His gaze darted to the ceiling—no, the corner, and the camera mounted there. Always watching.

  When his jaw clenched, I could almost see the words he wanted to say being crushed between his teeth.

  “Please,” he whispered. “Let me stay. If I leave, even for a minute…”

  “Then what?” I had to ask. He’d been hedging around some unspeakable thing. Something that frightened him more than the onsite porn studio. Or someone.

  Maslow had bragged about his hellish pipeline. All the young demons eager to escape the lower plane. It was a deal the wraith could offer, but under what terms?

  “What happens if you leave?” I prompted.

  Maybe I should have let it go. He was giving me the out I’d come for. Where other incubi would see me as a fly caught in their web and take their chance to strike, he shied away from it. But I saw the hunger gnawing at him. I heard the longing in his voice. I knew what he was denying himself, but I didn’t know why.

  His lack of reply left me grasping.

  “I’m not dragging you to another world.” I offered a coaxing smile. “It’s just the parking lot. You step outside, breathe some different air, that’s all. Hell, we don’t even have to get in the car, but it’s there.”

  His stare dropped to my waiting hand, and for a moment he didn’t move. Then he reached out and slid his slender fingers across my palm.

  “Okay,” he breathed. “Just the parking lot.”

  We retraced our steps back down the corridor and out onto the club’s main floor. I felt the tension winding tighter in Zephyr’s frame with every inch closer to the entrance. When we hit the short hall at the edge of the room, he slowed. Not stopping, but nearly.

  I turned my hand and threaded my fingers between his to give a squeeze.

  “You’re fine,” I assured him. “I’m right here.”

  He scanned the room like a hunted thing. The crowd was thicker now. Drunken laughter, glittering lights, and the twang of a guitar solo announced the twins taking the stage. We were traveling upstream, fighting the arriving guests who cast curious looks our way. Thankfully, they were as eager to get in as we were to get out and didn’t pause to question.

  At least, I was eager to get out. Zephyr, in contrast, had washed pale while shrinking inside my suit jacket and looking increasingly like a man being led to the gallows.

  I readied myself to offer further reassurance when Colette’s voice cracked like a whip above the noise.

  “Excusez-moi!”

  She barreled through a part in the crowd, blazing past Zephyr and me on her way toward the congested entry. I assumed she’d been dealing with security already, as I’d intended for her to chat the bouncers up or entice them with a bit of harmless flirtation. What I did not expect was for her to stop in the thick of the mob and wave a champagne flute like a flag, sloshing bubbly liquid onto the floor.

  “Where is the manager?” she demanded, causing the bouncers and everyone else in range to take notice. “I have a complaint to file!”

  The mention of the manager had Zephyr poised to bolt, but I tightened my grip.

  “Don’t look,” I advised him. “Just move.”

  “But…” His protest was drowned by Colette carrying on.

  “This is not Dom Pérignon. You serve this piss water to paying guests?” She tossed the glass over her shoulder, where it shattered on the tile with a dramatic crack.

  The bouncers were moving now. One abandoned the queue and left his buddy to manage the patrons growing annoyed or maybe just interested in the flamboyant French woman causing a stir.

  The crowd inside shifted, forming a ring around the unfolding scene and driving Zephyr and me to the outer edge of it. With a prompting tug, I steered us toward the exit, cutting toward the narrow gap of unguarded doorway.

  “Mon dieu,” Colette groaned at the bouncer standing in front of her looking like he’d been tasked with disarming a bomb. She gave her high ponytail a flip. “I did not rise from the Reign of Terror to ingest bourgeois nonsense in a crystal flute.”

  As we neared the open air, I thought Zephyr would balk again, but he stayed pressed against me as we passed the velvet ropes and exited into the night.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  Beck

  We were out, and what should have been a mundane occurrence felt monumental. I glanced over at Zephyr as he exhaled, and I wondered how long he’d been holding his breath.

