“Stay inside until I have walked around to your door.”
“Yep. Got it.”
After all that instruction, I stayed planted on the car seat until Nicolai was standing at my door and turned to look at me in the SUV.
As the other security guy,Dushyantaand I shouldrememberhisname,opened the car door, Nicolai stood outside, extending his hand. I grasped his palm to steadymyself as I stepped out, the thick silk of my skirt flowing around my ankles.
I’d kind of gotten used to how stunningly gorgeous Nicolai Romanov was while we’d been hanging out and talking in a hotel room, but for a moment as I took in his freshly showered and shaved self, wearing a pressed suit and crisp white shirt open at his throat, it hit me again.
Those perfectly sculpted cheekbones, skin pulled taut over his square jawline, tousled black hair barely curling at his forehead, just everything about him clean and in balance, his clear blue eyes almost sparkling in the overhead lights as he looked at me, I was as floored as that first moment last night when this unearthly beautiful man had walked out of the crowd like a fairy-tale prince to where I’d been standing on the sidewalk, destitute, begging for pennies.
With Nicolai smiling into my eyes, I felt a little like a princess stepping out of a silver carriage, even though I wasn’t wearing glass shoes and the SUV was black with darkly tinted windows instead of pumpkin-orange.
No red carpet. No flashing light bulbs.
Just Nicolai and me and two security guys in an exhaust-stinky concrete parking structure with cars thumping on the concrete floors overhead.
But a princess, nevertheless.
And like a modern-day princess with security personnel overseeing her every move, we were hustled through the private back doors and through the kitchens. The staff casually looked up, but as we were neither Beyoncé nor Taylor Swift, they looked right back down and continued prepping salads and chopping meat.
Our entourage took a few quick turns through industrial hallways and a long ride in an oversized padded-wall freight elevator. The security guys shuffled us to the back and stood at parade rest in front of the doors.
While the elevator shuddered and my feet felt heavy, I muttered to Nicolai under my breath, “What do I say when you introduce me to your friends,ifyou are going to introduce me to your friends?”
“Of course, I will introduce you. Say something along the lines of, ‘Lovely to meet you,’ or ‘So nice to meet you.’ It doesn’t matter what you say. The music will probably be too loud for anyone to hear anything.” Without looking down, his fingers found mine, and he squeezed my hand gently. “You’ll be fine.”
The wall-padded freight elevator was slow, taking forever, like we were traveling between worlds. “If I screw it up too much, you can always tell people you imprisoned me in the attic.”
“Nonsense. One doesn’t confess to imprisoning one’s wife in the attic. I’ll say you’re at the spa.”
I swiveled and looked up at where a very small smile tweaked the corners of Nicolai’s mouth. “That is not reassuring!”
The freight elevator’s doors finally parted.
Just as they cracked open, sliding apart, Nicolai stiffened. His chin rose, his jaw tightened, and his whole posturebraced.
I squeezed his hand, looking up and trying to question him with my eyes.
Nicolai’s fingers flexed around mine, a furtive squeeze, before he dropped my hand. He stared at the elevator doors slowly grinding apart.
Cigarette smoke trickled in through the widening gap, filling the air with pale blue haze.
One fingertip of nicotine craving stroked up the back of my neck and touched my scalp.
Man, if I stayed in Las Vegas much longer, I was going to fall off the ex-smoker wagon. This whole city was designed to seduce everyone back into any addiction they’d ever had.
Screaming techno dance music blasted into the elevator like accelerating into a wall of sound, and we walked a few steps onto the VIP area of the Omnia Nightclub, a wide balcony area three stories above the main nightclub floor, where the normal people writhed like a wheat field in a swirling Nebraska windstorm.
Dim light shone from barely glowing overhead ceiling cans and the battery-operated votive candles on the tables. Men wearing slim-cut suits held drinks in one hand, while beautiful women wearing black or dark silk draped over their shoulders laughed.
Beyond the glass balcony wall, out in the dark void and far above the main floor, an enormous structure of thick concentric rings blazing with thousands and thousandsand thousandsof LED lights trimmed with swinging strobes sliced light beams through the smoke-filled air and gyrated like an alien spacecraft winding up to self-destruct in a movie. The rings spun and flipped through each other, bouncing like a rocket-powered kaleidoscope. Even the smallest ring at the bottom was wider across than my outstretched arms, and the biggest one at the top was a vast flying saucer that would have sucked up dozens of cows and disbelieving farmers with room to spare.
The whole structure moved so fast that it looked like a sped-up video played at five-times normal, bouncing to the bomp-bomp beat and then whirling furiously.
I wasn’t sure whether to walk in like a pageant queen to schmooze with people or if I should hit the deck because that thing looked like it was going toblow.
The pounding techno dance music hit a pause, a tense silence, and the huge sculpture beyond the edge of the balcony contracted into a sphere and went black for an instant before erupting into a frantic flailing of thrashing rings with the crescendodownbeat.
