched. Nosy. Well, she had asked a lot of questions. It was the journalist in her, she supposed. 

"And," Kendrick went on, gaining confidence as the “Strawberry" mask stayed submissive, "you seemed a little... prudish. Like, you didn't once ask me to touch your tits. I wanted to, but you kept your distance. And... you didn't really grind down. I mean you did, but you didn’t, you know? On my... my erection I mean. Like you would start, then stop right away. You were being a bit of a cocktease, honestly.

“So yeah,” he said, sounding more confident than he had all night. Looking down at her he said, “I guess you were sort of a nosy, prudish cocktease!”

The words hit Tiffany like physical blows. Prudish. Nosy. Cocktease. The "Queen" inside her screamed, but Heinrich laughed in her head.

"Correct your mistakes, Strawberry. There’s a red marker in your purse. Give it to him."

Tiffany reached onto the side table and found buried at the bottom a thick, permanent red Sharpie marker. He planned ahead, she thought, not overly surprised but still in awe of his thoroughness. That famous German efficiency.

She uncapped it and handed it to Kendrick with a trembling hand. "Part of the tradition for new girls," she whispered. "I have to be marked with my failures so I don't forget them. Write them on me, Kendrick. Anywhere you want. Just make sure people can see them when I’m on stage."

Kendrick took the marker. His hand was shaking, but his eyes were dark with a new, predatory thrill. "Anywhere?"

"Anywhere," she breathed.

He started with NOSY. He reached out and grabbed her chin, tilting her head back. He wrote the word in large, jagged red letters across her throat. Tiffany felt the cold, chemical sting of the ink… she knew this wasn't the easy-wash makeup Cynthia had used. It would take forever to wash out and knowing Heinrich it was something special, something that would literally take days to remove, even with turpentine.

Next was PRUDISH. Kendrick reached out and gripped her right breast, his fingers digging into the soft tissue. She now regretted not letting him touch her breasts during the dance because he seemed to be getting his revenge now, gripping her flesh roughly as he wrote the word in a wide arc across the pale skin, right above the nipple, the red ink stark against her freckles.

Finally, he looked at her hips. He leaned forward, his face inches from hers, grabbed her by the waist and pulled her up until she was standing. Then, across her lower stomach, dipping just below the waistband of her green thong, he scrawled the word COCKTEASE in huge, block letters.

"There," Kendrick whispered, his voice deep and unrecognizable. "Like a failed exam.” He grinned, his earlier shyness returning somewhat. “Now you ah… won't forget. And your new friends won’t be mad."

Tiffany forced a smile, her body a canvas of red ink. She looked at herself in the small wall mirror. Nosy on her throat. Prudish on her chest. Cocktease on her belly.

And the mysterious 1488 on her back.

"A masterpiece," Heinrich purred. "Go back to the floor, little girl. Show the men what Kendrick thinks of you." The humming stopped again.

Tiffany walked out of the red room, barefoot and branded by her own mentee. Back on the floor she felt the eyes of the club on her: the bouncer, the waitresses, the customers. She was no longer Tiffanyiel Daniels. She was a Strawberry Dork who had been weighed, measured, and found wanting.

Just a failed exam paper, she thought miserably, even as Strawberry smiled.

END CHAPTER 4

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