by Kate Aeon
Jim’s voice in his ear was calm and reassuring. “It’s okay. We’re ahead of the curve on this one, Hank. We can save this girl.”
Chapter Ten
Jess leaned against the wall in the dressing room, her hands shaking, her whole body weak from a combination of nerves and exhilaration and embarrassment. And fear. Mustn’t forget fear.
The killer had been out there, had seen her dancing, had even touched her, and she had looked into those faces and smiled her smile and hadn’t seen anything in even one of the men out there that she could point to and say, “He’s it. He’s the one who’s killing them.”
They’d been a bunch of relatively clean-cut guys in suits or work shirts and loosened ties, as well as one guy she was almost sure was an actor on a TV series that filmed in Atlanta. He’d had a dancer right up close to him, but he’d still put a big bill in Jess’s G-string. She checked.
One hundred dollars from him. The rest were ones and fives. Mostly ones.
A dancer who’d been out on the floor poked her head through the dressing room doorway and said, “Jason Hemly wants to meet you.”
Jess closed her eyes. Jason Hemly was the actor’s name. God. She so very much did not want to go hang out with actors and pretend to be who she wasn’t. But she would. Soon. “I’ll be out in a little bit,” she said. “I need to... catch my breath first. And change.”
“I’ll tell him,” the girl said. And with an envious glare that personified the darker side of the early twenty-something, cheerleader-gone-wild persona of most of the Goldcastle dancers, she flounced off.
Jess started pulling the money she’d made out of her G-string and dropping it into the front pocket of her bag. Teri leaned in the door. “Caught your act from the doorway — just for a minute. The modifications you made worked well.”
“I’d say,” Jess said, counting money. Not including the hundred-dollar bill she’d made from the actor, she had already earned back her fifty for the day’s tip-out, and a little more. Surely it couldn’t be that easy.
“I’ll be going, then,” Teri said. “Just wanted to congratulate you on a good debut.”
And Jess looked up. “You have a minute?”
“Sure.”
“In your office?”
Teri’s smile died. “Of course.”
Jess followed her down the hall, into the office, and closed the door behind them.
“Problems?” Teri asked.
“Just one really big one. You didn’t tell me that the problem this place was having was with dancers being murdered.”
Teri sat down and sighed. “You heard.”
“Word gets around. I would have liked to have heard from you. That’s the sort of information a woman wants to have before taking a job. I’m not going to do my brother any good if I’m dead.”
“Have a seat,” Teri said, and Jess sat. Teri sighed again, heavily, ran a hand through her hair, and stared at her desk. “As far as I’ve been able to figure out — and I had to identify one of the bodies, and the police have been around asking questions, of course — there have been three girls murdered in the past year,” she said. “All three were dancers; all three were employees here, though I cannot say with certainty that all three were employed here at the time they were killed. And I have no way of knowing if they were also dancing at other clubs, or if what happened to them was even because they were dancers.”
Jess sat there, listening. Waiting.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Teri said. “I should have, I suppose.”
“Yeah,” Jess said. “You should have told me.”
“I was in a bind. Still am. We are short fifteen dancers on our roster. Fifteen. All of those fifteen but one quit when the rumors started, and the rumors have continued to keep most prospective replacements away.”
“All but one?” Jess studied Teri, watching for tells that would suggest deception. “So if fourteen quit, what did the other one do?”
“Got killed,” Teri said, not meeting Jess’s eyes. “To stay in business, we need a full roster. A lot of people depend on us keeping our doors open so that they can pay their bills. Or in your case, someone else’s bills.” Now she looked up at Jess, and she seemed defiant. “It’s my job to keep our roster full, to make sure people get paid, that nobody starves. We don’t get paid if the boys don’t spend it. And the boys like variety.”
“So does the killer, it would seem.”
Teri took a pen from her desk. “I’m hoping Goldcastle isn’t the link. I really am.” She played with the cap of the pen.
