Sure, my hair was cropped short, and I mostly wore contact lenses, but still, I’d get recognized. Can’t risk that.
I consider a waterfront park but dismiss it—too tacky. I rack my brain for other possibilities. It’s only once we reenter the heart of the city that I decide on the perfect place. One I’ve only ever gone to as Cillian. A hole-in-the-wall speakeasy that a client of mine told me about.
Thanks to the easy flow of Sunday traffic, we pull up in front of the red phone booth entrance in no time. After finding parking, I pocket a few bills from the zippered pouch under my seat, then jog around the car to get Electra’s door. She’s already out by the time I reach her side. I hold out my hand. She studies it like it’s some complex Captcha she’s meant to solve.
I realize the handholding was only for show back at the estate, but maybe?—
She takes my hand, and my heart misses a beat. I lock my fingers around hers before she can reconsider, then guide her to the phone booth.
With my free hand, I pick up the phone. The word “mambo” sounds in my ear. I secure the phone between my ear and shoulder and punch the numbers corresponding to the five letters.
Once I’ve keyed them in, the back panel of the booth unlatches, revealing a private club with a zinc bar, paper lanterns, and a stage where a local band is midperformance.
Electra’s eyes widen. “What is this place?”
“It doesn’t have a name and it’s not on any map. From what I was told, it was modeled on the first speakeasy in Boston back during Prohibition.”
Even though the tiled ceiling is low, Electra cranes her neck to take it all in. “How did you find out about it?”
“One of my regulars told me about it.”
Annoyance flashes across her face. “Do you often go places with yourregulars?”
“I didn’t gowithher. I went with my fellow instructors, the ones you met at my gym. No need to be jealous.”
“I’mnotjealous.” Yet she looks it. And sounds it.
I can’t help myself from leaning over to murmur. “Just becauseyouwant to fuck me, Miss Serran, doesn’t mean anyone else does.”
Even though the crooner on stage is singing loudly, I don’t miss the hitch in Electra’s breathing, along with her predictable retort. “You wish.”
“I do wish.”
If only she’d turn her head and meet my eyes, she’d see just how much I wish it. But she keeps her stare firmly on the stage.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
“I don’t drink around strangers, remem—” The last syllable cuts off in anoomphwhen a pair of lively dancers crash into Electra’s back, knocking her straight into my chest.
I catch her, clasping my arms around her. Even after she’s recovered her balance, I hold on, enjoying the feel and scent of her—crisp and clean, devoid of those sugary fragrances that smell like tropical cocktails.
She tilts her face up to mine. My gaze can’t decide where to land. I start at her lips, which flutter around hollow breaths, before moving to her eyes, to the gold burning around one pupil and the silver wheeling around the other.
I brace for her to tell me to let go, but she just breathes, her chest brushing against mine with each cadenced inhale. My face drifts a fraction lower. When she still doesn’t speak, I drop another inch, my pulse ramping up, redirecting the flow in my veins to a part of me that’s as rusty as my Volvo.
The awareness that Electra’s an Atlantean—my enemy…theworld’senemy—doesn’t faze my dick, which gladly hardens and digs into her lower belly.
“You fit so well inside my arms, Miss Serran,” I rasp.
It’s a line, one meant to seduce and entrap. It helps that she does fit well against me, that all those sharp edges that make up her lean, muscled frame slot against mine as though carved out of the same block of concrete.
I splay my palm on the small of her back and shift my hips, not for my dick’s sake, but because the music is sinking into my blood, making me want to move, making me want to move her. I bet she’d move really well.
She curls her fingers around my forearms, then glides them down to my wrists. Before she can break my hold, I skim her hip and twirl her, then plant my hand on her midriff.
The muscles in her stomach bunch against my palm as her tight shirt lifts, giving me access to her soft, hot skin.
I sway, grinding my erection against the base of her spine. I try to remember the last time I was so turned on. The only occasion that springs to mind is my shower, my fist, and my phone propped against my shampoo bottle with a headshot of Electra filling the frame.
