5. Janet
JANET
His hand is warm around mine. Firm enough that I stop. Not firm enough that I couldn't pull away if I wanted to.
"You were busy," I say.
"Sorry, I got caught up in a work thing."
"I shouldn't have come."
"Don't make me beg. It will be bad in front of associates."
Rosemary catches my eye across the room. Dane's friend says something in her ear, and she laughs, waves two fingers at me. Go. I know that wave.
Mike leads me toward the booth in the back corner. The men sitting there are gone now.
"What are you having?"
"I'll have a Macallan 18."
"Great."
A waitress appears like she's been summoned. "Two Macallan 18s, neat."
He turns back to me. "How was the show?"
"It was wonderful. So you own this place?"
"It's doing well."
"It's only two years old. We'll see."
"You look great, by the way."
"Thank you."
The waitress is back with two glass tumblers, amber liquid catching the low light.
He raises his glass. "Happy birthday."
We toast.
"Thank you."
"So why are you a prosecutor? Why haven't you gone private and made a killing?"
"I enjoy putting away bad guys."
"More than making money?"
I shrug.
"Or you want to be a DA someday. Even mayor?"
That gets a genuine laugh out of him, low and easy. He shifts his arm along the back of the booth, not quite touching my shoulders. I feel the heat.
"You run this whole place?"
"Built it from nothing. This was an empty storefront and a crazy idea." He looks around like he still can't quite believe it. "Now it's full of beautiful people."
He's looking right at me when he says it.
"Must be nice."
"It's a means to an end." Something flickers behind his eyes when he says it, gone before I can read it. "What's your story?"
"What you see is what you get."
"But what's with all the work and no play?"
"That's what it is right now."
"Why? You can do both, you know."
"I was married."
"Ended badly."
"He was killed."
"I'm so sorry."
"It was six years ago."
"That sucks."
"It does."
"I have some experience dealing with that."
"You had someone?—"
"No. I was in the Marines."
I look at him, at the line of his jaw, the way his eyes don't move off mine even when one of his guys leans in to say something. Mike waves him off without breaking eye contact.
"No disrespect, Janet, but that doesn't explain why a woman like you is single now."
I take a slow sip of my drink, buying myself half a second.
"That's a long conversation."
His eyes stay on mine a beat too long.
"I'll change the subject," he says. "Can I show you the plans for my new club?"
"Sure."
The word comes out easier than it should.
He stands and offers me his hand.
For a second, I look at it. Big hand. Confident. No hesitation in him at all. I put mine in his.
His fingers close around mine, warm and firm, and something moves through me before I can stop it.
I glance over my shoulder for Rosemary.
I don't see her.
Mike leads me through the crowd toward the back of the club. The music gets lower as we pass a narrow hallway, the bass still pulsing through the walls like a second heartbeat. At the elevator, he takes a black card from his wallet and swipes it.
The little light turns green.
I look at him. "Where are we going?"
The doors slide open.
"My apartment is upstairs."
"Oh."
Brilliant, Janet. Devastating cross-examination.
He steps in first, turns, and waits for me.
I could laugh. I could make a joke. I could say another time.
Instead, I step inside.
The doors close behind us, sealing out the noise, the people, the safety of witnesses.
For a few seconds, it's the two of us and the soft mechanical hum of the elevator. Mike stands close; I can smell his cologne now, something clean and expensive under the smoke and whiskey of the club.
I keep my eyes on the number 2. Lighting above the door.
The doors open on the second floor, straight into his apartment, right above the club.
He doesn't touch me again. He waits, one hand holding the door, giving me the choice.
I step out.
The apartment is all brick walls and warm leather furniture, low lights, dark wood, floor-to-ceiling windows throwing the city back at itself. The kind of place that says money without shouting.
A baby grand piano sits in one corner that I'd bet money he doesn't play. Everything is clean lines and expensive restraint, the place that costs more to look this empty than most apartments cost full.
On the dining room table, architectural plans are spread out beneath a brass lamp. Blueprints, renderings, and mock-ups of the new club. Not an excuse. At least not only an excuse.
I walk closer, grateful for something to look at besides him.
"It looks great," I say.
Mike comes to stand beside me. "It's a dream right now."
I glance down at the drawings. A stage. A bar. Private booths. Clean lines and shadows. A place designed for people to lose track of themselves.
"Always another mountain to climb?" I ask.
He smiles a little. "Something like that."
He leans over the table, one hand braced near the plans, and explains the layout. Where the bar will go. How he wants the sightlines. The sound. The entrance. The feeling people should have when they walk in.