Jess realized that Teri already thought Goldcastle was the link. Teri didn’t want to believe it, Jess decided, because money was at stake, a lot of it hers.
“You look stressed out,” Teri said.
“Bad case of nerves,” Jess told her, still watching. “About halfway through my set out there, I almost panicked and ran off the stage.”
“But you didn’t. You were solid. And very fresh. You were putting something out there the customers really responded to. You’re still tucking your butt too much when you move, though.”
“Dammit. I thought I’d fixed that.”
“Most of the time you have. You’ll get there. And I think you can fill seats for us, Grace. I’ll definitely be keeping you on the schedule. And on the weeks when you do nights, you’ll make even better money, and get more exposure.”
Jess laughed. Her laugh sounded hoarse in her own ears.
“What?”
Jess said, “How much more exposed could I be?”
Teri chuckled. “Well, yes. There is that. But that isn’t what I meant. Evenings, we have some genuine movers and shakers in the audience. People who could get you the sort of work that would make you a feature dancer — someone we could headline. Having seen how quickly you’ve caught on to this, I have to think that you could do it. You’ll have to move fast if you want it, because of your age. At this point, you have a very short shelf life. But you can make a lot of money in a couple of years if you’re careful about how you spend it.” She leaned back and spread her arms. “And then you can invest it, and let your money work for you. That’s what I did.”
And you’re looking at a lot of that money vanishing into the ether if this club goes down the tubes, aren’t you? So you’ll tell your dancers to be careful, but you won’t tell them why.
All she said, though, was, “Well, I guess I have to believe you about the big shots. There’s an actor out there right now who sent someone back to tell me he wanted to meet me.”
Teri sat up straight. “Really? Who?”
“Jason Hemly.”
“Then go. Go! He’s gotten a couple of our girls on his show as extras, and one even got a small speaking part. Those are credits we can use, Grace.”
Jess hesitated.
“Hurry,” Teri said. “Get out there before he gets distracted.”
He’d had second and even third thoughts about it, but finally Hank decided that he’d drop by Jess’s place rather than go straight home. And take food, because she wasn’t going to feel like shopping on the way home, and she’d had nothing in her cupboards.
So he was leaning against her door, starting to get worried, with grocery bags scattered around his feet, when she came out of the stairwell and spotted him.
Jess gave him a weary, grateful smile, and Hank found himself thinking again that he would have to be that fool — the one who’d turned her down.
“Long day.” She sighed. “Thanks.” And she opened the door and led him inside.
He had the irrational urge to hug her, it seemed so much like the right thing to do. Instead, he said, “I’ll cook while you change.”
“You cook?” She looked surprised, and at the same time intrigued.
“I eat; therefore I cook.”
She said, “Give me ten minutes,” and headed into the bathroom.
He didn’t let himself think too much about the fact that by this time tomorrow their joint assignment w
ould be over. The stakeout team would get the killer — or killers — tonight. And once he and Jess finished whatever debrief HSCU required, Jess would be heading back to her regular job, and Hank would be back at the dojo, with no reason to call her or drop by with food. If he wanted to change his mind, this would be his last chance to do it.
Except he could call her after they were finished working together. And that way, they wouldn’t be jeopardizing the mission. Wouldn’t be screwing anything up by being so drawn to each other.
Really, though, their part of the thing was done. Because he had found the next victim before she was dead, because the police were going to be there to step between the girl and her would-be killer, because HSCU would have the bastard dead to rights, and arrest him, and that would be the end of it.
Hank listened to Jess in the bathroom showering, and imagined her wet and naked. That proved to be an awkward line of thought, leading as it did to her wet and naked and beneath him. So he focused on how relieved he was that she wouldn’t have to take off her clothes in front of a big room full of drooling perverts anymore, and that led to his being possessively relieved that he wouldn’t have to share her.
