There was two feet of space between us where I’d bumped to the middle of the booth. When I didn’t shift, because my muscles had locked up tight, Kane inched in. He rested an elbow on the table and turned to face me. His hand came back up to wind my ponytail around his fist. A line furrowed his forehead as his gaze travelled over my face.
All I could see was him. His huge shape against the dark club. The tight curve of his jaw. He captivated me with his dark energy and powerful body.
“You look like you’re going to kiss me,” I breathed.
“I don’t kiss.”
Ouch. “You said that about beds and bedrooms, but that rule went out the window.”
The furrow deepened, yet he didn’t move away.
The intensity of his stare had me dropping mine to the bandanna around his throat, the skeleton print black-and-white cloth that he didn’t wear the way his crew did.
A thought took shape in my mind. Pieces of a puzzle sliding together. Kane always had the window open in his car when we drove, no matter the weather. In the lift in his Manchester apartment block, he’d held himself so rigid I’d worried it had been about to break down. Then there was the open bathroom door. The white-knuckling the booth. The no kissing rule.
Words flew from my lips. “Are you claustrophobic?”
His eyes widened, and he untangled his fist from my hair. “How did you…? Why do you ask?”
I waited him out.
Kane’s gaze fled mine to the exit then off again in a heartbeat. The pulsing music got louder.
Through a locked jaw, he finally answered, “Yes.”
My pulse thumped out of time. Another tiny morsel of knowing him. A secret we shared, even if I’d discovered it myself. At every little reveal, another part of me clung to him. Other parts of me ached.
I held perfectly still. “If you kiss me, I won’t touch you back.”
A figure appeared at the entrance to our booth.
The manager of the strip club introduced herself as Bette, oblivious to the tension that held me in its grip. She peered at Dixie’s photo but shook her head.
“I can’t discuss individual staff members.”
“Can you at least tell us if she’s been here?”
“Like I said, we protect our dancers. Maybe she has and maybe not. If she wants to be contacted, she’ll authorise it.”
She was playing the corporate line. I needed to appeal to her human side. “I’m worried that she’s in danger.”
“Sure you are.” Her eyes held mine. “Want to know how many requests I get per night to talk to the girls? How many men want to take them home?”
Her gaze flicked to Kane.
“It isn’t like that. We aren’t clients. We just want her to be safe.”
“If your friend wanted that, she’d be the one to decide. I suggest you text her, but feel free to stay and enjoy the show before you go back to Deadwater.”
She tapped the table then turned and left.
“The staff are talking about us,” Kane said.
He was right, she’d name-checked our city. Another fact was certain: if Dixie had been here, no one was going to say.
I exhaled disappointment. “Work this through with me. If she was backstage, she would’ve heard our description. She’d know it was me and come out, wouldn’t she? Which means she decided not to. What are we supposed to do with that?”
Kane leapt up. I followed him across the room to a door in the back wall that Bette had disappeared into.
