A goddamn exorcism.
At least some straight talk.
I was fucking a stripper. Granted, a fancy one who could bend in all the right places and whose violet eyes burned like he saw no one but me. Even so, he was a professional whore paid to entice and excite, and damn if he hadn’t done a job on me.
We seemed to be getting away with it too. The subject of Maslow hadn’t come up again, so I’d put my curiosity aside. Still, it was strange how voracious Zephyrwas. He met me every night with greedy hands and pleading eyes, ready to suck and fuck and sate his hunger. And I indulged him. Couldn’t deny him.
Taking him into my lap afterward, where he lay curled up and content, had become the highlight of my days. Those quiet, stolen moments were spent nosing into his hair and stroking the soft planes of his skin, until duty called him back to the club. Back to reality. Away from the stretch Lincoln that had become a sanctuary for us both.
There, in that temporary refuge, I could deny the truth that I was likely just one in a string of lovers. A customer. Though I never did pay him.
That was the line we hadn’t crossed. He said he didn’t want money, and I didn’t offer because the second it became transactional, whatever we had would lose its meaning. The feelings I tried to suppress would be cheapened. And I was already skirting too close to something dangerous.
Because the only thing worse than fucking a stripper was falling for one.
It was too soon for that. Maybe it would always be too soon. I’d told Zephyr he was a businessman, but the truth was, the gap between us felt enormous. Having him on my arm in public would invite stares, judgment, cruel assumptions. That he was a toy. That I was a lonely man grasping for something he couldn’t have.
So continued the denial.
But I could keep nothing from Colette.
She sat across from me in a corner booth in the Grecian Hotel lounge, basking in old-world glamor. Along the wall behind her, ivory columns sprouted from the polished floors, each carved with scenes from myth—Apollo chasing Daphne through curls of laurel, Hades pulling Persephoneinto the underworld, and Dionysus laughing with his wine-guzzling entourage.
Ceiling panels depicted the vault of Olympus: deep blue scattered with starry constellations. And above the bar, a mural of Eros and Psyche with wings unfurled and bodies entangled in a kiss loomed like a promise. Or a warning.
Colette swirled her martini while I nursed the smoked bourbon monstrosity the waiter swore I’d love. When I glanced up, the hellhound was watching me with a half-cocked grin.
“What?” I asked, shifting under her gaze.
“You’re glowing.”
“I’m not glowing.”
“You are,” she insisted. “Positively radiant. Like you’ve been kissed by a man who believes gravity is optional.”
She meant Zephyr’s aerial routine, which she’d managed to see the same way she’d managed to accompany me to the club, despite being banned. It turned out a hat and sunglasses made for an effective enough disguise, and Maslow’s security measures weren’t as strict as he likely believed.
I’d seen the show too. I joined the crowd in quiet rapture because my incubus was ephemeral. Spellbinding in silk and radiant in spotlight. But none of that compared to how he lit up for me, between my legs or under my body, a performance he gave only in private.
Was it a performance, though? An act?
“I haven’t kissed him,” I said.
“D’accord, the poison, I know.” Colette waved me off. “Frankly,mon ami, I don’t think it would make much difference if hedidenchant you. You couldn’t be more beguiled.”
I glanced toward the bar where the togaed bartender was finessing a lime-rind garnish. Instrumentalmusic droned, creating an atmosphere opposite that of the Dollhouse’s bass-thumping bedlam.
“I’ve not seen you like this in decades,” Colette continued. “You’re even drinking on a weekday. It’s adorable.”
“I think I’m having a midlife crisis,” I muttered, then shoved my bourbon to the far side of the table.
Colette looked after the rejected glass before turning toward me with a raised brow. “You’re a demon, Beck. You don’t have a midlife.”
I threw up my hands. “Then what the hell is this?”
My exclamation garnered the attention of a few tourists waiting for check-in and the man who’d been here since last night, drinking through the money he hadn’t lost at the poker tables.
Colette leaned forward and rested her chin on her hand. “He’s sweet, isn’t he?”
