Falling for Heaven (Four Winds) - By Anne Conley
Chapter 1
Uri managed to quell the rising nausea threatening to overwhelm him, as his eyes roved the club searching out his target. The nearly naked women pranced around, hips swaying to the pulsating beat of the extraordinarily loud music, while the lights flashed. These women, with their exposed flesh, were taking advantage of man's innate weakness for it, and it sickened him a little to see the callous satisfaction in their faces. He averted his eyes when one woman approached him.
“Showtime?” She stood next to him, her leg rubbing his, as her hand reached out to stroke his arm.
“No thanks.” He replied, unwilling to look at the woman’s breasts or the only article of clothing she wore, a red g-string. It wasn't that Uri was uncomfortable with nudity, he wasn't. He was uncomfortable with the fleshpot he was in and the business itself, which catered to humanity's weakness for flesh.
“Okay.” She smiled at him but he didn’t notice, as he was busy peeling off the label of the water bottle sitting on the table in front of him.
When she had gone, his eyes roamed the room once more, trying to find his target so he could get out of this place. Every woman was naked, save for a tiny scrap of cloth over her pubic region, leaving nothing to imagination. It was desensitizing. He wasn't sure he even wanted to work with a target that came to a place like this. What could he possibly have to offer The Boss, other than a distorted view of love and women? That's what these kinds of places propagated, that's why fornication is a sin. It objectified the act, taking the emotion out of making love, one of humanity's most treasured behaviors.
Apparently during this part of the evening, known as Showtime, the dancers all came out to give brief dances to individual patrons for tips. Each time he raised his eyes, a woman would come over and offer to dance for him. He declined each one.
When the DJ came over the loudspeaker announcing that Showtime was over, Uri breathed a sigh of relief and began searching for his target once more.
His hyper-alert senses were on overload. The music was too loud, the lights were flashing too brightly, and the oil that these women used on their bodies had a cloying smell. He couldn’t seem to shake the sense of unease that continued to plague him.
He wondered what it was about this assignment that bothered him so much. Was it the fact that he was going to find the target here, in this cesspool of lust? He wasn't exactly naïve. He understood that humans were weak, and they tended to give in to their weaknesses more often than not. He just didn't enjoy picking up his targets in places like this. Why couldn't he pick them up at work or something?
This assignment was different. The Boss hadn’t told him exactly what he was supposed to do. He usually knew not only the target but their purpose as well. This time, Uri only knew where to find him. That was all.
The club, appropriately named Bottom’s Up Cabaret, was filled with inebriated patrons. The dancers didn’t appear to be intoxicated, but a lot of them had the familiar hazy look of some sort of drug in their eyes. Uri couldn’t figure out what he was supposed to be doing here. He felt like he was flying blind.
The DJ came back over the speaker system to announce the next act, a dancer named Heaven.
As she came onstage, Uri was a little shocked to feel the familiar burning in his gut, which signified he had spotted his objective. Surprised to realize that he wasn't here for a patron, he leaned back, letting the white-hot burning fill him, and watched the dancer to determine why the Boss had sent him.
She wore more clothes than most of the other dancers, although Uri held no illusions about them actually staying on. Sure enough, she slowly removed her spandex dress before grabbing a towel from the side of the stage. He watched as she stalked out with the towel and seductively wiped the pole with it. As she rubbed it up and down the pole she looked out at the audience, giving the helpless men a sultry pout. Tossing the towel to the side of the stage, she launched herself on the top of the pole and began spinning around it, her body writhing to the music.
In spite of his feelings about the