Chapter 21
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
Beck
Ten days after the first time I snuck Zephyr out of the club, I felt like a man possessed.
Visits to the Dollhouse had become a nightly occurrence, as had trysts in the limo, courtesy of the building’s unguarded rear entrance.
I’d grown accustomed to the incubus’s smell in my nose, his taste on my tongue, and his fingerprints stamped on my skin.
I needed an intervention.
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 Zephyr was.
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 Persephone into 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 he did enchant you. You couldn’t be more beguiled.”
I glanced toward the bar where the togaed bartender was finessing a lime-rind garnish. Instrumental music 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?”
Safe to assume she meant Zephyr and not the down-on-his-luck drunk.
I exhaled. “He’s too sweet. Or too clever. I can’t tell.”
Colette clucked her tongue. “I don’t believe that.”
She was right.
Why was she always right?
Grumbling, I laid my head back on the top of the booth seat, consulting the murals overhead. “I’m not built for this,” I said. “I like stability. Predictability. Zephyr is…” I trailed off, studying the mythic heroes decorating the ceiling. After a long pause, I swallowed. “He makes me stupid.”
When I straightened, Colette was smiling over the rim of her martini glass. “He makes you happy.”
I couldn’t deny that, but my feelings didn’t change the facts.
“It’s a mistake,” I said.
“Or an opportunity,” she countered. “You’ve become… disillusioned. Adrift. Your days are—”
“My days?” My meaningful look targeted the hellhound first, then the drowsy lounge around us. The rattle of ice in the bartender’s shaker was the loudest sound in the room.
“Our days,” Colette conceded, “are not what I would call fulfilling.”
Whether in this lounge or the dead zone of my office, I couldn’t deny we’d become a little…
pathetic. I was an aged being, a higher demon who once held status in Hell, and Colette was a warrior.
A French revolutionary now possessed by the soul of a battle-ready hellhound.
Yet here we were, day drinking, fresh out of our resident suites where we lorded over the city from on high. Pitiful.
“Has the crossword lost its luster?” I asked.
Colette scoffed. “Years ago. And so have you. But I think you may be able to get it back.”
“From a stripper,” I muttered.
Colette’s brow dipped in warning. “You have to stop calling him that.”
“From a sex worker.”
“Lucas.” She said my name the way a mother would, but her austerity gave way to affection as she continued.
“He’s a man. A beautiful young man who chooses to spend his time with you.
I’ve seen you watch him onstage. Did you know he watches you too?
He looks for you in the crowd. And when he sees you, he smiles. ”
He smiled often in the spotlight. So joyful when he was in the air, carefree and full of the whimsy conveyed in his movements, the music, and the masterpieces he created night after night.
But the shadows returned the moment his feet hit the ground. Darkness lurked in the furrows of his brow and the creases around his eyes. Unspoken worries, because while we were getting away with our liaisons, I was fairly certain Maslow was getting away with something much worse.
I’d told Zephyr I would fix it. I’d made that promise, and then I did nothing. Maybe it made me selfish, but I liked our arrangement. I liked that Zephyr counted on me. I liked knowing he searched for me from the stage. I liked that I made him smile.
And—this was the worst part—I liked the boundary between us.
Zephyr was cleanly compartmentalized, tucked away in that neon-lit corner of my life.
What we shared was a part-time indulgence.
I stayed just long enough to enjoy him, to feel connected to someone for a while, then I left him behind without consequence.
He stayed in his world, and I slipped back into mine. No overlap. No mess.
Anything else would require commitment. More than that, it would require opening the part of myself I’d closed off long ago. I would have to expose the soft, scarred underbelly of my heart and risk rejection by a beautiful young man who had his pick of lovers, and he could ruin me.
That was why I hadn’t approached Maslow and why I didn’t press Zephyr for answers about his fear or his hunger. Because getting those answers might’ve forced me to act, and acting meant endangering the fragile thing we had.
So I didn’t.
I let him stay afraid.
I let him think I’d fix it, and I didn’t.
“I don’t deserve him,” I said, slowly arriving at the revelation. “He wants nothing from me. Nothing that matters. He turned down my money. I haven’t offered him any deals… He’s content with my time. Touch. Intimacy.”
Colette stared at me, incredulous. “Those things don’t matter?”
“Anyone could give him that,” I replied. “Anyone with a dick and a decent amount of stamina could satisfy him.”
Leaning back, Colette narrowed her eyes. “You really think it’s that simple? That he’s that simple?”
I didn’t answer as she pressed on, her voice low and firm.
“You keep trying to diminish this, to make it small so you can feel large. But you should know better than anyone—real affection is not that easy to give. Or to fake.”
I stared across the table at my rejected bourbon, watching the light beam through it in a honey glow. Colette was always right because she was always honest. Honest the way Zephyr was. It was a trait I valued. Admired. And one I might do well to emulate.
“I didn’t make a deal with him,” I confessed, more to myself than her. “Not like I usually do. No contract. No fine print. But I did make a promise.”
Her brows lifted. “What promise?”
“That first night we snuck out to the limo, Zephyr showed me something.” The words felt heavy in my mouth. “He said… not a lot but enough. Something’s going on in the Dollhouse, and I told him I’d look into it.”
“But you haven’t.”
The admission felt more damning when spoken aloud.
“I’ve known Maz a long time, and I think…
” I paused, recalling the conversation in the wraith’s office.
The portfolio of blueprints. The scathing comments about the lesser demons who made his business profitable.
“He said a few things too. About other souls in Hell. Demons who want to get out. If he’s exploiting Zephyr… If that’s how he curated his staff…”
Colette’s expression was unreadable. Pondering perhaps, the information already at my disposal. The puzzle pieces fit together in a way I wished they didn’t, creating an ugly picture of the world behind the Dollhouse’s velvet curtain.
“You know I’ve never seen any of the dancers on the Strip?” I asked as a sick feeling settled in my gut. “Not in a casino or restaurant or another club. Never once outside the Dollhouse. And every time I take Zephyr to the limo, he looks around like the world is new.”
He claimed the dancers couldn’t leave the club, told me he couldn’t, but I hadn’t… what? Hadn’t believed him?
No, I just hadn’t taken it seriously. I’d been too busy taking advantage.
Colette’s brown eyes narrowed. “You’re going now? To take care of it?”
I wasn’t sure I could. Even less sure I wanted to since the problem I aimed to solve was currently benefiting me. If I fixed it, I could become superfluous. Zephyr’s life would be better, but I might not be welcome in it.
A speech hovered behind Colette’s pinched lips. Something about altruism, or the purity of love, or one of a thousand ideals demons weren’t supposed to believe in. And if I lingered here, wasting this already unsatisfying day, I was bound to hear every word of it.
To save us both the headache, I planted my palms on the tabletop and slid toward the edge of the booth.
“Yeah, I’m going,” I said.
Because that was the promise. And as long as I ignored the possibility that Zephyr was on some kind of leash, I had no business pretending I wasn’t holding the other end.