Usually Hank loved to cook. Right at that moment, however, it gave his mind too much time to wander. He preheated Jess’s crappy little oven, started a base sauce of tomato paste, tomato sauce, and a dollop of water simmering in her sauce pot, and got water boiling in his own stock-pot — which he’d brought with him because he did not think Jess was a woman who would own a stockpot. Then he went to work crushing garlic and dicing tomatoes and rolling dried oregano off his palms into the sauce and adding a little extra-virgin olive oil and a pinch of salt and a bit of the garlic to his nice, crunchy loaf of Italian bread. The garlic bread went into the oven, and the diced tomatoes, more garlic, more olive oil, and another bit of salt went into the sauce.
The shower stretched a lot longer than Jess’s predicted ten minutes
The water was already boiling and the pasta nearly done when she came out of the bathroom in a big, fluffy terry-cloth robe, her hair wet and pulled back, her face scrubbed free of makeup. “Sorry I took so long. One shower wasn’t enough,” she said. “I got out, but then I had to get right back in again. And I need... stronger soap. Or... Lysol or something.” She shuddered a little. “Maybe after supper I can take another shower. I keep feeling strangers touching me.” And then she stopped dead, and sniffed the air with an expression of utter ecstasy on her face. “Ooooooh, what is that?”
“Garlic bread, sauce, and pasta,” he said. “Basic stuff, but I’m hungry and I figured you would be too. This is quick and simple.”
“Quick. Oh. Wow. It smells like that, and it’s quick and simple? When you said you cooked, I thought you meant that you knew how to microwave or something.”
“I eat; therefore I cook,” he repeated. “I don’t like microwaved food.”
“Who does? Where did you learn this stuff?”
“My mom’s Italian. We lost the language, but we kept the food.”
“Thank God,” Jess said so fervently that Hank laughed. “After the day I had, I can’t think of anything that would fix things better than real food.”
He turned to her. “Don’t talk about work. It’ll ruin your appetite, and I’m making a lot of food.”
“A lot of food. Can I keep you?” she asked. Her tone was joking, but there was a little flicker in her eyes that suggested the joking would end if he said yes.
He turned back to the stove and stirred the pots. “You don’t like psychics, remember?”
“I could make an exception in your case.” And just like that, all the joking was gone from her voice.
Hank swallowed hard. He was willing to make exceptions in her case, too, he realized. Was willing to take chances when he’d sworn to himself that he would never do that again. Willing to believe.
Was he stupid? Gullible? Setting himself up to get his heart broken?
Yes, probably.
He poured the pasta out of the stockpot into a colander he’d brought, shook it hard — a lot harder than it needed. Poured a little of the sauce into the bottom of the empty stockpot and let it sizzle a bit, and then dumped the pasta back, and poured sauce on top of it. Stirred it around so that all the pasta was well coated, took out two plates, and pulled the bread from the oven.
“I bet,” Jess said quietly from right next to him as he put the baking sheet on a pot holder, “that this place has never smelled this good before. Ever.”
He turned, and her face was inches from his. She went up on her toes and kissed him on the lips, and before he had a chance to respond, pulled away and said, “Watching you, all I could think was that I had never seen that done before that well.”
All the blood in his brain fled south. He didn’t have enough left to feed rational thought.
He muttered, “Thank you,” and turned back to the bread — already sliced, all set to go into a bowl of its own.
He heard her sigh, felt the air get empty all around him as she moved away.
“I... While we eat, I have some things I want to... Dammit.” Words weren’t working for him. He didn’t punch anything. But he thought all inanimate objects ought to be grateful that he didn’t want to look like an ass in front of her, because he wanted to put a fist through the wall. He left half the bread on the sheet, the pot of rotini pasta covered on the stove, and went after her.
Grabbed her wrist, turned her around, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her until his head felt like it was going to explode and he was sure he’d forgotten how to breathe.
“All I want to do is touch you,” he said into the side of her neck, and felt her body molding itself to his.