  His head turned one way and then the other, jaw slack and round eyes reflecting the Strip’s rainbow of lights. He slowed to a stop as he surveyed the sights I’d long gone blind to. To me they were expected, unimpressive, but my fellow Vegas resident viewed them with the awe of a tourist.

  While he gawked, I kept my grip on his hand. Not because I feared he’d retreat or get lost on the short trip to the limousine but because it felt nice to hold him. And to have him hold me back with his fingertips denting the skin behind my knuckles.

  His inspection ended on the club’s exterior, where his sense of amazement took a darker turn. “It looks so much bigger than it feels,” he murmured.

  The admission sparked more questions, but it didn’t feel right to voice them here. Besides the risk of being spotted by the bouncers when they recovered from Colette’s distraction, Zephyr would likely be more forthcoming once we were in the quiet capsule of the limo.

  After a lingering moment, I prompted him onward. “This way.”

  The pulse of music faded behind us, dimming as we crossed the crowded lot. When we came alongside the Lincoln, I released Zephyr long enough to tug open the back door. The interior lights illuminated the car’s tufted bench seat, mirrored ceiling, and long, narrow windows.

  “You’re welcome to get in, or we can stick with just the lot.” I indicated the open space all around. As silly as I would feel sitting on the hood of the Lincoln or standing on the asphalt while the day’s heat seeped in through my shoe soles, I’d told him he needn’t go further than this. Then he’d taken my hand, and that made it a deal. Not one I would break.

  Zephyr wrapped the suit coat snugly around himself and cast a glance back toward the club’s exterior. Then he drew a steeling breath and considered the limo’s open door.

  “You wanted to go somewhere private.” He nodded toward it. “I think this counts.”

  A pleased smile split my lips. “After you.”

  He clambered in and scooted down the bench seat to the long side. I followed and pulled the door shut, then settled myself to see him sitting straight-backed with his hands under his thighs. The wet bar’s multicolor glow highlighted the bare skin of his chest where the suit coat gapped down his front.

  He was hungry for lust, but at the moment, I had none. His body was beautiful, and of course I found him desirable, but my focus was on his face. Stunning with his sharp nose, high cheekbones, and puffy lips, but stricken with dread. I’d removed him from the club, but his concerns clung on. Like the incubus had his own demons perched on his shoulders, whispering worry in his ears.

  “Zephyr,” I began quietly, “I may owe you another apology. I don’t mean to cause trouble between you and Maslow. It’s not my place. When we go back in, I’m more than happy to discuss matters with him.”

  In fact, I wanted to. I had no intention of being patient or polite about it. Colette might’ve been onto something with her demand to speak to the manager. I had my own questions about how the Dollhouse was being run, and none of them involved the vintage of their champagne.

  Zephyr shifted, eyes drifting over the bottles and glassware behind the bar. But I got the sense he wasn’t seeing any of it, just looking for something that wasn’t me or his own reflection.

  “As long as you give him the money, and I give…” He stopped again when I wanted him to keep going. Explain, please, because I… cared. I genuinely, inexplicably, cared.

  “I’ll be fine,” he concluded. “But not if we don’t…” His brow furrowed, and he glanced over, eyes curtained by loose locks of scarlet hair. “Will you still? I-I need it.”

  It was far from a come-on, more of a plea. The first time we’d talked, I remembered thinking his pickup game was unpracticed at best, nonexistent at worst. But he was honest, and that was admirable. Not particularly arousing, but admirable.

  I moved down the bench until we were nearly hip to hip. Sitting so close, it was hard not to drag my fingers down his thigh or tuck his hair behind his ear. I remembered the girl in the club kissing him and wondered if she felt the same nagging temptation I did now. She succumbed, but I needed to resist. If I did one thing right tonight, let it be that. This man, this creature, already had his hooks in me. I didn’t need his venom in me too.

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” I asked. “Maybe we should sit for a while. You look ready to pass out.”

  Then I did reach out to feather my fingers through his hair. It was longer than I’d realized, hanging loose around his neck and curling under the collar of my suit coat.

  He was still pale and visibly weak, but he brightened at my touch.

