Chapter 17
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Beck
I don’t want to share you.
It was a dangerous thought, and one I almost let slip while standing across from Zephyr in the lonely hall. Since the moment I approached him at the bar, I’d deviated from my every intention.
I hadn’t dismissed him with a handshake and parting thanks.
I hadn’t paid him.
I hadn’t ended anything.
Instead, I asked him what he wanted, and he all but admitted he wanted me.
He meant as a food source. Nourishment. But I wasn’t bothered by that. Sex was vital to him, and taking part in it made me vital too. More essential than I’d been in what felt like lifetimes.
It bore consideration, though. In a place like this, how could Zephyr be anything less than sated? Between the stage performances and activities in the executive suites, lust was practically oozing out of the walls. Then there was… that room. The sex dungeon turned recording studio.
There were plenty of people in Vegas who’d line up to bed an incubus—and pay extra for a recording of the experience. Something to jerk off to later. An X-rated souvenir.
If that was happening, Zephyr should’ve had no use for me.
But… was it happening? The hallway had been empty.
No line of horny johns adjusting their zippers, making sure they were hard for the main event.
The room itself had been pristine, without sights or smells of recent use, and Zephyr had looked terrified.
Clinging to the doorframe like he thought it might swallow him whole.
Which begged another question: what happened to a creature who feared his own nature?
Reentering the club’s main room, I was assaulted by a blast of sound. My attention tunneled through the crowd, seeking the bar where Colette had promised to wait. She was there, balancing a martini glass while clapping along to the music.
A glance at the stage found Marvel front and center. He wore a metallic green G-string and a cape that fluttered as he marched along the row of footlights, striking poses and flexing his muscles to the tune of “My Hero” by the Foo Fighters.
The crush and chaos of the club must have dulled Colette’s hound senses because I was able to weave through the mob and get close enough to tap her shoulder, breaking her rapt attention.
She spun toward me, free hand twitching toward her hidden revolver before she broke into a grin. “This is pretty good!” she called over the racket.
My lips pulled into a tight smile. “Something to be said for nubile demon boys, after all?”
Colette raised her glass in a mock toast. “They make a strong case for themselves.” Her gaze drifted toward the main event and lingered there as she commented, “I think this one could crush me with his arms. Or his thighs.”
The observation forced me to look again, noticing the sheen of oil that highlighted the deep cut of Marvel’s abs and the bulge of his biceps as he set his feet and flexed. Blond-haired, blue-eyed, and tall enough to look down on most men, he was quite the specimen.
“That’s a good thing?” I asked.
“It’s certainly not bad.” Colette took a sip of her cocktail, relaxing while the urgency of my mission caught up to me.
“Listen,” I told her, leaning in to attempt discretion while whisper-shouting. “I’m taking Zephyr to the car.”
Colette fixed me with a narrow glance. “Not stealing him, are you? I think you only pay to borrow, not purchase.”
I waved her off. “I’m not stealing him, just—”
“Borrowing.” She gave an exaggerated nod. “For how long? Five, ten minutes? Should I make myself comfortable?”
“Not yet,” I replied. “Help me get him outside, then you can come back and… get comfortable.”
Her red lips quirked. “Why do you need help with that? Can’t he walk out on his own?”
I hesitated to answer that when I didn’t fully understand it myself.
Comments Maslow had made about his business model left a foul taste in my mouth.
Suffice to say, it felt important to get Zephyr out of this place, the same way it had felt important to give him my suit coat.
An offer of protection and a promise to return.
Colette remained unconvinced. “You see how this sounds like you’re stealing him.” She looked past me as though searching for the incubus I’d abandoned. “Do you have him gagged and bound somewhere? Rolled up in a rug?”
“A rug?” I repeated. “Where’d you see that?”
“Again.” She swirled her martini. “The films.”
The idea of Zephyr waiting and worrying I wouldn’t come back nagged at me. I needed to hurry this along.
“He told me he can’t leave,” I began again. “Something about the bouncers. I need you to distract them.”
The crowd burst into cheers, lauding some move Marvel pulled on the stage. Colette and I both missed it, and she looked perturbed by the fact.
“Haven’t you borrowed him before?” she asked. “Without the car?”
“Yes,” I admitted grudgingly.
“Then why do you need it now?”
“Why do you care?”
Colette huffed. “Because the dick kissing can be messy. The fluids. Like a fountain.” She pantomimed an almost volcanic eruption, then began ticking items off with her fingers. “On the windows, the seats, the floor—”
“The bouncers, Coll.” I snatched the martini glass from her hand, then grabbed her shoulder and spun her toward the entrance. “Keep them busy. Once Zephyr’s out, you can rejoin the ogling masses. And when you get back, give Marvel a tip. He’s earned it.”