Showered, she was clean of the residue of the day — he could feel no echoes from Goldcastle on her skin, no darkness anywhere. Beneath his fingertips, Jess shimmered with heat and lust. “You have on that robe, and all I can think is that there’s one lousy tied belt between me and that body of yours. I want...” God, he wanted things he didn’t even dare say. He wanted everything.
“Touch me,” she whispered. She undid the belt of her robe, and in that same simple move, undid any last resistance he might have mustered. He groaned, and slid his hands beneath the thick terry cloth and along her sleek skin. His fingers sought out her curves, and at the same time, they told him the truth of her desire; that she had no hidden agendas, no secret deceptions. He felt no doubt in her. All he felt was that she wanted him as completely and as hungrily as he wanted her.
He had not thought he would ever feel that. He gave himself up to her, lost himself in the moment, thankful only that it existed and not daring to look beyond the instant they inhabited to the wide abyss of the future.
He tangled his hand in her hair and pulled her head back and growled, “Kiss me.” She wrapped her body around him and leaned up into his kiss.
Her hunger consumed him. One hand released her hair, slid down her back and caught her waist, and the other curved under her bare buttock; he hiked her up so that she was at eye level with him, and she wrapped her legs around him, locking her ankles together and tightening her thighs. He groaned, and pulled out of the kiss to search her face for an echo of his own desperate desire. “I want all of you, Jess. Now.”
She shivered. “Take me,” she said. “Right now.”
She began to tug his pullover off; he put her down long enough to fish his wallet out of his back pocket before stripping out of pants and underwear and shoes and socks at top speed. He didn’t want her to see his scars. And most of the right side of his body was nothing but scars. But she smiled at him, ran her hands over both sides of his body, and never flinched or looked disgusted. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a condom. “I told myself today that we weren’t going here. But I still bought condoms along with the groceries.”
“Well,” she said, “you’re psychic.”
“Maybe more than I thought.” He rolled the condom on, then caught her arms and b
raced her back against the dining room wall. She smiled at him with eyes gone heavy-lidded and lifted her legs around his waist and he plunged into her.
She cried out, but he had no chance to wonder if he’d hurt her; she tightened around him and locked her legs around his waist, pulling him deeper into her. He paused at the pleasure of him in her, at the softness of her breasts crushed against his chest, at the soap and skin scent of her as he pressed his face against hers, at the way she arched against him and moved with him.
He held himself still within her, and again stared into her eyes; he was stunned, shaken, almost afraid. “God, oh, God,” he whispered, needing proof that this wasn’t a dream. “Are you real?”
“Are you?” she asked. “Take me hard.”
They understood each other — he could see it in her eyes. They’d both been in the darkness for a long time. Had both been dead inside, and they were staring at each other, discovering that they weren’t dead anymore, but both were afraid to be suddenly alive again only to discover they were alone after all.
He moved inside her. A slow, careful withdrawal, a hard thrust that made her gasp.
“Yes,” she groaned.
He did it again, and felt the pleasure in her, his fingertips reading her hunger, her yearning for the force and the ragged edge of his rough need, and the breathless wonder of her nearly drove him over the edge. Her body went rigid and her head went back and she screamed in wordless release.
His breath sobbed out of him as she groaned, “Yes, more.” He tightened his grip on her, pounded into her harder, faster, and she dug fingers into his shoulders, arched and writhed, screamed, “Harder, harder,” while his muscles and skin went molten, incandescent, and the connection of him to her, him in her, them together as one grew brighter and brighter until he shut his eyes tight against the light of her, and even then she burned behind his eyelids like too much sun.
He felt like he was going to shake apart, like he was going to explode from the inside out... like he was going to disappear into smoke and flames and pleasure too intense to comprehend. She collapsed against him, boneless, and he carried her to the daybed without pulling free of her, and carefully he laid her down on it, and moved over her.
