His Innocent Angel (Heaven's Ballroom Book 1)

by Aiden Bates

  It didn’t surprise me that Mr. Riley Angel wasn’t taking me up on my offer. He moved well and he knew it. Like a wet dream poured into a golden G-string and strapped up in angel wings. Probably had regulars here who’d be sorely disappointed to find he wasn’t available for the evening. Regulars that he wasn’t willing to piss of for some random asshole fresh off the street.

  Or maybe, I considered, he just liked a little variety in his night. Wouldn’t have surprised me either, really. I’d known my fair share of Omegas who were like that—my most recent ex only being the latest in a long chain of them. That was what killed relationships in the end, I’d realized long ago. Being with one person for so long like that—most people couldn’t handle it. In the end, they’d always go searching for something shiny and new. Forever sounded good in I love yous and wedding vows, but in practice, forever took work.

  Up on stage, an impressively tall dancer was teasing his way out of a pair of football pants while the house band strummed out Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part 2”. In any other strip club I’d been in, it would’ve been cheesy. Trashy. A little gauche. But Heaven’s Ballroom chose their dancers well. The band played dirty, but never missed a note. The lighting made it feel like I’d been transported to another world—a classier time. It made me wonder what kind of stage show Riley Angel put on. Some kind of firefighter shtick to Elvis Presley’s “Burning Love”, maybe. An officer-in-uniform bit that gave a more literal meaning to “Fuck Tha Police”.

  “Your drink, Mr. Griffin,” a sultry voice breathed into my ear. The smell of amber and vanilla accompanied it, curling around me like smoke.

  I turned to meet a set of eyes the same color as my scotch.

  “Riley.” I paused. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”

  “It is.” He came around the chair, still cradling my glass in his hand. He placed himself across my lap like a fine fur, winding an arm around my neck and holding my scotch a tantalizing inch and a half away from my lips.

  “I hear you’re all booked up for the night,” I told him.

  “Oh, I am.” He moved the glass an inch forward, teasing me with it—then pulled it away and pressed it to his own lips, taking a sip. “By a gentleman with excellent taste, as fate would have it.”

  I watched him lick a lingering bead of scotch away from his lower lip with a dark pink tongue.

  “I’ve never met an Omega who liked scotch before.”

  He smiled, tracing his fingertips along my collarbone. “You’ve never met an Omega like me.”

  “And this gentleman who’s bought all your dances for the night…” I closed my eyes. That touch of his—it was so fucking warm, but he was still finding ways to give me the shivers. “He doesn’t mind you going around sitting on other Alphas’ laps?”

  “Oh, he minds.” Riley’s fingertips delved lower beneath my collar, brushing against my chest just over my heart. “In fact, he’s a very jealous man.”

  “He’d have to be,” I agreed. “Throwing away money to fill up your dance card like that.”

  Riley laughed. It was the sound of cool water straight from the faucet after a long night of thirst. “He’s got money to burn. But you’re wrong—he doesn’t think of it as throwing it away.”

  “You’re worth it, then?”

  “Maybe you’d like to find out for yourself.”

  “I don’t think your gentleman friend would like that.”

  “No,” Riley agreed, with every implication that he didn’t give a fuck. “He wouldn’t like that at all.”

  It had been a cute game at first, I had to admit. He was as clever as he was handsome. But now, it was starting to rub me the wrong way.

  “You like stringing him along, then,” I said. It came out as gruff as I meant it to. I shouldn’t have been taking Ethan’s indiscretions out on this poor dancer at this nice club—but the wounds were still fresh enough, I found I couldn’t quite help myself. “You think it’s cute to cheat around a little bit.”

  Riley paused. For a moment, he looked stunned. A little pang of hurt flashed through his eyes—a hurt I recognized all too well. In the next moment, he was staring at me with a look just as severe and serious as the one I must’ve been giving him.

  “I didn’t say that, Mr. Griffin.” He drew away from me a little, the spell of our flirtation momentarily broken. “I take that kind of thing more seriously than you’ll ever know.”

