Boston Avant-Garde 4: Encore (8 page)

They rushed out, leaving Jericho to bring up the rear with Suri tucked beneath his arm. She was glad he hadn’t let go. At this point, she would be lucky to stand upright, much less walk.

He took three strides to an access door opposite the suite entrance and swiped his keycard to open it. “All of you inside. Now.”

The other three dancers huddled together, wide-eyed. The corridor was a stairwell of sorts, its bare brick walls a harsh contrast to the soft lighting and dreamy atmosphere inside the club proper.

Suri stumbled, her legs like jelly. She couldn’t stop thinking about what might have happened had Jericho not given Terrence the night off and taken his place. Would Terrence have been able to stop Flaherty? Would he have been able to fight off Flaherty’s guards and prevent the man from taking what he believed he’d bought?

Shame burned a trail of fire through her system. Dancing was one thing. Dealing with some asshole’s entitlement complex was something else. How could she do this again, even if it meant getting the money she needed for Ma?

“Stay here,” Jericho ordered the other dancers. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back for you.”

Before Suri could join her coworkers in a corner of the stairwell, Jericho swept her up into his arms. It felt good to be cuddled like that, picked up as though she weighed no more than a child. Closing her eyes, she rested her cheek against his hard pectoral. She could feel his warm skin through his black dress shirt. He smelled divine, exactly as he had the night before, the way he had an hour ago when he’d spread her thighs and pushed into her pussy for the first time.

He carried her two flights of stairs without breaking a sweat or even breathing hard. Arriving at a door, he fumbled for his keycard, finally sliding it awkwardly through the reader.

A wave of mixed feelings hit her when she opened her eyes and realized that Jericho had brought her back to the sultan’s bedchamber where she’d first met him and Dante less than twenty-four hours ago.

Jericho stopped beside the bed. “You’ll be out of harm’s way in here. I have to handle things downstairs, and then I’ll be back.”

She wanted to be strong, but she felt too vulnerable. “Please don’t go.”

He pressed his lips to her forehead, holding her so close she could hear his heart beating. “I have to, Suri. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

A door on the opposite side of the suite swung open, and Dante stepped in. He was dressed in soft black lounge pants and a black tee. His dark eyes were unreadable and his expression blank. He’d tucked his hair behind his ears. His lips were pursed, the scar bisecting the right side of his mouth pale against the warm caramel of his complexion. He looked forbidding. Suri wondered if this was when she would get fired.

As if she could take anymore crap today.

“I’m going back to handle Flaherty.” Jericho’s expression revealed nothing when he spoke to Dante. He could’ve been discussing the weather.

Dante wasn’t any warmer. “I’ll chat with him in a little bit. Have Felix keep him in my reception area until he cools off.”

Jericho started to leave the way he’d come, pausing when he was halfway out the door. “This isn’t business anymore.”

Suri wondered what he meant and what it had to do with her, Jericho, and Dante.

Dante was a businessman. He understood how to manipulate a market, sell a product, and use blackmail to get what he wanted. This Flaherty mess should have been simple. The congressman wanted Suri. Dante should have been willing to hand her over on a silver platter, no matter the cost. The potential returns on keeping an influential man like Flaherty happy should have been worth it.

How can I sell her to keep that selfish bastard where I want him?

He’d never been asked to make a decision like this when the person who was offered up like collateral had a name and a personality he’d grown to care about. Which was a whole new issue. When had Dante Torres started fixating on his dancers?

He should have walked away, right then. Left her huddled in the middle of his bed, hugging a pillow to her chest. Let Jericho deal with her.

Except he couldn’t.

He’d been looking after number one for years. He’d been weaned on the concept, raised to protect family and self. When his family had betrayed him, he’d had no one but himself to rely on. Until Jericho.

Dante remembered the first time he’d met Jericho. The man had put his life on the line for a total stranger, no questions asked. Since that night, he had worked his way underneath all Dante’s defenses. Jericho was one of those rare people who was truly good. Dante had known it from the very first moment.

