Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
ROONEY
Idon’t bother with the open stares of the other strippers when I walk up to Shard that evening and place a hand on his chest. He’s been watching me like a lovesick puppy, and I’m rather sick of it. I push him onto the couch where he sat the first day we met, then drop myself into his lap.
The room quiets, and I sense the moment everyone’s attitude toward me turns hostile.
Instant judgment, even from Nova. Did he actually do it?
they’re wondering, I’m sure. And even though I haven’t actually fucked Shard in exchange for his protection, I would have.
I almost did, so none of them are wrong for exchanging looks, silently calling me a gold-digging skank.
As if none of these bitches would have taken the opportunity to screw our rich, handsome boss to curry favor.
The difference is, Shard isn’t human, and I’m not sure why he’s so obsessed with me. I haven’t asked yet. It’s on the list.
“So, what are you?”
Shard’s strong brows crawl up his forehead. I want to smooth my thumbs over the thick, dark hair, chasing them back down. “Are you certain you want to do this here? Now?”
“Don’t question me,” I say, mildly irate and not trying to hide it. “I figure you’d be less likely to eat me in a room full of catty strippers.”
A knot forms between Shard’s eyes, surprise turning into…whatever that emotion is. “I’d never molest you in such a fashion. You are the brightest—” He cuts himself off, teeth in his bottom lip.
I have the impulse to scratch his face open so he has no choice but to finish the thought.
Rather than violence, I opt to stare at him expectantly until he sighs and wraps an arm around my lower back, tugging me closer.
I allow myself to spill against his chest, surprised at the way he holds me tight against him without fondling my ass.
Guess he was serious about the no molestation thing.
“There is no name for what I am,” he says, once I’ve tipped my nose underneath his chin so I can feel the low rumble in his throat.
“Not good enough,” I immediately parry.
Shard laughs, the hard muscles of his chest flexing. “I wasn’t going to leave it there.”
“You’d better not.”
“My species gestates between dimensions,” he begins, thumb stroking down my spine.
He doesn’t worm his hand underneath the thin t-shirt I’m wearing, because my impulse control wouldn’t let me wait to get dressed before confronting him.
The simple, non-invasive touch isn’t making it easy to focus, which is important when he’s using words like gestates.
“Once we’re fully developed, we…emerge, I suppose,” he muses.
I wonder if he’s ever had to explain this before.
“We’re set free amongst the far reaches of the universe, at the edges of infinite numbers of dimensions.
Most of us stay there, collecting fragments of worlds that make their way to oblivion.
There’s a threshold where reality ends, little jewel.
But we don’t let them disappear. My kin and I, our purpose is to turn those lost somethings into pieces of energy, light, spirit.
And once we’re full enough, we… expand. Become something new. ”
“A new universe? Or, uh, dimension?” I wonder, struggling to hold on to his dreamy spidersilk murmurs.
Shard squeezes my hip. “Perhaps. It’s as good a guess as any.”
“Is that going to happen to you?” The idea of Shard blowing up into his own dimension makes my chest ache in a way I, frankly, do not consent to, but it happens anyway.
But then he says, “No,” and chuckles.
I frown, disliking the lighthearted way he wastes my second of worry. “Why not?”
“Because I’m here,” he says, gesturing to the dressing room around us, where the girls are tying bikini strings and sucking their teeth resentfully. “I fell into this dimension on accident, ending up on your Earth.”
“Are you trapped, then? Can’t you go back?”
Shard shrugs. “I haven’t tried, and I don’t intend to. I found something more interesting to collect.”
Swallowing, I force myself to ask, even though I don’t want to know if the answer is ‘stripper boys who taste good.’ “What do you collect?”
“Souls,” Shard answers, tilting his head so his slightly stubbled cheek can nuzzle my forehead.
I tense noticeably, prompting him to stroke my hair, slipping past the short strands at my temples to the long tail at the nape of my neck.
He twists it around one thick finger, voice soothing when he continues, “Not all of them. Don’t be afraid. Fragments.”
All at once, it dawns on me. “Shards…of people’s souls?”
He rumbles in approval. “Yes.”
“Does it kill people?” I ask, thinking of the fucker who roofied me. I wonder if anyone found his remains yet, and if I’ll be accused of murder since I was the last person seen entering his apartment before we both disappeared.
“Not usually,” Shard hedges.
“Only when you want to.”
“Yes.” Sensing my unspoken question, Shard says, “The foul little man who hurt you needed to be dispatched. There was nothing of him worth keeping, so I spat him out.”
Spat is a generous term. I’d have said violently upchucked, but I don’t correct him. “Thank you for that, by the way.” I bite my lip. “Not sure I said that before.”
Shard gives a dismissive wave. “Not necessary, Rooney. I wouldn’t have allowed it to happen to anyone I was near enough to protect. Though I would have taken the fragments containing their memories of the events.”
“Why didn’t you take mine?” I’m relieved he didn’t, because the idea of having experiences taken from me without permission makes my stomach churn.
They might not all be good—in fact, most of them are actively bad, but they’re mine.
My choices, even the stupid ones. How will I learn from the mistakes I’ve forgotten?
After a moment of hesitation, Shard answers, “You’re different.”
“Don’t make me shake you,” I warn, making him laugh, but I’m serious. I straighten in his lap, tugging his collar so the vibrant blue of his eyes meet mine, only inches separating us. “You’ve been stalking me for weeks. What makes me so different? I’m just a burned-out stripper.”