  “We can sit,” he agreed. “Or I could… lay down…”

  Without waiting for my approval, he drew his bare legs up onto the bench seat and lowered his torso until he was below me looking up. His eyes flashed with dim light as his tongue flicked across his lips.

  “Will you let me taste you this time?” he asked. “I promise I won’t… No teeth.”

  Because he was honest, I believed him. And I had to admit, this was harder to resist than his previous efforts. I wasn’t above a pity fuck, but it was certainly more enticing to think he was into it. Into me.

  “Baby,” I began, and both of us stopped. He liked it when I called him Beauty, and I could tell from the catch in his breath that he liked this just as much.

  Fuck, I barely knew him. But I wanted to. And he was practically in my lap, so easily gathered up. I wanted that too.

  “Do you want to suck my cock?” I asked, then grimaced. It sounded crude.

  Zephyr made a needy sound and looked up at me. “Please,” he whispered, too ready to beg, and the notion rubbed me wrong.

  He was starved and desperate and afraid, and was I solving a problem or ignoring it?

  A moment of indecision passed before he reached for my belt and button, and I didn’t stop him. Pants undone and erection freed, I leaned back, making myself accessible to his advance.

  Zephyr hummed and threaded his arms around me. One tucked behind my lower back, and the other draped across my thighs. Then he laid his head down, taking my dick into his mouth as he did so.

  I almost stopped him—he couldn’t talk with his mouth full, and I still had questions—but the second my cock grazed the back of his throat, he let out a quiet whine and fisted the fabric of my shirt like he needed something to hold on to.

  His body grew heavy as he sank against me, and I couldn’t help but touch him. His hair, his face, the graceful slope of his neck… I stroked his skin with velvet fingertips until his eyelids began to droop. He swallowed, throat pulsing against my tip and causing me to groan.

  His soft, wet tongue pillowed my shaft as he suckled at my head, then drew down and swallowed once more. The motion became repetitive, but no less placid. Soft pulls against my crown chased the slide of his tongue, as if he could consume me from this contact alone.

  Intermittent sparks of pleasure left me alight. It was all I could do not to let my head roll back and just feel. It was simultaneously excruciating—wanting to take when he’d asked me to give—and exquisite because damn, his face. His amethyst eyes gazed up at me through his lashes. Guileless. Gorgeous.

  I carded my fingers through his hair again, testing the feel of it the same way I’d sampled his name. He looked like mine tucked up in my clothes, and I relished the idea that he would smell like me too.

  It was complicated: wanting to claim him and plotting ways I could take him away because he wasn’t safe here. The thought of Maslow counting stacks of cash while a line of men passed through that room, taking turns fucking my incubus, made me burn with rage.

  Zephyr’s sleepy breaths puffed against my groin as I gazed down at him.

  “You’re all right,” I murmured, trailing my thumb along his hairline down to his smooth jaw. “You don’t have to be scared. Whatever’s wrong, I’ll fix it.”

  He pulled off my cock with an audible pop and aimed expectant eyes at me. “You will? How?”

  I didn’t fully realize what I’d said until he questioned it.

  Zephyr squirmed to sitting while I tucked my cock back into my underwear. My jacket slid off his shoulders as he held himself upright. He looked refreshed, and I marveled at the polarity between hungry and full.

  Skimming my fingers along his chin, I ached again to kiss him. To leave my mark and wipe away whatever the autograph-seeking coed left behind. But he was waiting for my response, so I let my hand fall away then told him, “I think I’ll start by having another chat with Maslow.”

  Zephyr startled at the mention of wraith, scrambling off the bench and shedding my suit coat in a flurry of movement. “Oh shit, the VIPs!” he blurted. Straightening caused him to knock his head against the limo’s low ceiling, but the collision didn’t slow his rush toward the door.

  I tried to beat him there, to hold it open if nothing else, but he was a force in motion.

  “I have customers,” he stammered while spilling out into the lot. “And-and a drink order!”