Suri emitted a ragged sigh. Dante drifted closer, remembering her sharp wit and easy company. His instincts had been dead-on with Jericho. And they were telling him that Suri was cut from the same cloth.

“It’s obvious that you don’t want me here.” She started to rise, but her legs got tangled in the filmy material of her costume. “I’ll go just as soon as I get my shit together.”

Her voice broke, and the last word came out on a sob. Business sense and rational thought sank into the background. He climbed onto the bed and tried to pull her into his lap.

“I don’t want your pity.” She pushed his hands away, sitting stiffly in the middle of his bed.

“That’s good, because I’m not sure I even know how to offer it.”

Her blue eyes widened before she began to laugh.

“Come here, princess.” He tried again, and she didn’t resist his embrace. Settling down against a mound of pillows, he enjoyed the sensation of her curves tucked in beside him. “Why did you sneak up here to drink all by yourself last night?”

She didn’t answer right away. He let her get her thoughts together. The high ponytail holding her hair away from her face was starting to come undone, several renegade strands escaping to frame her face. He liked her better dressed as herself, not wearing her dancer persona.

“People don’t think very much of exotic dancers.” Her tone suggested she didn’t think much of them either. “I was at a function yesterday, a wedding actually. The bride was the sister-in-law of an acquaintance. They’re a pretty prominent family, so there were a lot of people there, and someone recognized me from here at the club.”

Something in her description stirred Dante’s memory. How many prominent families held weddings in a day?

Suri wasn’t done. “The groom tried to make a pass at me. I just blew him off at first. It wasn’t really a secret that he was a total douche bag. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Dante closed his eyes briefly. He’d tried to drown this inexplicable sense of shame and remorse in Arak the night before. Avoidance hadn’t worked then, and his conscience was coming back with new vigor now. He ran a business. He didn’t head up the morality police. How was he supposed to be responsible for the behavior of other grown men?

“He tried to pin me down in a space between two of the tents outside. I kept thinking he wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to rape someone at his own wedding reception, but that’s exactly what he was going to do.”

Dante cleared his throat. “What happened?”

“I managed to get him away from me. I was still escaping when the bride caught us coming out from behind a tent. She went completely ballistic. Accused me of trying to seduce him. My friend stood up for me, but the guy told the whole world I couldn’t be believed because I was nothing but a stripper. He called me a whore.” She wouldn’t meet his gaze, fiddling with the fabric of her skirt.

“Did the bride believe you or him?”

“Her sister got involved and said he’d been trying the same kind of shit with her.” Suri giggled unexpectedly, warming him with the musical sound. “The bride got pissed and cake-bombed him. Bet you anything that reception made it onto YouTube by last night.”

“Your profession obviously bothers you.” He couldn’t see her expression with her face snuggled against his chest, but he could feel the resentment in her rigid muscles.

“This isn’t my profession. But normally, I like dancing.”

That was an intriguing bit of information he filed away for later perusal. He focused in on her second statement. “What do you like about it?”

“It’s empowering. Music makes everything else slip away. I can focus on the rhythm and the movements, and whole hours pass without me noticing. Besides, most of our customers down on Level One aren’t like Flaherty.”

“So why dance at Flaherty’s party if it bothers you?”

“I need the money.”

Obviously, her other profession didn’t pay enough to make ends meet. He mulled this over, trying to make sense of what little he knew. The apartment she shared with her sister was cheap. It wasn’t like she was paying rent in Back Bay. They lived in a one-bedroom basement apartment in Southie. She didn’t have a car or any credit obligations to speak of. Did she have some kind of home shopping network fetish or something?

Engrossed in his speculations, he didn’t notice her staring up at him until she touched his face. “Where did you get this scar?”

“In a fight.” The answer was automatic. “What do you need money for?”

“Family stuff.”

It struck him then how much her answer resembled his. They were pat answers, things you said to throw people off the scent of a deeper truth you didn’t want to reveal.

It bothered him. Not just that she was deflecting a question about something he wanted to understand, but that he was doing it too. Why did it matter? Couldn’t he enjoy fucking her without getting involved in her personal life?

