Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
KIT
What an epic waste of a night it had been. The date I’d bailed on, which I’d been lukewarm about anyway, had started badly and had gone downhill from there.
I slowed my pace, no longer pretending I wasn’t looking out for Alex. The truth was, since the moment I’d set eyes on him, I’d been thinking of all those buttons he pushed.
He was, I reckoned, late-thirties to my mid-twenties.
Rocking the big shot corporate look for everything it was worth, there was no question Alex was floating my boat.
But there was more to it than the suited and booted cliché.
There was something about the way he carried himself, confident without trying, just on the right side of arrogance, making him impossible to ignore or forget.
Stepping into the doorway of a closed shop opposite the club, I looked across, biting my lower lip in indecision. I could go over, ask the doorman if Alex was around. Just to say thanks, just to tell him he’d saved me from the night bus journey from hell, just to—
A sleek sports car stopped in front of me and the window glided open. “What are you doing here?”
I blinked, Alex’s sudden appearance throwing me off balance.
“I, erm, was passing,” I managed to blurt out.
“I wanted to say thanks for the lift home.” He said nothing, only stared at me.
I felt ridiculous and exposed, offering up what sounded like a lame excuse of a story.
Embarrassment crawled over me. He hadn’t used my name; he’d forgotten it already.
“So, yeah, thanks. It saved me from getting a drenching. Thanks again.” I stepped out from the doorway, wanting only to scuttle off, feeling like a teenager discovered stalking their crush.
“Kit. Stop.”
I froze at the sound of my name on his lips.
The way he said it made my stomach flutter.
No, he hadn’t forgotten me. I turned around as he climbed out of the car.
Another suit, darker than the one he’d worn earlier in the week, but again fitting him like it was a second skin and just as mouth watering.
He beckoned to one of the doormen outside the club, who rushed over.
Alex tossed him the key to park the car.
Turning back to me, he smiled. “Come inside and have a drink. If it’s not too sleazy for you, that is.
” He cocked a brow, but there was amusement in his eyes, and I groaned, releasing some of the tension holding me rigid.
“You’re never going to let me live it down, are you? ”
“Of course not. I intend to play that particular card for all it’s worth. Come on, it’s too cold to hang around out here.”
I followed him across the road, the other doorman almost tugging his forelock as Alex swept past.
Alex placed his hand on my back, between my shoulder blades, the weight of the touch warm and confident without being over familiar. “Have my guest escorted to the VIP area and send some drinks over,” he said to the doorman before he looked back at me and smiled. “I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
The doorman murmured into the mouthpiece of his headset and a second later another bouncer appeared, wearing an identical black suit, his expression blandly polite as he invited me to follow him.
The club was a lot busier than I expected, given the time.
The dance floor was packed and the bar swamped.
A wild, raucous baying burst from the crowd as three cages descended from the ceiling, each holding a man dressed in nothing more than shimmering body paint and the skimpiest of briefs.
As one, the men began to gyrate to the heavy beat.
The glass door to the VIP area opened, and a barman came in, putting down an ice bucket and two glasses.
“Compliments of Mr. Cade. He’s been detained but he’ll be here as soon as he can.”
With an expert twist of the bottle the barman popped the cork, releasing a smoky vapour, and poured me a glass. My eyes widened as I took a sip. Not the Prosecco I was expecting, but Champagne and a bloody good one. Not that I was much of a judge.
On the other side of the glass partition, the roar of the crowd grew louder and more feverish and, despite the warmth, I shivered.
The sound made me think of a pack of feral dogs moving in for the kill, their jaws loose, wet, and hungry.
I put my glass down, and rubbed my palms down my thighs.
I felt jittery, all of a sudden, and out of my depth.
“I can’t stay. I’m sorry. Can you tell Mr. Cade I had to leave?”
“I’d… rather not.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The barman said nothing as he shook his head and left. I lurched up from the plush seat just as the door opened.
“Good, they brought you a drink.” Alex smiled but it faded when I didn’t return it. “If you don’t like it, I can get you something else.”
“It’s not that. Look, I was passing, like I said, and I only meant to drop in and thank you for the lift. I was on my way home.”
“Kit, are you okay? You seem nervous and jumpy and I’m not sure why.”
Neither was I, but what kind of answer was that?
Alex poured himself a glass and looked at me over the rim.
“I was surprised when I saw you, but more than that I was pleased, because I never expected to see you again, especially as you said Euphoria wasn’t your thing.
