Chapter 15 Quinn
Quinn
Rewind
“What a fucking night,” Lana murmurs, slamming her locker door.
She throws her cosmetic bag on the dressing table, propping her stiletto-clad foot on the edge of her chair.
She adjusts the cuff on her red faux-leather chaps, meeting Quinn’s eyes in the mirror.
“Is it too much to ask for them to turn on the freaking A/C? I’m melting out there. ”
The Glory Hole is a steaming pile of shit in every way imaginable.
A dark, dank, and seedy strip club, with dancers in cages and two stages where Nashville’s finest can be entranced and titillated with dancers of every gender, ethnicity, and size.
Or at least, that last part is what their manager, Jewel, wants to put on the webpage.
It’s where Quinn finds himself six afternoons and evenings a week, from five to eleven. His favorite coworker, Lana Hennessey, is a stunningly curvy redhead who is currently dressed in a leather half-bustier and chaps, rather than her usual Wrangler jeans and plaid flannel.
Quinn has long ago stopped wondering at his friend’s costume choices, because she makes more money in tips in a single night than Quinn makes in a week.
Maybe he needs leather chaps and a bustier, too.
It couldn’t be more uncomfortable than what the male cage dancers wear: a silver g-string that’s no bigger than a sports sock.
He watches Lana touch up her makeup and pull her red hair up high on her head so it’s out of the way. Done on the main stage, she’ll do a few lap dances and more private meetings in the rooms in the back. She says it’s her favorite part of the job, but Quinn can’t imagine how that’s the truth.
She once told Quinn that she likes sex, variety, and—for unmentioned kink-related reasons—it riles her up to suck off guys backstage for money. Sometimes clients will even pay extra to let the bartender and her partner, Maisy, watch.
The couple is Were and unmated, so maybe that’s what makes it work so well.
He could never make himself meet customers backstage, no matter how many requests Jewel fields and no matter how much extra he’d earn.
It’s become a bone of contention with The Hole’s manager of late, especially since the club’s “new owner” took over after Carnell died.
The questionable side hustles that Jewel used to pad her pockets were drying up under O’Daire’s new rules of conduct.
Drugs, racketeering, theft, and underage prostitution were off the table, and she was bitter with a capital B(itch).
Quinn originally hadn’t been interested in dancing on the main stages as cage work paid well enough, keeping Quinn in food, rent, and vintage designer wear once in a while.
Lately, he’d been thinking about taking Jewel up on her offer to put his dance training to work.
The extra income he’d earn would make it easier to save the cash he’d need to get out of the city.
Maybe head back to NOLA, see his mama, and still get that leather jacket he had on hold at Gloria’s Vintage he saw last week.
More importantly, he could be gone by Labor Day. The sooner the better, given how today had played out.
His heart burns in his chest for a minute when he thinks about this afternoon at his apartment and on the bus.
Wants so badly to ignore that he feels anything at all about Soren.
About O’Daire. About the scent of key lime pie and black tea.
He’s definitely going to ignore how Fate is kicking him in the ass today.
The thought of escaping Fate is enough to decide for him. He’ll catch his manager on the way out and talk about setting up his stage debut for next Friday.
“Was it a good night?” Quinn stuffs his own not-so-meager tips into a Ziploc bag and then deep into his satchel.
He’ll do his best to clean them up and drop them into the ATM tomorrow in time to pay his rent.
What he finds stuck to the fives, tens, and twenties is not worth traumatizing some poor bank clerk.
“Looking to be the best night this week. A group of tourists from Europe is dropping tips in euros tonight. Nothing like big spenders on vacation. You?”
“You know how it goes. Nothing to write home about.” Quinn shrugs a shoulder in what Lana has called a Gallic gesture.
She’s dumping all her tips and extras into a master’s degree in linguistics at the University of Tennessee, which means she spends as much time talking to him about language as she does asking him to talk back.
“I gotta catch Godzilla on the way out. Have a good night, chère. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“But those are all the fun ones,” she pretends to whine with a pout.
It’s the same thing they say every night, and the familiar routine brings Quinn a bit of comfort as he thinks about his half-empty bottle of wine and lonely bed.
Shrugging on his jacket, he opens his locker to check the mirror for the last time, clocking the bags under his eyes and the tightness around his mouth.
Nothing a good mask and eight hours of sleep won’t improve, even if it won’t be a cure-all.