  It was my turn to look stunned. He was either quicker on the draw than I’d given him credit for…

  Or he meant what he said.

  Interesting.

  “It’s Max,” I told him. My voice was softer now, and his gaze softened in response.

  “Max, then.”

  “Are you going to let me drink my scotch, or are you just going to tease me with it all night?”

  “I was thinking you might like to drink it somewhere a little more private.”

  Somewhere private with someone like him. It was my drink he had in his hand, but with an offer like that, it might as well have been my cock that he was gripping. He’d had me hard as soon as he’d touched me during that enchanting little opening number. He had me hard again now. I knew the rules—look, don’t touch—but they were rules that I was itching to break.

  His fingers were warm as they wound around mine. He picked himself up off my lap, then pulled me to my feet, leading me through an archway to the side of the room and down a dark hallway full of red doors.

  “Are we still in heaven?” I asked him as we came to the end of the hall.

  “We might be.” He pressed his angel wings against the door and opened it, moving backwards and beckoning me in. “You’ll just have to come inside and find out for yourself.”

  I barely had a foot in the door before Riley grabbed hold of my tie. He yanked on it, pulling me the rest of the way in. Outside in the main room, he’d been smoky and sensual. Eager, but restrained. But now, restraint seemed to be the last thing on his mind. He claimed lengths of my tie with his fists, pulling me toward him until his knuckles were at my throat and his head was craning up toward mine, lips poised for a kiss that required every ounce of my determination not to claim.

  He noticed, too. He noticed more than he ought to have.

  “Do you want to kiss me, Max?” he asked, an amused giggle in his throat.

  “I might. That’s the point, isn’t it?”

  “Tonight, I’d probably let you.” He sucked his lower lip between his teeth, releasing it with an aching slowness. It was purely suggestive. Made me imagine how good it would feel to sink my own teeth into those perfect lips of his. “I like you, Max.”

  “It’s your job to like me, isn’t it, sweetheart?” I let out a little laugh of my own as he pushed be backward, marching me into an armchair in retreat.

  “It’s my job to say I do.” He ran his fingers along the side of the armchair, closing his eyes as he stroked its velvet. It was black as midnight. Soft as mist. “Mm. But it’s another thing for me to mean it.”

  “And do you? Mean it?”

  Riley opened his eyes suddenly, looming over me and staring me down. There was the strangest look in those eyes. Something dangerous lingered around the edges of it. Like he wasn’t entirely sure where the edges were between us. Between what was fake and what was real.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” he purred, straddling me. “Maybe you can help me make up my mind.”

  Overhead, a slow beat flowed from unseen speakers. Not cock rock or country or rap—nothing that I’d ever heard in any strip club I’d been in before. Riley lowered his hips against mine, riding me in pantomime, as Michael Jackson wailed “Give Into Me”. If it hadn’t been for the logistics of getting my slacks off in that moment, I might have obeyed him.

  Even then—it would only take a flick of my belt. The lowering of a zipper. My cock was straining hard against the lap of my slacks already—and the first dance had only just started. Twenty dances. What the fuck had I been thinking? Another nineteen of
these with Riley, and I’d be stopping by my dry cleaners just so I didn’t have to drive all the way home with cum staining my boxers and dripping down my thigh.

  Strip clubs had never been my thing. I’d been dragged to enough of them by my pervert of a boss back when I first started as an intern at Hayward Financial to know how they worked, but I’d never really enjoyed it. Not like Malcolm did. He’d ordered us all out, men and women alike. To gentlemen’s clubs. Alphas’ clubs. To drag shows and burlesque acts. Some of the other interns had quit immediately. The others had petered out slowly, turning in their two weeks in a cascading fashion.

  And there, at the end of the waterfall, only I’d been left. Rough upbringing gave me a knack for keeping my nose to the grindstone and my head where I wanted it to be. It had earned me a promotion. Intern to the firm’s top financial analyst in eight short months. Malcolm Hayward could’ve taken me by the ear and hauled me to hell and back without fazing me. While I’d played wingman for him, I’d had strippers offer me blowjobs. Blow. Ecstasy, anal—everything under the sun. Never anything that I’d wanted. I wasn’t an easy man to tempt.

