Chapter 1

Catharine Willows was the second most senior crime scene investigator in the Las Vegas CSI Division's night shift. She'd worked hard to turn her life around from her late teenage years and her early twenties when she'd been one of the hottest and best-known exotic dancers in Las Vegas. She'd finally managed to pull herself out of the strip club culture as she approached 30 and had made a successful career for herself in CSI. Catharine had found a career in crime scene investigation extremely interesting and she'd had no problem adapting to the demands of the night shift -- that was already the period of the day she was most familiar and comfortable with -- from 7 at night until daybreak in the next morning.

Catharine often found herself thinking about her former career as a stripper. She hadn't actually realized it at the time but she'd been extremely successful as a featured dancer in the Vegas strip clubs.

Sometimes a crime investigation would take Catharine and CSI into a club to find crime witnesses or to seek other information. The instant she'd walk through the door of a strip club, Catharine would always feel the erotic juices start to flow again and she'd find herself wishing she could be the next girl up to perform.

Then, the unbelievable happened. Through no fault of her own, crucial evidence in a CSI investigation went missing and the chain of custody pointed to Catharine as the last person to have verified possession of the evidence. The case to be prosecuted with the missing evidence had to be dropped and Gil Grissom was told to let Catharine go from the CSI force.

In his very matter-of-fact, rational approach that Catharine knew so well, Grissom told her she was fired from CSI "with prejudice", meaning not only was she out of a job there in Las Vegas but she'd never get a job in a CSI anywhere else in the country because of the "with prejudice" tag.

What was she going to do to support herself, Catharine asked as she emptied her desk at CSI. She was divorced, she was a single mother with a little girl and she had to support herself and her daughter.

Catharine went straight home and threw herself on her bed as she wondered what she could possibly do to make a living. Catharine was in her early 30's; she still had a nice body and her breasts were even larger after having her baby daughter than they had been for most of her exotic dancing years. Catharine began to think back over her stripper career and she remembered how hot it made her the first time she performed for an audience in one of the night clubs. Catharine fought the notion that she could ever dance on stage and take all her clothes off in public. She knew she'd done it for over a decade but there was no way she could return to that life and that lifestyle.

Then, Catharine convinced herself that she'd see if she could line up an exotic dancing job just until she could find something else to work at. The next morning she called her old manager friend, Barclay, at the Maverick Club and when she convinced him she was serious, he arranged for her to try her hand out again on the dance stage that very evening.

Catharine had much of her exotic dancing wardrobe still but she went to some of the stores and upgraded some of the outfits and lingerie she had with new things. Catharine spent a couple of hours rehearsing that afternoon in front of a mirror and she felt she was ready to give this one honest try before giving it up as a big mistake.

A lot of the girls at the Maverick Club knew Catharine from earlier days and a lot of them were new since she'd quit. Those who knew Catharine's reputation from her early years as a stripper were delighted to see her back because they knew she drew larger, bigger tipped fans.

As Catharine finally settled down to do her makeup and get dressed for her first set, she began to think back to her first stint as a dancer. She realized she'd first ventured into taking her clothes off in public for money for a variety of reasons. They had all worked together and resulted in her first public striptease some 12 years earlier. She thought her first dances sucked but the guys seemed to love her and the tips really started to flow.

Catharine wasn't blind -- she'd known back then that she was very pretty, she was well built physically and she had a very nice set of breasts on her chest. All of that combined with a very sexy, sensual personality made her an overnight success as an exotic dancer. Catharine knew that her long, reddish-blonde hair, her pretty face and a set of large rounded tits were the necessary tools she had used back then and she would try to use them again to make her audience enjoy watching her perform.