Only one thing that will fix that, and Quinn’s not selling his soul to that blue-eyed devil tonight.
Reaching for his phone, he’s thinking about treating himself to an Uber after he sees Jewel when his phone rings.
Soren. Oh, fuck no.
Quinn is not going to be a second-choice booty call twice in one day. Fuck that and the horse cock he rode in on this morning. It’s made worse by how much he wants to pick up. How much he wants to find out how Soren’s night went and if he managed to dodge coming face-to-face with O’Daire.
Soren would let Quinn tease and taunt him before reaching some unknown limit and throwing him up against a wall or bending him over the bed or—ugh, Lomax, you got it bad.
He stares at the photo of a sleeping Soren, the glow of the knock-off Tiffany lamp beside Quinn’s bed turning Soren into a rainbow-gilded god. He’s under no illusion that it’s fine, not when he enjoys those moments almost more than the hard-fuck ones.
The call stops abruptly, and a wave of disappointment swirls in his belly, but it’s replaced by excitement when the phone rings again.
Answering the call with an exasperated, “You gotta be kidding me, cher,” Quinn sits back down on the bench. He’s not looking forward to denying himself the pleasure of an adrenaline hyped alpha who talks sweet and fucks like a dream.
There’s a pause before a soft voice says, “Uh, this is Vexley’s phone. Is this Blaze?”
Quinn’s stomach falls into his toes.
Soren guards his phone with the ferocity of a junkyard dog. It’s wired with all kinds of illegal tech so he can stalk O’Daire anywhere in the world, in all kinds of ways. There is no way he’d let some kid use it, let alone queue up Quinn’s number.
“Who is this? Where’s Soren?”
“My name is Kai, and I’m—I’m in the alley behind All’s End. He’s unconscious. It looks like he was going to call you, but…”
Unconscious behind the bar? After a fight? Quinn sucks in a breath, all thoughts of catching Jewel in her pit of despair slipping away like smoke.
Slamming his locker shut and twisting the lock, Quinn is out the door with a wave to Lana. Down the hall, and into the street behind the bar, he grits out, “He’s what? What happened?”
“He lost a fight—”
Quinn comes to an abrupt stop, letting The Hole’s side door slam shut behind him.
Holy shit. Even though he’d never seen his lover fight, and Soren didn’t talk about what he did in the hours Connall was safe in his office, he was undoubtedly a legend.
A man of myth and mystery, Soren fights with a mesmerizing disregard for his own safety, and his ferocity is a topic of conversation backstage at The Hole amongst the dancers and servers who happily spend their wages on winning bets in the underworld at All’s End.
Even amongst the customers who talk too loudly over the music as Quinn dances, where they forget Quinn is a person with ears and can hear every damn word they say about his ass and the guy who fights like a demon two blocks over.
After a minute, the sweet kid whispers, “Should I call an ambulance?”
Hell no, an ambulance would mean telling lies about how Soren got beaten to shit, and make it harder for him to stay invisible under the cops’ and O’Daire’s noses.
Quinn picks up speed, his long legs eating up the short distance to All’s End. “I’m on my way, just stay where you are, okay? I’m five minutes out.”
“Oka—”
He knows it’s rude to hang up, but the urge to keep the poor thing on the line—to ease what sounds like anxious worry—sends a tickle of foreboding down his spine. Quinn has no interest in taking broken little birds under his wing.
It’s six minutes later when Quinn pushes past the crowd gathered around the front door at All’s End.
They’re still talking about Soren’s loss like it was the World Series.
Quinn will just find out what the hell happened, take Soren to his place, and let him sleep it off.
No funny business. No fucking. And no emotions.
If he’d had any inclination what awaited him in the alley, he’d have turned around and run the other way.
A brisk breeze funnels down the alley, carrying the scents of garbage, heliotrope, and the sweetest tinge of flowery tropical coconut.
The scents shoot all the blood in his head south to pool in his groin and send a prickle of heat into every cell of his body.
Oh. No.
There’s a small body curled up with his head on Soren’s shoulder, medium-length wavy hair the color of dark chocolate covering most of his youthful face. His skin glows softly even in the dim light, revealing an almost feminine jaw, soft chin, and a full lower lip that is a deep red.
There is no doubt in Quinn’s mind, body, or soul that this Human boy is their mate. Quinn has no problem remembering the boy’s name: Kai.
“Shit, damn, fucking fuck,” Quinn groans.