If you want to leave I can’t stop you. But I hope you don’t, though, because it would be a shame to have a good bottle of Champagne like this go to waste.
Plus, you’d be saving me from looking like a sad tosser, sitting here drinking on my own.
The sad tosser label really isn’t one I want my employees to pin on me.
” His lips twitched, and my shoulders slumped.
My burst of panic subsided, leaving me feeling very, very stupid.
“Sorry. I—I think I’m just tired.” It was a barefaced lie, but there was no way I was going to tell him the baying crowd had spooked me. That would mean explaining why and I wasn’t anywhere near prepared to go down that road.
“So, you’re not going to bail on me?” He quirked his head to the side.
“No. And like you say, this fizz is too good to waste.”
“Tsk. Fizz? It’s not a bottle of supermarket own brand Cava, you know.” He tried to look mortified, but the laughter in his eyes—lovely, dark green eyes, framed with long, thick, dark lashes—gave him away.
“Ooh, I love a Cava, especially with a bag of cheese ’n’ onion crisps.
But this’ll do.” We both laughed, our gazes locking.
The hard beat of the music, muffled behind the glass partitions, faded.
He leant forward, just a little, and I mirrored his movements.
A shiver rippled through me and heat pooled deep in my belly.
“Shall we, I mean would you like to—”
Whatever Alex was going to ask me was ripped away as a deafening, primal, savage roar from the heaving dance floor smashed through the silence filling my head; I lurched back, spilling my drink.
The three cage dancers had turned into six, two per cage, the simulated sex disturbingly real looking as the clubbers whooped and cheered, clamouring for more.
The fire that had heated my stomach quenched, and turned to ice, freezing out everything that had gone before.
“Kit? Are you all right?” Alex looked from me to the dancers, and back again, confusion in his eyes where, for a moment, there had been something else, something I’d wanted.
“Are you bothered by the dancers?” His confusion turned to incredulity, before a smirk lifted his lips.
“Even if the club scene isn’t your thing, don’t tell me you haven’t seen this kind of stuff in other venues.
Dancers are very popular, the clubbers love them. As you can hear.”
Yes, I could hear. I could hear the pack, on the edge of chaos, pulling at the leash and threatening to break it. Anger burst like an ulcer in the pit of my stomach. Anger, and that something else I kept under lock and key.
“No, the club scene isn’t my thing. And as for—for simulated sex for a load of drunk, coked-up guys to get off on, reckon I’ll pass on that.” I could feel the shake threatening to erupt in my voice, but I wouldn’t let it, I would not fucking let it.
I took a breath, attempting to calm a heart that was beating too hard and too fast. Sweat soaked my armpits, and a bead meandered down the valley of my spine.
The air in the VIP area was hot and oppressive and pushing down on me like a physical weight.
I needed to go, needed to get out. I pushed to my feet, grabbing the back of the chair to steady myself.
“Whoa, come on. They’re performers, they're actors on stage. You said it yourself, it’s simulated. Just calm down.”
He went to touch my arm, but I stepped back, out of reach when only moments before I’d—
“You’re offended. But what’s going on out there is all part of this business. Being judgmental—”
“I’m not judging—” And I wasn’t, not the dancers. I would never, couldn’t ever, do that.
“It’s just theatre, designed to take everybody out of their humdrum daily lives.
” He jabbed a finger at the dance floor.
“Everybody out there is throwing off the shackles of the working week. The boss who gave some poor bastard a hard time for nothing and all in front of the whole office. The disappointment of another for not getting the promotion they’d worked for.
The notice of redundancy. Getting over being dumped by the latest arsehole boyfriend.
Everything that’s happening out there is making each and every man happy, allowing them to forget all the shit in their lives for a few hours. Where’s the harm in that?
“But just so you know the dancers are very well paid. More guys want to dance at Euphoria than we’re able to take on.
They’re not exploited. They have a choice.
” He nodded to the cages. “The guys in the middle one, they’re married.
It gives them a bit of a thrill, doing this, and their earnings from here paid for the extension on their house.
Two of the other dancers are medical students, and doing this is both stress and student debt relief.
Everybody out there, dancers and clubbers, are getting exactly what they want. So what’s there to kick off about?”
The roar and chanting from the crowd grew louder, overpowering the relentless thud of the music. Whatever Alex had said about it all being theatre, it was way too real to me.
“Kit, come on—”
I shook my head, unable to meet his eye, as I grabbed my coat and fled, pushing my way through the crowd, forcing myself not to look back, pursued by the ghosts of my past, and the image of a man it was too damn dangerous to want.