Chapter 9
Alex
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Jacob pleads with the booing crowd. He just told them I need to cut my performance short for the night. “Alex has some important business to attend to, but she’ll return tomorrow night. In the meantime, the next round is on the house!”
The men stop booing and shuffle to the bar. Some make for the exit.
“Christ,” Jacob shakes his head at the dispersing crowd. He helps me off the stage and leads me to the dancer’s room. As I follow behind Jacob, I glance back at his booth. Alonzo’s eyes remain on me as the door closes behind me.
“What’s going on?” I ask, wrapping my arms around my body. Jacob told the reapers I had business to attend to. It makes me nauseous to think what he means by that.
Jacob grins his devious grin.
“You probably saw your dear professor out there. I invited him because I wanted to speed things up a bit. And wouldn’t you know it? It worked.”
“What worked?”
Even though seducing Alonzo is part of the plan, I was stunned to see him at the club. More so when I caught him staring at me. Every time I looked in his direction, I noticed his hungry eyes devouring me whole. Just remembering the way he looked at me gives me chills.
What worries me the most is that part of me likes his unwavering attention.
“He wants a private dance,” Jacob laughs. He laughs as if it’s the funniest thing on the planet. “I guess you made an impression. He took the bait, and now it’s time to reel him in.”
The thought of somebody like Alonzo being into me feels absurd. Not just because he’s a killer but because he is deadly handsome. He can easily have any woman he wants, so him looking at me…
“So, he asked for a dance?” I wonder. “Just like that? Nothing in exchange?”
“Jeez, Alex. This isn’t a whorehouse. Of course he didn’t offer anything in exchange. He simply asked for a dance, and I agreed. You know, being his friend and all.”
Friends don’t steal from friends .
I don’t really care to question their friendship. I don’t know their personal history, but obviously Jacob doesn’t see Alonzo as a friend. He’s going to backstab him for money. And I don’t care. I need the money to take care of Mom and escape this town, and never set foot at The Den again.
Still, it’s messed up for Jacob to offer me up like a piece of meat. Alonzo is attractive and easy on the eye, but what if he wasn’t? What if he was another old, smelly reaper?
“You offered me up like a pimp?”
Jacob chuckles. “Please. Pimps get paid. I’m just doing both of us a favor.”
“Uh-huh,” I mutter.
“Don’t be difficult, Alex. Just give him a nice dance. Drive him a little crazy, and we’ll both be rolling in cash soon. Since I told him my office is off limits, you’ll have to give him the dance in here.” He scoffs and shakes his head. “If I hadn’t fucked you already, I would’ve envied the man.”
A knot tightens in my throat.
It’s hard to breathe every time I remember I’ve slept with Jacob. I’m ready to leave town as soon as I find Alonzo’s money. I don’t want to stay in this town another second, not when Jacob and his men know everything that happens here.
With the money, I can transfer to another university. It’ll be a drag—and a little complicated—to transfer during my senior year, but I don’t want to deal with Jacob anymore. He’ll still know where I live even if I stop working for him.
I want to get the hell out of here with my mom.
“I promised him a dance,” Jacob says as he heads for the door. “But if you fancy showing him a good time, that’s on you.”
The door closes behind him, and I drop my arms to my sides. A few minutes later, Alonzo walks in and my heart drops. I cover myself again.
Alonzo stands by the door, looking at me dead in the eyes, then drops his gaze to the rest of my body. His hungry eyes burn against my skin. It’s not an unpleasant feeling.
When he finally moves, he grabs a chair by the back wall and slides it to the center of the room, next to the lockers. He sits on it with his legs spread open, maintaining eye contact as he does all this.
I don’t know why Jacob thought it was a good idea for Alonzo to see me dancing at the club, but what if it makes our ulterior motives too obvious? What if Alonzo suspects that Jacob and I are up to something nefarious? I mean, shit, what are the odds that his flirty student works at the same biker club where he conducts clandestine business in?
Or maybe he’s just a clueless pervert who wants a dance, like every other reaper in the club .
Whatever the reason is, I have to dance for him. And I have to find that money. Not for Jacob, fuck Jacob, but for Mom and me. This dance is the first step to a better life.
I drop my arms to my sides, allowing him to look at my breasts. This bikini top does wonders for my chest. It lifts them up and pushes them slightly together. Maybe that’s why it’s the fan favorite and not so much the flag theme.
My face burns hot when Alonzo’s eyes fall to my chest. Sure, I’ve been dancing at the club for months now, but I’ve never given a private dance before. This feels more like something a stripper would do, and I’m not a stripper. I don’t have the confidence for it. Dancing in tiny bikinis is the extent of what I do, and that in itself makes me feel naked sometimes.
Being alone and up close with Alonzo in a small, dimly lit room feels very different from being on stage. When I’m on stage, the overhead lights sometimes hit my eyes at the right angle and momentarily blind me to the sea of men looking up at me. For those few seconds, I can pretend I’m someplace else.
But standing a few feet away from where Alonzo sits feels much more intimate than being on the stage. His piercing brown eyes make me feel like he can see through my bikini, sending a tingling sensation down my chest that settles around my nipples.
