The music was thumping outside as Carmen finished out her set. I was next, and my hand was shaking as I applied a fresh coat of blush.
“Does you being quiet have anything to do with the brooding badass you arrived with?” she prodded, leaning forward to touch up the edge of her blood-red lipstick. It was her signature, along with the beauty spot above those red lips. And the tight curls she wore every day, mimicking her namesake and all-around idol, Marilyn Monroe. Her eyes met mine once more. “The one with the jaw and the cheekbones and the hair?”
I nodded. “The one with the jaw and the cheekbones and the hair and the muscles and the hands,” I sighed. “And the tattoos.”
She grinned wickedly. “I thought you were going to stay ‘far, far away from the Sons of Templar’.” She mimicked my voice, repeating what I’d said verbatim when they’d come into the club my first week in town.
I groaned, sinking back in my chair, giving up on my makeup. “I was. I am. It’s complicated.”
She raised a brow. Or as much as she could since she’d had a fresh injection of Botox last week. “I bet it is, honey.”
“I have no idea how I’m going to dance with him out there,” I whispered, glimpsing at the door to where, in five minutes, I was going to have to strut out, shake my ass and take off my clothes.
Hades had, as Anderson had promised, been waiting in the parking lot when we arrived. Leaning against his bike, looking like pure fucking sin. I’d actually released a little sigh when I pulled up beside him. An audible fucking sound that was dangerously and embarrassingly close to a moan. My entire body had tensed up and relaxed at the same time.
As he watched me exit my car, his gaze was visceral. I felt his eyes travel all the way up my legs. All the way. When my eyes locked with his, my stomach dropped. Like all the way to my snakeskin heels. There was heat in it. A fucking inferno.
Then there wasn’t.
In an instant, he shut it down. It’s how I imagined it might’ve happened in an airlock when all the oxygen was sucked out. I hoped that I kept a poker face at what this did to me, what he did to me, but I feared I wasn’t anywhere as good as he was.
I used a goodbye to Anderson to distract myself, hugging him and promising to set a date for him and Hannah to come over to my place for dinner.
When done, I turned back toward Hades, finding his dark brows furrowed above the glare he directed at me. I’d done something to piss him off yet again. My cheeks heated with the force of that glare, my body responding in a way that was not at all healthy.
Since arriving, he hadn’t spoken to me, and I’d done my best to pretend he didn’t exist. I couldn’t do that now, though.
“We are going to have brunch, and you’re going to go into detail about him,” Marilyn told me, eyeing me in the middle of my nervous breakdown. “There is no time for details right now.” She put her hand on my leg, squeezing for reassurance. She pointed a long red nail toward the stage. “You have all the power here. So go out there, show that to him. Make him think you’re dancing for him even though you dance for yourself. Men are never weaker than when they’re watching a woman take her clothes off.”
She gave my leg one last squeeze before letting go.
“You’re a bad bitch, you’ve got this,” she continued, her voice confident, sure.
I nodded. “Yes, I am,” I agreed.
Carmen came strutting backstage with a wink and a G-string full of cash. Then the song came on.
My song.
“Toxic” by Britney Spears.
Yes. With Britney, I could do this.
HADES
I had no idea how I fucking survived it. How any man in this place with his eyes all over her survived it. The only way I was able to keep from killing every motherfucker in this joint was to stay completely and utterly still, my hands around the single glass of whisky I’d ordered. I hadn’t taken a single sip, though my body was crying out for the burn in my throat, something to dull the edges. But even if I’d downed the whole bottle, with her up on that stage, one tiny scrap of fabric away from being completely fucking naked, I knew nothing could’ve dulled the edges. The only thing whisky would’ve done was take away the miniscule amount of willpower I was clutching on to.
I’d dreaded coming here. Would’ve preferred anything else. A dangerous run that had a high chance of some kind of gunfight. An enemy to torture. Fuck, I would’ve loved either of those. I had not wanted to be here and hadn’t planned to. Until every fucker in the club volunteered for this protection duty. Well, everyone but Hansen and Jagger whose Old Ladies wouldn’t have been pleased with either of them being on protection duty on this particular night. Not that either of them wanted to be in a strip club on a Friday night. They were so fucking in love I’d think it was been pathetic if it weren’t for the fact that I was actually happy for my brothers. And I actually liked Macy and Caroline. It was impossible not to.