And I watch him get absorbed in it.
That's what catches me off guard.
Not the apartment. Not the elevator. Not the way my hand still remembers his.
It's this.
The focus. The hunger. The way his face changes when he talks about building something.
“So is this it? Is this foreplay?”
“If you have to ask I’m doing a terrible job at it.”
“I should get going,” I look for the door.
“What is it that you need to go home to do? Get in bed, read another case file, watch television until you fall asleep?”
“What? Am I supposed to just get in bed with you? Is that it?” I fold my arms, then drop them when my hands start shaking.
"Dance with me? Can you dance?”
“I can dance, yes.”
I hear the music, faint but there. Something with a slow bass-line and a woman's voice that sounds like it's been sanded down to velvet. He turns back to me and holds out his hand.
He pulls me in close, one palm flat against the small of my back, and we move slow, barely moving at all, swaying with the bass. I can feel his heartbeat where my hand rests against his chest. Steady. Faster than steady, actually, when I press my palm flat.
I pull back to look at him. This close, I can see the small scar through his eyebrow, the faint stubble he didn't bother shaving today. He's not smiling now. Neither am I.
"Mike."
"Yeah."
"I haven't done this. Not since—" I stop. "It's been a long time."
His hand moves up to my jaw, thumb brushing my cheekbone.
I close the last of the distance and kiss him.
He goes still for half a second, like he wasn't expecting me to make the first move, and his hand slides into my hair and he kisses me back like he's been waiting all night for permission.
His mouth is warm, certain, no hesitation once I've given him the green light. I press closer, and he makes a low sound against my lips that I feel in my spine.
He kisses me again, deeper this time, walking me backward through the apartment with one hand still cradling my jaw and the other splayed against my lower back. We hit the edge of his bed and I sit, pulling him down with me, and he comes willingly, knee braced on the mattress beside my hip.
His lips find my collarbone, the zipper of my skirt already half down beneath his fingers.
He peels the dress from my shoulders like he's unwrapping something he's been waiting for. My bra follows, his mouth finding my breast almost before the fabric clears it, and I arch into him with a sound I don't recognize as my own.
"God, you're beautiful." He says it against my skin, between kisses trailing down my stomach.
He sits back to pull his shirt over his head. I get my hands on him — the hard plane of his chest, the scar low on his ribs I don't ask about yet, the heat of him under my palms. He's lean and cut in a way that says gym discipline, not vanity. Marine, not a model.
His fingers find the lace of my underwear, dragging it down slow enough that I'm shaking by the time it hits the floor.
He looks at me. I've never laid on a bed and had a man's eyes look over every inch of my naked body.
He kneels at the edge of the bed and pulls me to him, hooking my knees over his shoulders before I understand what he's doing. His mouth is on me, and every thought I had about taking this slow disappears.
I fist the sheets in both hands, hips rocking up to meet him without my permission. He doesn't relent, tongue circling and pressing exactly where I need him most, one hand pinning my hip down when I buck against him.
I come fast and hard, shaking, gasping, and only when I'm boneless beneath him does he ease off, pressing one last kiss to my inner thigh like a period at the end of a sentence.
He reaches for his nightstand and comes back with a condom, rolling it on without taking his eyes off me, he's back between my thighs, the blunt heat of him pressing right where his mouth was.
"Look at me," he says, and I do, his eyes locked on mine as he sinks into me slow, inch by inch, both of us breathing through it.
He starts to move.
It's slow at first, deep, unhurried thrusts that build a pressure low in my belly I haven't felt in years. I wrap my legs around him and he groans, sinking deeper, one hand braced beside my head and the other gripping my hip hard enough to bruise.
The pace builds until the headboard knocks softly against the wall, until I'm clawing at his back, until the sound of skin against skin fills the whole apartment along with that slow, velvet voice still playing somewhere behind us.
He shifts the angle, hitting somewhere deeper, and a sound tears out of me I don't recognize.
He keeps that angle, relentless now, and I feel a second release building faster than the first, climbing in a way I can't slow down or control. My nails dig into his shoulders.
"Let go," he says against my ear. "I've got you."
My body does. It crashes through me harder than the first, my whole body locking around him, and I feel him follow me over a moment later, his rhythm stuttering, his face buried in my neck as he comes apart.
For a long moment neither of us moves. His weight is heavy and warm on top of me, his heartbeat hammering against my chest, slowing in time with mine.
His hand traces my thighs, causing little ripples through my body, they don't stop.