Chapter 1

I was twenty eight years old, living in Las Vegas, trying to make it as a showgirl but spending most of my time waiting tables at some two-bit casino lounge that was way way off the strip. The pay was lousy, the tips were terrible, but it was steady work and I needed all the money I could get.

I’ve always loved to dance; growing up I was in countless dance recitals, beauty pageants and talent shows, and I always placed if I didn’t win first prize. You couldn’t tell me that I wasn’t the greatest, and in my heart I knew that all I wanted to do was dance and entertain people. I got hooked on the thrill of the performance, the lights, the music, the roar of the crowd and the applause. It was like a drug that I couldn’t get enough of.

As passionate as I was about performing and being a showgirl, I always seemed to run into the same setback time and time again: I’m short and I’m fat.

I wasn’t always as fat as I am now, not back when I was getting started. I'd always been just a bit thicker and curvier than what most dance productions were looking for however. If I heard it once I heard it a million times: “Your moves are great, Cristina, and you’ve got a pretty face; you just need to grow another six inches taller and lose a good twenty pounds.” It was discouraging, but I kept at it.


One night when I was working at the lounge, licking my wounds after yet another unsuccessful audition, this guy came in and sat at one of my tables. He was all alone, dark and handsome yet modestly dressed. At a certain point I could tell that he was watching me, staring at me from across the room. When I went over to the table to take his order, he introduced himself by the name of V.J. and he said that he was a producer.

“A producer of what?” I asked him.

“Videos,” he said to me, “all sorts of videos, but mostly adult videos.”

“Adult videos?” I said. “You mean like porn?”

“Well, it’s not exactly porn,” he replied, “more like special-interest fetish content.”

“Not my thing,” I said before turning away and heading to the bar to retrieve his order. When I came back, he had a big smile on his face as I handed him his drink.

“You shouldn’t be so quick to judge,” he said as he looked up at me with a twinkle in his eye, “you might actually like some of it.”

“I find that hard to believe,” I said, shaking my head as I lowered my tray down to my side.

“Actually,” he said then, “I have a video I’m casting now that I think you would be perfect for.”

“Me?” I scowled. “In a fetish video? I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” he asked before taking a sip from his drink.

“Well first of all,” I said, “I don’t think my boyfriend Jake would like it very much.”

“Well what Jake doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” V.J. said with a devious grin.

“Second of all,” I said as I started giggling and squirming nervously, “I am trying to be a dancer, I don’t have time to mess around with being in some crazy fetish porn video.”

“A dancer, huh?” V.J. said sarcastically. “How’s that working out for you?”


I had to stop talking at that point, admittedly having been got by this stranger. There was no denying that my pursuit of a career in showbiz had hit a wall, and there didn’t look to be any means of getting around it. The reality was all too clear: I was not a dancer at all, I was a cocktail waitress in a shitty casino lounge.
Now I’d had offers before to do porn or to strip, and it was never something that interested me. No matter how desperate my finances got, there was always something that held me back from giving in to the temptation to exploit myself in that way. However, somehow this was different. There was something about this handsome stranger with the kind eyes that made me want to hear him out.

“So, what kind of video is it that you have in mind for me?” I asked him, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“Well,” he said, “at the risk of sounding like someone who would evade a question by asking another question,”

“Yes?”

“Are you a fan of sweets?”