I already messed up by coming here.
At least let's make it even bigger.
The club is the kind where you have to know someone to get in. No sign outside. Private elevator. The lobby alone costs more than my first contract. Everything is rich and golden—indirect lighting, backlit bottles like gems, glass, brass, velvet. The musicis slow, deep, it slides over your skin instead of entering your ears. It doesn't smell like sweat and tequila: it smells like money and sex.
We’re in one of the side lounges. Private, but not closed off. A one-way glass wall overlooks the main room. Dark leather couch curving around a table piled with champagne and ice. Mirrors behind the bar, on the ceiling, in the corners.
The kind of place where everything is “consensual entertainment” but anything you do can still ruin you. It’s The Aureum… you don't get in easily, you don't get out easily.
Well, I admit, it’s not the first time I've been here. But this is the first time I’m truly captivated.
Her thigh brushes mine.
Not accidentally. She knows exactly what she’s doing.
“So,” she says, tilting her head, “what’s your sin, Lucifer?”
I smile sideways. “Yours first, Angel.”
“Angel,” she repeats, as if savoring it. She smirks, “cute.”
She looks up at me.
Everything else fades.
There's the bass, the laughter from the other side of the glass. Mark groaning somewhere. Someone popping another bottle.
It all disappears.
Her eyes are glacial blue, rimmed with dark liner. Up close, she’s even more lethal—porcelain skin, perfect nose. Gloss that seems to taste of strawberry and sin.
She traces a fingernail along my throat.
I swallow.
The nail descends. To my sternum. Further down.
I grab her wrist.
Because if I don't, I'll start moaning like an idiot in a club full of people I’ll see again.
I feel her accelerated heartbeat beneath my fingers.
She raises her chin, provocative. “Are you stopping me?”
That tone.
That’s the tone men die to.
“Not here,” I say.
Her lips curve. “Not here,” she repeats, thoughtful. Then, with absolute calm: “Where?”
There's a corridor behind the lounge. I know at the end there's an unmarked door, with a keypad.
There was a guard earlier. Big guy. Suit. Earpiece. In any case, I have the password. Yes... courtesy of Dominic. He’s always why I have access to this place. I don't know if he's close with the owner or if it's something family-related. He's always enigmatic about it.
I look at her.
