Boston Avant-Garde 4: Encore (15 page)

Terrence had positioned himself on the floor directly in front of the stage to keep the audience from surging forward. But there were at least fifty or sixty customers watching the show. Jericho had never seen anyone command a crowd like this. Never.

She bent and twisted, her body contorting into sinuous positions that should not have been possible. The lucky guy on stage looked ready to pounce. Dancing around him, she kept just out of reach as she twirled. Her breasts bobbed and bounced as if they were puppies begging to play. Jericho was torn by the desire to keep watching or to yank her off the stage and find a place to fuck some sense into her head.

Giving the audience a good view of her rounded bottom, Suri reached out and twined her fingers through her customer’s hands. Lifting them to her chest, she gave an exaggerated response to his hands barely skimming the curve of her breasts.

Dante grabbed Jericho’s bicep before he could leap forward to intervene. “It’s just for show.”

“I know. It’s just—I’ve never—it’s the most provocative dance anyone’s ever given down here.” Jericho couldn’t tear his gaze away from Suri’s body as she grabbed the pole behind her back and enjoyed the pantomimed public fondling.

“That’s why they love it. Usually you have to be on Level Three or Four to see something that hot.”

Suri left her guest, twirling away to make a circuit of the stage. She stopped several times to swing her hips and set the bells shivering just before she’d bend over and scoop up the bills covering the stage in layers.

“It’s money.” Jericho finally realized what drove her, turning to Dante to get his reaction.

“Something happened. She’s never been this uninhibited. I’d have heard about it.”

Jericho glanced at his watch. “Her shift is done in an hour. You think she’ll come upstairs?”

Dante moved his hand to Jericho’s shoulder. “We’ll wait and see, I guess. I’m going to head up. I’m starting to realize how much I appreciate a private show as opposed to a public one.”

Jericho watched Dante disappear through a door tucked behind a copse of leafy potted plants. He wanted to follow, but his gut wouldn’t let him leave Suri alone. Terrence could handle a lot, but if the press of customers overwhelmed him, Jericho wanted to be on hand. Sometimes being head of security meant protecting the ones he loved from their own choices.

Dante mixed paint on the edge of the palette, inhaling the soothingly familiar scent of oil and turpentine. He wanted the color just right, the blend of spun gold and pale corn silk that matched Suri’s hair.

The coffered ceiling stretched over his head like a colorful canopy. Nearly ten years ago, he’d started painting scenes from
Arabian Nights.
He’d just left his identity behind, and it had begun as a bit of irony meant to mock his own Persian heritage. It hadn’t taken long for him to realize that, as Scheherazade had intended, the stories were applicable to life.

He had already finished Ali Baba. Now he carefully rendered Suri in the role of Morgiana dancing with the sword, ready to protect her master.

The scaffold shifted, and Dante balanced carefully on the plank stretched between the metal bars. The apparatus was usually stored in a closet, but he’d dragged it out after coming upstairs to wait for Jericho and Suri. Sometimes there was nothing to do but immerse himself in something distracting.

He traced the contour of her body with the tip of the brush. Long legs, rounded bottom, flat belly, and pert breasts—Suri’s features were almost as familiar to him as the face he saw in the mirror every morning.

The door swung wide open with considerable force. “I just came to say good-bye before I—oh!” Suri’s voice trailed off as she gazed from the scaffolding to his work. “You painted all of this?”

Dante forced himself to focus on the scene he was painting. Anything to keep him from reacting to the obvious brush-off she was about to give him. Give
them
. “A man has to have a hobby, right?”

“It’s so beautiful.” The awe in her voice made his heart swell. “That first night I was staring at it, trying to pick out all the parts from the
Arabian Nights
.”

“I add the scenes as I think of them or as they happen in my life.” He chanced a look down, noting the massive duffel slung over her shoulder. Was she carrying a week’s worth of clothing in there? “Do you know which one this is?”

She dumped the bag to the thick rug, angling for a better view. “It’s Ali Baba watching Morgiana dance.”

“Do you remember why she danced?” Dante focused on the paint instead of his emotions. He mixed gray with metallic silver for the dagger Morgiana would brandish above her head.