  But Heaven’s Ballroom wasn’t just any strip club. Riley wasn’t just any stripper.

  And this wasn’t just any night.

  Above me, Riley dipped his lips down toward my neck. He shaped his mouth into a wide O and blew a hot breath of air against my jugular, then puckered and blew cold. Shivers shot up and down my spine again, prickling in the thick muscles over my shoulder blades and strumming my nervous system to life.

  I wanted him. I wanted him bad.

  Daringly, I raised my hand up to his thigh. He had a dancer’s legs, long and lean with muscle. He let me feel the way that muscle rippled beneath my palm before he swatted my touch away.

  “You’re not allowed to do that,” he told me. His tone didn’t sound like a warning. It sounded like a challenge to do it again.

  “You know what they say. Idle hands.” I raised my palms up level with my shoulders where he could see them. “You’ve still got my drink.”

  He wound his arms around me, cradling my glass behind my head. “You’re telling me if I gave you your scotch, you’d play nice?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying at all.” I moved my hand to his hip this time, winding my fingers around the firm curve of the bone there. The other darted up to his jawline, capturing it in my palm. “But if I didn’t have both my hands free, I wouldn’t able to do this.”

  “Maybe I like you with your hands free.”

  “Made up your mind about me already?”

  “I think quicker on my feet.”

  “You might think quicker off of them.”

  A little light caught in his eyes. A mischievous glimmer. Like an ember that had been smoldering deep inside him for a while now, just waiting for the right bit of kindling to come along.

  “What are you proposing, Mr. Griffin?”

  “Max.”

  “Mm. Answer the question, Max.”

  I ran my thumb along his chin all the way up to his lower lip and pressed down, rolling it toward me. Every moment I touched him was a gamble—but he didn’t stop me. Not this time.

  “My car’s out in the lot,” I offered. “Nice car. Roomy.”

  “Leather interior?”

  “Suede.”

  He smirked. “Not a good fabric if you’re looking to get messy.”

  “We’ll have to keep things clean, then.”

  The smirk widened. “You don’t seem like that kind of man.”

  “Maybe you’d like to find out for sure.”

  I saw his breath catch in his throat. His gaze rolled over me, hesitating. Like he was looking for a good reason to take me up on what I was suggesting—or a better reason to say no.

  “Maybe I would,” he said finally. He tipped the rest of my drink down his throat—liquid courage?—and placed the empty glass on the end table to my right. His left. “Lead the way.”

  5

  Riley

  I pointed Max to the back door out to the parking lot, leaving my angel wings inside.

  “Shit,” he swore. “It’s cold out.”

  “It’s not that bad.” A blast of wind hit my bare chest and thighs, giving me a full-body shiver that betrayed my lie.

  “Here.” Max shrugged off his suit jacket and threw it around my shoulders, tugging the lapels tight across my chest.

  He was broader than I was. Bigger and taller and thicker. His jacket dwarfed me, but I wasn’t about to give it back to him. It was a sweet gesture, for one—and for another, he was right. It must have been close to freezing out here, and Max’s jacket was still full of his body heat. His warmth.

  Max’s car was a black Mercedes. He led me to it with his fingers clasped tightly around mine. Out of his suit jacket, he was clad in a white dress shirt. A black wool vest. A red tie. I ran my thumb over one of his cufflinks as he guided me. They were silver, emblazoned with roaring lion heads. With his cropped hair and his muscled form, he could’ve been a gangster—if this was the 1940s, anyway. The mob just didn’t dress quite so dapper anymore.

  “What do you do, Max?” I asked as he clicked his key fob. The lights of the Mercedes flashed as it unlocked.

  “During the day? Finance. Right now, though?” He cast a glance back at me, laughing prematurely.

  “Don’t say you’re doing me.” I squeezed his hand a little tighter, echoing his laugh back at him.

  “Mm. Then I won’t. Bad joke.”