With a grumbled protest about sticky upholstery, Colette headed for the door. I watched long enough to make sure she didn’t deviate from her task before downing what remained of her martini and offloading the empty glass onto a passing waitress’s tray.
Cutting back through the crowd, I found the doorway Zephyr had led me through earlier. The hall was as vacant as before, and near the end of it, the redheaded incubus stood near the wall, bundled up in my suit jacket.
His head whipped my way, and his wide eyes softened. But the pinch of his brows and the press of his lips betrayed something other than relief at my return.
I came swiftly within reach, then offered my hand. “Are you ready, Beauty?”
Zephyr hesitated, his fingers white-knuckled on the lapels of my jacket. The damn thing looked enormous on him, drowning his narrow shoulders, but he clutched it like a shield.
“Beck…” His lashes fluttered. “Mister Beckett, I really can’t go. If Mazzy finds out—”
“It’s just the parking lot,” I replied while leaving my hand extended. “You aren’t actually going anywhere. Though if you’d like to leave, the car does drive.”
His gaze darted to the ceiling—no, the corner, and the camera mounted there. Always watching.
When his jaw clenched, I could almost see the words he wanted to say being crushed between his teeth.
“Please,” he whispered. “Let me stay. If I leave, even for a minute…”
“Then what?” I had to ask. He’d been hedging around some unspeakable thing. Something that frightened him more than the onsite porn studio. Or someone.
Maslow had bragged about his hellish pipeline. All the young demons eager to escape the lower plane. It was a deal the wraith could offer, but under what terms?
“What happens if you leave?” I prompted.
Maybe I should have let it go. He was giving me the out I’d come for.
Where other incubi would see me as a fly caught in their web and take their chance to strike, he shied away from it.
But I saw the hunger gnawing at him. I heard the longing in his voice.
I knew what he was denying himself, but I didn’t know why.
His lack of reply left me grasping.
“I’m not dragging you to another world.” I offered a coaxing smile. “It’s just the parking lot. You step outside, breathe some different air, that’s all. Hell, we don’t even have to get in the car, but it’s there.”
His stare dropped to my waiting hand, and for a moment he didn’t move. Then he reached out and slid his slender fingers across my palm.
“Okay,” he breathed. “Just the parking lot.”
We retraced our steps back down the corridor and out onto the club’s main floor. I felt the tension winding tighter in Zephyr’s frame with every inch closer to the entrance. When we hit the short hall at the edge of the room, he slowed. Not stopping, but nearly.
I turned my hand and threaded my fingers between his to give a squeeze.
“You’re fine,” I assured him. “I’m right here.”
He scanned the room like a hunted thing.
The crowd was thicker now. Drunken laughter, glittering lights, and the twang of a guitar solo announced the twins taking the stage.
We were traveling upstream, fighting the arriving guests who cast curious looks our way.
Thankfully, they were as eager to get in as we were to get out and didn’t pause to question.
At least, I was eager to get out. Zephyr, in contrast, had washed pale while shrinking inside my suit jacket and looking increasingly like a man being led to the gallows.
I readied myself to offer further reassurance when Colette’s voice cracked like a whip above the noise.
“Excusez-moi!”
She barreled through a part in the crowd, blazing past Zephyr and me on her way toward the congested entry.
I assumed she’d been dealing with security already, as I’d intended for her to chat the bouncers up or entice them with a bit of harmless flirtation.
What I did not expect was for her to stop in the thick of the mob and wave a champagne flute like a flag, sloshing bubbly liquid onto the floor.
“Where is the manager?” she demanded, causing the bouncers and everyone else in range to take notice. “I have a complaint to file!”
The mention of the manager had Zephyr poised to bolt, but I tightened my grip.
“Don’t look,” I advised him. “Just move.”
“But…” His protest was drowned by Colette carrying on.
“This is not Dom Pérignon. You serve this piss water to paying guests?” She tossed the glass over her shoulder, where it shattered on the tile with a dramatic crack.
The bouncers were moving now. One abandoned the queue and left his buddy to manage the patrons growing annoyed or maybe just interested in the flamboyant French woman causing a stir.
The crowd inside shifted, forming a ring around the unfolding scene and driving Zephyr and me to the outer edge of it. With a prompting tug, I steered us toward the exit, cutting toward the narrow gap of unguarded doorway.
“Mon dieu,” Colette groaned at the bouncer standing in front of her looking like he’d been tasked with disarming a bomb. She gave her high ponytail a flip. “I did not rise from the Reign of Terror to ingest bourgeois nonsense in a crystal flute.”
As we neared the open air, I thought Zephyr would balk again, but he stayed pressed against me as we passed the velvet ropes and exited into the night.