Chapter 2
ARTUR
The new dancer enters with her shoulders straight, chin raised in a dare for the room to object. Two fingers twitch toward the narrow strip of black fabric over her ass, but she catches the impulse and lets her arm fall.
George closes the door behind her, sealing us inside a private room where mirrors rise above dark benches on three walls. From my chair, they reveal the smoked window into the corridor while repeating the woman under amber light from every angle her costume fails to conceal.
The triangle cups are too small, covering her nipples as her breasts swell past the sides with a strip of underboob exposed under each cup. One deep breath may defeat the taut cord between them, an emergency I’d endure with dignity.
Her undersized shorts rise high at the sides, then narrow across the back to expose the lower curves of her ass whenever she shifts her weight.
I spent the previous hour refusing photographs of women Ivan considers suitable wives. Each came with polished manners and a criminal father, her alliance displayed as an accomplishment. George’s ridiculous bag has delivered this one wearing six rhinestones with a threat to circulation.
The night has improved.
“Kitty,” I say.
Her mouth tightens beneath red lipstick that makes the reaction impossible to ignore. “The paperwork says Kitty. My face hasn’t agreed to anything yet.”
I settle farther into the chair. “What is your real first name?”
Her lips part without sound, then close. A beat passes before she gives me the smallest possible concession. “Katie.”
“Katie, then. I’d hate for this to feel impersonal.”
Her gaze drops briefly to my open collar, then travels across the mirrored panels. “Nothing feels impersonal when I can see you from three directions.”
“Four, if you count the ceiling.”
Katie looks up at the black acoustic tile where no mirror exists, then catches my smile as color rises under her makeup.
Music changes beyond the walls, sending a new bass line through the floor into my chair. She approaches in clear platform heels that pinch across her toes, but she has already found their balance, carrying her weight forward with loose knees until she stops between my spread feet.
“First night?” I ask.
“What gave it away?”
“Experienced women fix uncomfortable fabric without caring who watches. You’re fighting the urge so hard I can see your fingers suffering.”
Her eyes narrow. “Maybe I enjoy discomfort.”
Her blush deepens, but her attention stays on mine. “Hands on the chair.”
I place both palms on the leather arms. “Inspect my compliance as closely as necessary.”
She steps around my knee as the song slows, her palm gliding across my shoulder before she turns her back near my chest. At first, training divides every movement into exact intervals, careful enough to reveal how new she is.
Then she catches herself in the mirror, takes one quiet breath, and allows instinct to soften the technique.
Her hips release. Her knees open as she lowers in front of me, one hand traveling along the long line of her thigh before crossing the soft curve of her waist, and the tiny costume flashes between her legs whenever the amber light finds it.
By the time she rises, the room has learned the rhythm of her body with me.
I keep my hands where she ordered them, though restraint has never felt so much like physical labor.
“That costume is losing its argument with your breasts,” I tell her. “I’m attempting impartiality.”
She glances down, catches the meaning, and looks back with renewed color in her cheeks. “Do rich men usually narrate their failed attempts at self-control?”
Katie turns to pass her nearly bare ass within inches of my lap, watching my reflection as she bends long enough for my attention to travel. By the time she rises with one corner of her mouth curved, she is directing my attention instead of enduring it.
My body reacts with enough enthusiasm to become uncomfortable inside my trousers.
She straightens slowly. “Your hands stay there. I don’t care how much character they think they’ve developed.”
Her brief unwilling laugh makes me want to hear it again after the six rhinestones come off.
Katie catches the chair back as she turns, drawing it diagonally across the carpet before placing one knee beside my hip. She settles across my thighs without giving me her full weight, her heat reaching through my trousers as her breasts hover near my mouth.
She smells like citrus lotion over the clean salt beginning at her throat.
Her eyes move away from me, traveling across the mirror panels to the table and then the reflected door. She checks the space as naturally as Boris checks exits, folding the survey into the dance so neatly that another man might mistake vigilance for shyness.
She rolls her hips once, hardening my cock beneath her, and her lips part when she feels it.
“That,” I say quietly, “is your fault.”
Katie looks down between us, though my trousers conceal the evidence poorly. “You seem pleased with yourself.”