  “The worst.”

  My fingers slipped from his for just long enough to realize that my hands were shaking. This wasn’t like me, getting into an expensive car with a strange Alpha. My body knew it, even if my head didn’t want to admit that it was true. He was funny, which helped.

  His hand steadied my fingers as he reached out to catch them again. That helped more.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Passenger side?”

  “No.” He pulled open the driver’s side door and got in, then pulled me in on top of him. “I want you close, Riley.”

  My thighs settled on either side of his hips again. My fingers curled against his chest. “This close enough for you?”

  I smiled. “Almost.”

  He grabbed the lapels of the jacket to pull me closer still. Our lips hovered inches away from each other, dancing around the fact that we had yet to seal this little tryst with a kiss.

  “You do this often?” I asked him, my breath mingling with his. We both smelled faintly like his scotch. It hadn’t evaded me yet that technically, he’d bought me a drink—which was more than Kevin had ever done.

  “Never,” he told me. “You?”

  “Not here at the club,” I told him. “Not with a client. And never in a car.” I laughed. “But if you’re asking if I’m a virgin…”

  “Are you?”

  I closed my eyes. Did I tell him? Or did I lie?

  “Stop asking questions,” I told him, crushing my lips against his.

  He tasted like scotch too. Scotch and mint and bad decisions. The truth lingered between us, passed from the tip of my tongue onto his. It wasn’t something I could say out loud. Not something that I wanted to. Admitting it to Max meant admitting it to myself—that I’d been saving myself all these years for some cheating low-life who couldn’t even save himself for one night. I’d known that Kevin hadn’t been a virgin when I met him. He’d been surprised to find that the same wasn’t true about me.

  Twenty-one years of being a virgin and playing a whore. That ended tonight.

  If Kevin could fuck around with whoever he wanted, then dammit, now that I was rid of him, so could I.

  Max pulled his lips away from mine abruptly, leaving me leaning forward, desperate for his warmth.

  “Are you sure about this, Riley?” he asked.

  His brow was wrinkled with concern when I opened my eyes.

  “Are you?” I shot back at him.

  His arms wrapped around me, cuppin
g my ass. He had strong hands. They squeezed me in a way that made my cock throb and my head spin.

  “You’re in my car, on my lap, in nothing but a suit jacket and a G-string,” he pointed out. “You shouldn’t have to ask me that.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have to ask me either.” I wrapped my fists around his tie, pulling him closer again. “In fact, don’t ask me again.”

  Our second kiss lasted longer than the first. I could feel Max’s hesitation beneath my lips. A tension in his shoulders. He was holding back.

  It only made me kiss him harder. I’d been holding back for twenty-one years. I wasn’t doing that shit anymore tonight. I tugged at his tie, loosening it as he ran his hands up and down my back, stroking me gently. As my fingers fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, he stroked me a little harder.

  Our eyes met as I reached for his belt.

  Just like that, something inside Max snapped. Whatever restraints he’d put on himself fell away like paper streamers on the wind. He grabbed my hip, fingers plucking at the elastic of my G-string, then delved lower to the hardness of my cock, throbbing between us as he pushed the G-string aside.

  He wrapped my cock up in his fist, squeezing tight, and I moaned. Precum pearled at the tip of it, then ran down my shaft as he gave it a pump.

  “Christ,” he swore against my lips. “You want it bad.”

  “More than you know,” I told him, diving in for another kiss.

  My fingers uncovered his own cock with ease. I’d spent enough time at the Ballroom dressing and undressing—myself, others, making quick changes backstage before the next number went on. I might have been a virgin, but I sure as hell didn’t feel the need to act like one.

  “Fuck,” he gasped as I pulled his cock out. He was big enough, I had to wind both sets of my fingers around his thickness to stroke him.

  Fuck was right. I’d only ever seen a cock as big as Max’s in pornos. The closest I’d ever come to feeling one in real life was right there, straddling him in his fancy car. I set about stroking him, enjoying the way I could feel his pulse through the thick veins that ran up and down his shaft.