His sharp inhale steals the air between us; I almost jerk forward to demand it back. “Rooney, you’re—”
“Hey, Rooney!” another voice interjects, my name a slap on her lips.
I turn to Nova, seconds away from cussing her out for interrupting Shard before he can say what he wants from me, again, but she cuts me off.
“We open in ten minutes.” She radiates disapproval, priming me to expect a scolding the moment she can corner me. Just great.
Reluctantly, I slide off Shard’s lap. He looks disappointed to see me go, but I fix my mask and scowl until he fixes his. “I have to get ready,” I inform him.
Shard follows me upright, forcing me to lift my chin and pretend I’m not intimidated by his confident stance and powerful shoulders, twice the width of mine. “Go then. I’ll be waiting.”
“You’ll be watching,” I correct.
A smile twitches the corner of his mouth. He pats the top of my head, then slides past me, walking toward the exit with long strides. The heavy door unleashes a burst of cold into the dressing room before falling shut behind him.
I pretend not to be bothered by the stares I get when I tuck myself into a corner to rush through make-up application before wriggling into my skin-tight black leotard.
I shove my hands between my thighs to fasten the little buttons over my crotch, hidden there so we can piss without getting completely naked.
As well as less innocent purposes. It’s not until I’m pulling on a pair of red booty shorts, less than two minutes before I have to be on the floor carrying a tray of shot glasses, that I go stock-still.
Did Shard…
Somewhere within that weird existential sci-fi mishmash, did an impossible, inter-dimensional cosmic being call me his jewel?
I don’t see Shard for the first hour of flirting and lap dances, which raises my ire.
He’s not lurking in the corners as he has before.
No idea what could be more important than stalking me, when it seems he can be aware of me even when he’s not physically present.
Maybe he’s still doing that, but I don’t want some distant knowledge that he might be paying attention.
I want to look into the crowd and see someone who wants more than my ass.
By the time it’s my turn on the pole, I’m in a proper horrid mood. How dare he? Say all that then abandon me?
Fuck. Fuck!
Next time I see that fuck, he’s gone. I’ll tell him to get lost. No more of his well-intentioned stalking; he can just leave me alone. I don’t need anyone to save me, not even a—
Especially not some hyper-focused cosmic bastard.
Too distracted for heels, I stomp barefoot onto the stage and seize the pole, so hopping mad I nearly miss my music cue.
But then, as I’m lifting myself up, up, the first spin of the pole gathering momentum, I feel something odd in my shoulders.
Power dripping down my muscular arms, greater than the strength I usually wield.
Which is not insignificant, but this is more.
I cross my legs around the pole, flexing my thighs to hold my weight as I bend my back in mid-air, arms twisting above my head.
A thrill runs to the center of my sternum, making me gasp.
When it rolls down my abdomen, shock has me nearly releasing the pole and crashing head-first to the stage, but a force separate from myself tightens my thighs for me.
I only drop a few inches before jerking to a stop, and a handful of bills rain onto the stage.
Guess they thought it was an intentional trick, but I’m too distracted to care.
The next several beats of my choreography are executed through muscle memory alone, improvised with a bit of ass-shaking on all fours.
One guy slaps a stack of bills against my crack and for a moment I’m filled with rage so hot I want to kick like a horse, heel slamming into his nose with a crunch and fountain of blood.
I’m distracted by a different kind of heat—the man escapes unscathed, and that force drags me back to the pole.
I launch myself at it, furious enough to fly, legs flaring, obeying the momentum I gather as the pole whirls in my grip.
Warmth pools between my legs when they cross the pole again.
Sweat beads on my forehead, dripping down the bridge of my nose, dampening my cheeks.
Another form of moisture dampens much lower down, soaking the crotch of my leotard.
Wet, wet, I reach under my shorts to unfasten the buttons, fingers slipping because they’re tiny and slick.
The ravenous crowd howls when I pull the lycra to my waist, exposing my sweat-sheened hipbones.
I climb the pole as high as I can reach, whirling, tugging the rest of the leotard over my shoulders and hurling it to the stage, leaving me in nothing but red spandex.
Panting like a bitch in heat, I struggle to finish my routine.
By the time I’m done I’m shaking from the tips of my fingers down to my ankles, and I barely make it down the stairs backstage without falling on my ass.
I immediately hurry down the dimly lit corridor to the changing room, swaying dangerously, needing to sit down. Nova meets me halfway, brow furrowed.
“Rooney, are you okay? You look like shit.” She pauses, lips pursing. “Are you on something?”
I shake my head. “Might be getting sick,” I say, gripping my stomach. “I need to get to the—thinkin’ I stepped in something. Gotta find…”
“There are wipes in the bathroom,” Nova says, her cool gaze saying she doesn’t believe me but doesn’t have time to argue.
I slam the bathroom door, crash-landing on the toilet seat.
I scramble with the pack of wipes, scrubbing the bottom of my feet, my hands, my chest, my face.
Still, heat suffuses me. Something I can’t name or process.
Then, the air shifts, and when I look up from the view of the grimy floor between my knees, I’m somehow not surprised to see a certain large, imposing man leaning against the door with his arms crossed and his rippling teal-blue gaze fixed on me.
Contrary to my resolutions earlier to cuss and kick him in the nuts, seeing Shard fills me with a cool sensation of bone-deep relief.
“Where were you?” I demand, voice rasping. “What the fuck did you do to me?”