The tips of her fingers brushed the pale line scarring the right side of his mouth. The soft touch evoked a deep sense of comfort that made no sense given the casual nature of their relationship. “I’m sorry I made trouble for you with the congressman.”

That she could apologize for something like that made Dante feel as though he’d sunk to a whole new low. He’d known what would happen when he left the party. He’d simply been too much of a coward to stay and face it. Too selfish, too caught up in the preservation of the facade he’d spent years erecting.

“I think I should go.” She started to get up.

Dante caught her arm. Rolling her to her back, he kissed her hungrily. She tasted sweet and wild. The tiny noises she made in her throat drove him mad with desire. His cock hardened. The thin lounge pants did nothing to keep it from prodding her belly where their bodies were pressed together. When he finally ended the kiss to stare down into her face, it was all he could do not to strip her naked and take her like an animal in heat.

“I thought last night was some kind of fluke.” Confusion trumped desire in her expression. “Figured I’d check that experience off my bucket list and move on. I shouldn’t want you this much after being with Jericho earlier. One guy should be enough, right?”

Was she actually asking him that question? Dante’s body came alive at the thought of her and Jericho fucking somewhere inside the club. “Did you enjoy being with Jericho?”

“Yes.”

Dante had to force himself to breathe through his arousal. “Did he make you come? Did he bring you pleasure? Did you enjoy his big cock sliding in and out of your pussy?”

“You’re not angry?” Still trapped beneath his body, she was arching up against him now.

“God, no! Only disappointed that I didn’t get to enjoy him with you.”

A hazy image of Jericho spreading her long legs and fitting the head of his thick cock against her opening made Dante groan with need. The only thing better would be Jericho realizing it was all right to give and receive pleasure from Dante just like he did from Suri.

“So you’re bisexual?” Her brow furrowed as she tried to puzzle it out.

Dante rolled to his side, keeping her snug against his body. “Sexuality doesn’t work like that for me. Putting parameters like homosexual or heterosexual on relationships is ridiculous. I’m attracted to people that I somehow share a connection with. It doesn’t matter if they’re male or female. I’m able to put aside the social and cultural bullshit and just enjoy the pleasure we bring each other.”

If her expression was anything to go by, Suri was giving his point of view some serious thought. He took the opportunity to get rid of the remainder of her flimsy costume. It might be provocative in some instances, but at the moment, she needed to be naked.

She was already topless from her dance at the congressman’s party. Dante dislodged the sheer material of her skirt from beneath her hips and tossed it to the floor. With that done, he took a moment to enjoy the sight of her bare body.

She really was exquisite. Her hair had come mostly undone, the mussed blonde tresses spread across the pillows. Her breasts were softly rounded and topped with pale areolas and the most perfect pink nipples.

Lowering his head, Dante used the flat of his tongue against first one and then the other. She made a sound of surprise before pushing against the contact to beg for more.

“Do you like that?”

“That’s just a tease. I like it better when you suck.”

He laughed. She definitely had a saucy personality. Latching on to her right nipple, he took it between his teeth briefly before suckling hard. She buried her fingers in his hair, scraping her nails along his scalp and whimpering as he increased the pressure.

He let go with a soft
pop
. “Better?”

“Sure, except that it makes me unbelievably horny.”

“Is that right?” He put one hand on her belly, slipping it down over her sensitive skin to her mound. “Should I see how horny you are?”

Her legs fell open in response, her gaze begging him to touch her. Dante fought back the urge to mount her and sink his cock to the hilt. Instead, he slid two fingers into her wet slit. He wondered how wet she’d been earlier. “Did Jericho use a condom?”

“No.”

Dante’s desire burst into flames. He curled his fingers into her creamy fluids, imagining that he was delving into the mingled juices of both his lovers, the remnants of their passion left to fuel his own. “Fuck. Please stroke my cock. I’m so hard I’m about to lose myself here and now.”

“Does it turn you on that Jericho fucked me without protection?”