“Mira,” Axel said as she headed to the door.
“No, Axel.” She flung around to face him. “Do whatever you have to. Marry hisrealdaughter if you want to. I don’t blame you for trying to get what he promised, but take a lesson from this backstabbing. He’ll find another way to undercut you. He always does.” Her eyes were glistening as she shot Otto a final look, but they weren’t tears of hurt or sadness. It was the glow of vengeance.
A similar flame had been lit inside Axel, an incendiary refusal to lose again. Hewouldget what had been promised to him.
He folded the envelope Umberto had given him and tucked it inside his suit jacket. If Umberto could find this secret baby of Otto’s, so could he.
CHAPTER TWO
JOYYOUNGSTON WASmidway through a stag spin on the pole when she glimpsedhimentering the club.
Her grip almost slipped. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as though she recognized him. She only clocked him as not someone she’d seen before. Someone shewouldremember because he brought such an aura of wealth and sophistication in with him. Power. Not only was he not a regular to this club, he didn’t belong on this side of the city. Not in that suit. It must have been made for him because it moved as though it was part of him, accentuating the line of his wide shoulders and the length of his legs.
She mindlessly continued her routine, swinging around and kicking out her legs in a provocative eye-opener, then hooking the pole behind her knee so she could catch the spiked heel of her shoe and lean back in a rainbow.
As she held the position, she watched his upside-down image walk unhesitatingly toward her. His movements were as fluid as an athlete’s, his bearing tall and commanding. There was a watchfulness to him. Not fearful. Aware. He recognized the dangers in a club like this, especially to a man who looked like he carried abundant cash and a nice watch, but he was blade-sharp and ready to respond to any sort of trouble.
She contorted into a back arch, then grasped the pole and brought her legs down, one–two, before sinking into splits against the stage.
Other men watched the titillating movement of her breasts or tried to catch a wardrobe malfunction in her string bikini. This one kept his attention on her face.
She couldn’t help staring back. He had a square, clean-shaven jaw and straight, dark eyebrows to match his straight, closely shorn dark hair. He was more compelling than conventionally attractive. Roughly hewn and uncompromising. Beautiful in the way of wrathful storms.
Disapproving?
A savage pain hit her breastbone.Go to hell, she thought darkly, trying to retreat into her bubble of self-containment, but he had pierced her shell from the second he walked in. She couldn’t look through him the way she usually could. Couldn’t look away, either. He was too magnetic, pulling her gaze against her will.
Anxious electricity zipped in opposing currents under her skin, setting all of her buzzing. She tried to hide his effect on her as she swung her front leg around to meet the back and pushed against the stage, first a cobra, then she hinged her knees and lifted her butt high while her chest pressed low to the floor in a speedbump.
His piercing gaze didn’t slide to the undulation of her body. He didn’t look at her thighs with the garters she wore around the tops of them, or the tulle skirt that was more of a ruffle since it started at her tailbone and ended above her mostly bare cheeks. He didn’t acknowledge the girls on the other two poles at all.
Joy did these moves for hours every night. It was pure muscle memory and didn’t usually cause her pulse to pick up or her breath to labor.
Tonight, her bones felt like melted crayons. Her limbs twitched with conflicting signals. She grew breathless and hot. Wired.
Because the way he stared into her soul thrust alarm into her belly.
And spiraled erotic shivers into her blood.
His lips moved. He didn’t try to compete with the music, but she read her name as he shaped it. Not her stage name. Her legal name, Joy Youngston. He jerked his head in a signal to leave the pole and talk to him.
Her heart dipped in shock. She had the sudden fear she was about to be arrested. Exotic dancing was strictly regulated in Illinois, but she had her paperwork in order. She abided by all the rules—no touching chief among them.
Still on her hands and knees, she held his gaze as she slid her toe back along the floor, extending one leg. She reached up and back to find the pole, readying to mount it again, letting him know she didn’t take orders from strangers.
He drew a money clip from his jacket pocket and pulled a hundred-dollar bill from it.
She stayed exactly as she was. The position opened the front of her body for his perusal. Still his gaze stayed locked with hers in a battle of wills that felt dangerous and exciting and terrifying.
He jerked his head again, but she wasn’t giving up her spot on the stage for anything less than what she normally took home from a six-hour shift.
She lifted her chin, urging more from the clip.
He thumbed a second and a third bill, then held them out to her.
She took the money and tucked the notes under the strings at her hip, then rolled to take a low grasp on the pole with both hands. In a blatantly sexual move, she planted her feet and slowly lifted her hips, straightening her legs so she was bent forward, facing him. She held the pose with her shoes spaced wide while she exaggerated the dip in her lower back, affording him a good view of her breasts as they swayed inside the tiny cups of her black bra.
It was a little treat for his generosity and a show of insolence on her part. She would cooperate, but in her own time.