He’ll have to see you naked at one point, I remind myself, not entirely bemoaning the fact.
I close the gap between us and circle around his chair, momentarily getting a break from his heavy stare. But I know I can’t hide behind him for too long without being weird. I count to five in my head before circling back in front of him.
I give him my back, pacing to the door and swinging my hips from side to side. Men love that. When I turn to face him, his eyes are no longer on mine. Instead, they trace my curves, and for a moment, a warm feeling pools between my legs, causing me to blush again. Luckily, the lights are dim, so I doubt he can see my face reddening.
Shit, am I really enjoying this? Why is my body reacting this way?
I know the answer. Alonzo is handsome. At the end of the day, I’m dancing to an attractive man who wants my full attention. It’s a huge ego boost.
Stretching my arms in the air, I twist my hips to show him my backside again. Excited electricity travels to my extremities, lingering between my thighs. Even with my back to him, I can feel his burning stare on my body. It burns hot .
There’s no denying it. It’s exciting having a dangerous and stupidly handsome man crave my body.
For a brief moment, I forget the real reason I’m dancing for him. When the realization hits me, I begin to wonder if there’s something wrong with me. Is there a part of me that I have yet to uncover? A part that craves dangerous excitement?
Like a bad hangover, guilt floods my head and washes over my body. Alonzo is a dangerous criminal and a killer. He’s not some TV bad boy. He’s a real-life killer. I shouldn’t get carried away by his good looks.
The electric feeling between my legs falls secondary to the pit of guilt forming in my lower stomach, guilt that I’m actually enjoying Alonzo’s gaze.
With guilt overtaking my body, I fall into a robotic rhythm of stiff dance moves I memorized when I first started dancing at the club. It took me a long time to get comfortable moving my body in front of a crowd of men.
Now I’m back to those stiff dance moves.
I study Alonzo’s eyes to see if he noticed the change in my movements. Even though I’m trying to detach my emotions from the dance, I still have to make him want me.
His eyes are crawling the length of my body, leaving warm trails on my skin until they land on mine. He looks at me with a dark stare, but his eyes don’t look like the eyes of a killer. His stare is the same stare my mom gives me when her MS acts up—his eyes are the eyes of a man in pain.
What if Jacob is wrong about him? I wonder.
Without realizing it, my body relaxes and the robotic dance movements melt away. I’m intrigued by the man staring at me. I want to dig deeper into his psyche and find out where that pain is coming from. I want to know the real Alonzo.
Keep it together. You’re supposed to seduce him, not the other way around.
I almost chuckle at my own thoughts. Alonzo isn’t seducing me. He’s just sitting on the chair and staring at me. I’m the one overplaying the situation in my head and falling for his gaze.
I spin around to hide the amusement on my face, but my heels refuse the command. They glue themselves to the ground as the rest of my body twirls in the air, causing me to loose balance and land on Alonzo’s lap. His arms wrap around me as my head lands on his shoulder, mere inches from his face.
My fingertips tingle, and my heart is pounding my chest so hard it hurts. At first, I thought it was because I was scared that a dangerous killer had his arms around me.
But when I feel butterflies in my belly, I realize the warmth of his arms around my body is what’s causing me to short-circuit.
I’m so close to his neck that I smell his cologne, a dark-sweet sandalwood. I inhale involuntarily to consume his smell. In my mind, it’s only been a few seconds since I fell on his lap, but it must already be longer than that because Alonzo’s lips are twitching. He’s probably annoyed I fell on him like a clumsy idiot.
“How long have you been working here?” he asks.
My face reddens again. There it is. He thinks I’m an idiot. He thinks I suck at this.
I push myself off him and cross my arms, looking at the wall behind him to avoid his heavy stare.
“I—”
I what?
Something about this man causes my body and brain to short-circuit. It’s not fear. It’s something else. Something I’m too afraid to admit to myself.
“Thank you for the dance,” he says, rising to his feet. He reaches into his suit jacket and pulls out a small brown leather bag. He places it on the chair and says, “That’s for you. All of it.”
“What is it?”
“Your payment.”
Any excitement that lingers in my body disappears. I feel like a piece of meat he is buying at the market. It’s a dirty feeling, but not the good kind.
“No,” I refuse.
I turn to walk out the door, but Alonzo grips my arm and twists me around before I can reach the doorknob. My face ends up so close to his chest that I can smell his cologne again.
“Take the money,” he says.
I look up at him. His eyes are already on mine.
“Why? What’s the catch?” I ask.
I don’t understand why he is giving me money. Does he pity my situation? I desperately need the money, but not if there are unknown strings attached. I don’t want to owe him a thing.
“No catch,” he says. A slight grin appears on his face, but it’s not like Jacob’s devious grin. “Buy yourself something nice. You earned it.”
He releases my grip and walks out the door. As soon as the door closes, I grab the leather bag he left on the chair and tuck it into my locker before anybody else enters the room.
I don’t know how much money is in the bag, but there’s no way in hell I’m telling Jacob about it.