  My pants were barely buttoned, and I wrestled with my belt buckle as I stepped out after him. “Zephyr⁠—”

  “Sorry,” he said, half turned while readying to bolt toward the Dollhouse entrance. The red glow of the club’s neons painted his skin. I’d forgotten how bare he was under my coat, looking even more exposed standing in the open air.

  “Thank you for offering to help,” he said. “And for… everything else.” Then he spun away, nearly crashing into Colette as she clipped across the lot.

  He sidestepped in a staggering dodge, but Colette caught his arm and steadied him.

  “Salut, mon petit,” she said through a wide smile.

  Zephyr faltered, too off guard to do more than mumble, “Um, hi. Sorry. I gotta go…”

  Colette tugged a wrinkle out of his shirt sleeve, then shooed him away. “Oui, oui. By all means, off with you. The public awaits.”

  Zephyr’s eyes met mine in a final glance. I wondered if I imagined the longing in his gaze, or if he saw mine. Then he was off, scurrying toward the queue snaking between the cordons and turning the head of at least one bouncer as he darted through the open door.

  The burly hellhound peered across the lot, keen eyes fixing on me where I lingered with my belt undone and features slack. Colette waggled her fingers at the stern man, whose broad chest swelled in a huff before he resumed checking IDs.

  Rounding on me, Colette tugged up her jacket sleeve and raised her wrist for the inspection of an imaginary watch. “Ten minutes,” she quipped. “And I did tip the Marvel. Before I was, sadly, banned from the club.”

  “Banned?” I pinched the bridge of my nose. Considering the stunt she pulled with the champagne, I shouldn’t have been surprised.

  Colette nodded while trying to appear somber. “It seems we are both quite done with this place.”

  I grunted and looked past her toward the entry.

  “Are we not?” Colette pressed.

  “I…”

  “Lucas.” The exasperation in her voice was at odds with her grin. “Did you pay him at least?”

  My jacket and my money clip had been abandoned in the limo. The coat was empty, but the clip remained full.

  My shoulders sagged as I groaned. “Fuck.”

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  Zephyr

  Reentering the club was like diving into a fishbowl. The walls closed in around me, and I held my breath. It was small. So small. And I felt magnified. Inspected by everyone. Terribly, horribly seen.

  I’d gotten away with nothing.

  The bouncers watched me return, unsubtly slipping by while mumbling apologies. Maslow now had a recording of Beck in the private area, a location he would not have found without an escort, and the wraith would sense the change in me. The charge of lust was like a drug I couldn’t quit. All of it made what should have been shallow waters seem endlessly deep.

  I could drown here. Or be pulled under. Falling again.

  Thankfully, the VIPs had no reason to complain. Darby had covered for me, and after I told him where I’d been, he promised to do the same when Beck came back the next night.

  And he did come back—again and again. He became a familiar presence in the crowd, a body I hurried to embrace, a hand I held as we slipped out of the club and into the relative quiet of the parking lot.

  It became a habit, a high I chased, followed by the lows I endured each time Maslow took his due. While my nights were full of passion and performance, my mornings now started with the wraith lurking in the hall outside our rooms. It was a new routine—unavoidable, enforced, and draining in every sense of the word. Every day, he lined us up and strolled past, siphoning a different flavor of energy from each of us, filling his distended belly.

  This morning, we’d been rounded up earlier than usual. Maslow claimed to have “a prior engagement,” and would be gone most of the day. He was here now, though, standing at the end of the corridor in his finest suit. His sparse hair was stuck down with gel, and his gold teeth glinted as he smiled at us. Pleased as he appeared, the bouncers behind him remained stern, standing shoulder to shoulder in a wall of menacing muscle.

  “I’ll only be out for a while,” he informed us. “I expect you to behave and be stage-ready by showtime. No slacking off just because the cat’s away.”

  After a week of this ritual, some of the dancers had adjusted better than others. You’d think that after five years under the wraith’s thumb, the fight would’ve been wrung out of them, but some still resisted. I couldn’t tell if that made them brave or just stupid.