“She was protecting him.”

“And then?” Dante cast a gaze at the empty space to his left, thinking of the wedding scene that came next in the story. He’d never considered adding it before. Lately, he had been rethinking everything, thanks to the little muse who was now worrying her lower lip between her teeth.

“She was rewarded with freedom and a home of her own.”

“She had to wait a long time before her cleverness was rewarded and she could slay her enemies for good.” Dante began to paint bits and pieces of the crowd, realizing he’d rendered himself and Jericho watching from the back as they had been earlier.

“I came to say good-bye.”

His heart slammed against his ribs. “Are you quitting?”

“No, but I think we should go back to the way it was before.”

His painted image was leaning into Jericho’s, trying to get closer for comfort. Was that how he truly felt? As if he wanted to let Jericho be the strong one forever? “And you think it’s possible to go back?”

“It was just one crazy night. One of those insane things you do that you wish you hadn’t.” He couldn’t get a read on her expression. Normally it came second nature, but he couldn’t be objective when it came to Suri.

“And you wish you hadn’t let Jericho and me fuck you.” He tore his gaze away from his painting to meet hers, but she refused to lift her chin. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Yes! And no, but the two of you are perfect together anyway. You don’t even need me.” She was hugging herself as if she were about to come apart at the seams.

“I don’t know what happened between earlier today, when you agreed that we needed to have a nice long talk, and tonight. But it was apparently enough to make you walk away from us.” The painting couldn’t subdue his emotions any longer. He was too angry.

He leaped lightly to the floor, his bare feet sinking into the thick nap of the rug. Not bothering to clean the palette, he set it aside on a table. He picked up a rag and wiped his hands. What could he say to get through to her? Did she really think he and Jericho would be better off as a couple? That was bullshit.

Dante didn’t know why, but the urge to come completely clean was staggering. Maybe honesty would save what secrets kept tearing apart. Did he really have anything else to lose? “You wanted to know how I got this scar.”

Her brows drew together in confusion. “You didn’t want to say. I get it. I have stuff I don’t talk about too.”

“Like how your father is Senator Liam O’Callaghan? And that while he’s known about you since the day you were born, he chose his political career over his responsibility to his family?”

“How did you know that?”

Dante didn’t like the hurt in her voice, but she needed to understand that he grasped far more than she gave him credit for. “I deal in secrets, princess. I can spot one a mile away. He wasn’t surprised that you exist; he was surprised to see you there and then stunned to hear that your mother was ill.”

“I never knew what was worse. That he chose to save his own ass, or that my ma decided to take his side.” She gave a bitter chuckle.

“My name isn’t Dante Torres.”

She looked more surprised than he’d thought she would be.

“It’s Darios Kadjar. I’m one in a long line of exiled descendants of the house of Kadjar from Iran. Our family dynasty was the second-to-last line of Persian shahs. We’ve been hiding all over the world since about 1925. I was born in France and emigrated here with my mother and sisters when I was ten.”

“Why change your name?” She was inching closer, as if she was drawn to him despite herself.

He tried to condense an entire culture’s history into a short synopsis. Not an easy task. “Since the Islamic Revolution in Iran, exiled Persians with ties to any shah dynasty aren’t exactly popular. My mother had extravagant tastes. She made some bad choices, and we were—discovered, for lack of a better word—here in Boston. As the only living male in our family branch, I was the most valuable.”

“She sold you out.” She was so close now. Standing directly before him, gazing up into his face, at his scar. She lifted her fingers and brushed them over the line of thick skin that marred his face.

“I was only twenty-four and arrogant as hell. I was determined to go down insulting them, I think. They cut me, and then Jericho was there. We had an instant bond that night. Having him at my back was so natural, it was like breathing.”

“You changed your identity afterward, and now here you are.” She continued touching him, skating over his jaw, back over his lips, across his nose and eyebrows, until he was breathless with the anticipation of each touch.

“All these years, I’ve always known Jericho is there for me, as I am for him, but we could never take that step to be together—in that way—until you came along.” He wanted her to understand. He needed it.

