Her laugh soared above the noise, clear as a bell, all mockery and sass, but no real malice to it. “Figures you’d be the type. Repressed, macho, latent—”
“Look, could you just get me a drink and zip it?”
Tess slammed the glass down, studying him for a beat. Something in her expression shifted; not softer, exactly, but lessguarded. Like she’d decided he wasn’t worth the full armor. “What’s your poison, Tarzan?”
Her words still had teeth, but the bite was more playful now. Rick caught her scent beneath the bar’s miasma of liquor and smoke—bergamot, black coffee, and something clean. Honest. In some way, she was a kindred spirit: someone who’d learned to be tough because the world demanded it, but who hadn’t let that toughness harden all the way through. He realized he liked her.
“Brandy,” he said. “Cheapest one you got. And make it a double.”
Tess poured without speaking and sent the glass toward him with a practiced flick of the wrist. Her mouth twitched—almost a smile, but not quite. “Buckle up,” she said, the warning edged with something that might’ve been sympathy. “He’s next.”
Rick didn’t answer. There was no need. They both knew why he was here, who he was waiting for. He fished out a Jackson from his wallet and pushed it across the bar, the extra left unspoken.
“I still don’t like you,” she said, scooping up the bill and tucking it into her cleavage.
“I’m a detective, sweetheart,” he said, lifting the glass. “I know when people lie.”
She shook her head and drifted down the line of thirsty patrons, leaving Rick to stare at the stage, the grand arch, the shadow of possibility just out of reach.
He sipped the drink. Cheap, sharp, perfect.
When he raised his eyes again, the illumination changed. The music came to a stop. A microphone screeched. From behind the curtain, Vinny waddled out, a stocky little rooster in a three-piece suit, his pencil mustache twitching beneath a grin slicked across his face.
“Are we feeling wicked yet, my darlings?” he crooned into the mic. The crowd howled—hoots and catcalls raining from everytable. “Good—I’d hate for us to lose our reputation! Now, let’s make it a night worth repenting,” Vinny simpered. “Because Eclipse’s crowned jewel is about to make his return!”
The cheers that came from the audience were deafening. Someone in the front row threw a rose at the stage. Someone else whistled.
Vinny dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief, sweating in the glare. “He’s the flame you moths burn for. The sin you beg forgiveness for. And the reason you keep sinning anyway.”
It was contrived, affected, theatrical, and Rick almost snorted. But the throng was lapping it up, the anticipation almost tangible in the air.
Vinny’s voice grew even louder: “Put your hands together for the one, the only—ASH!”
The lights went dim. A hush swept the room, curious, reverent. For a moment, there was a collective breath held, the barely controlled hunger of a hundred waiting strangers.
On stage, a veil of white gauze dropped from the rigging like a fog descending. The spotlight behind it flared, casting a silhouette in sharp relief. The first note of music hit: mysterious, sensual, haunting, setting the mood as the figure behind the veil stirred—a cobra answering a snake charmer’s call. The band played soft and slow, all brushed cymbals, dusky strings, and sinuous bass that slid through the haze like rose petals across bare skin.
Rick didn’t breathe. Didn’t budge. The cigarette burned to the filter between his fingers and fell to the floor. Then the gauze fluttered, and Ash stepped into the blaze.
A prince of lust in black silk and gold, Ash wore harem pants that clung to his hips and around his ankles, held up by a belly-dance belt that chimed with each glide, clear in the sudden hush. Barefoot, he moved like he wasn’t bound by gravity. A vest, open down the middle, framed the bare expanse of his chest andstomach, while armbands circled his biceps, and bracers clung around his forearms. A matching turban sat high on his head, regal and almost mythic.
Rick stared, spellbound and mesmerized, something clicking into place. Ash was a canvas on which the audience painted their ideal, his face a mask across which emotion flitted and fought, a patchwork of shadows and desire. His every move was an exercise in control, a sort of exquisitely molded artifice. But Ash was no confection—he was a masterpiece. Simultaneously vulnerable and dominating, demure and suggestive, an Adonis with a broken heart.
He didn’t just dance—he slithered. His hips rolled in carnal, hypnotic circles. His abs contracted and released in a serpentine ripple. Each gesture hummed with temptation and allure, now fast, then slow, his body a blur of illusion that made it seem like he was in three places at once, his many hands spreading like Hindu gods on ancient temple walls. When he took off his turban and flung it into the crowd, people moaned in collective delirium. The guy who caught it screamed his name.
Rick felt like he was fighting for air. He thought he was strong, that he could resist anything, but his body mocked him with a surge of blood pooling low. His need swelled, insistent and undeniable, shattering all his attempts at restraint. He wasn’t prepared forthis.
At the stage, Ash let the vest fall from his shoulders, revealing the full sculpt of his carved chest, both lean and muscular. He dropped, smooth as water, to his knees, his bare stomach an undulating flame, his torso arching back, back, until his head touched the stage and his spine bent like a bow. For a moment, he stayed there, upside down, throat exposed, bills fluttering around him like falling leaves. When he lunged forward, slinking along the catwalk on his hands and knees, his back muscles rippled under silver lights, sweat glistening on his skin.He launched himself upward effortlessly, hips gyrating with obscene precision, every movement made to tease, to taunt, to destroy. He pulled the soft black veil from his pocket and swirled it around, a conjurer summoning spirits.
Dazed, Rick sensed a presence beside him a moment before Tess spoke.
“Mouth closed, Detective. You’re drooling.”
He snapped it shut. His ears were burning, but he couldn’t look away.
Ash unhooked his belt and let it drop to the platform in a clatter of coins, the smile on his face lethal. He was a rattlesnake, sounding off a warning.
Was he… He won’t…Rick leaned forward, throbbing, transfixed.
