Beauty and the Devil

chapter 9

Samantha’s POV

I was starting to realize that Clyde didn’t walk—he glided. Like gravity worked differently for him. The hallway we stepped into was quiet, trimmed in gold and velvet, with the kind of lighting that made everything, and everyone, look expensive. No thumping bass. No drunken laughter. This wasn’t the club the rest of the world got to see.

He led me past a velvet rope and through a sleek, black door. Inside was a private room, low-lit and softly humming with some kind of ambient confidence. One wall was mirrored. The other, padded with leather. There was a single chair at the center, and a marble side table next to it holding a chilled bottle of Moët, still sweating in its silver ice bucket.

“This is for you,” Clyde said, already untwisting the wire cage around the cork.

“I don’t drink before dancing,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure if that was a rule or something I made up just now.

He gave me a look—not sharp, not sarcastic. Just still.

“To calm your nerves,” he said.

I looked at the bottle. The pop of the cork was soft, controlled. He poured without asking again. Bubbles climbed the inside of the flute in slow motion. He held it out.

I took the glass.

Would it calm me, or just make me forget myself long enough to do what I was told?

One sip. Another. It tasted like New Year’s parties I’d never been invited to. Like frost. Like lies wrapped in gold foil.

The music came on—The Weeknd, sultry and familiar. Of course he’d pick something that played in the background of every fantasy ever sold to girls like me.

He sat down, legs wide, arm draped lazily over the chairback like he’d done this exact thing too many times to count. No phone in his hand. No drink. Just eyes on me, waiting.

I didn’t move.

“You said I was a performer,” I said, swallowing past the bubbles in my throat. “Not a stripper.”

“You’re whatever I say you are right now,” he replied. Calm. Like he was commenting on the weather.

For a second, I stared at him—at his face, unreadable as always. The room was too quiet. The music too slow. Everything smelled like chilled citrus and leather polish.

I closed my eyes.

And danced.

Badly, at first. My knees bent the wrong way. My elbows didn’t know what to do. Every nerve screamed that I was being watched. Judged. Reduced.

But then I remembered the mirror in my childhood bedroom, where I used to practice pirouettes in socks. How I used to move just because I could. Not for grades, not for tips, not for anyone.

So I stopped trying to perform and just… moved.

One arm lifted. My hips followed. I stopped seeing him and started seeing the rhythm. The weight of my own body. The way it used to feel before it became something I had to weaponize.

And then I looked up.

Clyde hadn’t shifted. But something in his expression had. Less amusement. More focus. As if he wasn’t watching me now, but studying.

The music pulsed under my skin, and I walked over.

I didn’t think. I just moved.

I stepped between his knees and let my hands rest on his shoulders for balance. I straddled him slowly, the skirt of the dress sliding up my thighs. His hands didn’t go to my waist—they went lower. Firm. Certain. Possessive.

I knocked one hand away, half teasing, half testing.

He grabbed me again, this time harder. No smile. Just that gaze.

I was sweating now. Not from nerves anymore—but from the sheer work of it. The heels. The tension. The heat that had nothing to do with the lights.

And I felt it—underneath me. A pressure that had nothing to do with posture or placement. He was hard. And still.

His breath hadn’t changed. But mine had.

The song ended.

I slid off him without a word, aware of every inch of space between us.

He stood. Abrupt. Mechanical. Like a decision had been made.

He walked to the door, opened it.

“You learn fast,” he said.

Then, without looking back: “You start tomorrow.”

The door shut behind him like punctuation. And I was left standing in rhinestones, champagne still fizzing in my blood, not entirely sure who I was anymore.