“So then I’ve done my part by bringing the two of you together.”

“No.” He caught her hand, holding on as tight as he dared. “You’re the catalyst, the missing part of our bond. There’s nothing without you, Suri. I told you that sexuality has nothing to do with gender. It’s about connection. You’re the connection. My connection, Jericho’s connection—and we’re yours.”

There were tears in her blue eyes. Brimming over, rolling down her cheeks until he leaned forward and kissed them away. She didn’t pull back from his touch. She leaned against him, wrapping her arms around his waist.

“What happened, princess?”

Jericho moved on silent feet through the doorway on the opposite side of the suite. So used to his friend’s soundless comings and goings, Dante felt more than heard him. Now Jericho stood like an angel of mercy half a dozen steps away. “It isn’t hard to guess the basics, Suri. But I want to know what I can do to help.”

Dante was afraid she might rebuff Jericho’s intrusive statement, but she reached out to him instead. Dante caught his friend’s eye and nodded at the bed. If they could make her see how safe and secure she was with them, she might be more comfortable with sharing a confidence.

Jericho didn’t waste any time. He swept Suri off her feet and into his arms. She snuggled up against his chest while Dante pulled the duvet back and got comfortable against a pile of pillows.

“I need to get out of these monkey clothes.” Jericho put Suri on the bed and began stripping out of his slacks and dress shirt. Dante couldn’t stop staring at the bulge in his friend’s fitted boxer briefs. It was an enticing distraction.

“Now”—Jericho sandwiched her between his body and Dante’s—“tell us what happened.”

“It’s pretty simple.” She used a crumpled tissue from her pocket to swipe at her eyes. “My sister has an unquenchable thirst for assholes. She and her current asshole of the month just flew out of Logan on their way to some kind of MMA tournament which will supposedly skyrocket them both to stardom.”

Dante would have done anything to wipe her troubles away. This was a small enough issue to fix with one or two phone calls. “I’ll get your sister home, if that’s what you want.”

She looked at Jericho and rolled her eyes. “Is he always like this?”

“Most of the time. Dante has resources and knows how to manipulate them.”

“Well,
Prince
Dante, it’s time to let my sister wallow in her own stupidity. I think I’ve become more of an enabler than a help to her. I just worry about her.”

Jericho looked up in surprise when she made such an obvious poke at the word
prince
.

Dante offered a subtle nod to let his friend know that he’d divulged more to Suri than he had to anyone other than Jericho. Odd. That didn’t bother him in the least, though he’d just given her an incredible amount of power over him.

SURI HELD BACK the rest of the story. She’d folded enough as it was. The plan had been to come to Dante’s quarters and put things back the way they were before all the complicated relationship stuff. That way, she would be free to contact Congressman Flaherty and set up a private party that would pay off the balance of her mother’s bills. How pathetic that she couldn’t even get through one conversation without winding up in bed with her lovers.

“Are you worried about taking care of your mother now that your sister has split?” Dante’s probing gaze was fixed on Suri. She could feel him stripping back the layers of truth. “I didn’t get a chance to tell Jericho everything that happened today. Do you mind if I fill him in?”

Suri shook her head. The truth was burning on her tongue. It was hard not to let it all spill out. On the other hand, if they wanted to think Kim had been helping with their mother’s expenses all these years, better that than the truth—that Suri was so broke she intended to call Flaherty and set up something on the side just to pull herself out of a desperate situation. No matter how she spun it, it sounded sneaky.

“Her mother has been in a nursing facility for the last ten years. She has Parkinson’s.” Dante’s hot gaze left Suri to rest on Jericho.

Jericho threaded his fingers through hers and lifted them to his lips. “Suri, let us help you.”

Guilt gnawed her insides. “I’ve got it under control. There’s nothing to worry about. Besides, accepting money from the two of you would be wrong. It would change—I don’t know—it would just change all of this.” She pulled her hand from Jericho’s and sat up, burying her face in her hands. “This is all so weird anyway. I mean, how does this happen? Really?”

“You said that first night that you have a friend in a committed relationship with two men. How did it work for them?” There was a lot of real curiosity in Dante’s voice.