“You are sitting on the evidence.”
The line between her brows eases before tightening again, then she reaches for my right hand. I let her take it.
Her fingers close around my wrist, warm against the steel of my watch, lifting my palm from the chair. She could place it at her waist, where the gesture would stay part of the performance. Instead, she guides it under the edge of her shorts and presses it high on her bare thigh.
Her skin is soft over firm muscle, and her pulse jumps under my thumb.
Color climbs her throat, but I keep my hand still, though every useful instinct suggests gripping her and finding out how far the blush extends.
“There,” she says, her voice less steady than her body. “Now stop looking so deprived.”
My fingers close around her thigh.
Katie inhales, and her gaze catches on the mirror behind my left shoulder, her expression cooling so fast that my grip tightens.
The reflected door opens two inches.
A man in a dark jacket moves against the corridor traffic while everyone behind him faces the stage or the commotion of the highest-tier room. His chest remains aimed at me as his right hand disappears beneath his lapel.
Katie throws her weight into my chest.
The chair tips backward as the first shot breaks the mirror above us. The report punches through the music, followed by the dry rush of glass across the air where my head had been.
We hit the carpet with Katie on top of me, driving the breath from my lungs.
Her knee scrapes across the carpet and leaves blood behind, but she doesn’t make a sound.
I roll her beneath me as another round strikes the chair, spraying wood chips against my neck.
My forearm covers her head while my body shields the exposed length of hers.
Boris fires from the corridor.
The first attacker folds into the doorway, but movement flashes at the side of the room: a service panel stands open behind the bench. Igor comes through it low, a compact weapon in his right hand.
I reach under my jacket, too slow with Katie pinned under my weight.
She sees him first; her left leg snaps upward between us, and the clear platform catches Igor diagonally across the face, slicing from his cheek toward his left eye.
He screams and fires into the ceiling while burned powder bites the back of my throat, blood covering one side of his face as he staggers into the mirrored wall.
I draw my pistol, but Igor ducks behind the bench before I can take the shot. He crashes through the service panel as Boris reaches the room a breath later to fire down the passage, too late to stop the return door slamming somewhere beyond it.
“Take Igor alive,” I tell Boris. “I want the route and the name of whoever opened it.”
He steps over the dead shooter and disappears into the corridor with two guards.
The music has stopped, leaving my ears ringing in the sudden gap as shouts spread across the club below and security locks every public exit.
Katie lies under me with one hand fisted in my shirt, her lipstick smudged as each shallow breath presses her chest against mine. Most of her costume has shifted beyond its limited ability to preserve modesty.
“Are you hit?” I ask.
“Only my knee. Your floor attacked it before you tried to crush the rest of me.”
Her breath catches somewhere between a laugh and disbelief. A man just shot at us, but she’s still arguing.
I ease my weight off her before removing my jacket to wrap around her shoulders, the hem reaching the tops of her thighs. When she tries to stand, the damaged heel tilts beneath her, so I put one arm behind her knees to lift her.
“I can walk once somebody finds the missing half of my shoe,” she says, but her ankle folds when she tests it.
She grips my shoulder as I carry her into the corridor and men flatten themselves against the wall. Below us, dancers have gathered near the locked dressing-room door while George argues with a security captain.
Cherry reaches the stairs first. “Katie.”
“I’m fine,” Katie calls. “The shoe is having a worse night.”
The women part as I descend, revealing a blonde in white lace near the bottom with a dark blue plastic gem still clutched in her hand, her gaze fixed on Katie inside my jacket before it drops to my arm under Katie’s bare legs.
Envy is common in this building. Hatred requires closer attention.
“Cherry comes with us,” Katie says near my ear.
Her expectation of obedience pleases me more than it should.
“George too,” I tell the captain. “My office.”
My private office occupies the rear corner above the staff entrance. Once inside, I set Katie on the leather sofa while Cherry kneels to examine her knee and George locks the door.
Katie catches my shirtfront before I can step away, letting my jacket fall open around the indecent scraps of her costume. Her gaze searches me first, moving from my face to the blood darkening the cuff of my jacket around her, then down the unmarked length of my shirt.
“Hold still.”